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looks doubtfully at Mr Gills, and says:
'Sol! There's the last bottle of the old Madeira down below. Would you
wish to have it up to-night, my boy, and drink to Wal'r and his wife?'
The Instrument-maker, looking wistfully at the Captain, puts his hand
into the breast-pocket of his coffee-coloured coat, brings forth his
pocket-book, and takes a letter out.
'To Mr Dombey,' says the old man. 'From Walter. To be sent in three
weeks' time. I'll read it.'
'"Sir. I am married to your daughter. She is gone with me upon a
distant voyage. To be devoted to her is to have no claim on her or you, but
God knows that I am.
'"Why, loving her beyond all earthly things, I have yet, without
remorse, united her to the uncertainties and dangers of my life, I will not
say to you. You know why, and you are her father.
'"Do not reproach her. She has never reproached you.
'"I do not think or hope that you will ever forgive me. There is
nothing I expect less. But if an hour should come when it will comfort you
to believe that Florence has someone ever near her, the great charge of
whose life is to cancel her remembrance of past sorrow, I solemnly assure
you, you may, in that hour, rest in that belief."'
Solomon puts back the letter carefully in his pocket-book, and puts
back his pocket-book in his coat.
'We won't drink the last bottle of the old Madeira yet, Ned,' says the
old man thoughtfully. 'Not yet.
'Not yet,' assents the Captain. 'No. Not yet.'
Susan and Mr Toots are of the same opinion. After a silence they all
sit down to supper, and drink to the young husband and wife in something
else; and the last bottle of the old Madeira still remains among its dust
and cobwebs, undisturbed.
A few days have elapsed, and a stately ship is out at sea, spreading
its white wings to the favouring wind.
Upon the deck, image to the roughest man on board of something that is
graceful, beautiful, and harmless - something that it is good and pleasant
to have there, and that should make the voyage prosperous - is Florence. It
is night, and she and Walter sit alone, watching the solemn path of light
upon the sea between them and the moon.
At length she cannot see it plainly, for the tears that fill her eyes;
and then she lays her head down on his breast, and puts her arms around his
neck, saying, 'Oh Walter, dearest love, I am so happy!'
Her husband holds her to his heart, and they are very quiet, and the
stately ship goes on serenely.
'As I hear the sea,' says Florence, 'and sit watching it, it brings so
many days into my mind. It makes me think so much - '
'Of Paul, my love. I know it does.'
Of Paul and Walter. And the voices in the waves are always whispering
to Florence, in their ceaseless murmuring, of love - of love, eternal and
illimitable, not bounded by the confines of this world, or by the end of
time, but ranging still, beyond the sea, beyond the sky, to the invisible
country far away!
After a Lapse
The sea had ebbed and flowed, through a whole year. Through a whole
year, the winds and clouds had come and gone; the ceaseless work of Time had
been performed, in storm and sunshine. Through a whole year, the tides of
human chance and change had set in their allotted courses. Through a whole
year, the famous House of Dombey and Son had fought a fight for life,
against cross accidents, doubtful rumours, unsuccessful ventures,
unpropitious times, and most of all, against the infatuation of its head,
who would not contract its enterprises by a hair's breadth, and would not
listen to a word of warning that the ship he strained so hard against the
storm, was weak, and could not bear it. The year was out, and the great
House was down.
One summer afternoon; a year, wanting some odd days, after the marriage
in the City church; there was a buzz and whisper upon 'Change of a great
failure. A certain cold proud man, well known there, was not there, nor was
he represented there. Next day it was noised abroad that Dombey and Son had
stopped, and next night there was a List of Bankrupts published, headed by
that name.
The world was very busy now, in sooth, and had a deal to say. It was an
innocently credulous and a much ill-used world. It was a world in which
there was 'no other sort of bankruptcy whatever. There were no conspicuous
people in it, trading far and wide on rotten banks of religion, patriotism,
virtue, honour. There was no amount worth mentioning of mere paper in
circulation, on which anybody lived pretty handsomely, promising to pay
great sums of goodness with no effects. There were no shortcomings anywhere,
in anything but money. The world was very angry indeed; and the people
especially, who, in a worse world, might have been supposed to be apt
traders themselves in shows and pretences, were observed to be mightily
indignant.
Here was a new inducement to dissipation, presented to that sport of
circumstances, Mr Perch the Messenger! It was apparently the fate of Mr
Perch to be always waking up, and finding himself famous. He had but
yesterday, as one might say, subsided into private life from the celebrity
of the elopement and the events that followed it; and now he was made a more
important man than ever, by the bankruptcy. Gliding from his bracket in the
outer office where he now sat, watching the strange faces of accountants and
others, who quickly superseded nearly all the old clerks, Mr Perch had but
to show himself in the court outside, or, at farthest, in the bar of the
King's Arms, to be asked a multitude of questions, almost certain to include
that interesting question, what would he take to drink? Then would Mr Perch
descant upon the hours of acute uneasiness he and Mrs Perch had suffered out
at Balls Pond, when they first suspected 'things was going wrong.' Then
would Mr Perch relate to gaping listeners, in a low voice, as if the corpse
of the deceased House were lying unburied in the next room, how Mrs Perch
had first come to surmise that things was going wrong by hearing him (Perch)
moaning in his sleep, 'twelve and ninepence in the pound, twelve and
ninepence in the pound!' Which act of somnambulism he supposed to have
originated in the impression made upon him by the change in Mr Dombey's
face. Then would he inform them how he had once said, 'Might I make so bold
as ask, Sir, are you unhappy in your mind?' and how Mr Dombey had replied,
'My faithful Perch - but no, it cannot be!' and with that had struck his
hand upon his forehead, and said, 'Leave me, Perch!' Then, in short, would
Mr Perch, a victim to his position, tell all manner of lies; affecting
himself to tears by those that were of a moving nature, and really believing
that the inventions of yesterday had, on repetition, a sort of truth about
them to-day.
Mr Perch always closed these conferences by meekly remarking, That, of
course, whatever his suspicions might have been (as if he had ever had any!)
it wasn't for him to betray his trust, was it? Which sentiment (there never
being any creditors present) was received as doing great honour to his
feelings. Thus, he generally brought away a soothed conscience and left an
agreeable impression behind him, when he returned to his bracket: again to
sit watching the strange faces of the accountants and others, making so free
with the great mysteries, the Books; or now and then to go on tiptoe into Mr
Dombey's empty room, and stir the fire; or to take an airing at the door,
and have a little more doleful chat with any straggler whom he knew; or to
propitiate, with various small attentions, the head accountant: from whom Mr
Perch had expectations of a messengership in a Fire Office, when the affairs
of the House should be wound up.
To Major Bagstock, the bankruptcy was quite a calamity. The Major was
not a sympathetic character - his attention being wholly concentrated on J.
B. - nor was he a man subject to lively emotions, except in the physical
regards of gasping and choking. But he had so paraded his friend Dombey at
the club; had so flourished him at the heads of the members in general, and
so put them down by continual assertion of his riches; that the club, being
but human, was delighted to retort upon the Major, by asking him, with a
show of great concern, whether this tremendous smash had been at all
expected, and how his friend Dombey bore it. To such questions, the Major,
waxing very purple, would reply that it was a bad world, Sir, altogether;
that Joey knew a thing or two, but had been done, Sir, done like an infant;
that if you had foretold this, Sir, to J. Bagstock, when he went abroad with
Dombey and was chasing that vagabond up and down France, J. Bagstock would
have pooh-pooh'd you - would have pooh- pooh'd you, Sir, by the Lord! That
Joe had been deceived, Sir, taken in, hoodwinked, blindfolded, but was broad
awake again and staring; insomuch, Sir, that if Joe's father were to rise up
from the grave to-morrow, he wouldn't trust the old blade with a penny
piece, but would tell him that his son Josh was too old a soldier to be done
again, Sir. That he was a suspicious, crabbed, cranky, used-up, J. B.
infidel, Sir; and that if it were consistent with the dignity of a rough and
tough old Major, of the old school, who had had the honour of being
personally known to, and commended by, their late Royal Highnesses the Dukes
of Kent and York, to retire to a tub and live in it, by Gad! Sir, he'd have
a tub in Pall Mall to-morrow, to show his contempt for mankind!'
Of all this, and many variations of the same tune, the Major would
deliver himself with so many apoplectic symptoms, such rollings of his head,
and such violent growls of ill usage and resentment, that the younger
members of the club surmised he had invested money in his friend Dombey's
House, and lost it; though the older soldiers and deeper dogs, who knew Joe
better, wouldn't hear of such a thing. The unfortunate Native, expressing no
opinion, suffered dreadfully; not merely in his moral feelings, which were
regularly fusilladed by the Major every hour in the day, and riddled through
and through, but in his sensitiveness to bodily knocks and bumps, which was
kept continually on the stretch. For six entire weeks after the bankruptcy,
this miserable foreigner lived in a rainy season of boot-jacks and brushes.
Mrs Chick had three ideas upon the subject of the terrible reverse. The
first was that she could not understand it. The second, that her brother had
not made an effort. The third, that if she had been invited to dinner on the
day of that first party, it never would have happened; and that she had said
so, at the time.
Nobody's opinion stayed the misfortune, lightened it, or made it
heavier. It was understood that the affairs of the House were to be wound up
as they best could be; that Mr Dombey freely resigned everything he had, and
asked for no favour from anyone. That any resumption of the business was out
of the question, as he would listen to no friendly negotiation having that
compromise in view; that he had relinquished every post of trust or
distinction he had held, as a man respected among merchants; that he was
dying, according to some; that he was going melancholy mad, according to
others; that he was a broken man, according to all.
