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letter that remained entire. Involuntarily holding his breath as he opened
this document, and 'bating in the stealthy action something of his arrogant
demeanour, he s at down, resting his head upon one hand, and read it
through.
He read it slowly and attentively, and with a nice particularity to
every syllable. Otherwise than as his great deliberation seemed unnatural,
and perhaps the result of an effort equally great, he allowed no sign of
emotion to escape him. When he had read it through, he folded and refolded
it slowly several times, and tore it carefully into fragments. Checking his
hand in the act of throwing these away, he put them in his pocket, as if
unwilling to trust them even to the chances of being re-united and
deciphered; and instead of ringing, as usual, for little Paul, he sat
solitary, all the evening, in his cheerless room.
There was anything but solitude in the nursery; for there, Mrs Chick
and Miss Tox were enjoying a social evening, so much to the disgust of Miss
Susan Nipper, that that young lady embraced every opportunity of making wry
faces behind the door. Her feelings were so much excited on the occasion,
that she found it indispensable to afford them this relief, even without
having the comfort of any audience or sympathy whatever. As the
knight-errants of old relieved their minds by carving their mistress's names
in deserts, and wildernesses, and other savage places where there was no
probability of there ever being anybody to read them, so did Miss Susan
Nipper curl her snub nose into drawers and wardrobes, put away winks of
disparagement in cupboards, shed derisive squints into stone pitchers, and
contradict and call names out in the passage.
The two interlopers, however, blissfully unconscious of the young
lady's sentiments, saw little Paul safe through all the stages of
undressing, airy exercise, supper and bed; and then sat down to tea before
the fire. The two children now lay, through the good offices of Polly, in
one room; and it was not until the ladies were established at their
tea-table that, happening to look towards the little beds, they thought of
Florence.
'How sound she sleeps!' said Miss Tox.
'Why, you know, my dear, she takes a great deal of exercise in the
course of the day,' returned Mrs Chick, 'playing about little Paul so much.'
'She is a curious child,' said Miss Tox.
'My dear,' retorted Mrs Chick, in a low voice: 'Her Mama, all over!'
'In deed!' said Miss Tox. 'Ah dear me!'
A tone of most extraordinary compassion Miss Tox said it in, though she
had no distinct idea why, except that it was expected of her.
'Florence will never, never, never be a Dombey,'said Mrs Chick, 'not if
she lives to be a thousand years old.'
Miss Tox elevated her eyebrows, and was again full of
commiseration.
'I quite fret and worry myself about her,' said Mrs Chick, with a sigh
of modest merit. 'I really don't see what is to become of her when she grows
older, or what position she is to take. She don't gain on her Papa in the
least. How can one expect she should, when she is so very unlike a Dombey?'
Miss Tox looked as if she saw no way out of such a cogent argument as
that, at all.
'And the child, you see,' said Mrs Chick, in deep confidence, 'has poor
dear Fanny's nature. She'll never make an effort in after-life, I'll venture
to say. Never! She'll never wind and twine herself about her Papa's heart
like - '
'Like the ivy?' suggested Miss Tox.
'Like the ivy,' Mrs Chick assented. 'Never! She'll never glide and
nestle into the bosom of her Papa's affections like - the - '
'Startled fawn?' suggested Miss Tox.
'Like the startled fawn,' said Mrs Chick. 'Never! Poor Fanny! Yet, how
I loved her!'
'You must not distress yourself, my dear,' said Miss Tox, in a soothing
voice. 'Now really! You have too much feeling.'
'We have all our faults,' said Mrs Chick, weeping and shaking her head.
'I daresay we have. I never was blind to hers. I never said I was. Far from
it. Yet how I loved her!'
What a satisfaction it was to Mrs Chick - a common-place piece of folly
enough, compared with whom her sister-in-law had been a very angel of
womanly intelligence and gentleness - to patronise and be tender to the
memory of that lady: in exact pursuance of her conduct to her in her
lifetime: and to thoroughly believe herself, and take herself in, and make
herself uncommonly comfortable on the strength of her toleration! What a
mighty pleasant virtue toleration should be when we are right, to be so very
pleasant when we are wrong, and quite unable to demonstrate how we come to
be invested with the privilege of exercising it!
