Страница:
then, in your generosity, to hide from me that you knew it too, you cannot
do so now, although you try as generously as before. You do. I thank you for
it, Walter, deeply, truly; but you cannot succeed. You have suffered too
much in your own hardships, and in those of your dearest relation, quite to
overlook the innocent cause of all the peril and affliction that has
befallen you. You cannot quite forget me in that character, and we can be
brother and sister no longer. But, dear Walter, do not think that I complain
of you in this. I might have known it - ought to have known it - but forgot
it in my joy. All I hope is that you may think of me less irksomely when
this feeling is no more a secret one; and all I ask is, Walter, in the name
of the poor child who was your sister once, that you will not struggle with
yourself, and pain yourself, for my sake, now that I know all!'
Walter had looked upon her while she said this, with a face so full of
wonder and amazement, that it had room for nothing else. Now he caught up
the hand that touched his, so entreatingly, and held it between his own.
'Oh, Miss Dombey,' he said, 'is it possible that while I have been
suffering so much, in striving with my sense of what is due to you, and must
be rendered to you, I have made you suffer what your words disclose to me?
Never, never, before Heaven, have I thought of you but as the single,
bright, pure, blessed recollection of my boyhood and my youth. Never have I
from the first, and never shall I to the last, regard your part in my life,
but as something sacred, never to be lightly thought of, never to be
esteemed enough, never, until death, to be forgotten. Again to see you look,
and hear you speak, as you did on that night when we parted, is happiness to
me that there are no words to utter; and to be loved and trusted as your
brother, is the next gift I could receive and prize!'
'Walter,' said Florence, looking at him earnestly, but with a changing
face, 'what is that which is due to me, and must be rendered to me, at the
sacrifice of all this?'
'Respect,' said Walter, in a low tone. 'Reverence.
The colour dawned in her face, and she timidly and thoughtfully
withdrew her hand; still looking at him with unabated earnestness.
'I have not a brother's right,' said Walter. 'I have not a brother's
claim. I left a child. I find a woman.'
The colour overspread her face. She made a gesture as if of entreaty
that he would say no more, and her face dropped upon her hands.
They were both silent for a time; she weeping.
'I owe it to a heart so trusting, pure, and good,' said Walter, 'even
to tear myself from it, though I rend my own. How dare I say it is my
sister's!'
She was weeping still.
'If you had been happy; surrounded as you should be by loving and
admiring friends, and by all that makes the station you were born to
enviable,' said Walter; 'and if you had called me brother, then, in your
affectionate remembrance of the past, I could have answered to the name from
my distant place, with no inward assurance that I wronged your spotless
truth by doing so. But here - and now!'
'Oh thank you, thank you, Walter! Forgive my having wronged you so
much. I had no one to advise me. I am quite alone.'
'Florence!' said Walter, passionately. 'I am hurried on to say, what I
thought, but a few moments ago, nothing could have forced from my lips. If I
had been prosperous; if I had any means or hope of being one day able to
restore you to a station near your own; I would have told you that there was
one name you might bestow upon - me - a right above all others, to protect
and cherish you - that I was worthy of in nothing but the love and honour
that I bore you, and in my whole heart being yours. I would have told you
that it was the only claim that you could give me to defend and guard you,
which I dare accept and dare assert; but that if I had that right, I would
regard it as a trust so precious and so priceless, that the undivided truth
and fervour of my life would poorly acknowledge its worth.'
The head was still bent down, the tears still falling, and the bosom
swelling with its sobs.
'Dear Florence! Dearest Florence! whom I called so in my thoughts
before I could consider how presumptuous and wild it was. One last time let
me call you by your own dear name, and touch this gentle hand in token of
your sisterly forgetfulness of what I have said.'
She raised her head, and spoke to him with such a solemn sweetness in
her eyes; with such a calm, bright, placid smile shining on him through her
tears; with such a low, soft tremble in her frame and voice; that the
innermost chords of his heart were touched, and his sight was dim as he
listened.
'No, Walter, I cannot forget it. I would not forget it, for the world.
Are you - are you very poor?'
'I am but a wanderer,' said Walter, 'making voyages to live, across the
sea. That is my calling now.
'Are you soon going away again, Walter?'
'Very soon.
She sat looking at him for a moment; then timidly put her trembling
hand in his.
'If you will take me for your wife, Walter, I will love you dearly. If
you will let me go with you, Walter, I will go to the world's end without
fear. I can give up nothing for you - I have nothing to resign, and no one
to forsake; but all my love and life shall be devoted to you, and with my
last breath I will breathe your name to God if I have sense and memory
left.'
He caught her to his heart, and laid her cheek against his own, and
now, no more repulsed, no more forlorn, she wept indeed, upon the breast of
her dear lover.
Blessed Sunday Bells, ringing so tranquilly in their entranced and
happy ears! Blessed Sunday peace and quiet, harmonising with the calmness in
their souls, and making holy air around them! Blessed twilight stealing on,
and shading her so soothingly and gravely, as she falls asleep, like a
hushed child, upon the bosom she has clung to!
Oh load of love and trustfulness that lies to lightly there! Ay, look
down on the closed eyes, Walter, with a proudly tender gaze; for in all the
wide wide world they seek but thee now - only thee!
The Captain remained in the little parlour until it was quite dark. He
took the chair on which Walter had been sitting, and looked up at the
skylight, until the day, by little and little, faded away, and the stars
peeped down. He lighted a candle, lighted a pipe, smoked it out, and
wondered what on earth was going on upstairs, and why they didn't call him
to tea.
Florence came to his side while he was in the height of his wonderment.
'Ay! lady lass!' cried the Captain. 'Why, you and Wal'r have had a long
spell o' talk, my beauty.'
Florence put her little hand round one of the great buttons of his
coat, and said, looking down into his face:
'Dear Captain, I want to tell you something, if you please.
The Captain raised his head pretty smartly, to hear what it was.
Catching by this means a more distinct view of Florence, he pushed back his
chair, and himself with it, as far as they could go.
'What! Heart's Delight!' cried the Captain, suddenly elated, 'Is it
that?'
'Yes!' said Florence, eagerly.
'Wal'r! Husband! THAT?' roared the Captain, tossing up his glazed hat
into the skylight.
'Yes!' cried Florence, laughing and crying together.
The Captain immediately hugged her; and then, picking up the glazed hat
and putting it on, drew her arm through his, and conducted her upstairs
again; where he felt that the great joke of his life was now to be made.
'What, Wal'r my lad!' said the Captain, looking in at the door, with
his face like an amiable warming-pan. 'So there ain't NO other character,
ain't there?'
He had like to have suffocated himself with this pleasantry, which he
repeated at least forty times during tea; polishing his radiant face with
the sleeve of his coat, and dabbing his head all over with his
pocket-handkerchief, in the intervals. But he was not without a graver
source of enjoyment to fall back upon, when so disposed, for he was
repeatedly heard to say in an undertone, as he looked with ineffable delight
at Walter and Florence:
'Ed'ard Cuttle, my lad, you never shaped a better course in your life,
than when you made that there little property over, jintly!'
Mr Dombey and the World
What is the proud man doing, while the days go by? Does he ever think
of his daughter, or wonder where she is gone? Does he suppose she has come
home, and is leading her old life in the weary house? No one can answer for
him. He has never uttered her name, since. His household dread him too much
to approach a subject on which he is resolutely dumb; and the only person
who dares question him, he silences immediately.
'My dear Paul!' murmurs his sister, sidling into the room, on the day
of Florence's departure, 'your wife! that upstart woman! Is it possible that
what I hear confusedly, is true, and that this is her return for your
unparalleled devotion to her; extending, I am sure, even to the sacrifice of
your own relations, to her caprices and haughtiness? My poor brother!'
With this speech feelingly reminiscent of her not having been asked to
dinner on the day of the first party, Mrs Chick makes great use of her
pocket-handkerchief, and falls on Mr Dombey's neck. But Mr Dombey frigidly
lifts her off, and hands her to a chair.
'I thank you, Louisa,' he says, 'for this mark of your affection; but
desire that our conversation may refer to any other subject. When I bewail
my fate, Louisa, or express myself as being in want of consolation, you can
offer it, if you will have the goodness.'
'My dear Paul,' rejoins his sister, with her handkerchief to her face,
and shaking her head, 'I know your great spirit, and will say no more upon a
theme so painful and revolting;' on the heads of which two adjectives, Mrs
Chick visits scathing indignation; 'but pray let me ask you - though I dread
to hear something that will shock and distress me - that unfortunate child
Florence -
'Louisa!' says her brother, sternly, 'silence! Not another word of
this!'
Mrs Chick can only shake her head, and use her handkerchief, and moan
over degenerate Dombeys, who are no Dombeys. But whether Florence has been
inculpated in the flight of Edith, or has followed her, or has done too
much, or too little, or anything, or nothing, she has not the least idea.
He goes on, without deviation, keeping his thoughts and feelings close
within his own breast, and imparting them to no one. He makes no search for
his daughter. He may think that she is with his sister, or that she is under
his own roof. He may think of her constantly, or he may never think about
her. It is all one for any sign he makes.
But this is sure; he does not think that he has lost her. He has no
suspicion of the truth. He has lived too long shut up in his towering
supremacy, seeing her, a patient gentle creature, in the path below it, to
have any fear of that. Shaken as he is by his disgrace, he is not yet
humbled to the level earth. The root is broad and deep, and in the course of
years its fibres have spread out and gathered nourishment from everything
around it. The tree is struck, but not down.
Though he hide the world within him from the world without - which he
believes has but one purpose for the time, and that, to watch him eagerly
wherever he goes - he cannot hide those rebel traces of it, which escape in
hollow eyes and cheeks, a haggard forehead, and a moody, brooding air.