The clerks dispersed after holding a little dinner of condolence among
themselves, which was enlivened by comic singing, and went off admirably.
Some took places abroad, and some engaged in other Houses at home; some
looked up relations in the country, for whom they suddenly remembered they
had a particular affection; and some advertised for employment in the
newspapers. Mr Perch alone remained of all the late establishment, sitting
on his bracket looking at the accountants, or starting off it, to propitiate
the head accountant, who was to get him into the Fire Office. The Counting
House soon got to be dirty and neglected. The principal slipper and dogs'
collar seller, at the corner of the court, would have doubted the propriety
of throwing up his forefinger to the brim of his hat, any more, if Mr Dombey
had appeared there now; and the ticket porter, with his hands under his
white apron, moralised good sound morality about ambition, which (he
observed) was not, in his opinion, made to rhyme to perdition, for nothing.
Mr Morfin, the hazel-eyed bachelor, with the hair and whiskers
sprinkled with grey, was perhaps the only person within the atmosphere of
the House - its head, of course, excepted - who was heartily and deeply
affected by the disaster that had befallen it. He had treated Mr Dombey with
due respect and deference through many years, but he had never disguised his
natural character, or meanly truckled to him, or pampered his master passion
for the advancement of his own purposes. He had, therefore, no
self-disrespect to avenge; no long-tightened springs to release with a quick
recoil. He worked early and late to unravel whatever was complicated or
difficult in the records of the transactions of the House; was always in
attendance to explain whatever required explanation; sat in his old room
sometimes very late at night, studying points by his mastery of which he
could spare Mr Dombey the pain of being personally referred to; and then
would go home to Islington, and calm his mind by producing the most dismal
and forlorn sounds out of his violoncello before going to bed.
He was solacing himself with this melodious grumbler one evening, and,
having been much dispirited by the proceedings of the day, was scraping
consolation out of its deepest notes, when his landlady (who was fortunately
deaf, and had no other consciousness of these performances than a sensation
of something rumbling in her bones) announced a lady.
'In mourning,' she said.
The violoncello stopped immediately; and the performer, laying it on
the sofa with great tenderness and care, made a sign that the lady was to
come in. He followed directly, and met Harriet Carker on the stair.
'Alone!' he said, 'and John here this morning! Is there anything the
matter, my dear? But no,' he added, 'your face tells quite another story.'
'I am afraid it is a selfish revelation that you see there, then,' she
answered.
'It is a very pleasant one,' said he; 'and, if selfish, a novelty too,
worth seeing in you. But I don't believe that.'
He had placed a chair for her by this time, and sat down opposite; the
violoncello lying snugly on the sofa between them.
'You will not be surprised at my coming alone, or at John's not having
told you I was coming,' said Harriet; 'and you will believe that, when I
tell you why I have come. May I do so now?'
'You can do nothing better.'
'You were not busy?'
He pointed to the violoncello lying on the sofa, and said 'I have been,
all day. Here's my witness. I have been confiding all my cares to it. I wish
I had none but my own to tell.'
'Is the House at an end?' said Harriet, earnestly.
'Completely at an end.'
'Will it never be resumed?'
'Never.'
The bright expression of her face was not overshadowed as her lips
silently repeated the word. He seemed to observe this with some little
involuntary surprise: and said again:
'Never. You remember what I told you. It has been, all along,
impossible to convince him; impossible to reason with him; sometimes,
impossible even to approach him. The worst has happened; and the House has
fallen, never to be built up any more.'
'And Mr Dombey, is he personally ruined?'
'Ruined.'
'Will he have no private fortune left? Nothing?'
A certain eagerness in her voice, and something that was almost joyful
in her look, seemed to surprise him more and more; to disappoint him too,
and jar discordantly against his own emotions. He drummed with the fingers
of one hand on the table, looking wistfully at her, and shaking his head,
said, after a pause:
'The extent of Mr Dombey's resources is not accurately within my
knowledge; but though they are doubtless very large, his obligations are
enormous. He is a gentleman of high honour and integrity. Any man in his
position could, and many a man in his position would, have saved himself, by
making terms which would have very slightly, almost insensibly, increased
the losses of those who had had dealings with him, and left him a remnant to
live upon. But he is resolved on payment to the last farthing of his means.
His own words are, that they will clear, or nearly clear, the House, and
that no one can lose much. Ah, Miss Harriet, it would do us no harm to
remember oftener than we do, that vices are sometimes only virtues carried
to excess! His pride shows well in this.'
She heard him with little or no change in her expression, and with a
divided attention that showed her to be busy with something in her own mind.
When he was silent, she asked him hurriedly:
'Have you seen him lately?'
'No one sees him. When this crisis of his affairs renders it necessary
for him to come out of his house, he comes out for the occasion, and again
goes home, and shuts himself up, and will sea no one. He has written me a
letter, acknowledging our past connexion in higher terms than it deserved,
and parting from me. I am delicate of obtruding myself upon him now, never
having had much intercourse with him in better times; but I have tried to do
so. I have written, gone there, entreated. Quite in vain.'
He watched her, as in the hope that she would testify some greater
concern than she had yet shown; and spoke gravely and feelingly, as if to
impress her the more; but there was no change in her.
'Well, well, Miss Harriet,' he said, with a disappointed air, 'this is
not to the purpose. You have not come here to hear this. Some other and
pleasanter theme is in your mind. Let it be in mine, too, and we shall talk
upon more equal terms. Come!'
'No, it is the same theme,' returned Harriet, with frank and quick
surprise. 'Is it not likely that it should be? Is it not natural that John
and I should have been thinking and speaking very much of late of these
great changes? Mr Dombey, whom he served so many years - you know upon what
terms - reduced, as you describe; and we quite rich!'
Good, true face, as that face of hers was, and pleasant as it had been
to him, Mr Morfin, the hazel-eyed bachelor, since the first time he had ever
looked upon it, it pleased him less at that moment, lighted with a ray of
exultation, than it had ever pleased him before.
'I need not remind you,' said Harriet, casting down her eyes upon her
black dress, 'through what means our circumstances changed. You have not
forgotten that our brother James, upon that dreadful day, left no will, no
relations but ourselves.'
The face was pleasanter to him now, though it was pale and melancholy,
than it had been a moment since. He seemed to breathe more cheerily.
'You know,' she said, 'our history, the history of both my brothers, in
connexion with the unfortunate, unhappy gentleman, of whom you have spoken
so truly. You know how few our wants are - John's and mine - and what little
use we have for money, after the life we have led together for so many
years; and now that he is earning an income that is ample for us, through
your kindness. You are not unprepared to hear what favour I have come to ask
of you?'
'I hardly know. I was, a minute ago. Now, I think, I am not.'
'Of my dead brother I say nothing. If the dead know what we do - but
you understand me. Of my living brother I could say much; but what need I
say more, than that this act of duty, in which I have come to ask your
indispensable assistance, is his own, and that he cannot rest until it is
performed!'
She raised her eyes again; and the light of exultation in her face
began to appear beautiful, in the observant eyes that watched her.
'Dear Sir,' she went on to say, 'it must be done very quietly and
secretly. Your experience and knowledge will point out a way of doing it. Mr
Dombey may, perhaps, be led to believe that it is something saved,
unexpectedly, from the wreck of his fortunes; or that it is a voluntary
tribute to his honourable and upright character, from some of those with
whom he has had great dealings; or that it is some old lost debt repaid.
There must be many ways of doing it. I know you will choose the best. The
favour I have come to ask is, that you will do it for us in your own kind,
generous, considerate manner. That you will never speak of it to John, whose
chief happiness in this act of restitution is to do it secretly, unknown,
and unapproved of: that only a very small part of the inheritance may be
reserved to us, until Mr Dombey shall have possessed the interest of the
rest for the remainder of his life; that you will keep our secret,
faithfully - but that I am sure you will; and that, from this time, it may
seldom be whispered, even between you and me, but may live in my thoughts
only as a new reason for thankfulness to Heaven, and joy and pride in my
brother.'
Such a look of exultation there may be on Angels' faces when the one
repentant sinner enters Heaven, among ninety-nine just men. It was not
dimmed or tarnished by the joyful tears that filled her eyes, but was the
brighter for them.
'My dear Harriet,' said Mr Morfin, after a silence, 'I was not prepared
for this. Do I understand you that you wish to make your own part in the
inheritance available for your good purpose, as well as John's?'
'Oh, yes,' she returned 'When we have shared everything together for so
long a time, and have had no care, hope, or purpose apart, could I bear to
be excluded from my share in this? May I not urge a claim to be my brother's
partner and companion to the last?'
'Heaven forbid that I should dispute it!' he replied.
'We may rely on your friendly help?' she said. 'I knew we might!'
'I should be a worse man than, - than I hope I am, or would willingly
believe myself, if I could not give you that assurance from my heart and
soul. You may, implicitly. Upon my honour, I will keep your secret. And if
it should be found that Mr Dombey is so reduced as I fear he will be, acting
on a determination that there seem to be no means of influencing, I will
assist you to accomplish the design, on which you and John are jointly
resolved.'
She gave him her hand, and thanked him with a cordial, happy face.