Mrs Chick was yet drying her eyes and shaking her head, when Richards
made bold to caution her that Miss Florence was awake and sitting in her
bed. She had risen, as the nurse said, and the lashes of her eyes were wet
with tears. But no one saw them glistening save Polly. No one else leant
over her, and whispered soothing words to her, or was near enough to hear
the flutter of her beating heart.
'Oh! dear nurse!' said the child, looking earnestly up in her face,
'let me lie by my brother!'
'Why, my pet?' said Richards.
'Oh! I think he loves me,' cried the child wildly. 'Let me lie by him.
Pray do!'
Mrs Chick interposed with some motherly words about going to sleep like
a dear, but Florence repeated her supplication, with a frightened look, and
in a voice broken by sobs and tears.
'I'll not wake him,' she said, covering her face and hanging down her
head. 'I'll only touch him with my hand, and go to sleep. Oh, pray, pray,
let me lie by my brother to-night, for I believe he's fond of me!'
Richards took her without a word, and carrying her to the little bed in
which the infant was sleeping, laid her down by his side. She crept as near
him as she could without disturbing his rest; and stretching out one arm so
that it timidly embraced his neck, and hiding her face on the other, over
which her damp and scattered hair fell loose, lay motionless.
'Poor little thing,' said Miss Tox; 'she has been dreaming, I daresay.'
Dreaming, perhaps, of loving tones for ever silent, of loving eyes for
ever closed, of loving arms again wound round her, and relaxing in that
dream within the dam which no tongue can relate. Seeking, perhaps - in
dreams - some natural comfort for a heart, deeply and sorely wounded, though
so young a child's: and finding it, perhaps, in dreams, if not in waking,
cold, substantial truth. This trivial incident had so interrupted the
current of conversation, that it was difficult of resumption; and Mrs Chick
moreover had been so affected by the contemplation of her own tolerant
nature, that she was not in spirits. The two friends accordingly soon made
an end of their tea, and a servant was despatched to fetch a hackney
cabriolet for Miss Tox. Miss Tox had great experience in hackney cabs, and
her starting in one was generally a work of time, as she was systematic in
the preparatory arrangements.
'Have the goodness, if you please, Towlinson,' said Miss Tox, 'first of
all, to carry out a pen and ink and take his number legibly.'
'Yes, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'Then, if you please, Towlinson,'said Miss Tox, 'have the goodness
to turn the cushion. Which,' said Miss Tox apart to Mrs Chick, 'is
generally damp, my dear.'
'Yes, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'I'll trouble you also, if you please, Towlinson,' said Miss Tox, 'with
this card and this shilling. He's to drive to the card, and is to understand
that he will not on any account have more than the shilling.'
'No, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'And - I'm sorry to give you so much trouble, Towlinson,' said Miss
Tox, looking at him pensively.
'Not at all, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'Mention to the man, then, if you please, Towlinson,' said Miss Tox,
'that the lady's uncle is a magistrate, and that if he gives her any of his
impertinence he will be punished terribly. You can pretend to say that, if
you please, Towlinson, in a friendly way, and because you know it was done
to another man, who died.'
'Certainly, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'And now good-night to my sweet, sweet, sweet, godson,' said Miss Tox,
with a soft shower of kisses at each repetition of the adjective; 'and
Louisa, my dear friend, promise me to take a little something warm before
you go to bed, and not to distress yourself!'
It was with extreme difficulty that Nipper, the black-eyed, who looked
on steadfastly, contained herself at this crisis, and until the subsequent
departure of Mrs Chick. But the nursery being at length free of visitors,
she made herself some recompense for her late restraint.
'You might keep me in a strait-waistcoat for six weeks,' said Nipper,
'and when I got it off I'd only be more aggravated, who ever heard the like
of them two Griffins, Mrs Richards?'
'And then to talk of having been dreaming, poor dear!' said Polly.
'Oh you beauties!' cried Susan Nipper, affecting to salute the door by
which the ladies had departed. 'Never be a Dombey won't she? It's to be
hoped she won't, we don't want any more such, one's enough.'