Impenetrable as before, he is still an altered man; and, proud as ever, he
is humbled, or those marks would not be there.
The world. What the world thinks of him, how it looks at him, what it
sees in him, and what it says - this is the haunting demon of his mind. It
is everywhere where he is; and, worse than that, it is everywhere where he
is not. It comes out with him among his servants, and yet he leaves it
whispering behind; he sees it pointing after him in the street; it is
waiting for him in his counting-house; it leers over the shoulders of rich
men among the merchants; it goes beckoning and babbling among the crowd; it
always anticipates him, in every place; and is always busiest, he knows,
when he has gone away. When he is shut up in his room at night, it is in his
house, outside it, audible in footsteps on the pavement, visible in print
upon the table, steaming to and fro on railroads and in ships; restless and
busy everywhere, with nothing else but him.
It is not a phantom of his imagination. It is as active in other
people's minds as in his. Witness Cousin Feenix, who comes from Baden-Baden,
purposely to talk to him. Witness Major Bagstock, who accompanies Cousin
Feenix on that friendly mission.
Mr Dombey receives them with his usual dignity, and stands erect, in
his old attitude, before the fire. He feels that the world is looking at him
out of their eyes. That it is in the stare of the pictures. That Mr Pitt,
upon the bookcase, represents it. That there are eyes in its own map,
hanging on the wall.
'An unusually cold spring,' says Mr Dombey - to deceive the world.
'Damme, Sir,' says the Major, in the warmth of friendship, 'Joseph
Bagstock is a bad hand at a counterfeit. If you want to hold your friends
off, Dombey, and to give them the cold shoulder, J. B. is not the man for
your purpose. Joe is rough and tough, Sir; blunt, Sir, blunt, is Joe. His
Royal Highness the late Duke of York did me the honour to say, deservedly or
undeservedly - never mind that - "If there is a man in the service on whom I
can depend for coming to the point, that man is Joe - Joe Bagstock."'
Mr Dombey intimates his acquiescence.
'Now, Dombey,' says the Major, 'I am a man of the world. Our friend
Feenix - if I may presume to - '
'Honoured, I am sure,' says Cousin Feenix.
' - is,' proceeds the Major, with a wag of his head, 'also a man of the
world. Dombey, you are a man of the world. Now, when three men of the world
meet together, and are friends - as I believe - ' again appealing to Cousin
Feenix.
'I am sure,' says Cousin Feenix, 'most friendly.'
' - and are friends,' resumes the Major, 'Old Joe's opinion is (I may
be wrong), that the opinion of the world on any particular subject, is very
easily got at.
'Undoubtedly,' says Cousin Feenix. 'In point of fact, it's quite a
self-evident sort of thing. I am extremely anxious, Major, that my friend
Dombey should hear me express my very great astonishment and regret, that my
lovely and accomplished relative, who was possessed of every qualification
to make a man happy, should have so far forgotten what was due to - in point
of fact, to the world - as to commit herself in such a very extraordinary
manner. I have been in a devilish state of depression ever since; and said
indeed to Long Saxby last night - man of six foot ten, with whom my friend
Dombey is probably acquainted - that it had upset me in a confounded way,
and made me bilious. It induces a man to reflect, this kind of fatal
catastrophe,' says Cousin Feenix, 'that events do occur in quite a
providential manner; for if my Aunt had been living at the time, I think the
effect upon a devilish lively woman like herself, would have been
prostration, and that she would have fallen, in point of fact, a victim.'
'Now, Dombey! - ' says the Major, resuming his discourse with great
energy.
'I beg your pardon,' interposes Cousin Feenix. 'Allow me another word.
My friend Dombey will permit me to say, that if any circumstance could have
added to the most infernal state of pain in which I find myself on this
occasion, it would be the natural amazement of the world at my lovely and
accomplished relative (as I must still beg leave to call her) being supposed
to have so committed herself with a person - man with white teeth, in point
of fact - of very inferior station to her husband. But while I must, rather
peremptorily, request my friend Dombey not to criminate my lovely and
accomplished relative until her criminality is perfectly established, I beg
to assure my friend Dombey that the family I represent, and which is now
almost extinct (devilish sad reflection for a man), will interpose no
obstacle in his way, and will be happy to assent to any honourable course of
proceeding, with a view to the future, that he may point out. I trust my
friend Dombey will give me credit for the intentions by which I am animated
in this very melancholy affair, and - a - in point of fact, I am not aware
that I need trouble my friend Dombey with any further observations.'
Mr Dombey bows, without raising his eyes, and is silent.
'Now, Dombey,' says the Major, 'our friend Feenix having, with an
amount of eloquence that Old Joe B. has never heard surpassed - no, by the
Lord, Sir! never!' - says the Major, very blue, indeed, and grasping his
cane in the middle - 'stated the case as regards the lady, I shall presume
upon our friendship, Dombey, to offer a word on another aspect of it. Sir,'
says the Major, with the horse's cough, 'the world in these things has
opinions, which must be satisfied.'
'I know it,' rejoins Mr Dombey.
'Of course you know it, Dombey,' says the Major, 'Damme, Sir, I know
you know it. A man of your calibre is not likely to be ignorant of it.'
'I hope not,' replies Mr Dombey.
'Dombey!' says the Major, 'you will guess the rest. I speak out -
prematurely, perhaps - because the Bagstock breed have always spoke out.
Little, Sir, have they ever got by doing it; but it's in the Bagstock blood.
A shot is to be taken at this man. You have J. B. at your elbow. He claims
the name of friend. God bless you!'
'Major,' returns Mr Dombey, 'I am obliged. I shall put myself in your
hands when the time comes. The time not being come, I have forborne to speak
to you.'
'Where is the fellow, Dombey?' inquires the Major, after gasping and
looking at him, for a minute.
'I don't know.'
'Any intelligence of him?' asks the Major.
'Yes.'
'Dombey, I am rejoiced to hear it,' says the Major. 'I congratulate
you.'
'You will excuse - even you, Major,' replies Mr Dombey, 'my entering
into any further detail at present. The intelligence is of a singular kind,
and singularly obtained. It may turn out to be valueless; it may turn out to
be true; I cannot say at present. My explanation must stop here.'
Although this is but a dry reply to the Major's purple enthusiasm, the
Major receives it graciously, and is delighted to think that the world has
such a fair prospect of soon receiving its due. Cousin Feenix is then
presented with his meed of acknowledgment by the husband of his lovely and
accomplished relative, and Cousin Feenix and Major Bagstock retire, leaving
that husband to the world again, and to ponder at leisure on their
representation of its state of mind concerning his affairs, and on its just
and reasonable expectations.
But who sits in the housekeeper's room, shedding tears, and talking to
Mrs Pipchin in a low tone, with uplifted hands? It is a lady with her face
concealed in a very close black bonnet, which appears not to belong to her.
It is Miss Tox, who has borrowed this disguise from her servant, and comes
from Princess's Place, thus secretly, to revive her old acquaintance with
Mrs Pipchin, in order to get certain information of the state of Mr Dombey.
'How does he bear it, my dear creature?' asks Miss Tox.
'Well,' says Mrs Pipchin, in her snappish way, 'he's pretty much as
usual.'
'Externally,' suggests Miss Tox 'But what he feels within!'
Mrs Pipchin's hard grey eye looks doubtful as she answers, in three
distinct jerks, 'Ah! Perhaps. I suppose so.'
'To tell you my mind, Lucretia,' says Mrs Pipchin; she still calls Miss
Tox Lucretia, on account of having made her first experiments in the
child-quelling line of business on that lady, when an unfortunate and weazen
little girl of tender years; 'to tell you my mind, Lucretia, I think it's a
good riddance. I don't want any of your brazen faces here, myself!'
'Brazen indeed! Well may you say brazen, Mrs Pipchin!' returned Miss
Tox. 'To leave him! Such a noble figure of a man!' And here Miss Tox is
overcome.
'I don't know about noble, I'm sure,' observes Mrs Pipchin; irascibly
rubbing her nose. 'But I know this - that when people meet with trials, they
must bear 'em. Hoity, toity! I have had enough to bear myself, in my time!
What a fuss there is! She's gone, and well got rid of. Nobody wants her
back, I should think!' This hint of the Peruvian Mines, causes Miss Tox to
rise to go away; when Mrs Pipchin rings the bell for Towlinson to show her
out, Mr Towlinson, not having seen Miss Tox for ages, grins, and hopes she's
well; observing that he didn't know her at first, in that bonnet.
'Pretty well, Towlinson, I thank you,' says Miss Tox. 'I beg you'll
have the goodness, when you happen to see me here, not to mention it. My
visits are merely to Mrs Pipchin.'
'Very good, Miss,' says Towlinson.
'Shocking circumstances occur, Towlinson,' says Miss Tox.
'Very much so indeed, Miss,' rejoins Towlinson.
'I hope, Towlinson,' says Miss Tox, who, in her instruction of the
Toodle family, has acquired an admonitorial tone, and a habit of improving
passing occasions, 'that what has happened here, will be a warning to you,
Towlinson.'
'Thank you, Miss, I'm sure,' says Towlinson.