'Harriet,' he said, detaining it in his. 'To speak to you of the worth
of any sacrifice that you can make now - above all, of any sacrifice of mere
money - would be idle and presumptuous. To put before you any appeal to
reconsider your purpose or to set narrow limits to it, would be, I feel, not
less so. I have no right to mar the great end of a great history, by any
obtrusion of my own weak self. I have every right to bend my head before
what you confide to me, satisfied that it comes from a higher and better
source of inspiration than my poor worldly knowledge. I will say only this:
I am your faithful steward; and I would rather be so, and your chosen
friend, than I would be anybody in the world, except yourself.'
She thanked him again, cordially, and wished him good-night. 'Are you
going home?' he said. 'Let me go with you.'
'Not to-night. I am not going home now; I have a visit to make alone.
Will you come to-morrow?'
'Well, well,' said he, 'I'll come to-morrow. In the meantime, I'll
think of this, and how we can best proceed. And perhaps I'll think of it,
dear Harriet, and - and - think of me a little in connexion with it.'
He handed her down to a coach she had in waiting at the door; and if
his landlady had not been deaf, she would have heard him muttering as he
went back upstairs, when the coach had driven off, that we were creatures of
habit, and it was a sorrowful habit to be an old bachelor.
The violoncello lying on the sofa between the two chairs, he took it
up, without putting away the vacant chair, and sat droning on it, and slowly
shaking his head at the vacant chair, for a long, long time. The expression
he communicated to the instrument at first, though monstrously pathetic and
bland, was nothing to the expression he communicated to his own face, and
bestowed upon the empty chair: which was so sincere, that he was obliged to
have recourse to Captain Cuttle's remedy more than once, and to rub his face
with his sleeve. By degrees, however, the violoncello, in unison with his
own frame of mind, glided melodiously into the Harmonious Blacksmith, which
he played over and over again, until his ruddy and serene face gleamed like
true metal on the anvil of a veritable blacksmith. In fine, the violoncello
and the empty chair were the companions of his bachelorhood until nearly
midnight; and when he took his supper, the violoncello set up on end in the
sofa corner, big with the latent harmony of a whole foundry full of
harmonious blacksmiths, seemed to ogle the empty chair out of its crooked
eyes, with unutterable intelligence.
When Harriet left the house, the driver of her hired coach, taking a
course that was evidently no new one to him, went in and out by bye-ways,
through that part of the suburbs, until he arrived at some open ground,
where there were a few quiet little old houses standing among gardens. At
the garden-gate of one of these he stopped, and Harriet alighted.
Her gentle ringing at the bell was responded to by a dolorous-looking
woman, of light complexion, with raised eyebrows, and head drooping on one
side, who curtseyed at sight of her, and conducted her across the garden to
the house.
'How is your patient, nurse, to-night?' said Harriet.
'In a poor way, Miss, I am afraid. Oh how she do remind me, sometimes,
of my Uncle's Betsey Jane!' returned the woman of the light complexion, in a
sort of doleful rapture.
'In what respect?' asked Harriet.
'Miss, in all respects,' replied the other, 'except that she's grown
up, and Betsey Jane, when at death's door, was but a child.'
'But you have told me she recovered,' observed Harriet mildly; 'so
there is the more reason for hope, Mrs Wickam.'
'Ah, Miss, hope is an excellent thing for such as has the spirits to
bear it!' said Mrs Wickam, shaking her head. 'My own spirits is not equal to
it, but I don't owe it any grudge. I envys them that is so blest!'
'You should try to be more cheerful,' remarked Harriet.
'Thank you, Miss, I'm sure,' said Mrs Wickam grimly. 'If I was so
inclined, the loneliness of this situation - you'll excuse my speaking so
free - would put it out of my power, in four and twenty hours; but I ain't
at all. I'd rather not. The little spirits that I ever had, I was bereaved
of at Brighton some few years ago, and I think I feel myself the better for
it.'
In truth, this was the very Mrs Wickam who had superseded Mrs Richards
as the nurse of little Paul, and who considered herself to have gained the
loss in question, under the roof of the amiable Pipchin. The excellent and
thoughtful old system, hallowed by long prescription, which has usually
picked out from the rest of mankind the most dreary and uncomfortable people
that could possibly be laid hold of, to act as instructors of youth,
finger-posts to the virtues, matrons, monitors, attendants on sick beds, and
the like, had established Mrs Wickam in very good business as a nurse, and
had led to her serious qualities being particularly commended by an admiring
and numerous connexion.
Mrs Wickam, with her eyebrows elevated, and her head on one side,
lighted the way upstairs to a clean, neat chamber, opening on another
chamber dimly lighted, where there was a bed. In the first room, an old
woman sat mechanically staring out at the open window, on the darkness. In
the second, stretched upon the bed, lay the shadow of a figure that had
spurned the wind and rain, one wintry night; hardly to be recognised now,
but by the long black hair that showed so very black against the colourless
face, and all the white things about it.
Oh, the strong eyes, and the weak frame! The eyes that turned so
eagerly and brightly to the door when Harriet came in; the feeble head that
could not raise itself, and moved so slowly round upon its pillow!
'Alice!' said the visitor's mild voice, 'am I late to-night?'
'You always seem late, but are always early.'
Harriet had sat down by the bedside now, and put her hand upon the thin
hand lying there.
'You are better?'
Mrs Wickam, standing at the foot of the bed, like a disconsolate
spectre, most decidedly and forcibly shook her head to negative this
position.
'It matters very little!' said Alice, with a faint smile. 'Better or
worse to-day, is but a day's difference - perhaps not so much.'
Mrs Wickam, as a serious character, expressed her approval with a
groan; and having made some cold dabs at the bottom of the bedclothes, as
feeling for the patient's feet and expecting to find them stony; went
clinking among the medicine bottles on the table, as who should say, 'while
we are here, let us repeat the mixture as before.'
'No,' said Alice, whispering to her visitor, 'evil courses, and
remorse, travel, want, and weather, storm within, and storm without, have
worn my life away. It will not last much longer.
She drew the hand up as she spoke, and laid her face against it.
'I lie here, sometimes, thinking I should like to live until I had had
a little time to show you how grateful I could be! It is a weakness, and
soon passes. Better for you as it is. Better for me!'
How different her hold upon the hand, from what it had been when she
took it by the fireside on the bleak winter evening! Scorn, rage, defiance,
recklessness, look here! This is the end.
Mrs Wickam having clinked sufficiently among the bottles, now produced
the mixture. Mrs Wickam looked hard at her patient in the act of drinking,
screwed her mouth up tight, her eyebrows also, and shook her head,
expressing that tortures shouldn't make her say it was a hopeless case. Mrs
Wickam then sprinkled a little cooling-stuff about the room, with the air of
a female grave-digger, who was strewing ashes on ashes, dust on dust - for
she was a serious character - and withdrew to partake of certain funeral
baked meats downstairs.
'How long is it,' asked Alice, 'since I went to you and told you what I
had done, and when you were advised it was too late for anyone to follow?'
'It is a year and more,' said Harriet.
'A year and more,' said Alice, thoughtfully intent upon her face.
'Months upon months since you brought me here!'
Harriet answered 'Yes.'
'Brought me here, by force of gentleness and kindness. Me!' said Alice,
shrinking with her face behind her hand, 'and made me human by woman's looks
and words, and angel's deeds!'
Harriet bending over her, composed and soothed her. By and bye, Alice
lying as before, with the hand against her face, asked to have her mother
called.
Harriet called to her more than once, but the old woman was so absorbed
looking out at the open window on the darkness, that she did not hear. It
was not until Harriet went to her and touched her, that she rose up, and
came.
'Mother,' said Alice, taking the hand again, and fixing her lustrous
eyes lovingly upon her visitor, while she merely addressed a motion of her
finger to the old woman, 'tell her what you know.'
'To-night, my deary?'
'Ay, mother,' answered Alice, faintly and solemnly, 'to-night!'
The old woman, whose wits appeared disorderly by alarm, remorse, or
grief, came creeping along the side of the bed, opposite to that on which
Harriet sat; and kneeling down, so as to bring her withered face upon a
level with the coverlet, and stretching out her hand, so as to touch her
daughter's arm, began:
'My handsome gal - '
Heaven, what a cry was that, with which she stopped there, gazing at
the poor form lying on the bed!
'Changed, long ago, mother! Withered, long ago,' said Alice, without
looking at her. 'Don't grieve for that now.
'My daughter,' faltered the old woman, 'my gal who'll soon get better,
and shame 'em all with her good looks.'
Alice smiled mournfully at Harriet, and fondled her hand a little
closer, but said nothing.
'Who'll soon get better, I say,' repeated the old woman, menacing the
vacant air with her shrivelled fist, 'and who'll shame 'em all with her good
looks - she will. I say she will! she shall!' - as if she were in passionate
contention with some unseen opponent at the bedside, who contradicted her -
'my daughter has been turned away from, and cast out, but she could boast
relationship to proud folks too, if she chose. Ah! To proud folks! There's
relationship without your clergy and your wedding rings - they may make it,
but they can't break it - and my daughter's well related. Show me Mrs
Dombey, and I'll show you my Alice's first cousin.'
Harriet glanced from the old woman to the lustrous eyes intent upon her
face, and derived corroboration from them.
