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'It would have occurred to most men,' said Mrs Chick, 'that poor dear
Fanny being no more, - those words of mine will always be a balm and comfort
to me,' here she dried her eyes; 'it becomes necessary to provide a Nurse.'
'Oh! Ah!' said Mr Chick. 'Toor-ru! - such is life, I mean. I hope you
are suited, my dear.'
'Indeed I am not,' said Mrs Chick; 'nor likely to be, so far as I can
see, and in the meantime the poor child seems likely to be starved to death.
Paul is so very particular - naturally so, of course, having set his whole
heart on this one boy - and there are so many objections to everybody that
offers, that I don't see, myself, the least chance of an arrangement.
Meanwhile, of course, the child is - '
'Going to the Devil,' said Mr Chick, thoughtfully, 'to be sure.'
Admonished, however, that he had committed himself, by the indignation
expressed in Mrs Chick's countenance at the idea of a Dombey going there;
and thinking to atone for his misconduct by a bright suggestion, he added:
'Couldn't something temporary be done with a teapot?'
If he had meant to bring the subject prematurely to a close, he could
not have done it more effectually. After looking at him for some moments in
silent resignation, Mrs Chick said she trusted he hadn't said it in
aggravation, because that would do very little honour to his heart. She
trusted he hadn't said it seriously, because that would do very little
honour to his head. As in any case, he couldn't, however sanguine his
disposition, hope to offer a remark that would be a greater outrage on human
nature in general, we would beg to leave the discussion at that point.
Mrs Chick then walked majestically to the window and peeped through the
blind, attracted by the sound of wheels. Mr Chick, finding that his destiny
was, for the time, against him, said no more, and walked off. But it was not
always thus with Mr Chick. He was often in the ascendant himself, and at
those times punished Louisa roundly. In their matrimonial bickerings they
were, upon the whole, a well-matched, fairly-balanced, give-and-take couple.
It would have been, generally speaking, very difficult to have betted on the
winner. Often when Mr Chick seemed beaten, he would suddenly make a start,
turn the tables, clatter them about the ears of Mrs Chick, and carry all
before him. Being liable himself to similar unlooked for checks from Mrs
Chick, their little contests usually possessed a character of uncertainty
that was very animating.
Miss Tox had arrived on the wheels just now alluded to, and came
running into the room in a breathless condition. 'My dear Louisa,'said Miss
Tox, 'is the vacancy still unsupplied?'
'You good soul, yes,' said Mrs Chick.
'Then, my dear Louisa,' returned Miss Tox, 'I hope and believe - but in
one moment, my dear, I'll introduce the party.'
Running downstairs again as fast as she had run up, Miss Tox got the
party out of the hackney-coach, and soon returned with it under convoy.
It then appeared that she had used the word, not in its legal or
business acceptation, when it merely expresses an individual, but as a noun
of multitude, or signifying many: for Miss Tox escorted a plump rosy-cheeked
wholesome apple-faced young woman, with an infant in her arms; a younger
woman not so plump, but apple-faced also, who led a plump and apple-faced
child in each hand; another plump and also apple-faced boy who walked by
himself; and finally, a plump and apple-faced man, who carried in his arms
another plump and apple-faced boy, whom he stood down on the floor, and
admonished, in a husky whisper, to 'kitch hold of his brother Johnny.'
'My dear Louisa,' said Miss Tox, 'knowing your great anxiety, and
wishing to relieve it, I posted off myself to the Queen Charlotte's Royal
Married Females,' which you had forgot, and put the question, Was there
anybody there that they thought would suit? No, they said there was not.
When they gave me that answer, I do assure you, my dear, I was almost driven
to despair on your account. But it did so happen, that one of the Royal
Married Females, hearing the inquiry, reminded the matron of another who had
gone to her own home, and who, she said, would in all likelihood be most
satisfactory. The moment I heard this, and had it corroborated by the matron
- excellent references and unimpeachable character - I got the address, my
dear, and posted off again.'
'Like the dear good Tox, you are!' said Louisa.
'Not at all,' returned Miss Tox. 'Don't say so. Arriving at the house
(the cleanest place, my dear! You might eat your dinner off the floor), I
found the whole family sitting at table; and feeling that no account of them
could be half so comfortable to you and Mr Dombey as the sight of them all
together, I brought them all away. This gentleman,' said Miss Tox, pointing
out the apple-faced man, 'is the father. Will you have the goodness to come
a little forward, Sir?'
The apple-faced man having sheepishly complied with this request, stood
chuckling and grinning in a front row.
'This is his wife, of course,' said Miss Tox, singling out the young
woman with the baby. 'How do you do, Polly?'
'I'm pretty well, I thank you, Ma'am,' said Polly.
By way of bringing her out dexterously, Miss Tox had made the inquiry
as in condescension to an old acquaintance whom she hadn't seen for a
fortnight or so.
'I'm glad to hear it,' said Miss Tox. 'The other young woman is her
unmarried sister who lives with them, and would take care of her children.
Her name's Jemima. How do you do, Jemima?'
'I'm pretty well, I thank you, Ma'am,' returned Jemima.
'I'm very glad indeed to hear it,' said Miss Tox. 'I hope you'll keep
so. Five children. Youngest six weeks. The fine little boy with the blister
on his nose is the eldest The blister, I believe,' said Miss Tox, looking
round upon the family, 'is not constitutional, but accidental?'
The apple-faced man was understood to growl, 'Flat iron.
'I beg your pardon, Sir,' said Miss Tox, 'did you?
'Flat iron,' he repeated.
'Oh yes,' said Miss Tox. 'Yes! quite true. I forgot. The little
creature, in his mother's absence, smelt a warm flat iron. You're quite
right, Sir. You were going to have the goodness to inform me, when we
arrived at the door that you were by trade a - '
'Stoker,' said the man.
'A choker!' said Miss Tox, quite aghast.
'Stoker,' said the man. 'Steam ingine.'
'Oh-h! Yes!' returned Miss Tox, looking thoughtfully at him, and
seeming still to have but a very imperfect understanding of his meaning.
'And how do you like it, Sir?'
'Which, Mum?' said the man.
'That,' replied Miss Tox. 'Your trade.'
'Oh! Pretty well, Mum. The ashes sometimes gets in here;' touching his
chest: 'and makes a man speak gruff, as at the present time. But it is
ashes, Mum, not crustiness.'
Miss Tox seemed to be so little enlightened by this reply, as to find a
difficulty in pursuing the subject. But Mrs Chick relieved her, by entering
into a close private examination of Polly, her children, her marriage
certificate, testimonials, and so forth. Polly coming out unscathed from
this ordeal, Mrs Chick withdrew with her report to her brother's room, and
as an emphatic comment on it, and corroboration of it, carried the two
rosiest little Toodles with her. Toodle being the family name of the
apple-faced family.
Mr Dombey had remained in his own apartment since the death of his
wife, absorbed in visions of the youth, education, and destination of his
baby son. Something lay at the bottom of his cool heart, colder and heavier
than its ordinary load; but it was more a sense of the child's loss than his
own, awakening within him an almost angry sorrow. That the life and progress
on which he built such hopes, should be endangered in the outset by so mean
a want; that Dombey and Son should be tottering for a nurse, was a sore
humiliation. And yet in his pride and jealousy, he viewed with so much
bitterness the thought of being dependent for the very first step towards
the accomplishment of his soul's desire, on a hired serving-woman who would
be to the child, for the time, all that even his alliance could have made
his own wife, that in every new rejection of a candidate he felt a secret
pleasure. The time had now come, however, when he could no longer be divided
between these two sets of feelings. The less so, as there seemed to be no
flaw in the title of Polly Toodle after his sister had set it forth, with
many commendations on the indefatigable friendship of Miss Tox.
'These children look healthy,' said Mr Dombey. 'But my God, to think of
their some day claiming a sort of relationship to Paul!'
' But what relationship is there!' Louisa began -
'Is there!' echoed Mr Dombey, who had not intended his sister to
participate in the thought he had unconsciously expressed. 'Is there, did
you say, Louisa!'
'Can there be, I mean - '
'Why none,' said Mr Dombey, sternly. 'The whole world knows that, I
presume. Grief has not made me idiotic, Louisa. Take them away, Louisa! Let
me see this woman and her husband.'
Mrs Chick bore off the tender pair of Toodles, and presently returned
with that tougher couple whose presence her brother had commanded.
'My good woman,' said Mr Dombey, turning round in his easy chair, as
one piece, and not as a man with limbs and joints, 'I understand you are
poor, and wish to earn money by nursing the little boy, my son, who has been
so prematurely deprived of what can never be replaced. I have no objection
to your adding to the comforts of your family by that means. So far as I can
tell, you seem to be a deserving object. But I must impose one or two
conditions on you, before you enter my house in that capacity. While you are
here, I must stipulate that you are always known as - say as Richards - an
ordinary name, and convenient. Have you any objection to be known as
Richards? You had better consult your husband.'
'Well?' said Mr Dombey, after a pretty long pause. 'What does your
husband say to your being called Richards?'
As the husband did nothing but chuckle and grin, and continually draw
his right hand across his mouth, moistening the palm, Mrs Toodle, after
nudging him twice or thrice in vain, dropped a curtsey and replied 'that
perhaps if she was to be called out of her name, it would be considered in
the wages.'
'Oh, of course,' said Mr Dombey. 'I desire to make it a question of
wages, altogether. Now, Richards, if you nurse my bereaved child, I wish you
to remember this always. You will receive a liberal stipend in return for
the discharge of certain duties, in the performance of which, I wish you to
see as little of your family as possible. When those duties cease to be
required and rendered, and the stipend ceases to be paid, there is an end of
all relations between us. Do you understand me?'
Mrs Toodle seemed doubtful about it; and as to Toodle himself, he had
evidently no doubt whatever, that he was all abroad.