He appears to be falling into a consideration of the manner in which
this warning ought to operate in his particular case, when the vinegary Mrs
Pipchin, suddenly stirring him up with a 'What are you doing? Why don't you
show the lady to the door?' he ushers Miss Tox forth. As she passes Mr
Dombey's room, she shrinks into the inmost depths of the black bonnet, and
walks, on tip-toe; and there is not another atom in the world which haunts
him so, that feels such sorrow and solicitude about him, as Miss Tox takes
out under the black bonnet into the street, and tries to carry home shadowed
it from the newly-lighted lamps
But Miss Tox is not a part of Mr Dombey's world. She comes back every
evening at dusk; adding clogs and an umbrella to the bonnet on wet nights;
and bears the grins of Towlinson, and the huffs and rebuffs of Mrs Pipchin,
and all to ask how he does, and how he bears his misfortune: but she has
nothing to do with Mr Dombey's world. Exacting and harassing as ever, it
goes on without her; and she, a by no means bright or particular star, moves
in her little orbit in the corner of another system, and knows it quite
well, and comes, and cries, and goes away, and is satisfied. Verily Miss Tox
is easier of satisfaction than the world that troubles Mr Dombey so much!
At the Counting House, the clerks discuss the great disaster in all its
lights and shades, but chiefly wonder who will get Mr Carker's place. They
are generally of opinion that it will be shorn of some of its emoluments,
and made uncomfortable by newly-devised checks and restrictions; and those
who are beyond all hope of it are quite sure they would rather not have it,
and don't at all envy the person for whom it may prove to be reserved.
Nothing like the prevailing sensation has existed in the Counting House
since Mr Dombey's little son died; but all such excitements there take a
social, not to say a jovial turn, and lead to the cultivation of good
fellowship. A reconciliation is established on this propitious occasion
between the acknowledged wit of the Counting House and an aspiring rival,
with whom he has been at deadly feud for months; and a little dinner being
proposed, in commemoration of their happily restored amity, takes place at a
neighbouring tavern; the wit in the chair; the rival acting as
Vice-President. The orations following the removal of the cloth are opened
by the Chair, who says, Gentlemen, he can't disguise from himself that this
is not a time for private dissensions. Recent occurrences to which he need
not more particularly allude, but which have not been altogether without
notice in some Sunday Papers,' and in a daily paper which he need not name
(here every other member of the company names it in an audible murmur), have
caused him to reflect; and he feels that for him and Robinson to have any
personal differences at such a moment, would be for ever to deny that good
feeling in the general cause, for which he has reason to think and hope that
the gentlemen in Dombey's House have always been distinguished. Robinson
replies to this like a man and a brother; and one gentleman who has been in
the office three years, under continual notice to quit on account of lapses
in his arithmetic, appears in a perfectly new light, suddenly bursting out
with a thrilling speech, in which he says, May their respected chief never
again know the desolation which has fallen on his hearth! and says a great
variety of things, beginning with 'May he never again,' which are received
with thunders of applause. In short, a most delightful evening is passed,
only interrupted by a difference between two juniors, who, quarrelling about
the probable amount of Mr Carker's late receipts per annum, defy each other
with decanters, and are taken out greatly excited. Soda water is in general
request at the office next day, and most of the party deem the bill an
imposition.
As to Perch, the messenger, he is in a fair way of being ruined for
life. He finds himself again constantly in bars of public-houses, being
treated and lying dreadfully. It appears that he met everybody concerned in
the late transaction, everywhere, and said to them, 'Sir,' or 'Madam,' as
the case was, 'why do you look so pale?' at which each shuddered from head
to foot, and said, 'Oh, Perch!' and ran away. Either the consciousness of
these enormities, or the reaction consequent on liquor, reduces Mr Perch to
an extreme state of low spirits at that hour of the evening when he usually
seeks consolation in the society of Mrs Perch at Balls Pond; and Mrs Perch
frets a good deal, for she fears his confidence in woman is shaken now, and
that he half expects on coming home at night to find her gone off with some
Viscount - 'which,' as she observes to an intimate female friend, 'is what
these wretches in the form of woman have to answer for, Mrs P. It ain't the
harm they do themselves so much as what they reflect upon us, Ma'am; and I
see it in Perch's eye.
Mr Dombey's servants are becoming, at the same time, quite dissipated,
and unfit for other service. They have hot suppers every night, and 'talk it
over' with smoking drinks upon the board. Mr Towlinson is always maudlin
after half-past ten, and frequently begs to know whether he didn't say that
no good would ever come of living in a corner house? They whisper about Miss
Florence, and wonder where she is; but agree that if Mr Dombey don't know,
Mrs Dombey does. This brings them to the latter, of whom Cook says, She had
a stately way though, hadn't she? But she was too high! They all agree that
she was too high, and Mr Towlinson's old flame, the housemaid (who is very
virtuous), entreats that you will never talk to her any more about people
who hold their heads up, as if the ground wasn't good enough for 'em.
Everything that is said and done about it, except by Mr Dombey, is done
in chorus. Mr Dombey and the world are alone together.
Secret Intelligence
Good Mrs Brown and her daughter Alice kept silent company together, in
their own dwelling. It was early in the evening, and late in the spring. But
a few days had elapsed since Mr Dombey had told Major Bagstock of his
singular intelligence, singularly obtained, which might turn out to be
valueless, and might turn out to be true; and the world was not satisfied
yet.
The mother and daughter sat for a long time without interchanging a
word: almost without motion. The old woman's face was shrewdly anxious and
expectant; that of her daughter was expectant too, but in a less sharp
degree, and sometimes it darkened, as if with gathering disappointment and
incredulity. The old woman, without heeding these changes in its expression,
though her eyes were often turned towards it, sat mumbling and munching, and
listening confidently.
Their abode, though poor and miserable, was not so utterly wretched as
in the days when only Good Mrs Brown inhabited it. Some few attempts at
cleanliness and order were manifest, though made in a reckless, gipsy way,
that might have connected them, at a glance, with the younger woman. The
shades of evening thickened and deepened as the two kept silence, until the
blackened walls were nearly lost in the prevailing gloom.
Then Alice broke the silence which had lasted so long, and said:
'You may give him up, mother. He'll not come here.'
'Death give him up!' returned the old woman, impatiently. 'He will come
here.'
'We shall see,' said Alice.
'We shall see him,' returned her mother.
'And doomsday,' said the daughter.
'You think I'm in my second childhood, I know!' croaked the old woman.
'That's the respect and duty that I get from my own gal, but I'm wiser than
you take me for. He'll come. T'other day when I touched his coat in the
street, he looked round as if I was a toad. But Lord, to see him when I said
their names, and asked him if he'd like to find out where they was!'
'Was it so angry?' asked her daughter, roused to interest in a moment.
'Angry? ask if it was bloody. That's more like the word. Angry? Ha, ha!
To call that only angry!' said the old woman, hobbling to the cupboard, and
lighting a candle, which displayed the workings of her mouth to ugly
advantage, as she brought it to the table. 'I might as well call your face
only angry, when you think or talk about 'em.'
It was something different from that, truly, as she sat as still as a
crouched tigress, with her kindling eyes.
'Hark!' said the old woman, triumphantly. 'I hear a step coming. It's
not the tread of anyone that lives about here, or comes this way often. We
don't walk like that. We should grow proud on such neighbours! Do you hear
him?'
'I believe you are right, mother,' replied Alice, in a low voice.
'Peace! open the door.'
As she drew herself within her shawl, and gathered it about her, the
old woman complied; and peering out, and beckoning, gave admission to Mr
Dombey, who stopped when he had set his foot within the door, and looked
distrustfully around.
'It's a poor place for a great gentleman like your worship,' said the
old woman, curtseying and chattering. 'I told you so, but there's no harm in
it.'
'Who is that?' asked Mr Dombey, looking at her companion.
'That's my handsome daughter,' said the old woman. 'Your worship won't
mind her. She knows all about it.'
A shadow fell upon his face not less expressive than if he had groaned
aloud, 'Who does not know all about it!' but he looked at her steadily, and
she, without any acknowledgment of his presence, looked at him. The shadow
on his face was darker when he turned his glance away from her; and even
then it wandered back again, furtively, as if he were haunted by her bold
eyes, and some remembrance they inspired.
'Woman,' said Mr Dombey to the old witch who was chucKling and leering
close at his elbow, and who, when he turned to address her, pointed
stealthily at her daughter, and rubbed her hands, and pointed again, 'Woman!
I believe that I am weak and forgetful of my station in coming here, but you
know why I come, and what you offered when you stopped me in the street the
other day. What is it that you have to tell me concerning what I want to
know; and how does it happen that I can find voluntary intelligence in a
hovel like this,' with a disdainful glance about him, 'when I have exerted
my power and means to obtain it in vain? I do not think,' he said, after a
moment's pause, during which he had observed her, sternly, 'that you are so
audacious as to mean to trifle with me, or endeavour to impose upon me. But
if you have that purpose, you had better stop on the threshold of your
scheme. My humour is not a trifling one, and my acknowledgment will be
severe.'
'Oh a proud, hard gentleman!' chuckled the old woman, shaking her head,
and rubbing her shrivelled hands, 'oh hard, hard, hard! But your worship
shall see with your own eyes and hear with your own ears; not with ours -
and if your worship's put upon their track, you won't mind paying something
for it, will you, honourable deary?'
'Money,' returned Mr Dombey, apparently relieved, and assured by this
inquiry, 'will bring about unlikely things, I know. It may turn even means
as unexpected and unpromising as these, to account. Yes. For any reliable
information I receive, I will pay. But I must have the information first,
and judge for myself of its value.'
'Do you know nothing more powerful than money?' asked the younger
woman, without rising, or altering her attitude.
'Not here, I should imagine,' said Mr Dombey.
'You should know of something that is more powerful elsewhere, as I
judge,' she returned. 'Do you know nothing of a woman's anger?'
'You have a saucy tongue, Jade,' said Mr Dombey.
'Not usually,' she answered, without any show of emotion: 'I speak to
you now, that you may understand us better, and rely more on us. A woman's
anger is pretty much the same here, as in your fine house. I am angry. I
have been so, many years. I have as good cause for my anger as you have for
yours, and its object is the same man.'