'What!' cried the old woman, her nodding head bridling with a ghastly
vanity. 'Though I am old and ugly now, - much older by life and habit than
years though, - I was once as young as any. Ah! as pretty too, as many! I
was a fresh country wench in my time, darling,' stretching out her arm to
Harriet, across the bed, 'and looked it, too. Down in my country, Mrs
Dombey's father and his brother were the gayest gentlemen and the best-liked
that came a visiting from London - they have long been dead, though! Lord,
Lord, this long while! The brother, who was my Ally's father, longest of the
two.'
She raised her head a little, and peered at her daughter's face; as if
from the remembrance of her own youth, she had flown to the remembrance of
her child's. Then, suddenly, she laid her face down on the bed, and shut her
head up in her hands and arms.
'They were as like,' said the old woman, without looking up, as you
could see two brothers, so near an age - there wasn't much more than a year
between them, as I recollect - and if you could have seen my gal, as I have
seen her once, side by side with the other's daughter, you'd have seen, for
all the difference of dress and life, that they were like each other. Oh! is
the likeness gone, and is it my gal - only my gal - that's to change so!'
'We shall all change, mother, in our turn,' said Alice.
'Turn!' cried the old woman, 'but why not hers as soon as my gal's! The
mother must have changed - she looked as old as me, and full as wrinkled
through her paint - but she was handsome. What have I done, I, what have I
done worse than her, that only my gal is to lie there fading!' With another
of those wild cries, she went running out into the room from which she had
come; but immediately, in her uncertain mood, returned, and creeping up to
Harriet, said:
'That's what Alice bade me tell you, deary. That's all. I found it out
when I began to ask who she was, and all about her, away in Warwickshire
there, one summer-time. Such relations was no good to me, then. They
wouldn't have owned me, and had nothing to give me. I should have asked 'em,
maybe, for a little money, afterwards, if it hadn't been for my Alice; she'd
a'most have killed me, if I had, I think She was as proud as t'other in her
way,' said the old woman, touching the face of her daughter fearfully, and
withdrawing her hand, 'for all she's so quiet now; but she'll shame 'em with
her good looks yet. Ha, ha! She'll shame 'em, will my handsome daughter!'
Her laugh, as she retreated, was worse than her cry; worse than the
burst of imbecile lamentation in which it ended; worse than the doting air
with which she sat down in her old seat, and stared out at the darkness.
The eyes of Alice had all this time been fixed on Harriet, whose hand
she had never released. She said now:
'I have felt, lying here, that I should like you to know this. It might
explain, I have thought, something that used to help to harden me. I had
heard so much, in my wrongdoing, of my neglected duty, that I took up with
the belief that duty had not been done to me, and that as the seed was sown,
the harvest grew. I somehow made it out that when ladies had bad homes and
mothers, they went wrong in their way, too; but that their way was not so
foul a one as mine, and they had need to bless God for it.' That is all
past. It is like a dream, now, which I cannot quite remember or understand.
It has been more and more like a dream, every day, since you began to sit
here, and to read to me. I only tell it you, as I can recollect it. Will you
read to me a little more?'
Harriet was withdrawing her hand to open the book, when Alice detained
it for a moment.
'You will not forget my mother? I forgive her, if I have any cause. I
know that she forgives me, and is sorry in her heart. You will not forget
her?'
'Never, Alice!'
'A moment yet. Lay your head so, dear, that as you read I may see the
words in your kind face.'
Harriet complied and read - read the eternal book for all the weary,
and the heavy-laden; for all the wretched, fallen, and neglected of this
earth - read the blessed history, in which the blind lame palsied beggar,
the criminal, the woman stained with shame, the shunned of all our dainty
clay, has each a portion, that no human pride, indifference, or sophistry,
through all the ages that this world shall last, can take away, or by the
thousandth atom of a grain reduce - read the ministry of Him who, through
the round of human life, and all its hopes and griefs, from birth to death,
from infancy to age, had sweet compassion for, and interest in, its every
scene and stage, its every suffering and sorrow.
'I shall come,' said Harriet, when she shut the book, 'very early in
the morning.'
The lustrous eyes, yet fixed upon her face, closed for a moment, then
opened; and Alice kissed and blest her.
The same eyes followed her to the door; and in their light, and on the
tranquil face, there was a smile when it was closed.
They never turned away. She laid her hand upon her breast, murmuring
the sacred name that had been read to her; and life passed from her face,
like light removed.
Nothing lay there, any longer, but the ruin of the mortal house on
which the rain had beaten, and the black hair that had fluttered in the
wintry wind.
Retribution
Changes have come again upon the great house in the long dull street,
once the scene of Florence's childhood and loneliness. It is a great house
still, proof against wind and weather, without breaches in the roof, or
shattered windows, or dilapidated walls; but it is a ruin none the less, and
the rats fly from it.
Mr Towlinson and company are, at first, incredulous in respect of the
shapeless rumours that they hear. Cook says our people's credit ain't so
easy shook as that comes to, thank God; and Mr Towlinson expects to hear it
reported next, that the Bank of England's a-going to break, or the jewels in
the Tower to be sold up. But, next come the Gazette, and Mr Perch; and Mr
Perch brings Mrs Perch to talk it over in the kitchen, and to spend a
pleasant evening.
As soon as there is no doubt about it, Mr Towlinson's main anxiety is
that the failure should be a good round one - not less than a hundred
thousand pound. Mr Perch don't think himself that a hundred thousand pound
will nearly cover it. The women, led by Mrs Perch and Cook, often repeat 'a
hun-dred thou-sand pound!' with awful satisfaction - as if handling the
words were like handling the money; and the housemaid, who has her eye on Mr
Towlinson, wishes she had only a hundredth part of the sum to bestow on the
man of her choice. Mr Towlinson, still mindful of his old wrong, opines that
a foreigner would hardly know what to do with so much money, unless he spent
it on his whiskers; which bitter sarcasm causes the housemaid to withdraw in
tears.
But not to remain long absent; for Cook, who has the reputation of
being extremely good-hearted, says, whatever they do, let 'em stand by one
another now, Towlinson, for there's no telling how soon they may be divided.
They have been in that house (says Cook) through a funeral, a wedding, and a
running-away; and let it not be said that they couldn't agree among
themselves at such a time as the present. Mrs Perch is immensely affected by
this moving address, and openly remarks that Cook is an angel. Mr Towlinson
replies to Cook, far be it from him to stand in the way of that good feeling
which he could wish to see; and adjourning in quest of the housemaid, and
presently returning with that young lady on his arm, informs the kitchen
that foreigners is only his fun, and that him and Anne have now resolved to
take one another for better for worse, and to settle in Oxford Market in the
general greengrocery and herb and leech line, where your kind favours is
particular requested. This announcement is received with acclamation; and
Mrs Perch, projecting her soul into futurity, says, 'girls,' in Cook's ear,
in a solemn whisper.
Misfortune in the family without feasting, in these lower regions,
couldn't be. Therefore Cook tosses up a hot dish or two for supper, and Mr
Towlinson compounds a lobster salad to be devoted to the same hospitable
purpose. Even Mrs Pipchin, agitated by the occasion, rings her bell, and
sends down word that she requests to have that little bit of sweetbread that
was left, warmed up for her supper, and sent to her on a tray with about a
quarter of a tumbler-full of mulled sherry; for she feels poorly.
There is a little talk about Mr Dombey, but very little. It is chiefly
speculation as to how long he has known that this was going to happen. Cook
says shrewdly, 'Oh a long time, bless you! Take your oath of that.' And
reference being made to Mr Perch, he confirms her view of the case. Somebody
wonders what he'll do, and whether he'll go out in any situation. Mr
Towlinson thinks not, and hints at a refuge in one of them genteel
almshouses of the better kind. 'Ah, where he'll have his little garden, you
know,' says Cook plaintively, 'and bring up sweet peas in the spring.'
'Exactly so,' says Mr Towlinson, 'and be one of the Brethren of something or
another.' 'We are all brethren,' says Mrs Perch, in a pause of her drink.
'Except the sisters,' says Mr Perch. 'How are the mighty fallen!' remarks
Cook. 'Pride shall have a fall, and it always was and will be so!' observes
the housemaid.
It is wonderful how good they feel, in making these reflections; and
what a Christian unanimity they are sensible of, in bearing the common shock
with resignation. There is only one interruption to this excellent state of
mind, which is occasioned by a young kitchen-maid of inferior rank - in
black stockings - who, having sat with her mouth open for a long time,
unexpectedly discharges from it words to this effect, 'Suppose the wages
shouldn't be paid!' The company sit for a moment speechless; but Cook
recovering first, turns upon the young woman, and requests to know how she
dares insult the family, whose bread she eats, by such a dishonest
supposition, and whether she thinks that anybody, with a scrap of honour
left, could deprive poor servants of their pittance? 'Because if that is
your religious feelings, Mary Daws,' says Cook warmly, 'I don't know where
you mean to go to.
Mr Towlinson don't know either; nor anybody; and the young
kitchen-maid, appearing not to know exactly, herself, and scouted by the
general voice, is covered with confusion, as with a garment.
After a few days, strange people begin to call at the house, and to
make appointments with one another in the dining-room, as if they lived
there. Especially, there is a gentleman, of a Mosaic Arabian cast of
countenance, with a very massive watch-guard, who whistles in the
drawing-room, and, while he is waiting for the other gentleman, who always
has pen and ink in his pocket, asks Mr Towlinson (by the easy name of 'Old
Cock,') if he happens to know what the figure of them crimson and gold
hangings might have been, when new bought. The callers and appointments in
the dining-room become more numerous every day, and every gentleman seems to
have pen and ink in his pocket, and to have some occasion to use it. At last
'Sol! There's the last bottle of the old Madeira down below. Would you
wish to have it up to-night, my boy, and drink to Wal'r and his wife?'