'You have children of your own,' said Mr Dombey. 'It is not at all in
this bargain that you need become attached to my child, or that my child
need become attached to you. I don't expect or desire anything of the kind.
Quite the reverse. When you go away from here, you will have concluded what
is a mere matter of bargain and sale, hiring and letting: and will stay
away. The child will cease to remember you; and you will cease, if you
please, to remember the child.'
Mrs Toodle, with a little more colour in her cheeks than she had had
before, said 'she hoped she knew her place.'
'I hope you do, Richards,' said Mr Dombey. 'I have no doubt you know it
very well. Indeed it is so plain and obvious that it could hardly be
otherwise. Louisa, my dear, arrange with Richards about money, and let her
have it when and how she pleases. Mr what's-your name, a word with you, if
you please!'
Thus arrested on the threshold as he was following his wife out of the
room, Toodle returned and confronted Mr Dombey alone. He was a strong,
loose, round-shouldered, shuffling, shaggy fellow, on whom his clothes sat
negligently: with a good deal of hair and whisker, deepened in its natural
tint, perhaps by smoke and coal-dust: hard knotty hands: and a square
forehead, as coarse in grain as the bark of an oak. A thorough contrast in
all respects, to Mr Dombey, who was one of those close-shaved close-cut
moneyed gentlemen who are glossy and crisp like new bank-notes, and who seem
to be artificially braced and tightened as by the stimulating action of
golden showerbaths.
'You have a son, I believe?' said Mr Dombey.
'Four on 'em, Sir. Four hims and a her. All alive!'
'Why, it's as much as you can afford to keep them!' said Mr Dombey.
'I couldn't hardly afford but one thing in the world less, Sir.'
'What is that?'
'To lose 'em, Sir.'
'Can you read?' asked Mr Dombey.
'Why, not partick'ler, Sir.'
'Write?'
'With chalk, Sir?'
'With anything?'
'I could make shift to chalk a little bit, I think, if I was put to
it,' said Toodle after some reflection.
'And yet,' said Mr Dombey, 'you are two or three and thirty, I
suppose?'
'Thereabouts, I suppose, Sir,' answered Toodle, after more reflection
'Then why don't you learn?' asked Mr Dombey.
'So I'm a going to, Sir. One of my little boys is a going to learn me,
when he's old enough, and been to school himself.'
'Well,' said Mr Dombey, after looking at him attentively, and with no
great favour, as he stood gazing round the room (principally round the
ceiling) and still drawing his hand across and across his mouth. 'You heard
what I said to your wife just now?'
'Polly heerd it,' said Toodle, jerking his hat over his shoulder in the
direction of the door, with an air of perfect confidence in his better half.
'It's all right.'
'But I ask you if you heard it. You did, I suppose, and understood it?'
pursued Mr Dombey.
'I heerd it,' said Toodle, 'but I don't know as I understood it rightly
Sir, 'account of being no scholar, and the words being - ask your pardon -
rayther high. But Polly heerd it. It's all right.'
'As you appear to leave everything to her,' said Mr Dombey, frustrated
in his intention of impressing his views still more distinctly on the
husband, as the stronger character, 'I suppose it is of no use my saying
anything to you.'
'Not a bit,' said Toodle. 'Polly heerd it. She's awake, Sir.'
'I won't detain you any longer then,' returned Mr Dombey, disappointed.
'Where have you worked all your life?'
'Mostly underground, Sir, 'till I got married. I come to the level
then. I'm a going on one of these here railroads when they comes into full
play.'
As he added in one of his hoarse whispers, 'We means to bring up little
Biler to that line,' Mr Dombey inquired haughtily who little Biler was.
'The eldest on 'em, Sir,' said Toodle, with a smile. 'It ain't a common
name. Sermuchser that when he was took to church the gen'lm'n said, it wam't
a chris'en one, and he couldn't give it. But we always calls him Biler just
the same. For we don't mean no harm. Not we.
'Do you mean to say, Man,' inquired Mr Dombey; looking at him with
marked displeasure, 'that you have called a child after a boiler?'
'No, no, Sir,' returned Toodle, with a tender consideration for his
mistake. 'I should hope not! No, Sir. Arter a BILER Sir. The Steamingine was
a'most as good as a godfather to him, and so we called him Biler, don't you
see!'
As the last straw breaks the laden camel's back, this piece of
information crushed the sinking spirits of Mr Dombey. He motioned his
child's foster-father to the door, who departed by no means unwillingly: and
then turning the key, paced up and down the room in solitary wretchedness.
It would be harsh, and perhaps not altogether true, to say of him that
he felt these rubs and gratings against his pride more keenly than he had
felt his wife's death: but certainly they impressed that event upon him with
new force, and communicated to it added weight and bitterness. It was a rude
shock to his sense of property in his child, that these people - the mere
dust of the earth, as he thought them - should be necessary to him; and it
was natural that in proportion as he felt disturbed by it, he should deplore
the occurrence which had made them so. For all his starched, impenetrable
dignity and composure, he wiped blinding tears from his eyes as he paced up
and down his room; and often said, with an emotion of which he would not,
for the world, have had a witness, 'Poor little fellow!'
It may have been characteristic of Mr Dombey's pride, that he pitied
himself through the child. Not poor me. Not poor widower, confiding by
constraint in the wife of an ignorant Hind who has been working 'mostly
underground' all his life, and yet at whose door Death had never knocked,
and at whose poor table four sons daily sit - but poor little fellow!
Those words being on his lips, it occurred to him - and it is an
instance of the strong attraction with which his hopes and fears and all his
thoughts were tending to one centre - that a great temptation was being
placed in this woman's way. Her infant was a boy too. Now, would it be
possIble for her to change them?
Though he was soon satisfied that he had dismissed the idea as romantic
and unlikely - though possible, there was no denying - he could not help
pursuing it so far as to entertain within himself a picture of what his
condition would be, if he should discover such an imposture when he was
grown old. Whether a man so situated would be able to pluck away the result
of so many years of usage, confidence, and belief, from the impostor, and
endow a stranger with it?
But it was idle speculating thus. It couldn't happen. In a moment
afterwards he determined that it could, but that such women were constantly
observed, and had no opportunity given them for the accomplishment of such a
design, even when they were so wicked as to entertain it. In another moment,
he was remembering how few such cases seemed to have ever happened. In
another moment he was wondering whether they ever happened and were not
found out.
As his unusual emotion subsided, these misgivings gradually melted
away, though so much of their shadow remained behind, that he was constant
in his resolution to look closely after Richards himself, without appearing
to do so. Being now in an easier frame of mind, he regarded the woman's
station as rather an advantageous circumstance than otherwise, by placing,
in itself, a broad distance between her and the child, and rendering their
separation easy and natural. Thence he passed to the contemplation of the
future glories of Dombey and Son, and dismissed the memory of his wife, for
the time being, with a tributary sigh or two.
Meanwhile terms were ratified and agreed upon between Mrs Chick and
Richards, with the assistance of Miss Tox; and Richards being with much
ceremony invested with the Dombey baby, as if it were an Order, resigned her
own, with many tears and kisses, to Jemima. Glasses of wine were then
produced, to sustain the drooping spirits of the family; and Miss Tox,
busying herself in dispensing 'tastes' to the younger branches, bred them up
to their father's business with such surprising expedition, that she made
chokers of four of them in a quarter of a minute.
'You'll take a glass yourself, Sir, won't you?' said Miss Tox, as
Toodle appeared.
'Thankee, Mum,' said Toodle, 'since you are suppressing.'
'And you're very glad to leave your dear good wife in such a
comfortable home, ain't you, Sir?'said Miss Tox, nodding and winking at him
stealthily.
'No, Mum,' said Toodle. 'Here's wishing of her back agin.'
Polly cried more than ever at this. So Mrs Chick, who had her matronly
apprehensions that this indulgence in grief might be prejudicial to the
little Dombey ('acid, indeed,' she whispered Miss Tox), hastened to the
rescue.
'Your little child will thrive charmingly with your sister Jemima,
Richards,' said Mrs Chick; 'and you have only to make an effort - this is a
world of effort, you know, Richards - to be very happy indeed. You have been
already measured for your mourning, haven't you, Richards?'
'Ye - es, Ma'am,' sobbed Polly.
'And it'll fit beautifully. I know,' said Mrs Chick, 'for the same
young person has made me many dresses. The very best materials, too!'
'Lor, you'll be so smart,' said Miss Tox, 'that your husband won't know
you; will you, Sir?'
'I should know her,' said Toodle, gruffly, 'anyhows and anywheres.'
Toodle was evidently not to be bought over.
'As to living, Richards, you know,' pursued Mrs Chick, 'why, the very
best of everything will be at your disposal. You will order your little
dinner every day; and anything you take a fancy to, I'm sure will be as
readily provided as if you were a Lady.'
'Yes to be sure!' said Miss Tox, keeping up the ball with great
sympathy. 'And as to porter! - quite unlimited, will it not, Louisa?'
'Oh, certainly!' returned Mrs Chick in the same tone. 'With a little
abstinence, you know, my dear, in point of vegetables.'
'And pickles, perhaps,' suggested Miss Tox.
'With such exceptions,' said Louisa, 'she'll consult her choice
entirely, and be under no restraint at all, my love.'
'And then, of course, you know,' said Miss Tox, 'however fond she is of
her own dear little child - and I'm sure, Louisa, you don't blame her for
being fond of it?'
'Oh no!' cried Mrs Chick, benignantly.
'Still,' resumed Miss Tox, 'she naturally must be interested in her
young charge, and must consider it a privilege to see a little cherub
connected with the superior classes, gradually unfolding itself from day to
day at one common fountain- is it not so, Louisa?'