'Don't wake the children, Susan dear,' said Polly.
'I'm very much beholden to you, Mrs Richards,' said Susan, who was not
by any means discriminating in her wrath, 'and really feel it as a honour to
receive your commands, being a black slave and a mulotter. Mrs Richards, if
there's any other orders, you can give me, pray mention 'em.'
'Nonsense; orders,' said Polly.
'Oh! bless your heart, Mrs Richards,' cried Susan, 'temporaries always
orders permanencies here, didn't you know that, why wherever was you born,
Mrs Richards? But wherever you was born, Mrs Richards,' pursued Spitfire,
shaking her head resolutely, 'and whenever, and however (which is best known
to yourself), you may bear in mind, please, that it's one thing to give
orders, and quite another thing to take 'em. A person may tell a person to
dive off a bridge head foremost into five-and-forty feet of water, Mrs
Richards, but a person may be very far from diving.'
'There now,' said Polly, 'you're angry because you're a good little
thing, and fond of Miss Florence; and yet you turn round on me, because
there's nobody else.'
'It's very easy for some to keep their tempers, and be soft-spoken, Mrs
Richards,' returned Susan, slightly mollified, 'when their child's made as
much of as a prince, and is petted and patted till it wishes its friends
further, but when a sweet young pretty innocent, that never ought to have a
cross word spoken to or of it, is rundown, the case is very different
indeed. My goodness gracious me, Miss Floy, you naughty, sinful child, if
you don't shut your eyes this minute, I'll call in them hobgoblins that
lives in the cock-loft to come and eat you up alive!'
Here Miss Nipper made a horrible lowing, supposed to issue from a
conscientious goblin of the bull species, impatient to discharge the severe
duty of his position. Having further composed her young charge by covering
her head with the bedclothes, and making three or four angry dabs at the
pillow, she folded her arms, and screwed up her mouth, and sat looking at
the fire for the rest of the evening.
Though little Paul was said, in nursery phrase, 'to take a deal of
notice for his age,' he took as little notice of all this as of the
preparations for his christening on the next day but one; which nevertheless
went on about him, as to his personal apparel, and that of his sister and
the two nurses, with great activity. Neither did he, on the arrival of the
appointed morning, show any sense of its importance; being, on the contrary,
unusually inclined to sleep, and unusually inclined to take it ill in his
attendants that they dressed him to go out.
It happened to be an iron-grey autumnal day, with a shrewd east wind
blowing - a day in keeping with the proceedings. Mr Dombey represented in
himself the wind, the shade, and the autumn of the christening. He stood in
his library to receive the company, as hard and cold as the weather; and
when he looked out through the glass room, at the trees in the little
garden, their brown and yellow leaves came fluttering down, as if he
blighted them.
Ugh! They were black, cold rooms; and seemed to be in mourning, like
the inmates of the house. The books precisely matched as to size, and drawn
up in line, like soldiers, looked in their cold, hard, slippery uniforms, as
if they had but one idea among them, and that was a freezer. The bookcase,
glazed and locked, repudiated all familiarities. Mr Pitt, in bronze, on the
top, with no trace of his celestial origin' about him, guarded the
unattainable treasure like an enchanted Moor. A dusty urn at each high
corner, dug up from an ancient tomb, preached desolation and decay, as from
two pulpits; and the chimney-glass, reflecting Mr Dombey and his portrait at
one blow, seemed fraught with melancholy meditations.
The stiff and stark fire-irons appeared to claim a nearer relationship
than anything else there to Mr Dombey, with his buttoned coat, his white
cravat, his heavy gold watch-chain, and his creaking boots.
But this was before the arrival of Mr and Mrs Chick, his lawful
relatives, who soon presented themselves.
'My dear Paul,' Mrs Chick murmured, as she embraced him, 'the
beginning, I hope, of many joyful days!'
'Thank you, Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, grimly. 'How do you do, Mr John?'
'How do you do, Sir?' said Chick.