The Instrument-maker, looking wistfully at the Captain, puts his hand
into the breast-pocket of his coffee-coloured coat, brings forth his
pocket-book, and takes a letter out.
'To Mr Dombey,' says the old man. 'From Walter. To be sent in three
weeks' time. I'll read it.'
'"Sir. I am married to your daughter. She is gone with me upon a
distant voyage. To be devoted to her is to have no claim on her or you, but
God knows that I am.
'"Why, loving her beyond all earthly things, I have yet, without
remorse, united her to the uncertainties and dangers of my life, I will not
say to you. You know why, and you are her father.
'"Do not reproach her. She has never reproached you.
'"I do not think or hope that you will ever forgive me. There is
nothing I expect less. But if an hour should come when it will comfort you
to believe that Florence has someone ever near her, the great charge of
whose life is to cancel her remembrance of past sorrow, I solemnly assure
you, you may, in that hour, rest in that belief."'
Solomon puts back the letter carefully in his pocket-book, and puts
back his pocket-book in his coat.
'We won't drink the last bottle of the old Madeira yet, Ned,' says the
old man thoughtfully. 'Not yet.
'Not yet,' assents the Captain. 'No. Not yet.'
Susan and Mr Toots are of the same opinion. After a silence they all
sit down to supper, and drink to the young husband and wife in something
else; and the last bottle of the old Madeira still remains among its dust
and cobwebs, undisturbed.
A few days have elapsed, and a stately ship is out at sea, spreading
its white wings to the favouring wind.
Upon the deck, image to the roughest man on board of something that is
graceful, beautiful, and harmless - something that it is good and pleasant
to have there, and that should make the voyage prosperous - is Florence. It
is night, and she and Walter sit alone, watching the solemn path of light
upon the sea between them and the moon.
At length she cannot see it plainly, for the tears that fill her eyes;
and then she lays her head down on his breast, and puts her arms around his
neck, saying, 'Oh Walter, dearest love, I am so happy!'
Her husband holds her to his heart, and they are very quiet, and the
stately ship goes on serenely.
'As I hear the sea,' says Florence, 'and sit watching it, it brings so
many days into my mind. It makes me think so much - '
'Of Paul, my love. I know it does.'
Of Paul and Walter. And the voices in the waves are always whispering
to Florence, in their ceaseless murmuring, of love - of love, eternal and
illimitable, not bounded by the confines of this world, or by the end of
time, but ranging still, beyond the sea, beyond the sky, to the invisible
country far away!
After a Lapse
The sea had ebbed and flowed, through a whole year. Through a whole
year, the winds and clouds had come and gone; the ceaseless work of Time had
been performed, in storm and sunshine. Through a whole year, the tides of
human chance and change had set in their allotted courses. Through a whole
year, the famous House of Dombey and Son had fought a fight for life,
against cross accidents, doubtful rumours, unsuccessful ventures,
unpropitious times, and most of all, against the infatuation of its head,
who would not contract its enterprises by a hair's breadth, and would not
listen to a word of warning that the ship he strained so hard against the
storm, was weak, and could not bear it. The year was out, and the great
House was down.
One summer afternoon; a year, wanting some odd days, after the marriage
in the City church; there was a buzz and whisper upon 'Change of a great
failure. A certain cold proud man, well known there, was not there, nor was
he represented there. Next day it was noised abroad that Dombey and Son had
stopped, and next night there was a List of Bankrupts published, headed by
that name.
The world was very busy now, in sooth, and had a deal to say. It was an
innocently credulous and a much ill-used world. It was a world in which
there was 'no other sort of bankruptcy whatever. There were no conspicuous
people in it, trading far and wide on rotten banks of religion, patriotism,
virtue, honour. There was no amount worth mentioning of mere paper in
circulation, on which anybody lived pretty handsomely, promising to pay
great sums of goodness with no effects. There were no shortcomings anywhere,
in anything but money. The world was very angry indeed; and the people
especially, who, in a worse world, might have been supposed to be apt
traders themselves in shows and pretences, were observed to be mightily
indignant.
Here was a new inducement to dissipation, presented to that sport of
circumstances, Mr Perch the Messenger! It was apparently the fate of Mr
Perch to be always waking up, and finding himself famous. He had but
yesterday, as one might say, subsided into private life from the celebrity
of the elopement and the events that followed it; and now he was made a more
important man than ever, by the bankruptcy. Gliding from his bracket in the
outer office where he now sat, watching the strange faces of accountants and
others, who quickly superseded nearly all the old clerks, Mr Perch had but
to show himself in the court outside, or, at farthest, in the bar of the
King's Arms, to be asked a multitude of questions, almost certain to include
that interesting question, what would he take to drink? Then would Mr Perch
descant upon the hours of acute uneasiness he and Mrs Perch had suffered out
at Balls Pond, when they first suspected 'things was going wrong.' Then
would Mr Perch relate to gaping listeners, in a low voice, as if the corpse
of the deceased House were lying unburied in the next room, how Mrs Perch
had first come to surmise that things was going wrong by hearing him (Perch)
moaning in his sleep, 'twelve and ninepence in the pound, twelve and
ninepence in the pound!' Which act of somnambulism he supposed to have
originated in the impression made upon him by the change in Mr Dombey's
face. Then would he inform them how he had once said, 'Might I make so bold
as ask, Sir, are you unhappy in your mind?' and how Mr Dombey had replied,
'My faithful Perch - but no, it cannot be!' and with that had struck his
hand upon his forehead, and said, 'Leave me, Perch!' Then, in short, would
Mr Perch, a victim to his position, tell all manner of lies; affecting
himself to tears by those that were of a moving nature, and really believing
that the inventions of yesterday had, on repetition, a sort of truth about
them to-day.
Mr Perch always closed these conferences by meekly remarking, That, of
course, whatever his suspicions might have been (as if he had ever had any!)
it wasn't for him to betray his trust, was it? Which sentiment (there never
being any creditors present) was received as doing great honour to his
feelings. Thus, he generally brought away a soothed conscience and left an
agreeable impression behind him, when he returned to his bracket: again to
sit watching the strange faces of the accountants and others, making so free
with the great mysteries, the Books; or now and then to go on tiptoe into Mr
Dombey's empty room, and stir the fire; or to take an airing at the door,
and have a little more doleful chat with any straggler whom he knew; or to
propitiate, with various small attentions, the head accountant: from whom Mr
Perch had expectations of a messengership in a Fire Office, when the affairs
of the House should be wound up.
To Major Bagstock, the bankruptcy was quite a calamity. The Major was
not a sympathetic character - his attention being wholly concentrated on J.
B. - nor was he a man subject to lively emotions, except in the physical
regards of gasping and choking. But he had so paraded his friend Dombey at
the club; had so flourished him at the heads of the members in general, and
so put them down by continual assertion of his riches; that the club, being
but human, was delighted to retort upon the Major, by asking him, with a
show of great concern, whether this tremendous smash had been at all
expected, and how his friend Dombey bore it. To such questions, the Major,
waxing very purple, would reply that it was a bad world, Sir, altogether;
that Joey knew a thing or two, but had been done, Sir, done like an infant;
that if you had foretold this, Sir, to J. Bagstock, when he went abroad with
Dombey and was chasing that vagabond up and down France, J. Bagstock would
have pooh-pooh'd you - would have pooh- pooh'd you, Sir, by the Lord! That
Joe had been deceived, Sir, taken in, hoodwinked, blindfolded, but was broad
awake again and staring; insomuch, Sir, that if Joe's father were to rise up
from the grave to-morrow, he wouldn't trust the old blade with a penny
piece, but would tell him that his son Josh was too old a soldier to be done
again, Sir. That he was a suspicious, crabbed, cranky, used-up, J. B.
infidel, Sir; and that if it were consistent with the dignity of a rough and
tough old Major, of the old school, who had had the honour of being
personally known to, and commended by, their late Royal Highnesses the Dukes
of Kent and York, to retire to a tub and live in it, by Gad! Sir, he'd have
a tub in Pall Mall to-morrow, to show his contempt for mankind!'
Of all this, and many variations of the same tune, the Major would
deliver himself with so many apoplectic symptoms, such rollings of his head,
and such violent growls of ill usage and resentment, that the younger
members of the club surmised he had invested money in his friend Dombey's
House, and lost it; though the older soldiers and deeper dogs, who knew Joe
better, wouldn't hear of such a thing. The unfortunate Native, expressing no
opinion, suffered dreadfully; not merely in his moral feelings, which were
regularly fusilladed by the Major every hour in the day, and riddled through
and through, but in his sensitiveness to bodily knocks and bumps, which was
kept continually on the stretch. For six entire weeks after the bankruptcy,
this miserable foreigner lived in a rainy season of boot-jacks and brushes.
Mrs Chick had three ideas upon the subject of the terrible reverse. The
first was that she could not understand it. The second, that her brother had
not made an effort. The third, that if she had been invited to dinner on the
day of that first party, it never would have happened; and that she had said
so, at the time.
Nobody's opinion stayed the misfortune, lightened it, or made it
heavier. It was understood that the affairs of the House were to be wound up
as they best could be; that Mr Dombey freely resigned everything he had, and
asked for no favour from anyone. That any resumption of the business was out
of the question, as he would listen to no friendly negotiation having that
compromise in view; that he had relinquished every post of trust or
distinction he had held, as a man respected among merchants; that he was
dying, according to some; that he was going melancholy mad, according to
others; that he was a broken man, according to all.