'Most undoubtedly!' said Mrs Chick. 'You see, my love, she's already
quite contented and comfortable, and means to say goodbye to her sister
Jemima and her little pets, and her good honest husband, with a light heart
and a smile; don't she, my dear?'
'Oh yes!' cried Miss Tox. 'To be sure she does!'
Notwithstanding which, however, poor Polly embraced them all round in
great distress, and coming to her spouse at last, could not make up her mind
to part from him, until he gently disengaged himself, at the close of the
following allegorical piece of consolation:
'Polly, old 'ooman, whatever you do, my darling, hold up your head and
fight low. That's the only rule as I know on, that'll carry anyone through
life. You always have held up your head and fought low, Polly. Do it now, or
Bricks is no longer so. God bless you, Polly! Me and J'mima will do your
duty by you; and with relating to your'n, hold up your head and fight low,
Polly, and you can't go wrong!'
Fortified by this golden secret, Folly finally ran away to avoid any
more particular leave-taking between herself and the children. But the
stratagem hardly succeeded as well as it deserved; for the smallest boy but
one divining her intent, immediately began swarming upstairs after her - if
that word of doubtful etymology be admissible - on his arms and legs; while
the eldest (known in the family by the name of Biler, in remembrance of the
steam engine) beat a demoniacal tattoo with his boots, expressive of grief;
in which he was joined by the rest of the family.
A quantity of oranges and halfpence thrust indiscriminately on each
young Toodle, checked the first violence of their regret, and the family
were speedily transported to their own home, by means of the hackney-coach
kept in waiting for that purpose. The children, under the guardianship of
Jemima, blocked up the window, and dropped out oranges and halfpence all the
way along. Mr Toodle himself preferred to ride behind among the spikes, as
being the mode of conveyance to which he was best accustomed.
In which Mr Dombey, as a Man and a Father, is seen at the Head of the
Home-Department
The funeral of the deceased lady having been 'performed to the entire
satisfaction of the undertaker, as well as of the neighbourhood at large,
which is generally disposed to be captious on such a point, and is prone to
take offence at any omissions or short-comings in the ceremonies, the
various members of Mr Dombey's household subsided into their several places
in the domestic system. That small world, like the great one out of doors,
had the capacity of easily forgetting its dead; and when the cook had said
she was a quiet-tempered lady, and the house-keeper had said it was the
common lot, and the butler had said who'd have thought it, and the housemaid
had said she couldn't hardly believe it, and the footman had said it seemed
exactly like a dream, they had quite worn the subject out, and began to
think their mourning was wearing rusty too.
On Richards, who was established upstairs in a state of honourable
captivity, the dawn of her new life seemed to break cold and grey. Mr
Dombey's house was a large one, on the shady side of a tall, dark,
dreadfully genteel street in the region between Portland Place and
Bryanstone Square.' It was a corner house, with great wide areas containing
cellars frowned upon by barred windows, and leered at by crooked-eyed doors
leading to dustbins. It was a house of dismal state, with a circular back to
it, containing a whole suite of drawing-rooms looking upon a gravelled yard,
where two gaunt trees, with blackened trunks and branches, rattled rather
than rustled, their leaves were so smoked-dried. The summer sun was never on
the street, but in the morning about breakfast-time, when it came with the
water-carts and the old clothes men, and the people with geraniums, and the
umbrella-mender, and the man who trilled the little bell of the Dutch clock
as he went along. It was soon gone again to return no more that day; and the
bands of music and the straggling Punch's shows going after it, left it a
prey to the most dismal of organs, and white mice; with now and then a
porcupine, to vary the entertainments; until the butlers whose families were
dining out, began to stand at the house-doors in the twilight, and the
lamp-lighter made his nightly failure in attempting to brighten up the
street with gas.
It was as blank a house inside as outside. When the funeral was over,
Mr Dombey ordered the furniture to be covered up - perhaps to preserve it
for the son with whom his plans were all associated - and the rooms to be
ungarnished, saving such as he retained for himself on the ground floor.
Accordingly, mysterious shapes were made of tables and chairs, heaped
together in the middle of rooms, and covered over with great winding-sheets.
Bell-handles, window-blinds, and looking-glasses, being papered up in
journals, daily and weekly, obtruded fragmentary accounts of deaths and
dreadful murders. Every chandelier or lustre, muffled in holland, looked
like a monstrous tear depending from the ceiling's eye. Odours, as from
vaults and damp places, came out of the chimneys. The dead and buried lady
was awful in a picture-frame of ghastly bandages. Every gust of wind that
rose, brought eddying round the corner from the neighbouring mews, some
fragments of the straw that had been strewn before the house when she was
ill, mildewed remains of which were still cleaving to the neighbourhood: and
these, being always drawn by some invisible attraction to the threshold of
the dirty house to let immediately opposite, addressed a dismal eloquence to
Mr Dombey's windows.
The apartments which Mr Dombey reserved for his own inhabiting, were
attainable from the hall, and consisted of a sitting-room; a library, which
was in fact a dressing-room, so that the smell of hot-pressed paper, vellum,
morocco, and Russia leather, contended in it with the smell of divers pairs
of boots; and a kind of conservatory or little glass breakfast-room beyond,
commanding a prospect of the trees before mentioned, and, generally
speaking, of a few prowling cats. These three rooms opened upon one another.
In the morning, when Mr Dombey was at his breakfast in one or other of the
two first-mentioned of them, as well as in the afternoon when he came home
to dinner, a bell was rung for Richards to repair to this glass chamber, and
there walk to and fro with her young charge. From the glimpses she caught of
Mr Dombey at these times, sitting in the dark distance, looking out towards
the infant from among the dark heavy furniture - the house had been
inhabited for years by his father, and in many of its appointments was
old-fashioned and grim - she began to entertain ideas of him in his solitary
state, as if he were a lone prisoner in a cell, or a strange apparition that
was not to be accosted or understood. Mr Dombey came to be, in the course of
a few days, invested in his own person, to her simple thinking, with all the
mystery and gloom of his house. As she walked up and down the glass room, or
sat hushing the baby there - which she very often did for hours together,
when the dusk was closing in, too - she would sometimes try to pierce the
gloom beyond, and make out how he was looking and what he was doing.
Sensible that she was plainly to be seen by him' however, she never dared to
pry in that direction but very furtively and for a moment at a time.
Consequently she made out nothing, and Mr Dombey in his den remained a very
shade.
Little Paul Dombey's foster-mother had led this life herself, and had
carried little Paul through it for some weeks; and had returned upstairs one
day from a melancholy saunter through the dreary rooms of state (she never
went out without Mrs Chick, who called on fine mornings, usually accompanied
by Miss Tox, to take her and Baby for an airing - or in other words, to
march them gravely up and down the pavement, like a walking funeral); when,
as she was sitting in her own room, the door was slowly and quietly opened,
and a dark-eyed little girl looked in.
'It's Miss Florence come home from her aunt's, no doubt,' thought
Richards, who had never seen the child before. 'Hope I see you well, Miss.'
'Is that my brother?' asked the child, pointing to the Baby.
'Yes, my pretty,' answered Richards. 'Come and kiss him.'
But the child, instead of advancing, looked her earnestly in the face,
and said:
'What have you done with my Mama?'
'Lord bless the little creeter!' cried Richards, 'what a sad question!
I done? Nothing, Miss.'
'What have they done with my Mama?' inquired the child, with exactly
the same look and manner.
'I never saw such a melting thing in all my life!' said Richards, who
naturally substituted 'for this child one of her own, inquiring for herself
in like circumstances. 'Come nearer here, my dear Miss! Don't be afraid of
me.'
'I am not afraid of you,' said the child, drawing nearer. 'But I want
to know what they have done with my Mama.'
Her heart swelled so as she stood before the woman, looking into her
eyes, that she was fain to press her little hand upon her breast and hold it
there. Yet there was a purpose in the child that prevented both her slender
figure and her searching gaze from faltering.
'My darling,' said Richards, 'you wear that pretty black frock in
remembrance of your Mama.'
'I can remember my Mama,' returned the child, with tears springing to
her eyes, 'in any frock.'
'But people put on black, to remember people when they're gone.'
'Where gone?' asked the child.
'Come and sit down by me,' said Richards, 'and I'll tell you a story.'
With a quick perception that it was intended to relate to what she had
asked, little Florence laid aside the bonnet she had held in her hand until
now, and sat down on a stool at the Nurse's feet, looking up into her face.
'Once upon a time,' said Richards, 'there was a lady - a very good
lady, and her little daughter dearly loved her.'
'A very good lady and her little daughter dearly loved her,' repeated
the child.
'Who, when God thought it right that it should be so, was taken ill and
died.'
The child shuddered.
'Died, never to be seen again by anyone on earth, and was buried in the
ground where the trees grow.
'The cold ground?' said the child, shuddering again. 'No! The warm
ground,' returned Polly, seizing her advantage, 'where the ugly little seeds
turn into beautiful flowers, and into grass, and corn, and I don't know what
all besides. Where good people turn into bright angels, and fly away to
Heaven!'
The child, who had dropped her head, raised it again, and sat looking
at her intently.
'So; let me see,' said Polly, not a little flurried between this
earnest scrutiny, her desire to comfort the child, her sudden success, and
her very slight confidence in her own powers.' So, when this lady died,
wherever they took her, or wherever they put her, she went to GOD! and she
prayed to Him, this lady did,' said Polly, affecting herself beyond measure;
being heartily in earnest, 'to teach her little daughter to be sure of that
in her heart: and to know that she was happy there and loved her still: and
to hope and try - Oh, all her life - to meet her there one day, never,
never, never to part any more.'
'It was my Mama!' exclaimed the child, springing up, and clasping her
round the neck.