He gave Mr Dombey his hand, as if he feared it might electrify him. Mr
Dombey tool: it as if it were a fish, or seaweed, or some such clammy
substance, and immediately returned it to him with exalted politeness.
'Perhaps, Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, slightly turning his head in his
cravat, as if it were a socket, 'you would have preferred a fire?'
'Oh, my dear Paul, no,' said Mrs Chick, who had much ado to keep her
teeth from chattering; 'not for me.'
'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, 'you are not sensible of any chill?'
Mr John, who had already got both his hands in his pockets over the
wrists, and was on the very threshold of that same canine chorus which had
given Mrs Chick so much offence on a former occasion, protested that he was
perfectly comfortable.
He added in a low voice, 'With my tiddle tol toor rul' - when he was
providentially stopped by Towlinson, who announced:
'Miss Tox!'
And enter that fair enslaver, with a blue nose and indescribably frosty
face, referable to her being very thinly clad in a maze of fluttering odds
and ends, to do honour to the ceremony.
'How do you do, Miss Tox?' said Mr Dombey.
Miss Tox, in the midst of her spreading gauzes, went down altogether
like an opera-glass shutting-up; she curtseyed so low, in acknowledgment of
Mr Dombey's advancing a step or two to meet her.
'I can never forget this occasion, Sir,' said Miss Tox, softly. ''Tis
impossible. My dear Louisa, I can hardly believe the evidence of my senses.'
If Miss Tox could believe the evidence of one of her senses, it was a
very cold day. That was quite clear. She took an early opportunity of
promoting the circulation in the tip of her nose by secretly chafing it with
her pocket handkerchief, lest, by its very low temperature, it should
disagreeably astonish the baby when she came to kiss it.
The baby soon appeared, carried in great glory by Richards; while
Florence, in custody of that active young constable, Susan Nipper, brought
up the rear. Though the whole nursery party were dressed by this time in
lighter mourning than at first, there was enough in the appearance of the
bereaved children to make the day no brighter. The baby too - it might have
been Miss Tox's nose - began to cry. Thereby, as it happened, preventing Mr
Chick from the awkward fulfilment of a very honest purpose he had; which
was, to make much of Florence. For this gentleman, insensible to the
superior claims of a perfect Dombey (perhaps on account of having the honour
to be united to a Dombey himself, and being familiar with excellence),
really liked her, and showed that he liked her, and was about to show it in
his own way now, when Paul cried, and his helpmate stopped him short
'Now Florence, child!' said her aunt, briskly, 'what are you doing,
love? Show yourself to him. Engage his attention, my dear!'
The atmosphere became or might have become colder and colder, when Mr
Dombey stood frigidly watching his little daughter, who, clapping her hands,
and standing On tip-toe before the throne of his son and heir, lured him to
bend down from his high estate, and look at her. Some honest act of
Richards's may have aided the effect, but he did look down, and held his
peace. As his sister hid behind her nurse, he followed her with his eyes;
and when she peeped out with a merry cry to him, he sprang up and crowed
lustily - laughing outright when she ran in upon him; and seeming to fondle
her curls with his tiny hands, while she smothered him with kisses.
Was Mr Dombey pleased to see this? He testified no pleasure by the
relaxation of a nerve; but outward tokens of any kind of feeling were
unusual with him. If any sunbeam stole into the room to light the children
at their play, it never reached his face. He looked on so fixedly and
coldly, that the warm light vanished even from the laughing eyes of little
Florence, when, at last, they happened to meet his.
It was a dull, grey, autumn day indeed, and in a minute's pause and
silence that took place, the leaves fell sorrowfully.
'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, referring to his watch, and assuming his hat
and gloves. 'Take my sister, if you please: my arm today is Miss Tox's. You
had better go first with Master Paul, Richards. Be very careful.'
In Mr Dombey's carriage, Dombey and Son, Miss Tox, Mrs Chick, Richards,
and Florence. In a little carriage following it, Susan Nipper and the owner
Mr Chick. Susan looking out of window, without intermission, as a relief
from the embarrassment of confronting the large face of that gentleman, and
thinking whenever anything rattled that he was putting up in paper an
appropriate pecuniary compliment for herself.