The clerks dispersed after holding a little dinner of condolence among
themselves, which was enlivened by comic singing, and went off admirably.
Some took places abroad, and some engaged in other Houses at home; some
looked up relations in the country, for whom they suddenly remembered they
had a particular affection; and some advertised for employment in the
newspapers. Mr Perch alone remained of all the late establishment, sitting
on his bracket looking at the accountants, or starting off it, to propitiate
the head accountant, who was to get him into the Fire Office. The Counting
House soon got to be dirty and neglected. The principal slipper and dogs'
collar seller, at the corner of the court, would have doubted the propriety
of throwing up his forefinger to the brim of his hat, any more, if Mr Dombey
had appeared there now; and the ticket porter, with his hands under his
white apron, moralised good sound morality about ambition, which (he
observed) was not, in his opinion, made to rhyme to perdition, for nothing.
Mr Morfin, the hazel-eyed bachelor, with the hair and whiskers
sprinkled with grey, was perhaps the only person within the atmosphere of
the House - its head, of course, excepted - who was heartily and deeply
affected by the disaster that had befallen it. He had treated Mr Dombey with
due respect and deference through many years, but he had never disguised his
natural character, or meanly truckled to him, or pampered his master passion
for the advancement of his own purposes. He had, therefore, no
self-disrespect to avenge; no long-tightened springs to release with a quick
recoil. He worked early and late to unravel whatever was complicated or
difficult in the records of the transactions of the House; was always in
attendance to explain whatever required explanation; sat in his old room
sometimes very late at night, studying points by his mastery of which he
could spare Mr Dombey the pain of being personally referred to; and then
would go home to Islington, and calm his mind by producing the most dismal
and forlorn sounds out of his violoncello before going to bed.
He was solacing himself with this melodious grumbler one evening, and,
having been much dispirited by the proceedings of the day, was scraping
consolation out of its deepest notes, when his landlady (who was fortunately
deaf, and had no other consciousness of these performances than a sensation
of something rumbling in her bones) announced a lady.
'In mourning,' she said.
The violoncello stopped immediately; and the performer, laying it on
the sofa with great tenderness and care, made a sign that the lady was to
come in. He followed directly, and met Harriet Carker on the stair.
'Alone!' he said, 'and John here this morning! Is there anything the
matter, my dear? But no,' he added, 'your face tells quite another story.'
'I am afraid it is a selfish revelation that you see there, then,' she
answered.
'It is a very pleasant one,' said he; 'and, if selfish, a novelty too,
worth seeing in you. But I don't believe that.'
He had placed a chair for her by this time, and sat down opposite; the
violoncello lying snugly on the sofa between them.
'You will not be surprised at my coming alone, or at John's not having
told you I was coming,' said Harriet; 'and you will believe that, when I
tell you why I have come. May I do so now?'
'You can do nothing better.'
'You were not busy?'
He pointed to the violoncello lying on the sofa, and said 'I have been,
all day. Here's my witness. I have been confiding all my cares to it. I wish
I had none but my own to tell.'
'Is the House at an end?' said Harriet, earnestly.
'Completely at an end.'
'Will it never be resumed?'
'Never.'
The bright expression of her face was not overshadowed as her lips
silently repeated the word. He seemed to observe this with some little
involuntary surprise: and said again:
'Never. You remember what I told you. It has been, all along,
impossible to convince him; impossible to reason with him; sometimes,
impossible even to approach him. The worst has happened; and the House has
fallen, never to be built up any more.'
'And Mr Dombey, is he personally ruined?'
'Ruined.'
'Will he have no private fortune left? Nothing?'
A certain eagerness in her voice, and something that was almost joyful
in her look, seemed to surprise him more and more; to disappoint him too,
and jar discordantly against his own emotions. He drummed with the fingers
of one hand on the table, looking wistfully at her, and shaking his head,
said, after a pause:
'The extent of Mr Dombey's resources is not accurately within my
knowledge; but though they are doubtless very large, his obligations are
enormous. He is a gentleman of high honour and integrity. Any man in his
position could, and many a man in his position would, have saved himself, by
making terms which would have very slightly, almost insensibly, increased
the losses of those who had had dealings with him, and left him a remnant to
live upon. But he is resolved on payment to the last farthing of his means.
His own words are, that they will clear, or nearly clear, the House, and
that no one can lose much. Ah, Miss Harriet, it would do us no harm to
remember oftener than we do, that vices are sometimes only virtues carried
to excess! His pride shows well in this.'
She heard him with little or no change in her expression, and with a
divided attention that showed her to be busy with something in her own mind.
When he was silent, she asked him hurriedly:
'Have you seen him lately?'
'No one sees him. When this crisis of his affairs renders it necessary
for him to come out of his house, he comes out for the occasion, and again
goes home, and shuts himself up, and will sea no one. He has written me a
letter, acknowledging our past connexion in higher terms than it deserved,
and parting from me. I am delicate of obtruding myself upon him now, never
having had much intercourse with him in better times; but I have tried to do
so. I have written, gone there, entreated. Quite in vain.'
He watched her, as in the hope that she would testify some greater
concern than she had yet shown; and spoke gravely and feelingly, as if to
impress her the more; but there was no change in her.
'Well, well, Miss Harriet,' he said, with a disappointed air, 'this is
not to the purpose. You have not come here to hear this. Some other and
pleasanter theme is in your mind. Let it be in mine, too, and we shall talk
upon more equal terms. Come!'
'No, it is the same theme,' returned Harriet, with frank and quick
surprise. 'Is it not likely that it should be? Is it not natural that John
and I should have been thinking and speaking very much of late of these
great changes? Mr Dombey, whom he served so many years - you know upon what
terms - reduced, as you describe; and we quite rich!'
Good, true face, as that face of hers was, and pleasant as it had been
to him, Mr Morfin, the hazel-eyed bachelor, since the first time he had ever
looked upon it, it pleased him less at that moment, lighted with a ray of
exultation, than it had ever pleased him before.
'I need not remind you,' said Harriet, casting down her eyes upon her
black dress, 'through what means our circumstances changed. You have not
forgotten that our brother James, upon that dreadful day, left no will, no
relations but ourselves.'
The face was pleasanter to him now, though it was pale and melancholy,
than it had been a moment since. He seemed to breathe more cheerily.
'You know,' she said, 'our history, the history of both my brothers, in
connexion with the unfortunate, unhappy gentleman, of whom you have spoken
so truly. You know how few our wants are - John's and mine - and what little
use we have for money, after the life we have led together for so many
years; and now that he is earning an income that is ample for us, through
your kindness. You are not unprepared to hear what favour I have come to ask
of you?'
'I hardly know. I was, a minute ago. Now, I think, I am not.'
'Of my dead brother I say nothing. If the dead know what we do - but
you understand me. Of my living brother I could say much; but what need I
say more, than that this act of duty, in which I have come to ask your
indispensable assistance, is his own, and that he cannot rest until it is
performed!'
She raised her eyes again; and the light of exultation in her face
began to appear beautiful, in the observant eyes that watched her.
'Dear Sir,' she went on to say, 'it must be done very quietly and
secretly. Your experience and knowledge will point out a way of doing it. Mr
Dombey may, perhaps, be led to believe that it is something saved,
unexpectedly, from the wreck of his fortunes; or that it is a voluntary
tribute to his honourable and upright character, from some of those with
whom he has had great dealings; or that it is some old lost debt repaid.
There must be many ways of doing it. I know you will choose the best. The
favour I have come to ask is, that you will do it for us in your own kind,
generous, considerate manner. That you will never speak of it to John, whose
chief happiness in this act of restitution is to do it secretly, unknown,
and unapproved of: that only a very small part of the inheritance may be
reserved to us, until Mr Dombey shall have possessed the interest of the
rest for the remainder of his life; that you will keep our secret,
faithfully - but that I am sure you will; and that, from this time, it may
seldom be whispered, even between you and me, but may live in my thoughts
only as a new reason for thankfulness to Heaven, and joy and pride in my
brother.'
Such a look of exultation there may be on Angels' faces when the one
repentant sinner enters Heaven, among ninety-nine just men. It was not
dimmed or tarnished by the joyful tears that filled her eyes, but was the
brighter for them.
'My dear Harriet,' said Mr Morfin, after a silence, 'I was not prepared
for this. Do I understand you that you wish to make your own part in the
inheritance available for your good purpose, as well as John's?'
'Oh, yes,' she returned 'When we have shared everything together for so
long a time, and have had no care, hope, or purpose apart, could I bear to
be excluded from my share in this? May I not urge a claim to be my brother's
partner and companion to the last?'
'Heaven forbid that I should dispute it!' he replied.
'We may rely on your friendly help?' she said. 'I knew we might!'
'I should be a worse man than, - than I hope I am, or would willingly
believe myself, if I could not give you that assurance from my heart and
soul. You may, implicitly. Upon my honour, I will keep your secret. And if
it should be found that Mr Dombey is so reduced as I fear he will be, acting
on a determination that there seem to be no means of influencing, I will
assist you to accomplish the design, on which you and John are jointly
resolved.'
She gave him her hand, and thanked him with a cordial, happy face.