'And the child's heart,' said Polly, drawing her to her breast: 'the
little daughter's heart was so full of the truth of this, that even when she
heard it from a strange nurse that couldn't tell it right, but was a poor
mother herself and that was all, she found a comfort in it - didn't feel so
lonely - sobbed and cried upon her bosom - took kindly to the baby lying in
her lap - and - there, there, there!' said Polly, smoothing the child's
curls and dropping tears upon them. 'There, poor dear!'
'Oh well, Miss Floy! And won't your Pa be angry neither!' cried a quick
voice at the door, proceeding from a short, brown, womanly girl of fourteen,
with a little snub nose, and black eyes like jet beads. 'When it was
'tickerlerly given out that you wasn't to go and worrit the wet nurse.
'She don't worry me,' was the surprised rejoinder of Polly. 'I am very
fond of children.'
'Oh! but begging your pardon, Mrs Richards, that don't matter, you
know,' returned the black-eyed girl, who was so desperately sharp and biting
that she seemed to make one's eyes water. 'I may be very fond of
pennywinkles, Mrs Richards, but it don't follow that I'm to have 'em for
tea. 'Well, it don't matter,' said Polly. 'Oh, thank'ee, Mrs Richards, don't
it!' returned the sharp girl. 'Remembering, however, if you'll be so good,
that Miss Floy's under my charge, and Master Paul's under your'n.'
'But still we needn't quarrel,' said Polly.
'Oh no, Mrs Richards,' rejoined Spitfire. 'Not at all, I don't wish it,
we needn't stand upon that footing, Miss Floy being a permanency, Master
Paul a temporary.' Spitfire made use of none but comma pauses; shooting out
whatever she had to say in one sentence, and in one breath, if possible.
'Miss Florence has just come home, hasn't she?' asked Polly.
'Yes, Mrs Richards, just come, and here, Miss Floy, before you've been
in the house a quarter of an hour, you go a smearing your wet face against
the expensive mourning that Mrs Richards is a wearing for your Ma!' With
this remonstrance, young Spitfire, whose real name was Susan Nipper,
detached the child from her new friend by a wrench - as if she were a tooth.
But she seemed to do it, more in the excessively sharp exercise of her
official functions, than with any deliberate unkindness.
'She'll be quite happy, now she has come home again,' said Polly,
nodding to her with an encouraging smile upon her wholesome face, 'and will
be so pleased to see her dear Papa to-night.'
'Lork, Mrs Richards!' cried Miss Nipper, taking up her words with a
jerk. 'Don't. See her dear Papa indeed! I should like to see her do it!'
'Won't she then?' asked Polly.
'Lork, Mrs Richards, no, her Pa's a deal too wrapped up in somebody
else, and before there was a somebody else to be wrapped up in she never was
a favourite, girls are thrown away in this house, Mrs Richards, I assure
you.
The child looked quickly from one nurse to the other, as if she
understood and felt what was said.
'You surprise me!' cried Folly. 'Hasn't Mr Dombey seen her since - '
'No,' interrupted Susan Nipper. 'Not once since, and he hadn't hardly
set his eyes upon her before that for months and months, and I don't think
he'd have known her for his own child if he had met her in the streets, or
would know her for his own child if he was to meet her in the streets
to-morrow, Mrs Richards, as to me,' said Spitfire, with a giggle, 'I doubt
if he's aweer of my existence.'
'Pretty dear!' said Richards; meaning, not Miss Nipper, but the little
Florence.
'Oh! there's a Tartar within a hundred miles of where we're now in
conversation, I can tell you, Mrs Richards, present company always excepted
too,' said Susan Nipper; 'wish you good morning, Mrs Richards, now Miss
Floy, you come along with me, and don't go hanging back like a naughty
wicked child that judgments is no example to, don't!'
In spite of being thus adjured, and in spite also of some hauling on
the part of Susan Nipper, tending towards the dislocation of her right
shoulder, little Florence broke away, and kissed her new friend,
affectionately.
'Oh dear! after it was given out so 'tickerlerly, that Mrs Richards
wasn't to be made free with!' exclaimed Susan. 'Very well, Miss Floy!'
'God bless the sweet thing!' said Richards, 'Good-bye, dear!'
'Good-bye!' returned the child. 'God bless you! I shall come to see you
again soon, and you'll come to see me? Susan will let us. Won't you, Susan?'
Spitfire seemed to be in the main a good-natured little body, although
a disciple of that school of trainers of the young idea which holds that
childhood, like money, must be shaken and rattled and jostled about a good
deal to keep it bright. For, being thus appealed to with some endearing
gestures and caresses, she folded her small arms and shook her head, and
conveyed a relenting expression into her very-wide-open black eyes.
'It ain't right of you to ask it, Miss Floy, for you know I can't
refuse you, but Mrs Richards and me will see what can be done, if Mrs
Richards likes, I may wish, you see, to take a voyage to Chaney, Mrs
Richards, but I mayn't know how to leave the London Docks.'
Richards assented to the proposition.
'This house ain't so exactly ringing with merry-making,' said Miss
Nipper, 'that one need be lonelier than one must be. Your Toxes and your
Chickses may draw out my two front double teeth, Mrs Richards, but that's no
reason why I need offer 'em the whole set.'
This proposition was also assented to by Richards, as an obvious one.
'So I'm able, I'm sure,'said Susan Nipper, 'to live friendly, Mrs
Richards, while Master Paul continues a permanency, if the means can be
planned out without going openly against orders, but goodness gracious Miss
Floy, you haven't got your things off yet, you naughty child, you haven't,
come along!'
With these words, Susan Nipper, in a transport of coercion, made a
charge at her young ward, and swept her out of the room.
The child, in her grief and neglect, was so gentle, so quiet, and
uncomplaining; was possessed of so much affection that no one seemed to care
to have, and so much sorrowful intelligence that no one seemed to mind or
think about the wounding of, that Polly's heart was sore when she was left
alone again. In the simple passage that had taken place between herself and
the motherless little girl, her own motherly heart had been touched no less
than the child's; and she felt, as the child did, that there was something
of confidence and interest between them from that moment.
Notwithstanding Mr Toodle's great reliance on Polly, she was perhaps in
point of artificial accomplishments very little his superior. She had been
good-humouredly working and drudging for her life all her life, and was a
sober steady-going person, with matter-of-fact ideas about the butcher and
baker, and the division of pence into farthings. But she was a good plain
sample of a nature that is ever, in the mass, better, truer, higher, nobler,
quicker to feel, and much more constant to retain, all tenderness and pity,
self-denial and devotion, than the nature of men. And, perhaps, unlearned as
she was, she could have brought a dawning knowledge home to Mr Dombey at
that early day, which would not then have struck him in the end like
lightning.
But this is from the purpose. Polly only thought, at that time, of
improving on her successful propitiation of Miss Nipper, and devising some
means of having little Florence aide her, lawfully, and without rebellion.
An opening happened to present itself that very night.
She had been rung down into the glass room as usual, and had walked
about and about it a long time, with the baby in her arms, when, to her
great surprise and dismay, Mr Dombey - whom she had seen at first leaning on
his elbow at the table, and afterwards walking up and down the middle room,
drawing, each time, a little nearer, she thought, to the open folding doors
- came out, suddenly, and stopped before her.
'Good evening, Richards.'
Just the same austere, stiff gentleman, as he had appeared to her on
that first day. Such a hard-looking gentleman, that she involuntarily
dropped her eyes and her curtsey at the same time.
'How is Master Paul, Richards?'
'Quite thriving, Sir, and well.'
'He looks so,' said Mr Dombey, glancing with great interest at the tiny
face she uncovered for his observation, and yet affecting to be half
careless of it. 'They give you everything you want, I hope?'
'Oh yes, thank you, Sir.'
She suddenly appended such an obvious hesitation to this reply,
however, that Mr Dombey, who had turned away; stopped, and turned round
again, inquiringly.
'If you please, Sir, the child is very much disposed to take notice of
things,' said Richards, with another curtsey, 'and - upstairs is a little
dull for him, perhaps, Sir.'
'I begged them to take you out for airings, constantly,' said Mr
Dombey. 'Very well! You shall go out oftener. You're quite right to mention
it.'
'I beg your pardon, Sir,' faltered Polly, 'but we go out quite plenty
Sir, thank you.'
'What would you have then?' asked Mr Dombey.
'Indeed Sir, I don't exactly know,' said Polly, 'unless - '
'Yes?'
'I believe nothing is so good for making children lively and cheerful,
Sir, as seeing other children playing about 'em,' observed Polly, taking
courage.
'I think I mentioned to you, Richards, when you came here,' said Mr
Dombey, with a frown, 'that I wished you to see as little of your family as
possible.'
'Oh dear yes, Sir, I wasn't so much as thinking of that.'
'I am glad of it,' said Mr Dombey hastily. 'You can continue your walk
if you please.'
With that, he disappeared into his inner room; and Polly had the
satisfaction of feeling that he had thoroughly misunderstood her object, and
that she had fallen into disgrace without the least advancement of her
purpose.
Next night, she found him walking about the conservatory when she came
down. As she stopped at the door, checked by this unusual sight, and
uncertain whether to advance or retreat, he called her in. His mind was too
much set on Dombey and Son, it soon appeared, to admit of his having
forgotten her suggestion.
'If you really think that sort of society is good for the child,' he
said sharply, as if there had been no interval since she proposed it,
'where's Miss Florence?'
'Nothing could be better than Miss Florence, Sir,' said Polly eagerly,
'but I understood from her maid that they were not to - '
Mr Dombey rang the bell, and walked till it was answered.
'Tell them always to let Miss Florence be with Richards when she
chooses, and go out with her, and so forth. Tell them to let the children be
together, when Richards wishes it.'