He started, in spite of himself, and looked at her with
astonishment.
'Yes,' she said, with a kind of laugh. 'Wide as the distance may seem
between us, it is so. How it is so, is no matter; that is my story, and I
keep my story to myself. I would bring you and him together, because I have
a rage against him. My mother there, is avaricious and poor; and she would
sell any tidings she could glean, or anything, or anybody, for money. It is
fair enough, perhaps, that you should pay her some, if she can help you to
what you want to know. But that is not my motive. I have told you what mine
is, and it would be as strong and all-sufficient with me if you haggled and
bargained with her for a sixpence. I have done. My saucy tongue says no
more, if you wait here till sunrise tomorrow.'
The old woman, who had shown great uneasiness during this speech, which
had a tendency to depreciate her expected gains, pulled Mr Dombey softly by
the sleeve, and whispered to him not to mind her. He glared at them both, by
turns, with a haggard look, and said, in a deeper voice than was usual with
him:
'Go on - what do you know?'
'Oh, not so fast, your worship! we must wait for someone,' answered the
old woman. 'It's to be got from someone else - wormed out - screwed and
twisted from him.'
'What do you mean?' said Mr Dombey.
'Patience,' she croaked, laying her hand, like a claw, upon his arm.
'Patience. I'll get at it. I know I can! If he was to hold it back from me,'
said Good Mrs Brown, crooking her ten fingers, 'I'd tear it out of him!'
Mr Dombey followed her with his eyes as she hobbled to the door, and
looked out again: and then his glance sought her daughter; but she remained
impassive, silent, and regardless of him.
'Do you tell me, woman,' he said, when the bent figure of Mrs Brown
came back, shaking its head and chattering to itself, 'that there is another
person expected here?'
'Yes!' said the old woman, looking up into his face, and nodding.
'From whom you are to exact the intelligence that is to be useful to
me?'
'Yes,' said the old woman, nodding again.
'A stranger?'
'Chut!' said the old woman, with a shrill laugh. 'What signifies! Well,
well; no. No stranger to your worship. But he won't see you. He'd be afraid
of you, and wouldn't talk. You'll stand behind that door, and judge him for
yourself. We don't ask to be believed on trust What! Your worship doubts the
room behind the door? Oh the suspicion of you rich gentlefolks! Look at it,
then.'
Her sharp eye had detected an involuntary expression of this feeling on
his part, which was not unreasonable under the circumstances. In
satisfaction of it she now took the candle to the door she spoke of. Mr
Dombey looked in; assured himself that it was an empty, crazy room; and
signed to her to put the light back in its place.
'How long,' he asked, 'before this person comes?'
'Not long,' she answered. 'Would your worship sit down for a few odd
minutes?'
He made no answer; but began pacing the room with an irresolute air, as
if he were undecided whether to remain or depart, and as if he had some
quarrel with himself for being there at all. But soon his tread grew slower
and heavier, and his face more sternly thoughtful!; as the object with which
he had come, fixed itself in his mind, and dilated there again.
While he thus walked up and down with his eyes on the ground, Mrs
Brown, in the chair from which she had risen to receive him, sat listening
anew. The monotony of his step, or the uncertainty of age, made her so slow
of hearing, that a footfall without had sounded in her daughter's ears for
some moments, and she had looked up hastily to warn her mother of its
approach, before the old woman was roused by it. But then she started from
her seat, and whispering 'Here he is!' hurried her visitor to his place of
observation, and put a bottle and glass upon the table, with such alacrity,
as to be ready to fling her arms round the neck of Rob the Grinder on his
appearance at the door.
'And here's my bonny boy,' cried Mrs Brown, 'at last! - oho, oho!
You're like my own son, Robby!'
'Oh! Misses Brown!' remonstrated the Grinder. 'Don't! Can't you be fond
of a cove without squeedging and throttling of him? Take care of the
birdcage in my hand, will you?'
'Thinks of a birdcage, afore me!' cried the old woman, apostrophizing
the ceiling. 'Me that feels more than a mother for him!'
'Well, I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you, Misses Brown,' said the
unfortunate youth, greatly aggravated; 'but you're so jealous of a cove. I'm
very fond of you myself, and all that, of course; but I don't smother you,
do I, Misses Brown?'
He looked and spoke as if he wOuld have been far from objecting to do
so, however, on a favourable occasion.
'And to talk about birdcages, too!' whimpered the Grinder. 'As If that
was a crime! Why, look'ee here! Do you know who this belongs to?'
'To Master, dear?' said the old woman with a grin.
'Ah!' replied the Grinder, lifting a large cage tied up in a wrapper,
on the table, and untying it with his teeth and hands. 'It's our parrot,
this is.'
'Mr Carker's parrot, Rob?'
'Will you hold your tongue, Misses Brown?' returned the goaded Grinder.
'What do you go naming names for? I'm blest,' said Rob, pulling his hair
with both hands in the exasperation of his feelings, 'if she ain't enough to
make a cove run wild!'
'What! Do you snub me, thankless boy!' cried the old woman, with ready
vehemence.
'Good gracious, Misses Brown, no!' returned the Grinder, with tears in
his eyes. 'Was there ever such a - ! Don't I dote upon you, Misses Brown?'
'Do you, sweet Rob? Do you truly, chickabiddy?' With that, Mrs Brown
held him in her fond embrace once more; and did not release him until he had
made several violent and ineffectual struggles with his legs, and his hair
was standing on end all over his head.
'Oh!' returned the Grinder, 'what a thing it is to be perfectly pitched
into with affection like this here. I wish she was - How have you been,
Misses Brown?'
'Ah! Not here since this night week!' said the old woman, contemplating
him with a look of reproach.
'Good gracious, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder, 'I said tonight's
a week, that I'd come tonight, didn't I? And here I am. How you do go on! I
wish you'd be a little rational, Misses Brown. I'm hoarse with saying things
in my defence, and my very face is shiny with being hugged!' He rubbed it
hard with his sleeve, as if to remove the tender polish in question.
'Drink a little drop to comfort you, my Robin,' said the old woman,
filling the glass from the bottle and giving it to him.
'Thank'ee, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder. 'Here's your health.
And long may you - et ceterer.' Which, to judge from the expression of his
face, did not include any very choice blessings. 'And here's her health,'
said the Grinder, glancing at Alice, who sat with her eyes fixed, as it
seemed to him, on the wall behind him, but in reality on Mr Dombey's face at
the door, 'and wishing her the same and many of 'em!'
He drained the glass to these two sentiments, and set it down.
'Well, I say, Misses Brown!' he proceeded. 'To go on a little rational
now. You're a judge of birds, and up to their ways, as I know to my cost.'
'Cost!' repeated Mrs Brown.
'Satisfaction, I mean,' returned the Grinder. 'How you do take up a
cove, Misses Brown! You've put it all out of my head again.'
'Judge of birds, Robby,' suggested the old woman.
'Ah!' said the Grinder. 'Well, I've got to take care of this parrot -
certain things being sold, and a certain establishment broke up - and as I
don't want no notice took at present, I wish you'd attend to her for a week
or so, and give her board and lodging, will you? If I must come backwards
and forwards,' mused the Grinder with a dejected face, 'I may as well have
something to come for.'
'Something to come for?' screamed the old woman.
'Besides you, I mean, Misses Brown,' returned the craven Rob. 'Not that
I want any inducement but yourself, Misses Brown, I'm sure. Don't begin
again, for goodness' sake.'
'He don't care for me! He don't care for me, as I care for him!' cried
Mrs Brown, lifting up her skinny hands. 'But I'll take care of his bird.'
'Take good care of it too, you know, Mrs Brown,' said Rob, shaking his
head. 'If you was so much as to stroke its feathers once the wrong way, I
believe it would be found out.'
'Ah, so sharp as that, Rob?' said Mrs Brown, quickly.
'Sharp, Misses Brown!' repeated Rob. 'But this is not to be talked
about.'
Checking himself abruptly, and not without a fearful glance across the
room, Rob filled the glass again, and having slowly emptied it, shook his
head, and began to draw his fingers across and across the wires of the
parrot's cage by way of a diversion from the dangerous theme that had just
been broached.
The old woman eyed him slily, and hitching her chair nearer his, and
looking in at the parrot, who came down from the gilded dome at her call,
said:
'Out of place now, Robby?'
'Never you mind, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder, shortly.
'Board wages, perhaps, Rob?' said Mrs Brown.
'Pretty Polly!' said the Grinder.
The old woman darted a glance at him that might have warned him to
consider his ears in danger, but it was his turn to look in at the parrot
now, and however expressive his imagination may have made her angry scowl,
it was unseen by his bodily eyes.
'I wonder Master didn't take you with him, Rob,' said the old woman, in
a wheedling voice, but with increased malignity of aspect.
Rob was so absorbed in contemplation of the parrot, and in trolling his
forefinger on the wires, that he made no answer.
The old woman had her clutch within a hair's breadth of his shock of
hair as it stooped over the table; but she restrained her fingers, and said,
in a voice that choked with its efforts to be coaxing:
'Robby, my child.'
'Well, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder.
'I say I wonder Master didn't take you with him, dear.'
'Never you mind, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder.
Mrs Brown instantly directed the clutch of her right hand at his hair,
and the clutch of her left hand at his throat, and held on to the object of
her fond affection with such extraordinary fury, that his face began to
blacken in a moment.
'Misses Brown!' exclaimed the Grinder, 'let go, will you? What are you
doing of? Help, young woman! Misses Brow- Brow- !'