'Harriet,' he said, detaining it in his. 'To speak to you of the worth
of any sacrifice that you can make now - above all, of any sacrifice of mere
money - would be idle and presumptuous. To put before you any appeal to
reconsider your purpose or to set narrow limits to it, would be, I feel, not
less so. I have no right to mar the great end of a great history, by any
obtrusion of my own weak self. I have every right to bend my head before
what you confide to me, satisfied that it comes from a higher and better
source of inspiration than my poor worldly knowledge. I will say only this:
I am your faithful steward; and I would rather be so, and your chosen
friend, than I would be anybody in the world, except yourself.'
She thanked him again, cordially, and wished him good-night. 'Are you
going home?' he said. 'Let me go with you.'
'Not to-night. I am not going home now; I have a visit to make alone.
Will you come to-morrow?'
'Well, well,' said he, 'I'll come to-morrow. In the meantime, I'll
think of this, and how we can best proceed. And perhaps I'll think of it,
dear Harriet, and - and - think of me a little in connexion with it.'
He handed her down to a coach she had in waiting at the door; and if
his landlady had not been deaf, she would have heard him muttering as he
went back upstairs, when the coach had driven off, that we were creatures of
habit, and it was a sorrowful habit to be an old bachelor.
The violoncello lying on the sofa between the two chairs, he took it
up, without putting away the vacant chair, and sat droning on it, and slowly
shaking his head at the vacant chair, for a long, long time. The expression
he communicated to the instrument at first, though monstrously pathetic and
bland, was nothing to the expression he communicated to his own face, and
bestowed upon the empty chair: which was so sincere, that he was obliged to
have recourse to Captain Cuttle's remedy more than once, and to rub his face
with his sleeve. By degrees, however, the violoncello, in unison with his
own frame of mind, glided melodiously into the Harmonious Blacksmith, which
he played over and over again, until his ruddy and serene face gleamed like
true metal on the anvil of a veritable blacksmith. In fine, the violoncello
and the empty chair were the companions of his bachelorhood until nearly
midnight; and when he took his supper, the violoncello set up on end in the
sofa corner, big with the latent harmony of a whole foundry full of
harmonious blacksmiths, seemed to ogle the empty chair out of its crooked
eyes, with unutterable intelligence.
When Harriet left the house, the driver of her hired coach, taking a
course that was evidently no new one to him, went in and out by bye-ways,
through that part of the suburbs, until he arrived at some open ground,
where there were a few quiet little old houses standing among gardens. At
the garden-gate of one of these he stopped, and Harriet alighted.
Her gentle ringing at the bell was responded to by a dolorous-looking
woman, of light complexion, with raised eyebrows, and head drooping on one
side, who curtseyed at sight of her, and conducted her across the garden to
the house.
'How is your patient, nurse, to-night?' said Harriet.
'In a poor way, Miss, I am afraid. Oh how she do remind me, sometimes,
of my Uncle's Betsey Jane!' returned the woman of the light complexion, in a
sort of doleful rapture.
'In what respect?' asked Harriet.
'Miss, in all respects,' replied the other, 'except that she's grown
up, and Betsey Jane, when at death's door, was but a child.'
'But you have told me she recovered,' observed Harriet mildly; 'so
there is the more reason for hope, Mrs Wickam.'
'Ah, Miss, hope is an excellent thing for such as has the spirits to
bear it!' said Mrs Wickam, shaking her head. 'My own spirits is not equal to
it, but I don't owe it any grudge. I envys them that is so blest!'
'You should try to be more cheerful,' remarked Harriet.
'Thank you, Miss, I'm sure,' said Mrs Wickam grimly. 'If I was so
inclined, the loneliness of this situation - you'll excuse my speaking so
free - would put it out of my power, in four and twenty hours; but I ain't
at all. I'd rather not. The little spirits that I ever had, I was bereaved
of at Brighton some few years ago, and I think I feel myself the better for
it.'
In truth, this was the very Mrs Wickam who had superseded Mrs Richards
as the nurse of little Paul, and who considered herself to have gained the
loss in question, under the roof of the amiable Pipchin. The excellent and
thoughtful old system, hallowed by long prescription, which has usually
picked out from the rest of mankind the most dreary and uncomfortable people
that could possibly be laid hold of, to act as instructors of youth,
finger-posts to the virtues, matrons, monitors, attendants on sick beds, and
the like, had established Mrs Wickam in very good business as a nurse, and
had led to her serious qualities being particularly commended by an admiring
and numerous connexion.
Mrs Wickam, with her eyebrows elevated, and her head on one side,
lighted the way upstairs to a clean, neat chamber, opening on another
chamber dimly lighted, where there was a bed. In the first room, an old
woman sat mechanically staring out at the open window, on the darkness. In
the second, stretched upon the bed, lay the shadow of a figure that had
spurned the wind and rain, one wintry night; hardly to be recognised now,
but by the long black hair that showed so very black against the colourless
face, and all the white things about it.
Oh, the strong eyes, and the weak frame! The eyes that turned so
eagerly and brightly to the door when Harriet came in; the feeble head that
could not raise itself, and moved so slowly round upon its pillow!
'Alice!' said the visitor's mild voice, 'am I late to-night?'
'You always seem late, but are always early.'
Harriet had sat down by the bedside now, and put her hand upon the thin
hand lying there.
'You are better?'
Mrs Wickam, standing at the foot of the bed, like a disconsolate
spectre, most decidedly and forcibly shook her head to negative this
position.
'It matters very little!' said Alice, with a faint smile. 'Better or
worse to-day, is but a day's difference - perhaps not so much.'
Mrs Wickam, as a serious character, expressed her approval with a
groan; and having made some cold dabs at the bottom of the bedclothes, as
feeling for the patient's feet and expecting to find them stony; went
clinking among the medicine bottles on the table, as who should say, 'while
we are here, let us repeat the mixture as before.'
'No,' said Alice, whispering to her visitor, 'evil courses, and
remorse, travel, want, and weather, storm within, and storm without, have
worn my life away. It will not last much longer.
She drew the hand up as she spoke, and laid her face against it.
'I lie here, sometimes, thinking I should like to live until I had had
a little time to show you how grateful I could be! It is a weakness, and
soon passes. Better for you as it is. Better for me!'
How different her hold upon the hand, from what it had been when she
took it by the fireside on the bleak winter evening! Scorn, rage, defiance,
recklessness, look here! This is the end.
Mrs Wickam having clinked sufficiently among the bottles, now produced
the mixture. Mrs Wickam looked hard at her patient in the act of drinking,
screwed her mouth up tight, her eyebrows also, and shook her head,
expressing that tortures shouldn't make her say it was a hopeless case. Mrs
Wickam then sprinkled a little cooling-stuff about the room, with the air of
a female grave-digger, who was strewing ashes on ashes, dust on dust - for
she was a serious character - and withdrew to partake of certain funeral
baked meats downstairs.
'How long is it,' asked Alice, 'since I went to you and told you what I
had done, and when you were advised it was too late for anyone to follow?'
'It is a year and more,' said Harriet.
'A year and more,' said Alice, thoughtfully intent upon her face.
'Months upon months since you brought me here!'
Harriet answered 'Yes.'
'Brought me here, by force of gentleness and kindness. Me!' said Alice,
shrinking with her face behind her hand, 'and made me human by woman's looks
and words, and angel's deeds!'
Harriet bending over her, composed and soothed her. By and bye, Alice
lying as before, with the hand against her face, asked to have her mother
called.
Harriet called to her more than once, but the old woman was so absorbed
looking out at the open window on the darkness, that she did not hear. It
was not until Harriet went to her and touched her, that she rose up, and
came.
'Mother,' said Alice, taking the hand again, and fixing her lustrous
eyes lovingly upon her visitor, while she merely addressed a motion of her
finger to the old woman, 'tell her what you know.'
'To-night, my deary?'
'Ay, mother,' answered Alice, faintly and solemnly, 'to-night!'
The old woman, whose wits appeared disorderly by alarm, remorse, or
grief, came creeping along the side of the bed, opposite to that on which
Harriet sat; and kneeling down, so as to bring her withered face upon a
level with the coverlet, and stretching out her hand, so as to touch her
daughter's arm, began:
'My handsome gal - '
Heaven, what a cry was that, with which she stopped there, gazing at
the poor form lying on the bed!
'Changed, long ago, mother! Withered, long ago,' said Alice, without
looking at her. 'Don't grieve for that now.
'My daughter,' faltered the old woman, 'my gal who'll soon get better,
and shame 'em all with her good looks.'
Alice smiled mournfully at Harriet, and fondled her hand a little
closer, but said nothing.
'Who'll soon get better, I say,' repeated the old woman, menacing the
vacant air with her shrivelled fist, 'and who'll shame 'em all with her good
looks - she will. I say she will! she shall!' - as if she were in passionate
contention with some unseen opponent at the bedside, who contradicted her -
'my daughter has been turned away from, and cast out, but she could boast
relationship to proud folks too, if she chose. Ah! To proud folks! There's
relationship without your clergy and your wedding rings - they may make it,
but they can't break it - and my daughter's well related. Show me Mrs
Dombey, and I'll show you my Alice's first cousin.'
Harriet glanced from the old woman to the lustrous eyes intent upon her
face, and derived corroboration from them.
'What!' cried the old woman, her nodding head bridling with a ghastly
vanity. 'Though I am old and ugly now, - much older by life and habit than
years though, - I was once as young as any. Ah! as pretty too, as many! I
was a fresh country wench in my time, darling,' stretching out her arm to
Harriet, across the bed, 'and looked it, too. Down in my country, Mrs
Dombey's father and his brother were the gayest gentlemen and the best-liked
that came a visiting from London - they have long been dead, though! Lord,
Lord, this long while! The brother, who was my Ally's father, longest of the
two.'