The iron was now hot, and Richards striking on it boldly - it was a
good cause and she bold in it, though instinctively afraid of Mr Dombey -
Fanny being no more, - those words of mine will always be a balm and comfort
to me,' here she dried her eyes; 'it becomes necessary to provide a Nurse.'
'Oh! Ah!' said Mr Chick. 'Toor-ru! - such is life, I mean. I hope you
are suited, my dear.'
'Indeed I am not,' said Mrs Chick; 'nor likely to be, so far as I can
see, and in the meantime the poor child seems likely to be starved to death.
Paul is so very particular - naturally so, of course, having set his whole
heart on this one boy - and there are so many objections to everybody that
offers, that I don't see, myself, the least chance of an arrangement.
Meanwhile, of course, the child is - '
'Going to the Devil,' said Mr Chick, thoughtfully, 'to be sure.'
Admonished, however, that he had committed himself, by the indignation
expressed in Mrs Chick's countenance at the idea of a Dombey going there;
and thinking to atone for his misconduct by a bright suggestion, he added:
'Couldn't something temporary be done with a teapot?'
If he had meant to bring the subject prematurely to a close, he could
not have done it more effectually. After looking at him for some moments in
silent resignation, Mrs Chick said she trusted he hadn't said it in
aggravation, because that would do very little honour to his heart. She
trusted he hadn't said it seriously, because that would do very little
honour to his head. As in any case, he couldn't, however sanguine his
disposition, hope to offer a remark that would be a greater outrage on human
nature in general, we would beg to leave the discussion at that point.
Mrs Chick then walked majestically to the window and peeped through the
blind, attracted by the sound of wheels. Mr Chick, finding that his destiny
was, for the time, against him, said no more, and walked off. But it was not
always thus with Mr Chick. He was often in the ascendant himself, and at
those times punished Louisa roundly. In their matrimonial bickerings they
were, upon the whole, a well-matched, fairly-balanced, give-and-take couple.
It would have been, generally speaking, very difficult to have betted on the
winner. Often when Mr Chick seemed beaten, he would suddenly make a start,
turn the tables, clatter them about the ears of Mrs Chick, and carry all
before him. Being liable himself to similar unlooked for checks from Mrs
Chick, their little contests usually possessed a character of uncertainty
that was very animating.
Miss Tox had arrived on the wheels just now alluded to, and came
running into the room in a breathless condition. 'My dear Louisa,'said Miss
Tox, 'is the vacancy still unsupplied?'
'You good soul, yes,' said Mrs Chick.
'Then, my dear Louisa,' returned Miss Tox, 'I hope and believe - but in
one moment, my dear, I'll introduce the party.'
Running downstairs again as fast as she had run up, Miss Tox got the
party out of the hackney-coach, and soon returned with it under convoy.
It then appeared that she had used the word, not in its legal or
business acceptation, when it merely expresses an individual, but as a noun
of multitude, or signifying many: for Miss Tox escorted a plump rosy-cheeked
wholesome apple-faced young woman, with an infant in her arms; a younger
woman not so plump, but apple-faced also, who led a plump and apple-faced
child in each hand; another plump and also apple-faced boy who walked by
himself; and finally, a plump and apple-faced man, who carried in his arms
another plump and apple-faced boy, whom he stood down on the floor, and
admonished, in a husky whisper, to 'kitch hold of his brother Johnny.'
'My dear Louisa,' said Miss Tox, 'knowing your great anxiety, and
wishing to relieve it, I posted off myself to the Queen Charlotte's Royal
Married Females,' which you had forgot, and put the question, Was there
anybody there that they thought would suit? No, they said there was not.
When they gave me that answer, I do assure you, my dear, I was almost driven
to despair on your account. But it did so happen, that one of the Royal
Married Females, hearing the inquiry, reminded the matron of another who had
gone to her own home, and who, she said, would in all likelihood be most
satisfactory. The moment I heard this, and had it corroborated by the matron
- excellent references and unimpeachable character - I got the address, my
dear, and posted off again.'
'Like the dear good Tox, you are!' said Louisa.
'Not at all,' returned Miss Tox. 'Don't say so. Arriving at the house
(the cleanest place, my dear! You might eat your dinner off the floor), I
found the whole family sitting at table; and feeling that no account of them
could be half so comfortable to you and Mr Dombey as the sight of them all
together, I brought them all away. This gentleman,' said Miss Tox, pointing
out the apple-faced man, 'is the father. Will you have the goodness to come
a little forward, Sir?'
The apple-faced man having sheepishly complied with this request, stood
chuckling and grinning in a front row.
'This is his wife, of course,' said Miss Tox, singling out the young
woman with the baby. 'How do you do, Polly?'
'I'm pretty well, I thank you, Ma'am,' said Polly.
By way of bringing her out dexterously, Miss Tox had made the inquiry
as in condescension to an old acquaintance whom she hadn't seen for a
fortnight or so.
'I'm glad to hear it,' said Miss Tox. 'The other young woman is her
unmarried sister who lives with them, and would take care of her children.
Her name's Jemima. How do you do, Jemima?'
'I'm pretty well, I thank you, Ma'am,' returned Jemima.
'I'm very glad indeed to hear it,' said Miss Tox. 'I hope you'll keep
so. Five children. Youngest six weeks. The fine little boy with the blister
on his nose is the eldest The blister, I believe,' said Miss Tox, looking
round upon the family, 'is not constitutional, but accidental?'
The apple-faced man was understood to growl, 'Flat iron.
'I beg your pardon, Sir,' said Miss Tox, 'did you?
'Flat iron,' he repeated.
'Oh yes,' said Miss Tox. 'Yes! quite true. I forgot. The little
creature, in his mother's absence, smelt a warm flat iron. You're quite
right, Sir. You were going to have the goodness to inform me, when we
arrived at the door that you were by trade a - '
'Stoker,' said the man.
'A choker!' said Miss Tox, quite aghast.
'Stoker,' said the man. 'Steam ingine.'
'Oh-h! Yes!' returned Miss Tox, looking thoughtfully at him, and
seeming still to have but a very imperfect understanding of his meaning.
'And how do you like it, Sir?'
'Which, Mum?' said the man.
'That,' replied Miss Tox. 'Your trade.'
'Oh! Pretty well, Mum. The ashes sometimes gets in here;' touching his
chest: 'and makes a man speak gruff, as at the present time. But it is
ashes, Mum, not crustiness.'
Miss Tox seemed to be so little enlightened by this reply, as to find a
difficulty in pursuing the subject. But Mrs Chick relieved her, by entering
into a close private examination of Polly, her children, her marriage
certificate, testimonials, and so forth. Polly coming out unscathed from
this ordeal, Mrs Chick withdrew with her report to her brother's room, and
as an emphatic comment on it, and corroboration of it, carried the two
rosiest little Toodles with her. Toodle being the family name of the
apple-faced family.
Mr Dombey had remained in his own apartment since the death of his
wife, absorbed in visions of the youth, education, and destination of his
baby son. Something lay at the bottom of his cool heart, colder and heavier
than its ordinary load; but it was more a sense of the child's loss than his
own, awakening within him an almost angry sorrow. That the life and progress
on which he built such hopes, should be endangered in the outset by so mean
a want; that Dombey and Son should be tottering for a nurse, was a sore
humiliation. And yet in his pride and jealousy, he viewed with so much
bitterness the thought of being dependent for the very first step towards
the accomplishment of his soul's desire, on a hired serving-woman who would
be to the child, for the time, all that even his alliance could have made
his own wife, that in every new rejection of a candidate he felt a secret
pleasure. The time had now come, however, when he could no longer be divided
between these two sets of feelings. The less so, as there seemed to be no
flaw in the title of Polly Toodle after his sister had set it forth, with
many commendations on the indefatigable friendship of Miss Tox.
'These children look healthy,' said Mr Dombey. 'But my God, to think of
their some day claiming a sort of relationship to Paul!'
' But what relationship is there!' Louisa began -
'Is there!' echoed Mr Dombey, who had not intended his sister to
participate in the thought he had unconsciously expressed. 'Is there, did
you say, Louisa!'
'Can there be, I mean - '
'Why none,' said Mr Dombey, sternly. 'The whole world knows that, I
presume. Grief has not made me idiotic, Louisa. Take them away, Louisa! Let
me see this woman and her husband.'
Mrs Chick bore off the tender pair of Toodles, and presently returned
with that tougher couple whose presence her brother had commanded.
'My good woman,' said Mr Dombey, turning round in his easy chair, as
one piece, and not as a man with limbs and joints, 'I understand you are
poor, and wish to earn money by nursing the little boy, my son, who has been
so prematurely deprived of what can never be replaced. I have no objection
to your adding to the comforts of your family by that means. So far as I can
tell, you seem to be a deserving object. But I must impose one or two
conditions on you, before you enter my house in that capacity. While you are
here, I must stipulate that you are always known as - say as Richards - an
ordinary name, and convenient. Have you any objection to be known as
Richards? You had better consult your husband.'
'Well?' said Mr Dombey, after a pretty long pause. 'What does your
husband say to your being called Richards?'
As the husband did nothing but chuckle and grin, and continually draw
his right hand across his mouth, moistening the palm, Mrs Toodle, after
nudging him twice or thrice in vain, dropped a curtsey and replied 'that
perhaps if she was to be called out of her name, it would be considered in
the wages.'
'Oh, of course,' said Mr Dombey. 'I desire to make it a question of
wages, altogether. Now, Richards, if you nurse my bereaved child, I wish you
to remember this always. You will receive a liberal stipend in return for
the discharge of certain duties, in the performance of which, I wish you to
see as little of your family as possible. When those duties cease to be
required and rendered, and the stipend ceases to be paid, there is an end of
all relations between us. Do you understand me?'
Mrs Toodle seemed doubtful about it; and as to Toodle himself, he had
evidently no doubt whatever, that he was all abroad.