The young woman, however, equally unmoved by his direct appeal to her,
and by his inarticulate utterance, remained quite neutral, until, after
struggling with his assailant into a corner, Rob disengaged himself, and
stood there panting and fenced in by his own elbows, while the old woman,
do so now, although you try as generously as before. You do. I thank you for
it, Walter, deeply, truly; but you cannot succeed. You have suffered too
much in your own hardships, and in those of your dearest relation, quite to
overlook the innocent cause of all the peril and affliction that has
befallen you. You cannot quite forget me in that character, and we can be
brother and sister no longer. But, dear Walter, do not think that I complain
of you in this. I might have known it - ought to have known it - but forgot
it in my joy. All I hope is that you may think of me less irksomely when
this feeling is no more a secret one; and all I ask is, Walter, in the name
of the poor child who was your sister once, that you will not struggle with
yourself, and pain yourself, for my sake, now that I know all!'
Walter had looked upon her while she said this, with a face so full of
wonder and amazement, that it had room for nothing else. Now he caught up
the hand that touched his, so entreatingly, and held it between his own.
'Oh, Miss Dombey,' he said, 'is it possible that while I have been
suffering so much, in striving with my sense of what is due to you, and must
be rendered to you, I have made you suffer what your words disclose to me?
Never, never, before Heaven, have I thought of you but as the single,
bright, pure, blessed recollection of my boyhood and my youth. Never have I
from the first, and never shall I to the last, regard your part in my life,
but as something sacred, never to be lightly thought of, never to be
esteemed enough, never, until death, to be forgotten. Again to see you look,
and hear you speak, as you did on that night when we parted, is happiness to
me that there are no words to utter; and to be loved and trusted as your
brother, is the next gift I could receive and prize!'
'Walter,' said Florence, looking at him earnestly, but with a changing
face, 'what is that which is due to me, and must be rendered to me, at the
sacrifice of all this?'
'Respect,' said Walter, in a low tone. 'Reverence.
The colour dawned in her face, and she timidly and thoughtfully
withdrew her hand; still looking at him with unabated earnestness.
'I have not a brother's right,' said Walter. 'I have not a brother's
claim. I left a child. I find a woman.'
The colour overspread her face. She made a gesture as if of entreaty
that he would say no more, and her face dropped upon her hands.
They were both silent for a time; she weeping.
'I owe it to a heart so trusting, pure, and good,' said Walter, 'even
to tear myself from it, though I rend my own. How dare I say it is my
sister's!'
She was weeping still.
'If you had been happy; surrounded as you should be by loving and
admiring friends, and by all that makes the station you were born to
enviable,' said Walter; 'and if you had called me brother, then, in your
affectionate remembrance of the past, I could have answered to the name from
my distant place, with no inward assurance that I wronged your spotless
truth by doing so. But here - and now!'
'Oh thank you, thank you, Walter! Forgive my having wronged you so
much. I had no one to advise me. I am quite alone.'
'Florence!' said Walter, passionately. 'I am hurried on to say, what I
thought, but a few moments ago, nothing could have forced from my lips. If I
had been prosperous; if I had any means or hope of being one day able to
restore you to a station near your own; I would have told you that there was
one name you might bestow upon - me - a right above all others, to protect
and cherish you - that I was worthy of in nothing but the love and honour
that I bore you, and in my whole heart being yours. I would have told you
that it was the only claim that you could give me to defend and guard you,
which I dare accept and dare assert; but that if I had that right, I would
regard it as a trust so precious and so priceless, that the undivided truth
and fervour of my life would poorly acknowledge its worth.'
The head was still bent down, the tears still falling, and the bosom
swelling with its sobs.
'Dear Florence! Dearest Florence! whom I called so in my thoughts
before I could consider how presumptuous and wild it was. One last time let
me call you by your own dear name, and touch this gentle hand in token of
your sisterly forgetfulness of what I have said.'
She raised her head, and spoke to him with such a solemn sweetness in
her eyes; with such a calm, bright, placid smile shining on him through her
tears; with such a low, soft tremble in her frame and voice; that the
innermost chords of his heart were touched, and his sight was dim as he
listened.
'No, Walter, I cannot forget it. I would not forget it, for the world.
Are you - are you very poor?'
'I am but a wanderer,' said Walter, 'making voyages to live, across the
sea. That is my calling now.
'Are you soon going away again, Walter?'
'Very soon.
She sat looking at him for a moment; then timidly put her trembling
hand in his.
'If you will take me for your wife, Walter, I will love you dearly. If
you will let me go with you, Walter, I will go to the world's end without
fear. I can give up nothing for you - I have nothing to resign, and no one
to forsake; but all my love and life shall be devoted to you, and with my
last breath I will breathe your name to God if I have sense and memory
left.'
He caught her to his heart, and laid her cheek against his own, and
now, no more repulsed, no more forlorn, she wept indeed, upon the breast of
her dear lover.
Blessed Sunday Bells, ringing so tranquilly in their entranced and
happy ears! Blessed Sunday peace and quiet, harmonising with the calmness in
their souls, and making holy air around them! Blessed twilight stealing on,
and shading her so soothingly and gravely, as she falls asleep, like a
hushed child, upon the bosom she has clung to!
Oh load of love and trustfulness that lies to lightly there! Ay, look
down on the closed eyes, Walter, with a proudly tender gaze; for in all the
wide wide world they seek but thee now - only thee!
The Captain remained in the little parlour until it was quite dark. He
took the chair on which Walter had been sitting, and looked up at the
skylight, until the day, by little and little, faded away, and the stars
peeped down. He lighted a candle, lighted a pipe, smoked it out, and
wondered what on earth was going on upstairs, and why they didn't call him
to tea.
Florence came to his side while he was in the height of his wonderment.
'Ay! lady lass!' cried the Captain. 'Why, you and Wal'r have had a long
spell o' talk, my beauty.'
Florence put her little hand round one of the great buttons of his
coat, and said, looking down into his face:
'Dear Captain, I want to tell you something, if you please.
The Captain raised his head pretty smartly, to hear what it was.
Catching by this means a more distinct view of Florence, he pushed back his
chair, and himself with it, as far as they could go.
'What! Heart's Delight!' cried the Captain, suddenly elated, 'Is it
that?'
'Yes!' said Florence, eagerly.
'Wal'r! Husband! THAT?' roared the Captain, tossing up his glazed hat
into the skylight.
'Yes!' cried Florence, laughing and crying together.
The Captain immediately hugged her; and then, picking up the glazed hat
and putting it on, drew her arm through his, and conducted her upstairs
again; where he felt that the great joke of his life was now to be made.
'What, Wal'r my lad!' said the Captain, looking in at the door, with
his face like an amiable warming-pan. 'So there ain't NO other character,
ain't there?'
He had like to have suffocated himself with this pleasantry, which he
repeated at least forty times during tea; polishing his radiant face with
the sleeve of his coat, and dabbing his head all over with his
pocket-handkerchief, in the intervals. But he was not without a graver
source of enjoyment to fall back upon, when so disposed, for he was
repeatedly heard to say in an undertone, as he looked with ineffable delight
at Walter and Florence:
'Ed'ard Cuttle, my lad, you never shaped a better course in your life,
than when you made that there little property over, jintly!'
Mr Dombey and the World
What is the proud man doing, while the days go by? Does he ever think
of his daughter, or wonder where she is gone? Does he suppose she has come
home, and is leading her old life in the weary house? No one can answer for
him. He has never uttered her name, since. His household dread him too much
to approach a subject on which he is resolutely dumb; and the only person
who dares question him, he silences immediately.
'My dear Paul!' murmurs his sister, sidling into the room, on the day
of Florence's departure, 'your wife! that upstart woman! Is it possible that
what I hear confusedly, is true, and that this is her return for your
unparalleled devotion to her; extending, I am sure, even to the sacrifice of
your own relations, to her caprices and haughtiness? My poor brother!'
With this speech feelingly reminiscent of her not having been asked to
dinner on the day of the first party, Mrs Chick makes great use of her
pocket-handkerchief, and falls on Mr Dombey's neck. But Mr Dombey frigidly
lifts her off, and hands her to a chair.
'I thank you, Louisa,' he says, 'for this mark of your affection; but
desire that our conversation may refer to any other subject. When I bewail
my fate, Louisa, or express myself as being in want of consolation, you can
offer it, if you will have the goodness.'
'My dear Paul,' rejoins his sister, with her handkerchief to her face,
and shaking her head, 'I know your great spirit, and will say no more upon a
theme so painful and revolting;' on the heads of which two adjectives, Mrs
Chick visits scathing indignation; 'but pray let me ask you - though I dread
to hear something that will shock and distress me - that unfortunate child
Florence -
'Louisa!' says her brother, sternly, 'silence! Not another word of
this!'
Mrs Chick can only shake her head, and use her handkerchief, and moan
over degenerate Dombeys, who are no Dombeys. But whether Florence has been
inculpated in the flight of Edith, or has followed her, or has done too
much, or too little, or anything, or nothing, she has not the least idea.
He goes on, without deviation, keeping his thoughts and feelings close
within his own breast, and imparting them to no one. He makes no search for
his daughter. He may think that she is with his sister, or that she is under
his own roof. He may think of her constantly, or he may never think about
her. It is all one for any sign he makes.
But this is sure; he does not think that he has lost her. He has no
suspicion of the truth. He has lived too long shut up in his towering
supremacy, seeing her, a patient gentle creature, in the path below it, to
have any fear of that. Shaken as he is by his disgrace, he is not yet
humbled to the level earth. The root is broad and deep, and in the course of
years its fibres have spread out and gathered nourishment from everything
around it. The tree is struck, but not down.
Though he hide the world within him from the world without - which he
believes has but one purpose for the time, and that, to watch him eagerly
wherever he goes - he cannot hide those rebel traces of it, which escape in
hollow eyes and cheeks, a haggard forehead, and a moody, brooding air.