She raised her head a little, and peered at her daughter's face; as if
from the remembrance of her own youth, she had flown to the remembrance of
her child's. Then, suddenly, she laid her face down on the bed, and shut her
head up in her hands and arms.
'They were as like,' said the old woman, without looking up, as you
could see two brothers, so near an age - there wasn't much more than a year
between them, as I recollect - and if you could have seen my gal, as I have
seen her once, side by side with the other's daughter, you'd have seen, for
all the difference of dress and life, that they were like each other. Oh! is
the likeness gone, and is it my gal - only my gal - that's to change so!'
'We shall all change, mother, in our turn,' said Alice.
'Turn!' cried the old woman, 'but why not hers as soon as my gal's! The
mother must have changed - she looked as old as me, and full as wrinkled
through her paint - but she was handsome. What have I done, I, what have I
done worse than her, that only my gal is to lie there fading!' With another
of those wild cries, she went running out into the room from which she had
come; but immediately, in her uncertain mood, returned, and creeping up to
Harriet, said:
'That's what Alice bade me tell you, deary. That's all. I found it out
when I began to ask who she was, and all about her, away in Warwickshire
there, one summer-time. Such relations was no good to me, then. They
wouldn't have owned me, and had nothing to give me. I should have asked 'em,
maybe, for a little money, afterwards, if it hadn't been for my Alice; she'd
a'most have killed me, if I had, I think She was as proud as t'other in her
way,' said the old woman, touching the face of her daughter fearfully, and
withdrawing her hand, 'for all she's so quiet now; but she'll shame 'em with
her good looks yet. Ha, ha! She'll shame 'em, will my handsome daughter!'
Her laugh, as she retreated, was worse than her cry; worse than the
burst of imbecile lamentation in which it ended; worse than the doting air
with which she sat down in her old seat, and stared out at the darkness.
The eyes of Alice had all this time been fixed on Harriet, whose hand
she had never released. She said now:
'I have felt, lying here, that I should like you to know this. It might
explain, I have thought, something that used to help to harden me. I had
heard so much, in my wrongdoing, of my neglected duty, that I took up with
the belief that duty had not been done to me, and that as the seed was sown,
the harvest grew. I somehow made it out that when ladies had bad homes and
mothers, they went wrong in their way, too; but that their way was not so
foul a one as mine, and they had need to bless God for it.' That is all
past. It is like a dream, now, which I cannot quite remember or understand.
It has been more and more like a dream, every day, since you began to sit
here, and to read to me. I only tell it you, as I can recollect it. Will you
read to me a little more?'
Harriet was withdrawing her hand to open the book, when Alice detained
it for a moment.
'You will not forget my mother? I forgive her, if I have any cause. I
know that she forgives me, and is sorry in her heart. You will not forget
her?'
'Never, Alice!'
'A moment yet. Lay your head so, dear, that as you read I may see the
words in your kind face.'
Harriet complied and read - read the eternal book for all the weary,
and the heavy-laden; for all the wretched, fallen, and neglected of this
earth - read the blessed history, in which the blind lame palsied beggar,
the criminal, the woman stained with shame, the shunned of all our dainty
clay, has each a portion, that no human pride, indifference, or sophistry,
through all the ages that this world shall last, can take away, or by the
thousandth atom of a grain reduce - read the ministry of Him who, through
the round of human life, and all its hopes and griefs, from birth to death,
from infancy to age, had sweet compassion for, and interest in, its every
scene and stage, its every suffering and sorrow.
'I shall come,' said Harriet, when she shut the book, 'very early in
the morning.'
The lustrous eyes, yet fixed upon her face, closed for a moment, then
opened; and Alice kissed and blest her.
The same eyes followed her to the door; and in their light, and on the
tranquil face, there was a smile when it was closed.
They never turned away. She laid her hand upon her breast, murmuring
the sacred name that had been read to her; and life passed from her face,
like light removed.
Nothing lay there, any longer, but the ruin of the mortal house on
which the rain had beaten, and the black hair that had fluttered in the
wintry wind.
Retribution
Changes have come again upon the great house in the long dull street,
once the scene of Florence's childhood and loneliness. It is a great house
still, proof against wind and weather, without breaches in the roof, or
shattered windows, or dilapidated walls; but it is a ruin none the less, and
the rats fly from it.
Mr Towlinson and company are, at first, incredulous in respect of the
shapeless rumours that they hear. Cook says our people's credit ain't so
easy shook as that comes to, thank God; and Mr Towlinson expects to hear it
reported next, that the Bank of England's a-going to break, or the jewels in
the Tower to be sold up. But, next come the Gazette, and Mr Perch; and Mr
Perch brings Mrs Perch to talk it over in the kitchen, and to spend a
pleasant evening.
As soon as there is no doubt about it, Mr Towlinson's main anxiety is
that the failure should be a good round one - not less than a hundred
thousand pound. Mr Perch don't think himself that a hundred thousand pound
will nearly cover it. The women, led by Mrs Perch and Cook, often repeat 'a
hun-dred thou-sand pound!' with awful satisfaction - as if handling the
words were like handling the money; and the housemaid, who has her eye on Mr
Towlinson, wishes she had only a hundredth part of the sum to bestow on the
man of her choice. Mr Towlinson, still mindful of his old wrong, opines that
a foreigner would hardly know what to do with so much money, unless he spent
it on his whiskers; which bitter sarcasm causes the housemaid to withdraw in
tears.
But not to remain long absent; for Cook, who has the reputation of
being extremely good-hearted, says, whatever they do, let 'em stand by one
another now, Towlinson, for there's no telling how soon they may be divided.
They have been in that house (says Cook) through a funeral, a wedding, and a
running-away; and let it not be said that they couldn't agree among
themselves at such a time as the present. Mrs Perch is immensely affected by
this moving address, and openly remarks that Cook is an angel. Mr Towlinson
replies to Cook, far be it from him to stand in the way of that good feeling
which he could wish to see; and adjourning in quest of the housemaid, and
presently returning with that young lady on his arm, informs the kitchen
that foreigners is only his fun, and that him and Anne have now resolved to
take one another for better for worse, and to settle in Oxford Market in the
general greengrocery and herb and leech line, where your kind favours is
particular requested. This announcement is received with acclamation; and
Mrs Perch, projecting her soul into futurity, says, 'girls,' in Cook's ear,
in a solemn whisper.
Misfortune in the family without feasting, in these lower regions,
couldn't be. Therefore Cook tosses up a hot dish or two for supper, and Mr
Towlinson compounds a lobster salad to be devoted to the same hospitable
purpose. Even Mrs Pipchin, agitated by the occasion, rings her bell, and
sends down word that she requests to have that little bit of sweetbread that
was left, warmed up for her supper, and sent to her on a tray with about a
quarter of a tumbler-full of mulled sherry; for she feels poorly.
There is a little talk about Mr Dombey, but very little. It is chiefly
speculation as to how long he has known that this was going to happen. Cook
says shrewdly, 'Oh a long time, bless you! Take your oath of that.' And
reference being made to Mr Perch, he confirms her view of the case. Somebody
wonders what he'll do, and whether he'll go out in any situation. Mr
Towlinson thinks not, and hints at a refuge in one of them genteel
almshouses of the better kind. 'Ah, where he'll have his little garden, you
know,' says Cook plaintively, 'and bring up sweet peas in the spring.'
'Exactly so,' says Mr Towlinson, 'and be one of the Brethren of something or
another.' 'We are all brethren,' says Mrs Perch, in a pause of her drink.
'Except the sisters,' says Mr Perch. 'How are the mighty fallen!' remarks
Cook. 'Pride shall have a fall, and it always was and will be so!' observes
the housemaid.
It is wonderful how good they feel, in making these reflections; and
what a Christian unanimity they are sensible of, in bearing the common shock
with resignation. There is only one interruption to this excellent state of
mind, which is occasioned by a young kitchen-maid of inferior rank - in
black stockings - who, having sat with her mouth open for a long time,
unexpectedly discharges from it words to this effect, 'Suppose the wages
shouldn't be paid!' The company sit for a moment speechless; but Cook
recovering first, turns upon the young woman, and requests to know how she
dares insult the family, whose bread she eats, by such a dishonest
supposition, and whether she thinks that anybody, with a scrap of honour
left, could deprive poor servants of their pittance? 'Because if that is
your religious feelings, Mary Daws,' says Cook warmly, 'I don't know where
you mean to go to.
Mr Towlinson don't know either; nor anybody; and the young
kitchen-maid, appearing not to know exactly, herself, and scouted by the
general voice, is covered with confusion, as with a garment.
After a few days, strange people begin to call at the house, and to
make appointments with one another in the dining-room, as if they lived
there. Especially, there is a gentleman, of a Mosaic Arabian cast of
countenance, with a very massive watch-guard, who whistles in the
drawing-room, and, while he is waiting for the other gentleman, who always
has pen and ink in his pocket, asks Mr Towlinson (by the easy name of 'Old
Cock,') if he happens to know what the figure of them crimson and gold
hangings might have been, when new bought. The callers and appointments in
the dining-room become more numerous every day, and every gentleman seems to
have pen and ink in his pocket, and to have some occasion to use it. At last