'You have children of your own,' said Mr Dombey. 'It is not at all in
this bargain that you need become attached to my child, or that my child
need become attached to you. I don't expect or desire anything of the kind.
Quite the reverse. When you go away from here, you will have concluded what
is a mere matter of bargain and sale, hiring and letting: and will stay
away. The child will cease to remember you; and you will cease, if you
please, to remember the child.'
Mrs Toodle, with a little more colour in her cheeks than she had had
before, said 'she hoped she knew her place.'
'I hope you do, Richards,' said Mr Dombey. 'I have no doubt you know it
very well. Indeed it is so plain and obvious that it could hardly be
otherwise. Louisa, my dear, arrange with Richards about money, and let her
have it when and how she pleases. Mr what's-your name, a word with you, if
you please!'
Thus arrested on the threshold as he was following his wife out of the
room, Toodle returned and confronted Mr Dombey alone. He was a strong,
loose, round-shouldered, shuffling, shaggy fellow, on whom his clothes sat
negligently: with a good deal of hair and whisker, deepened in its natural
tint, perhaps by smoke and coal-dust: hard knotty hands: and a square
forehead, as coarse in grain as the bark of an oak. A thorough contrast in
all respects, to Mr Dombey, who was one of those close-shaved close-cut
moneyed gentlemen who are glossy and crisp like new bank-notes, and who seem
to be artificially braced and tightened as by the stimulating action of
golden showerbaths.
'You have a son, I believe?' said Mr Dombey.
'Four on 'em, Sir. Four hims and a her. All alive!'
'Why, it's as much as you can afford to keep them!' said Mr Dombey.
'I couldn't hardly afford but one thing in the world less, Sir.'
'What is that?'
'To lose 'em, Sir.'
'Can you read?' asked Mr Dombey.
'Why, not partick'ler, Sir.'
'Write?'
'With chalk, Sir?'
'With anything?'
'I could make shift to chalk a little bit, I think, if I was put to
it,' said Toodle after some reflection.
'And yet,' said Mr Dombey, 'you are two or three and thirty, I
suppose?'
'Thereabouts, I suppose, Sir,' answered Toodle, after more reflection
'Then why don't you learn?' asked Mr Dombey.
'So I'm a going to, Sir. One of my little boys is a going to learn me,
when he's old enough, and been to school himself.'
'Well,' said Mr Dombey, after looking at him attentively, and with no
great favour, as he stood gazing round the room (principally round the
ceiling) and still drawing his hand across and across his mouth. 'You heard
what I said to your wife just now?'
'Polly heerd it,' said Toodle, jerking his hat over his shoulder in the
direction of the door, with an air of perfect confidence in his better half.
'It's all right.'
'But I ask you if you heard it. You did, I suppose, and understood it?'
pursued Mr Dombey.
'I heerd it,' said Toodle, 'but I don't know as I understood it rightly
Sir, 'account of being no scholar, and the words being - ask your pardon -
rayther high. But Polly heerd it. It's all right.'
'As you appear to leave everything to her,' said Mr Dombey, frustrated
in his intention of impressing his views still more distinctly on the
husband, as the stronger character, 'I suppose it is of no use my saying
anything to you.'
'Not a bit,' said Toodle. 'Polly heerd it. She's awake, Sir.'
'I won't detain you any longer then,' returned Mr Dombey, disappointed.
'Where have you worked all your life?'
'Mostly underground, Sir, 'till I got married. I come to the level
then. I'm a going on one of these here railroads when they comes into full
play.'
As he added in one of his hoarse whispers, 'We means to bring up little
Biler to that line,' Mr Dombey inquired haughtily who little Biler was.
'The eldest on 'em, Sir,' said Toodle, with a smile. 'It ain't a common
name. Sermuchser that when he was took to church the gen'lm'n said, it wam't
a chris'en one, and he couldn't give it. But we always calls him Biler just
the same. For we don't mean no harm. Not we.
'Do you mean to say, Man,' inquired Mr Dombey; looking at him with
marked displeasure, 'that you have called a child after a boiler?'
'No, no, Sir,' returned Toodle, with a tender consideration for his
mistake. 'I should hope not! No, Sir. Arter a BILER Sir. The Steamingine was
a'most as good as a godfather to him, and so we called him Biler, don't you
see!'
As the last straw breaks the laden camel's back, this piece of
information crushed the sinking spirits of Mr Dombey. He motioned his
child's foster-father to the door, who departed by no means unwillingly: and
then turning the key, paced up and down the room in solitary wretchedness.
It would be harsh, and perhaps not altogether true, to say of him that
he felt these rubs and gratings against his pride more keenly than he had
felt his wife's death: but certainly they impressed that event upon him with
new force, and communicated to it added weight and bitterness. It was a rude
shock to his sense of property in his child, that these people - the mere
dust of the earth, as he thought them - should be necessary to him; and it
was natural that in proportion as he felt disturbed by it, he should deplore
the occurrence which had made them so. For all his starched, impenetrable
dignity and composure, he wiped blinding tears from his eyes as he paced up
and down his room; and often said, with an emotion of which he would not,
for the world, have had a witness, 'Poor little fellow!'
It may have been characteristic of Mr Dombey's pride, that he pitied
himself through the child. Not poor me. Not poor widower, confiding by
constraint in the wife of an ignorant Hind who has been working 'mostly
underground' all his life, and yet at whose door Death had never knocked,
and at whose poor table four sons daily sit - but poor little fellow!
Those words being on his lips, it occurred to him - and it is an
instance of the strong attraction with which his hopes and fears and all his
thoughts were tending to one centre - that a great temptation was being
placed in this woman's way. Her infant was a boy too. Now, would it be
possIble for her to change them?
Though he was soon satisfied that he had dismissed the idea as romantic
and unlikely - though possible, there was no denying - he could not help
pursuing it so far as to entertain within himself a picture of what his
condition would be, if he should discover such an imposture when he was
grown old. Whether a man so situated would be able to pluck away the result
of so many years of usage, confidence, and belief, from the impostor, and
endow a stranger with it?
But it was idle speculating thus. It couldn't happen. In a moment
afterwards he determined that it could, but that such women were constantly
observed, and had no opportunity given them for the accomplishment of such a
design, even when they were so wicked as to entertain it. In another moment,
he was remembering how few such cases seemed to have ever happened. In
another moment he was wondering whether they ever happened and were not
found out.
As his unusual emotion subsided, these misgivings gradually melted
away, though so much of their shadow remained behind, that he was constant
in his resolution to look closely after Richards himself, without appearing
to do so. Being now in an easier frame of mind, he regarded the woman's
station as rather an advantageous circumstance than otherwise, by placing,
in itself, a broad distance between her and the child, and rendering their
separation easy and natural. Thence he passed to the contemplation of the
future glories of Dombey and Son, and dismissed the memory of his wife, for
the time being, with a tributary sigh or two.
Meanwhile terms were ratified and agreed upon between Mrs Chick and
Richards, with the assistance of Miss Tox; and Richards being with much
ceremony invested with the Dombey baby, as if it were an Order, resigned her
own, with many tears and kisses, to Jemima. Glasses of wine were then
produced, to sustain the drooping spirits of the family; and Miss Tox,
busying herself in dispensing 'tastes' to the younger branches, bred them up
to their father's business with such surprising expedition, that she made
chokers of four of them in a quarter of a minute.
'You'll take a glass yourself, Sir, won't you?' said Miss Tox, as
Toodle appeared.
'Thankee, Mum,' said Toodle, 'since you are suppressing.'
'And you're very glad to leave your dear good wife in such a
comfortable home, ain't you, Sir?'said Miss Tox, nodding and winking at him
stealthily.
'No, Mum,' said Toodle. 'Here's wishing of her back agin.'
Polly cried more than ever at this. So Mrs Chick, who had her matronly
apprehensions that this indulgence in grief might be prejudicial to the
little Dombey ('acid, indeed,' she whispered Miss Tox), hastened to the
rescue.
'Your little child will thrive charmingly with your sister Jemima,
Richards,' said Mrs Chick; 'and you have only to make an effort - this is a
world of effort, you know, Richards - to be very happy indeed. You have been
already measured for your mourning, haven't you, Richards?'
'Ye - es, Ma'am,' sobbed Polly.
'And it'll fit beautifully. I know,' said Mrs Chick, 'for the same
young person has made me many dresses. The very best materials, too!'
'Lor, you'll be so smart,' said Miss Tox, 'that your husband won't know
you; will you, Sir?'
'I should know her,' said Toodle, gruffly, 'anyhows and anywheres.'
Toodle was evidently not to be bought over.
'As to living, Richards, you know,' pursued Mrs Chick, 'why, the very
best of everything will be at your disposal. You will order your little
dinner every day; and anything you take a fancy to, I'm sure will be as
readily provided as if you were a Lady.'
'Yes to be sure!' said Miss Tox, keeping up the ball with great
sympathy. 'And as to porter! - quite unlimited, will it not, Louisa?'
'Oh, certainly!' returned Mrs Chick in the same tone. 'With a little
abstinence, you know, my dear, in point of vegetables.'
'And pickles, perhaps,' suggested Miss Tox.
'With such exceptions,' said Louisa, 'she'll consult her choice
entirely, and be under no restraint at all, my love.'
'And then, of course, you know,' said Miss Tox, 'however fond she is of
her own dear little child - and I'm sure, Louisa, you don't blame her for
being fond of it?'
'Oh no!' cried Mrs Chick, benignantly.
'Still,' resumed Miss Tox, 'she naturally must be interested in her
young charge, and must consider it a privilege to see a little cherub
connected with the superior classes, gradually unfolding itself from day to
day at one common fountain- is it not so, Louisa?'