Impenetrable as before, he is still an altered man; and, proud as ever, he
is humbled, or those marks would not be there.
The world. What the world thinks of him, how it looks at him, what it
sees in him, and what it says - this is the haunting demon of his mind. It
is everywhere where he is; and, worse than that, it is everywhere where he
is not. It comes out with him among his servants, and yet he leaves it
whispering behind; he sees it pointing after him in the street; it is
waiting for him in his counting-house; it leers over the shoulders of rich
men among the merchants; it goes beckoning and babbling among the crowd; it
always anticipates him, in every place; and is always busiest, he knows,
when he has gone away. When he is shut up in his room at night, it is in his
house, outside it, audible in footsteps on the pavement, visible in print
upon the table, steaming to and fro on railroads and in ships; restless and
busy everywhere, with nothing else but him.
It is not a phantom of his imagination. It is as active in other
people's minds as in his. Witness Cousin Feenix, who comes from Baden-Baden,
purposely to talk to him. Witness Major Bagstock, who accompanies Cousin
Feenix on that friendly mission.
Mr Dombey receives them with his usual dignity, and stands erect, in
his old attitude, before the fire. He feels that the world is looking at him
out of their eyes. That it is in the stare of the pictures. That Mr Pitt,
upon the bookcase, represents it. That there are eyes in its own map,
hanging on the wall.
'An unusually cold spring,' says Mr Dombey - to deceive the world.
'Damme, Sir,' says the Major, in the warmth of friendship, 'Joseph
Bagstock is a bad hand at a counterfeit. If you want to hold your friends
off, Dombey, and to give them the cold shoulder, J. B. is not the man for
your purpose. Joe is rough and tough, Sir; blunt, Sir, blunt, is Joe. His
Royal Highness the late Duke of York did me the honour to say, deservedly or
undeservedly - never mind that - "If there is a man in the service on whom I
can depend for coming to the point, that man is Joe - Joe Bagstock."'
Mr Dombey intimates his acquiescence.
'Now, Dombey,' says the Major, 'I am a man of the world. Our friend
Feenix - if I may presume to - '
'Honoured, I am sure,' says Cousin Feenix.
' - is,' proceeds the Major, with a wag of his head, 'also a man of the
world. Dombey, you are a man of the world. Now, when three men of the world
meet together, and are friends - as I believe - ' again appealing to Cousin
Feenix.
'I am sure,' says Cousin Feenix, 'most friendly.'
' - and are friends,' resumes the Major, 'Old Joe's opinion is (I may
be wrong), that the opinion of the world on any particular subject, is very
easily got at.
'Undoubtedly,' says Cousin Feenix. 'In point of fact, it's quite a
self-evident sort of thing. I am extremely anxious, Major, that my friend
Dombey should hear me express my very great astonishment and regret, that my
lovely and accomplished relative, who was possessed of every qualification
to make a man happy, should have so far forgotten what was due to - in point
of fact, to the world - as to commit herself in such a very extraordinary
manner. I have been in a devilish state of depression ever since; and said
indeed to Long Saxby last night - man of six foot ten, with whom my friend
Dombey is probably acquainted - that it had upset me in a confounded way,
and made me bilious. It induces a man to reflect, this kind of fatal
catastrophe,' says Cousin Feenix, 'that events do occur in quite a
providential manner; for if my Aunt had been living at the time, I think the
effect upon a devilish lively woman like herself, would have been
prostration, and that she would have fallen, in point of fact, a victim.'
'Now, Dombey! - ' says the Major, resuming his discourse with great
energy.
'I beg your pardon,' interposes Cousin Feenix. 'Allow me another word.
My friend Dombey will permit me to say, that if any circumstance could have
added to the most infernal state of pain in which I find myself on this
occasion, it would be the natural amazement of the world at my lovely and
accomplished relative (as I must still beg leave to call her) being supposed
to have so committed herself with a person - man with white teeth, in point
of fact - of very inferior station to her husband. But while I must, rather
peremptorily, request my friend Dombey not to criminate my lovely and
accomplished relative until her criminality is perfectly established, I beg
to assure my friend Dombey that the family I represent, and which is now
almost extinct (devilish sad reflection for a man), will interpose no
obstacle in his way, and will be happy to assent to any honourable course of
proceeding, with a view to the future, that he may point out. I trust my
friend Dombey will give me credit for the intentions by which I am animated
in this very melancholy affair, and - a - in point of fact, I am not aware
that I need trouble my friend Dombey with any further observations.'
Mr Dombey bows, without raising his eyes, and is silent.
'Now, Dombey,' says the Major, 'our friend Feenix having, with an
amount of eloquence that Old Joe B. has never heard surpassed - no, by the
Lord, Sir! never!' - says the Major, very blue, indeed, and grasping his
cane in the middle - 'stated the case as regards the lady, I shall presume
upon our friendship, Dombey, to offer a word on another aspect of it. Sir,'
says the Major, with the horse's cough, 'the world in these things has
opinions, which must be satisfied.'
'I know it,' rejoins Mr Dombey.
'Of course you know it, Dombey,' says the Major, 'Damme, Sir, I know
you know it. A man of your calibre is not likely to be ignorant of it.'
'I hope not,' replies Mr Dombey.
'Dombey!' says the Major, 'you will guess the rest. I speak out -
prematurely, perhaps - because the Bagstock breed have always spoke out.
Little, Sir, have they ever got by doing it; but it's in the Bagstock blood.
A shot is to be taken at this man. You have J. B. at your elbow. He claims
the name of friend. God bless you!'
'Major,' returns Mr Dombey, 'I am obliged. I shall put myself in your
hands when the time comes. The time not being come, I have forborne to speak
to you.'
'Where is the fellow, Dombey?' inquires the Major, after gasping and
looking at him, for a minute.
'I don't know.'
'Any intelligence of him?' asks the Major.
'Yes.'
'Dombey, I am rejoiced to hear it,' says the Major. 'I congratulate
you.'
'You will excuse - even you, Major,' replies Mr Dombey, 'my entering
into any further detail at present. The intelligence is of a singular kind,
and singularly obtained. It may turn out to be valueless; it may turn out to
be true; I cannot say at present. My explanation must stop here.'
Although this is but a dry reply to the Major's purple enthusiasm, the
Major receives it graciously, and is delighted to think that the world has
such a fair prospect of soon receiving its due. Cousin Feenix is then
presented with his meed of acknowledgment by the husband of his lovely and
accomplished relative, and Cousin Feenix and Major Bagstock retire, leaving
that husband to the world again, and to ponder at leisure on their
representation of its state of mind concerning his affairs, and on its just
and reasonable expectations.
But who sits in the housekeeper's room, shedding tears, and talking to
Mrs Pipchin in a low tone, with uplifted hands? It is a lady with her face
concealed in a very close black bonnet, which appears not to belong to her.
It is Miss Tox, who has borrowed this disguise from her servant, and comes
from Princess's Place, thus secretly, to revive her old acquaintance with
Mrs Pipchin, in order to get certain information of the state of Mr Dombey.
'How does he bear it, my dear creature?' asks Miss Tox.
'Well,' says Mrs Pipchin, in her snappish way, 'he's pretty much as
usual.'
'Externally,' suggests Miss Tox 'But what he feels within!'
Mrs Pipchin's hard grey eye looks doubtful as she answers, in three
distinct jerks, 'Ah! Perhaps. I suppose so.'
'To tell you my mind, Lucretia,' says Mrs Pipchin; she still calls Miss
Tox Lucretia, on account of having made her first experiments in the
child-quelling line of business on that lady, when an unfortunate and weazen
little girl of tender years; 'to tell you my mind, Lucretia, I think it's a
good riddance. I don't want any of your brazen faces here, myself!'
'Brazen indeed! Well may you say brazen, Mrs Pipchin!' returned Miss
Tox. 'To leave him! Such a noble figure of a man!' And here Miss Tox is
overcome.
'I don't know about noble, I'm sure,' observes Mrs Pipchin; irascibly
rubbing her nose. 'But I know this - that when people meet with trials, they
must bear 'em. Hoity, toity! I have had enough to bear myself, in my time!
What a fuss there is! She's gone, and well got rid of. Nobody wants her
back, I should think!' This hint of the Peruvian Mines, causes Miss Tox to
rise to go away; when Mrs Pipchin rings the bell for Towlinson to show her
out, Mr Towlinson, not having seen Miss Tox for ages, grins, and hopes she's
well; observing that he didn't know her at first, in that bonnet.
'Pretty well, Towlinson, I thank you,' says Miss Tox. 'I beg you'll
have the goodness, when you happen to see me here, not to mention it. My
visits are merely to Mrs Pipchin.'
'Very good, Miss,' says Towlinson.
'Shocking circumstances occur, Towlinson,' says Miss Tox.
'Very much so indeed, Miss,' rejoins Towlinson.
'I hope, Towlinson,' says Miss Tox, who, in her instruction of the
Toodle family, has acquired an admonitorial tone, and a habit of improving
passing occasions, 'that what has happened here, will be a warning to you,
Towlinson.'
'Thank you, Miss, I'm sure,' says Towlinson.