'Most undoubtedly!' said Mrs Chick. 'You see, my love, she's already
quite contented and comfortable, and means to say goodbye to her sister
Jemima and her little pets, and her good honest husband, with a light heart
and a smile; don't she, my dear?'
'Oh yes!' cried Miss Tox. 'To be sure she does!'
Notwithstanding which, however, poor Polly embraced them all round in
great distress, and coming to her spouse at last, could not make up her mind
to part from him, until he gently disengaged himself, at the close of the
following allegorical piece of consolation:
'Polly, old 'ooman, whatever you do, my darling, hold up your head and
fight low. That's the only rule as I know on, that'll carry anyone through
life. You always have held up your head and fought low, Polly. Do it now, or
Bricks is no longer so. God bless you, Polly! Me and J'mima will do your
duty by you; and with relating to your'n, hold up your head and fight low,
Polly, and you can't go wrong!'
Fortified by this golden secret, Folly finally ran away to avoid any
more particular leave-taking between herself and the children. But the
stratagem hardly succeeded as well as it deserved; for the smallest boy but
one divining her intent, immediately began swarming upstairs after her - if
that word of doubtful etymology be admissible - on his arms and legs; while
the eldest (known in the family by the name of Biler, in remembrance of the
steam engine) beat a demoniacal tattoo with his boots, expressive of grief;
in which he was joined by the rest of the family.
A quantity of oranges and halfpence thrust indiscriminately on each
young Toodle, checked the first violence of their regret, and the family
were speedily transported to their own home, by means of the hackney-coach
kept in waiting for that purpose. The children, under the guardianship of
Jemima, blocked up the window, and dropped out oranges and halfpence all the
way along. Mr Toodle himself preferred to ride behind among the spikes, as
being the mode of conveyance to which he was best accustomed.
In which Mr Dombey, as a Man and a Father, is seen at the Head of the
Home-Department
The funeral of the deceased lady having been 'performed to the entire
satisfaction of the undertaker, as well as of the neighbourhood at large,
which is generally disposed to be captious on such a point, and is prone to
take offence at any omissions or short-comings in the ceremonies, the
various members of Mr Dombey's household subsided into their several places
in the domestic system. That small world, like the great one out of doors,
had the capacity of easily forgetting its dead; and when the cook had said
she was a quiet-tempered lady, and the house-keeper had said it was the
common lot, and the butler had said who'd have thought it, and the housemaid
had said she couldn't hardly believe it, and the footman had said it seemed
exactly like a dream, they had quite worn the subject out, and began to
think their mourning was wearing rusty too.
On Richards, who was established upstairs in a state of honourable
captivity, the dawn of her new life seemed to break cold and grey. Mr
Dombey's house was a large one, on the shady side of a tall, dark,
dreadfully genteel street in the region between Portland Place and
Bryanstone Square.' It was a corner house, with great wide areas containing
cellars frowned upon by barred windows, and leered at by crooked-eyed doors
leading to dustbins. It was a house of dismal state, with a circular back to
it, containing a whole suite of drawing-rooms looking upon a gravelled yard,
where two gaunt trees, with blackened trunks and branches, rattled rather
than rustled, their leaves were so smoked-dried. The summer sun was never on
the street, but in the morning about breakfast-time, when it came with the
water-carts and the old clothes men, and the people with geraniums, and the
umbrella-mender, and the man who trilled the little bell of the Dutch clock
as he went along. It was soon gone again to return no more that day; and the
bands of music and the straggling Punch's shows going after it, left it a
prey to the most dismal of organs, and white mice; with now and then a
porcupine, to vary the entertainments; until the butlers whose families were
dining out, began to stand at the house-doors in the twilight, and the
lamp-lighter made his nightly failure in attempting to brighten up the
street with gas.
It was as blank a house inside as outside. When the funeral was over,
Mr Dombey ordered the furniture to be covered up - perhaps to preserve it
for the son with whom his plans were all associated - and the rooms to be
ungarnished, saving such as he retained for himself on the ground floor.
Accordingly, mysterious shapes were made of tables and chairs, heaped
together in the middle of rooms, and covered over with great winding-sheets.
Bell-handles, window-blinds, and looking-glasses, being papered up in
journals, daily and weekly, obtruded fragmentary accounts of deaths and
dreadful murders. Every chandelier or lustre, muffled in holland, looked
like a monstrous tear depending from the ceiling's eye. Odours, as from
vaults and damp places, came out of the chimneys. The dead and buried lady
was awful in a picture-frame of ghastly bandages. Every gust of wind that
rose, brought eddying round the corner from the neighbouring mews, some
fragments of the straw that had been strewn before the house when she was
ill, mildewed remains of which were still cleaving to the neighbourhood: and
these, being always drawn by some invisible attraction to the threshold of
the dirty house to let immediately opposite, addressed a dismal eloquence to
Mr Dombey's windows.
The apartments which Mr Dombey reserved for his own inhabiting, were
attainable from the hall, and consisted of a sitting-room; a library, which
was in fact a dressing-room, so that the smell of hot-pressed paper, vellum,
morocco, and Russia leather, contended in it with the smell of divers pairs
of boots; and a kind of conservatory or little glass breakfast-room beyond,
commanding a prospect of the trees before mentioned, and, generally
speaking, of a few prowling cats. These three rooms opened upon one another.
In the morning, when Mr Dombey was at his breakfast in one or other of the
two first-mentioned of them, as well as in the afternoon when he came home
to dinner, a bell was rung for Richards to repair to this glass chamber, and
there walk to and fro with her young charge. From the glimpses she caught of
Mr Dombey at these times, sitting in the dark distance, looking out towards
the infant from among the dark heavy furniture - the house had been
inhabited for years by his father, and in many of its appointments was
old-fashioned and grim - she began to entertain ideas of him in his solitary
state, as if he were a lone prisoner in a cell, or a strange apparition that
was not to be accosted or understood. Mr Dombey came to be, in the course of
a few days, invested in his own person, to her simple thinking, with all the
mystery and gloom of his house. As she walked up and down the glass room, or
sat hushing the baby there - which she very often did for hours together,
when the dusk was closing in, too - she would sometimes try to pierce the
gloom beyond, and make out how he was looking and what he was doing.
Sensible that she was plainly to be seen by him' however, she never dared to
pry in that direction but very furtively and for a moment at a time.
Consequently she made out nothing, and Mr Dombey in his den remained a very
shade.
Little Paul Dombey's foster-mother had led this life herself, and had
carried little Paul through it for some weeks; and had returned upstairs one
day from a melancholy saunter through the dreary rooms of state (she never
went out without Mrs Chick, who called on fine mornings, usually accompanied
by Miss Tox, to take her and Baby for an airing - or in other words, to
march them gravely up and down the pavement, like a walking funeral); when,
as she was sitting in her own room, the door was slowly and quietly opened,
and a dark-eyed little girl looked in.
'It's Miss Florence come home from her aunt's, no doubt,' thought
Richards, who had never seen the child before. 'Hope I see you well, Miss.'
'Is that my brother?' asked the child, pointing to the Baby.
'Yes, my pretty,' answered Richards. 'Come and kiss him.'
But the child, instead of advancing, looked her earnestly in the face,
and said:
'What have you done with my Mama?'
'Lord bless the little creeter!' cried Richards, 'what a sad question!
I done? Nothing, Miss.'
'What have they done with my Mama?' inquired the child, with exactly
the same look and manner.
'I never saw such a melting thing in all my life!' said Richards, who
naturally substituted 'for this child one of her own, inquiring for herself
in like circumstances. 'Come nearer here, my dear Miss! Don't be afraid of
me.'
'I am not afraid of you,' said the child, drawing nearer. 'But I want
to know what they have done with my Mama.'
Her heart swelled so as she stood before the woman, looking into her
eyes, that she was fain to press her little hand upon her breast and hold it
there. Yet there was a purpose in the child that prevented both her slender
figure and her searching gaze from faltering.
'My darling,' said Richards, 'you wear that pretty black frock in
remembrance of your Mama.'
'I can remember my Mama,' returned the child, with tears springing to
her eyes, 'in any frock.'
'But people put on black, to remember people when they're gone.'
'Where gone?' asked the child.
'Come and sit down by me,' said Richards, 'and I'll tell you a story.'
With a quick perception that it was intended to relate to what she had
asked, little Florence laid aside the bonnet she had held in her hand until
now, and sat down on a stool at the Nurse's feet, looking up into her face.
'Once upon a time,' said Richards, 'there was a lady - a very good
lady, and her little daughter dearly loved her.'
'A very good lady and her little daughter dearly loved her,' repeated
the child.
'Who, when God thought it right that it should be so, was taken ill and
died.'
The child shuddered.
'Died, never to be seen again by anyone on earth, and was buried in the
ground where the trees grow.
'The cold ground?' said the child, shuddering again. 'No! The warm
ground,' returned Polly, seizing her advantage, 'where the ugly little seeds
turn into beautiful flowers, and into grass, and corn, and I don't know what
all besides. Where good people turn into bright angels, and fly away to
Heaven!'
The child, who had dropped her head, raised it again, and sat looking
at her intently.
'So; let me see,' said Polly, not a little flurried between this
earnest scrutiny, her desire to comfort the child, her sudden success, and
her very slight confidence in her own powers.' So, when this lady died,
wherever they took her, or wherever they put her, she went to GOD! and she
prayed to Him, this lady did,' said Polly, affecting herself beyond measure;
being heartily in earnest, 'to teach her little daughter to be sure of that
in her heart: and to know that she was happy there and loved her still: and
to hope and try - Oh, all her life - to meet her there one day, never,
never, never to part any more.'
'It was my Mama!' exclaimed the child, springing up, and clasping her
round the neck.
'And the child's heart,' said Polly, drawing her to her breast: 'the
little daughter's heart was so full of the truth of this, that even when she
heard it from a strange nurse that couldn't tell it right, but was a poor
mother herself and that was all, she found a comfort in it - didn't feel so
lonely - sobbed and cried upon her bosom - took kindly to the baby lying in
her lap - and - there, there, there!' said Polly, smoothing the child's
curls and dropping tears upon them. 'There, poor dear!'
'Oh well, Miss Floy! And won't your Pa be angry neither!' cried a quick
voice at the door, proceeding from a short, brown, womanly girl of fourteen,
with a little snub nose, and black eyes like jet beads. 'When it was
'tickerlerly given out that you wasn't to go and worrit the wet nurse.
'She don't worry me,' was the surprised rejoinder of Polly. 'I am very
fond of children.'
'Oh! but begging your pardon, Mrs Richards, that don't matter, you
know,' returned the black-eyed girl, who was so desperately sharp and biting
that she seemed to make one's eyes water. 'I may be very fond of
pennywinkles, Mrs Richards, but it don't follow that I'm to have 'em for
tea. 'Well, it don't matter,' said Polly. 'Oh, thank'ee, Mrs Richards, don't
it!' returned the sharp girl. 'Remembering, however, if you'll be so good,
that Miss Floy's under my charge, and Master Paul's under your'n.'
'But still we needn't quarrel,' said Polly.
'Oh no, Mrs Richards,' rejoined Spitfire. 'Not at all, I don't wish it,
we needn't stand upon that footing, Miss Floy being a permanency, Master
Paul a temporary.' Spitfire made use of none but comma pauses; shooting out
whatever she had to say in one sentence, and in one breath, if possible.
'Miss Florence has just come home, hasn't she?' asked Polly.
'Yes, Mrs Richards, just come, and here, Miss Floy, before you've been
in the house a quarter of an hour, you go a smearing your wet face against
the expensive mourning that Mrs Richards is a wearing for your Ma!' With
this remonstrance, young Spitfire, whose real name was Susan Nipper,
detached the child from her new friend by a wrench - as if she were a tooth.
But she seemed to do it, more in the excessively sharp exercise of her
official functions, than with any deliberate unkindness.
'She'll be quite happy, now she has come home again,' said Polly,
nodding to her with an encouraging smile upon her wholesome face, 'and will
be so pleased to see her dear Papa to-night.'
'Lork, Mrs Richards!' cried Miss Nipper, taking up her words with a
jerk. 'Don't. See her dear Papa indeed! I should like to see her do it!'
'Won't she then?' asked Polly.
'Lork, Mrs Richards, no, her Pa's a deal too wrapped up in somebody
else, and before there was a somebody else to be wrapped up in she never was
a favourite, girls are thrown away in this house, Mrs Richards, I assure
you.
The child looked quickly from one nurse to the other, as if she
understood and felt what was said.
'You surprise me!' cried Folly. 'Hasn't Mr Dombey seen her since - '
'No,' interrupted Susan Nipper. 'Not once since, and he hadn't hardly
set his eyes upon her before that for months and months, and I don't think
he'd have known her for his own child if he had met her in the streets, or
would know her for his own child if he was to meet her in the streets
to-morrow, Mrs Richards, as to me,' said Spitfire, with a giggle, 'I doubt
if he's aweer of my existence.'
'Pretty dear!' said Richards; meaning, not Miss Nipper, but the little
Florence.
'Oh! there's a Tartar within a hundred miles of where we're now in
conversation, I can tell you, Mrs Richards, present company always excepted
too,' said Susan Nipper; 'wish you good morning, Mrs Richards, now Miss
Floy, you come along with me, and don't go hanging back like a naughty
wicked child that judgments is no example to, don't!'
In spite of being thus adjured, and in spite also of some hauling on
the part of Susan Nipper, tending towards the dislocation of her right
shoulder, little Florence broke away, and kissed her new friend,
affectionately.
'Oh dear! after it was given out so 'tickerlerly, that Mrs Richards
wasn't to be made free with!' exclaimed Susan. 'Very well, Miss Floy!'
'God bless the sweet thing!' said Richards, 'Good-bye, dear!'
'Good-bye!' returned the child. 'God bless you! I shall come to see you
again soon, and you'll come to see me? Susan will let us. Won't you, Susan?'
Spitfire seemed to be in the main a good-natured little body, although
a disciple of that school of trainers of the young idea which holds that
childhood, like money, must be shaken and rattled and jostled about a good
deal to keep it bright. For, being thus appealed to with some endearing
gestures and caresses, she folded her small arms and shook her head, and
conveyed a relenting expression into her very-wide-open black eyes.
'It ain't right of you to ask it, Miss Floy, for you know I can't
refuse you, but Mrs Richards and me will see what can be done, if Mrs
Richards likes, I may wish, you see, to take a voyage to Chaney, Mrs
Richards, but I mayn't know how to leave the London Docks.'
Richards assented to the proposition.
'This house ain't so exactly ringing with merry-making,' said Miss
Nipper, 'that one need be lonelier than one must be. Your Toxes and your
Chickses may draw out my two front double teeth, Mrs Richards, but that's no
reason why I need offer 'em the whole set.'
This proposition was also assented to by Richards, as an obvious one.
'So I'm able, I'm sure,'said Susan Nipper, 'to live friendly, Mrs
Richards, while Master Paul continues a permanency, if the means can be
planned out without going openly against orders, but goodness gracious Miss
Floy, you haven't got your things off yet, you naughty child, you haven't,
come along!'
With these words, Susan Nipper, in a transport of coercion, made a
charge at her young ward, and swept her out of the room.
The child, in her grief and neglect, was so gentle, so quiet, and
uncomplaining; was possessed of so much affection that no one seemed to care
to have, and so much sorrowful intelligence that no one seemed to mind or
think about the wounding of, that Polly's heart was sore when she was left
alone again. In the simple passage that had taken place between herself and
the motherless little girl, her own motherly heart had been touched no less
than the child's; and she felt, as the child did, that there was something
of confidence and interest between them from that moment.
Notwithstanding Mr Toodle's great reliance on Polly, she was perhaps in
point of artificial accomplishments very little his superior. She had been
good-humouredly working and drudging for her life all her life, and was a
sober steady-going person, with matter-of-fact ideas about the butcher and
baker, and the division of pence into farthings. But she was a good plain
sample of a nature that is ever, in the mass, better, truer, higher, nobler,
quicker to feel, and much more constant to retain, all tenderness and pity,
self-denial and devotion, than the nature of men. And, perhaps, unlearned as
she was, she could have brought a dawning knowledge home to Mr Dombey at
that early day, which would not then have struck him in the end like
lightning.
But this is from the purpose. Polly only thought, at that time, of
improving on her successful propitiation of Miss Nipper, and devising some
means of having little Florence aide her, lawfully, and without rebellion.
An opening happened to present itself that very night.
She had been rung down into the glass room as usual, and had walked
about and about it a long time, with the baby in her arms, when, to her
great surprise and dismay, Mr Dombey - whom she had seen at first leaning on
his elbow at the table, and afterwards walking up and down the middle room,
drawing, each time, a little nearer, she thought, to the open folding doors
- came out, suddenly, and stopped before her.
'Good evening, Richards.'
Just the same austere, stiff gentleman, as he had appeared to her on
that first day. Such a hard-looking gentleman, that she involuntarily
dropped her eyes and her curtsey at the same time.
'How is Master Paul, Richards?'
'Quite thriving, Sir, and well.'
'He looks so,' said Mr Dombey, glancing with great interest at the tiny
face she uncovered for his observation, and yet affecting to be half
careless of it. 'They give you everything you want, I hope?'
'Oh yes, thank you, Sir.'
She suddenly appended such an obvious hesitation to this reply,
however, that Mr Dombey, who had turned away; stopped, and turned round
again, inquiringly.
'If you please, Sir, the child is very much disposed to take notice of
things,' said Richards, with another curtsey, 'and - upstairs is a little
dull for him, perhaps, Sir.'
'I begged them to take you out for airings, constantly,' said Mr
Dombey. 'Very well! You shall go out oftener. You're quite right to mention
it.'
'I beg your pardon, Sir,' faltered Polly, 'but we go out quite plenty
Sir, thank you.'
'What would you have then?' asked Mr Dombey.
'Indeed Sir, I don't exactly know,' said Polly, 'unless - '
'Yes?'
'I believe nothing is so good for making children lively and cheerful,
Sir, as seeing other children playing about 'em,' observed Polly, taking
courage.
'I think I mentioned to you, Richards, when you came here,' said Mr
Dombey, with a frown, 'that I wished you to see as little of your family as
possible.'
'Oh dear yes, Sir, I wasn't so much as thinking of that.'
'I am glad of it,' said Mr Dombey hastily. 'You can continue your walk
if you please.'
With that, he disappeared into his inner room; and Polly had the
satisfaction of feeling that he had thoroughly misunderstood her object, and
that she had fallen into disgrace without the least advancement of her
purpose.
Next night, she found him walking about the conservatory when she came
down. As she stopped at the door, checked by this unusual sight, and
uncertain whether to advance or retreat, he called her in. His mind was too
much set on Dombey and Son, it soon appeared, to admit of his having
forgotten her suggestion.
'If you really think that sort of society is good for the child,' he
said sharply, as if there had been no interval since she proposed it,
'where's Miss Florence?'
'Nothing could be better than Miss Florence, Sir,' said Polly eagerly,
'but I understood from her maid that they were not to - '
Mr Dombey rang the bell, and walked till it was answered.
'Tell them always to let Miss Florence be with Richards when she
chooses, and go out with her, and so forth. Tell them to let the children be
together, when Richards wishes it.'
The iron was now hot, and Richards striking on it boldly - it was a
good cause and she bold in it, though instinctively afraid of Mr Dombey -