He appears to be falling into a consideration of the manner in which
this warning ought to operate in his particular case, when the vinegary Mrs
Pipchin, suddenly stirring him up with a 'What are you doing? Why don't you
show the lady to the door?' he ushers Miss Tox forth. As she passes Mr
Dombey's room, she shrinks into the inmost depths of the black bonnet, and
walks, on tip-toe; and there is not another atom in the world which haunts
him so, that feels such sorrow and solicitude about him, as Miss Tox takes
out under the black bonnet into the street, and tries to carry home shadowed
it from the newly-lighted lamps
But Miss Tox is not a part of Mr Dombey's world. She comes back every
evening at dusk; adding clogs and an umbrella to the bonnet on wet nights;
and bears the grins of Towlinson, and the huffs and rebuffs of Mrs Pipchin,
and all to ask how he does, and how he bears his misfortune: but she has
nothing to do with Mr Dombey's world. Exacting and harassing as ever, it
goes on without her; and she, a by no means bright or particular star, moves
in her little orbit in the corner of another system, and knows it quite
well, and comes, and cries, and goes away, and is satisfied. Verily Miss Tox
is easier of satisfaction than the world that troubles Mr Dombey so much!
At the Counting House, the clerks discuss the great disaster in all its
lights and shades, but chiefly wonder who will get Mr Carker's place. They
are generally of opinion that it will be shorn of some of its emoluments,
and made uncomfortable by newly-devised checks and restrictions; and those
who are beyond all hope of it are quite sure they would rather not have it,
and don't at all envy the person for whom it may prove to be reserved.
Nothing like the prevailing sensation has existed in the Counting House
since Mr Dombey's little son died; but all such excitements there take a
social, not to say a jovial turn, and lead to the cultivation of good
fellowship. A reconciliation is established on this propitious occasion
between the acknowledged wit of the Counting House and an aspiring rival,
with whom he has been at deadly feud for months; and a little dinner being
proposed, in commemoration of their happily restored amity, takes place at a
neighbouring tavern; the wit in the chair; the rival acting as
Vice-President. The orations following the removal of the cloth are opened
by the Chair, who says, Gentlemen, he can't disguise from himself that this
is not a time for private dissensions. Recent occurrences to which he need
not more particularly allude, but which have not been altogether without
notice in some Sunday Papers,' and in a daily paper which he need not name
(here every other member of the company names it in an audible murmur), have
caused him to reflect; and he feels that for him and Robinson to have any
personal differences at such a moment, would be for ever to deny that good
feeling in the general cause, for which he has reason to think and hope that
the gentlemen in Dombey's House have always been distinguished. Robinson
replies to this like a man and a brother; and one gentleman who has been in
the office three years, under continual notice to quit on account of lapses
in his arithmetic, appears in a perfectly new light, suddenly bursting out
with a thrilling speech, in which he says, May their respected chief never
again know the desolation which has fallen on his hearth! and says a great
variety of things, beginning with 'May he never again,' which are received
with thunders of applause. In short, a most delightful evening is passed,
only interrupted by a difference between two juniors, who, quarrelling about
the probable amount of Mr Carker's late receipts per annum, defy each other
with decanters, and are taken out greatly excited. Soda water is in general
request at the office next day, and most of the party deem the bill an
imposition.
As to Perch, the messenger, he is in a fair way of being ruined for
life. He finds himself again constantly in bars of public-houses, being
treated and lying dreadfully. It appears that he met everybody concerned in
the late transaction, everywhere, and said to them, 'Sir,' or 'Madam,' as
the case was, 'why do you look so pale?' at which each shuddered from head
to foot, and said, 'Oh, Perch!' and ran away. Either the consciousness of
these enormities, or the reaction consequent on liquor, reduces Mr Perch to
an extreme state of low spirits at that hour of the evening when he usually
seeks consolation in the society of Mrs Perch at Balls Pond; and Mrs Perch
frets a good deal, for she fears his confidence in woman is shaken now, and
that he half expects on coming home at night to find her gone off with some
Viscount - 'which,' as she observes to an intimate female friend, 'is what
these wretches in the form of woman have to answer for, Mrs P. It ain't the
harm they do themselves so much as what they reflect upon us, Ma'am; and I
see it in Perch's eye.
Mr Dombey's servants are becoming, at the same time, quite dissipated,
and unfit for other service. They have hot suppers every night, and 'talk it
over' with smoking drinks upon the board. Mr Towlinson is always maudlin
after half-past ten, and frequently begs to know whether he didn't say that
no good would ever come of living in a corner house? They whisper about Miss
Florence, and wonder where she is; but agree that if Mr Dombey don't know,
Mrs Dombey does. This brings them to the latter, of whom Cook says, She had
a stately way though, hadn't she? But she was too high! They all agree that
she was too high, and Mr Towlinson's old flame, the housemaid (who is very
virtuous), entreats that you will never talk to her any more about people
who hold their heads up, as if the ground wasn't good enough for 'em.
Everything that is said and done about it, except by Mr Dombey, is done
in chorus. Mr Dombey and the world are alone together.
Secret Intelligence
Good Mrs Brown and her daughter Alice kept silent company together, in
their own dwelling. It was early in the evening, and late in the spring. But
a few days had elapsed since Mr Dombey had told Major Bagstock of his
singular intelligence, singularly obtained, which might turn out to be
valueless, and might turn out to be true; and the world was not satisfied
yet.
The mother and daughter sat for a long time without interchanging a
word: almost without motion. The old woman's face was shrewdly anxious and
expectant; that of her daughter was expectant too, but in a less sharp
degree, and sometimes it darkened, as if with gathering disappointment and
incredulity. The old woman, without heeding these changes in its expression,
though her eyes were often turned towards it, sat mumbling and munching, and
listening confidently.
Their abode, though poor and miserable, was not so utterly wretched as
in the days when only Good Mrs Brown inhabited it. Some few attempts at
cleanliness and order were manifest, though made in a reckless, gipsy way,
that might have connected them, at a glance, with the younger woman. The
shades of evening thickened and deepened as the two kept silence, until the
blackened walls were nearly lost in the prevailing gloom.
Then Alice broke the silence which had lasted so long, and said:
'You may give him up, mother. He'll not come here.'
'Death give him up!' returned the old woman, impatiently. 'He will come
here.'
'We shall see,' said Alice.
'We shall see him,' returned her mother.
'And doomsday,' said the daughter.
'You think I'm in my second childhood, I know!' croaked the old woman.
'That's the respect and duty that I get from my own gal, but I'm wiser than
you take me for. He'll come. T'other day when I touched his coat in the
street, he looked round as if I was a toad. But Lord, to see him when I said
their names, and asked him if he'd like to find out where they was!'
'Was it so angry?' asked her daughter, roused to interest in a moment.
'Angry? ask if it was bloody. That's more like the word. Angry? Ha, ha!
To call that only angry!' said the old woman, hobbling to the cupboard, and
lighting a candle, which displayed the workings of her mouth to ugly
advantage, as she brought it to the table. 'I might as well call your face
only angry, when you think or talk about 'em.'
It was something different from that, truly, as she sat as still as a
crouched tigress, with her kindling eyes.
'Hark!' said the old woman, triumphantly. 'I hear a step coming. It's
not the tread of anyone that lives about here, or comes this way often. We
don't walk like that. We should grow proud on such neighbours! Do you hear
him?'
'I believe you are right, mother,' replied Alice, in a low voice.
'Peace! open the door.'
As she drew herself within her shawl, and gathered it about her, the
old woman complied; and peering out, and beckoning, gave admission to Mr
Dombey, who stopped when he had set his foot within the door, and looked
distrustfully around.
'It's a poor place for a great gentleman like your worship,' said the
old woman, curtseying and chattering. 'I told you so, but there's no harm in
it.'
'Who is that?' asked Mr Dombey, looking at her companion.
'That's my handsome daughter,' said the old woman. 'Your worship won't
mind her. She knows all about it.'
A shadow fell upon his face not less expressive than if he had groaned
aloud, 'Who does not know all about it!' but he looked at her steadily, and
she, without any acknowledgment of his presence, looked at him. The shadow
on his face was darker when he turned his glance away from her; and even
then it wandered back again, furtively, as if he were haunted by her bold
eyes, and some remembrance they inspired.
'Woman,' said Mr Dombey to the old witch who was chucKling and leering
close at his elbow, and who, when he turned to address her, pointed
stealthily at her daughter, and rubbed her hands, and pointed again, 'Woman!
I believe that I am weak and forgetful of my station in coming here, but you
know why I come, and what you offered when you stopped me in the street the
other day. What is it that you have to tell me concerning what I want to
know; and how does it happen that I can find voluntary intelligence in a
hovel like this,' with a disdainful glance about him, 'when I have exerted
my power and means to obtain it in vain? I do not think,' he said, after a
moment's pause, during which he had observed her, sternly, 'that you are so
audacious as to mean to trifle with me, or endeavour to impose upon me. But
if you have that purpose, you had better stop on the threshold of your
scheme. My humour is not a trifling one, and my acknowledgment will be
severe.'
'Oh a proud, hard gentleman!' chuckled the old woman, shaking her head,
and rubbing her shrivelled hands, 'oh hard, hard, hard! But your worship
shall see with your own eyes and hear with your own ears; not with ours -
and if your worship's put upon their track, you won't mind paying something
for it, will you, honourable deary?'
'Money,' returned Mr Dombey, apparently relieved, and assured by this
inquiry, 'will bring about unlikely things, I know. It may turn even means
as unexpected and unpromising as these, to account. Yes. For any reliable
information I receive, I will pay. But I must have the information first,
and judge for myself of its value.'
'Do you know nothing more powerful than money?' asked the younger
woman, without rising, or altering her attitude.
'Not here, I should imagine,' said Mr Dombey.
'You should know of something that is more powerful elsewhere, as I
judge,' she returned. 'Do you know nothing of a woman's anger?'
'You have a saucy tongue, Jade,' said Mr Dombey.
'Not usually,' she answered, without any show of emotion: 'I speak to
you now, that you may understand us better, and rely more on us. A woman's
anger is pretty much the same here, as in your fine house. I am angry. I
have been so, many years. I have as good cause for my anger as you have for
yours, and its object is the same man.'
He started, in spite of himself, and looked at her with
astonishment.
'Yes,' she said, with a kind of laugh. 'Wide as the distance may seem
between us, it is so. How it is so, is no matter; that is my story, and I
keep my story to myself. I would bring you and him together, because I have
a rage against him. My mother there, is avaricious and poor; and she would
sell any tidings she could glean, or anything, or anybody, for money. It is
fair enough, perhaps, that you should pay her some, if she can help you to
what you want to know. But that is not my motive. I have told you what mine
is, and it would be as strong and all-sufficient with me if you haggled and
bargained with her for a sixpence. I have done. My saucy tongue says no
more, if you wait here till sunrise tomorrow.'
The old woman, who had shown great uneasiness during this speech, which
had a tendency to depreciate her expected gains, pulled Mr Dombey softly by
the sleeve, and whispered to him not to mind her. He glared at them both, by
turns, with a haggard look, and said, in a deeper voice than was usual with
him:
'Go on - what do you know?'
'Oh, not so fast, your worship! we must wait for someone,' answered the
old woman. 'It's to be got from someone else - wormed out - screwed and
twisted from him.'
'What do you mean?' said Mr Dombey.
'Patience,' she croaked, laying her hand, like a claw, upon his arm.
'Patience. I'll get at it. I know I can! If he was to hold it back from me,'
said Good Mrs Brown, crooking her ten fingers, 'I'd tear it out of him!'
Mr Dombey followed her with his eyes as she hobbled to the door, and
looked out again: and then his glance sought her daughter; but she remained
impassive, silent, and regardless of him.
'Do you tell me, woman,' he said, when the bent figure of Mrs Brown
came back, shaking its head and chattering to itself, 'that there is another
person expected here?'
'Yes!' said the old woman, looking up into his face, and nodding.
'From whom you are to exact the intelligence that is to be useful to
me?'
'Yes,' said the old woman, nodding again.
'A stranger?'
'Chut!' said the old woman, with a shrill laugh. 'What signifies! Well,
well; no. No stranger to your worship. But he won't see you. He'd be afraid
of you, and wouldn't talk. You'll stand behind that door, and judge him for
yourself. We don't ask to be believed on trust What! Your worship doubts the
room behind the door? Oh the suspicion of you rich gentlefolks! Look at it,
then.'
Her sharp eye had detected an involuntary expression of this feeling on
his part, which was not unreasonable under the circumstances. In
satisfaction of it she now took the candle to the door she spoke of. Mr
Dombey looked in; assured himself that it was an empty, crazy room; and
signed to her to put the light back in its place.
'How long,' he asked, 'before this person comes?'
'Not long,' she answered. 'Would your worship sit down for a few odd
minutes?'
He made no answer; but began pacing the room with an irresolute air, as
if he were undecided whether to remain or depart, and as if he had some
quarrel with himself for being there at all. But soon his tread grew slower
and heavier, and his face more sternly thoughtful!; as the object with which
he had come, fixed itself in his mind, and dilated there again.
While he thus walked up and down with his eyes on the ground, Mrs
Brown, in the chair from which she had risen to receive him, sat listening
anew. The monotony of his step, or the uncertainty of age, made her so slow
of hearing, that a footfall without had sounded in her daughter's ears for
some moments, and she had looked up hastily to warn her mother of its
approach, before the old woman was roused by it. But then she started from
her seat, and whispering 'Here he is!' hurried her visitor to his place of
observation, and put a bottle and glass upon the table, with such alacrity,
as to be ready to fling her arms round the neck of Rob the Grinder on his
appearance at the door.
'And here's my bonny boy,' cried Mrs Brown, 'at last! - oho, oho!
You're like my own son, Robby!'
'Oh! Misses Brown!' remonstrated the Grinder. 'Don't! Can't you be fond
of a cove without squeedging and throttling of him? Take care of the
birdcage in my hand, will you?'
'Thinks of a birdcage, afore me!' cried the old woman, apostrophizing
the ceiling. 'Me that feels more than a mother for him!'
'Well, I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you, Misses Brown,' said the
unfortunate youth, greatly aggravated; 'but you're so jealous of a cove. I'm
very fond of you myself, and all that, of course; but I don't smother you,
do I, Misses Brown?'
He looked and spoke as if he wOuld have been far from objecting to do
so, however, on a favourable occasion.
'And to talk about birdcages, too!' whimpered the Grinder. 'As If that
was a crime! Why, look'ee here! Do you know who this belongs to?'
'To Master, dear?' said the old woman with a grin.
'Ah!' replied the Grinder, lifting a large cage tied up in a wrapper,
on the table, and untying it with his teeth and hands. 'It's our parrot,
this is.'
'Mr Carker's parrot, Rob?'
'Will you hold your tongue, Misses Brown?' returned the goaded Grinder.
'What do you go naming names for? I'm blest,' said Rob, pulling his hair
with both hands in the exasperation of his feelings, 'if she ain't enough to
make a cove run wild!'
'What! Do you snub me, thankless boy!' cried the old woman, with ready
vehemence.
'Good gracious, Misses Brown, no!' returned the Grinder, with tears in
his eyes. 'Was there ever such a - ! Don't I dote upon you, Misses Brown?'
'Do you, sweet Rob? Do you truly, chickabiddy?' With that, Mrs Brown
held him in her fond embrace once more; and did not release him until he had
made several violent and ineffectual struggles with his legs, and his hair
was standing on end all over his head.
'Oh!' returned the Grinder, 'what a thing it is to be perfectly pitched
into with affection like this here. I wish she was - How have you been,
Misses Brown?'
'Ah! Not here since this night week!' said the old woman, contemplating
him with a look of reproach.
'Good gracious, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder, 'I said tonight's
a week, that I'd come tonight, didn't I? And here I am. How you do go on! I
wish you'd be a little rational, Misses Brown. I'm hoarse with saying things
in my defence, and my very face is shiny with being hugged!' He rubbed it
hard with his sleeve, as if to remove the tender polish in question.
'Drink a little drop to comfort you, my Robin,' said the old woman,
filling the glass from the bottle and giving it to him.
'Thank'ee, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder. 'Here's your health.
And long may you - et ceterer.' Which, to judge from the expression of his
face, did not include any very choice blessings. 'And here's her health,'
said the Grinder, glancing at Alice, who sat with her eyes fixed, as it
seemed to him, on the wall behind him, but in reality on Mr Dombey's face at
the door, 'and wishing her the same and many of 'em!'
He drained the glass to these two sentiments, and set it down.
'Well, I say, Misses Brown!' he proceeded. 'To go on a little rational
now. You're a judge of birds, and up to their ways, as I know to my cost.'
'Cost!' repeated Mrs Brown.
'Satisfaction, I mean,' returned the Grinder. 'How you do take up a
cove, Misses Brown! You've put it all out of my head again.'
'Judge of birds, Robby,' suggested the old woman.
'Ah!' said the Grinder. 'Well, I've got to take care of this parrot -
certain things being sold, and a certain establishment broke up - and as I
don't want no notice took at present, I wish you'd attend to her for a week
or so, and give her board and lodging, will you? If I must come backwards
and forwards,' mused the Grinder with a dejected face, 'I may as well have
something to come for.'
'Something to come for?' screamed the old woman.
'Besides you, I mean, Misses Brown,' returned the craven Rob. 'Not that
I want any inducement but yourself, Misses Brown, I'm sure. Don't begin
again, for goodness' sake.'
'He don't care for me! He don't care for me, as I care for him!' cried
Mrs Brown, lifting up her skinny hands. 'But I'll take care of his bird.'
'Take good care of it too, you know, Mrs Brown,' said Rob, shaking his
head. 'If you was so much as to stroke its feathers once the wrong way, I
believe it would be found out.'
'Ah, so sharp as that, Rob?' said Mrs Brown, quickly.
'Sharp, Misses Brown!' repeated Rob. 'But this is not to be talked
about.'
Checking himself abruptly, and not without a fearful glance across the
room, Rob filled the glass again, and having slowly emptied it, shook his
head, and began to draw his fingers across and across the wires of the
parrot's cage by way of a diversion from the dangerous theme that had just
been broached.
The old woman eyed him slily, and hitching her chair nearer his, and
looking in at the parrot, who came down from the gilded dome at her call,
said:
'Out of place now, Robby?'
'Never you mind, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder, shortly.
'Board wages, perhaps, Rob?' said Mrs Brown.
'Pretty Polly!' said the Grinder.
The old woman darted a glance at him that might have warned him to
consider his ears in danger, but it was his turn to look in at the parrot
now, and however expressive his imagination may have made her angry scowl,
it was unseen by his bodily eyes.
'I wonder Master didn't take you with him, Rob,' said the old woman, in
a wheedling voice, but with increased malignity of aspect.
Rob was so absorbed in contemplation of the parrot, and in trolling his
forefinger on the wires, that he made no answer.
The old woman had her clutch within a hair's breadth of his shock of
hair as it stooped over the table; but she restrained her fingers, and said,
in a voice that choked with its efforts to be coaxing:
'Robby, my child.'
'Well, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder.
'I say I wonder Master didn't take you with him, dear.'
'Never you mind, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder.
Mrs Brown instantly directed the clutch of her right hand at his hair,
and the clutch of her left hand at his throat, and held on to the object of
her fond affection with such extraordinary fury, that his face began to
blacken in a moment.
'Misses Brown!' exclaimed the Grinder, 'let go, will you? What are you
doing of? Help, young woman! Misses Brow- Brow- !'
The young woman, however, equally unmoved by his direct appeal to her,
and by his inarticulate utterance, remained quite neutral, until, after
struggling with his assailant into a corner, Rob disengaged himself, and
stood there panting and fenced in by his own elbows, while the old woman,