Once upon the road to church, Mr Dombey clapped his hands for the
amusement of his son. At which instance of parental enthusiasm Miss Tox was
enchanted. But exclusive of this incident, the chief difference between the
christening party and a party in a mourning coach consisted in the colours
of the carriage and horses.
Arrived at the church steps, they were received by a portentous
beadle.' Mr Dombey dismounting first to help the ladies out, and standing
near him at the church door, looked like another beadle. A beadle less
gorgeous but more dreadful; the beadle of private life; the beadle of our
business and our bosoms.
Miss Tox's hand trembled as she slipped it through Mr Dombey's arm, and
felt herself escorted up the steps, preceded by a cocked hat and a
Babylonian collar. It seemed for a moment like that other solemn
institution, 'Wilt thou have this man, Lucretia?' 'Yes, I will.'
'Please to bring the child in quick out of the air there,' whispered
the beadle, holding open the inner door of the church.
Little Paul might have asked with Hamlet 'into my grave?' so chill and
earthy was the place. The tall shrouded pulpit and reading desk; the dreary
perspective of empty pews stretching away under the galleries, and empty
benches mounting to the roof and lost in the shadow of the great grim organ;
the dusty matting and cold stone slabs; the grisly free seats' in the
aisles; and the damp corner by the bell-rope, where the black trestles used
for funerals were stowed away, along with some shovels and baskets, and a
coil or two of deadly-looking rope; the strange, unusual, uncomfortable
smell, and the cadaverous light; were all in unison. It was a cold and
dismal scene.
'There's a wedding just on, Sir,' said the beadle, 'but it'll be over
directly, if you'll walk into the westry here.
Before he turned again to lead the way, he gave Mr Dombey a bow and a
half smile of recognition, importing that he (the beadle) remembered to have
had the pleasure of attending on him when he buried his wife, and hoped he
had enjoyed himself since.
The very wedding looked dismal as they passed in front of the altar.
The bride was too old and the bridegroom too young, and a superannuated beau
with one eye and an eyeglass stuck in its blank companion, was giving away
the lady, while the friends were shivering. In the vestry the fire was
smoking; and an over-aged and over-worked and under-paid attorney's clerk,
'making a search,' was running his forefinger down the parchment pages of an
immense register (one of a long series of similar volumes) gorged with
burials. Over the fireplace was a ground-plan of the vaults underneath the
church; and Mr Chick, skimming the literary portion of it aloud, by way of
enlivening the company, read the reference to Mrs Dombey's tomb in full,
before he could stop himself.
After another cold interval, a wheezy little pew-opener afflicted with
an asthma, appropriate to the churchyard, if not to the church, summoned
them to the font - a rigid marble basin which seemed to have been playing a
churchyard game at cup and ball with its matter of fact pedestal, and to
have been just that moment caught on the top of it. Here they waited some
little time while the marriage party enrolled themselves; and meanwhile the
wheezy little pew-opener - partly in consequence of her infirmity, and
partly that the marriage party might not forget her - went about the
building coughing like a grampus.
Presently the clerk (the only cheerful-looking object there, and he was
an undertaker) came up with a jug of warm water, and said something, as he
poured it into the font, about taking the chill off; which millions of
gallons boiling hot could not have done for the occasion. Then the
clergyman, an amiable and mild-looking young curate, but obviously afraid of
the baby, appeared like the principal character in a ghost-story, 'a tall
figure all in white;' at sight of whom Paul rent the air with his cries, and
never left off again till he was taken out black in the face.
Even when that event had happened, to the great relief of everybody, he
was heard under the portico, during the rest of the ceremony, now fainter,
now louder, now hushed, now bursting forth again with an irrepressible sense
of his wrongs. This so distracted the attention of the two ladies, that Mrs
Chick was constantly deploying into the centre aisle, to send out messages
by the pew-opener, while Miss Tox kept her Prayer-book open at the Gunpowder
Plot, and occasionally read responses from that service.
During the whole of these proceedings, Mr Dombey remained as impassive
and gentlemanly as ever, and perhaps assisted in making it so cold, that the
young curate smoked at the mouth as he read. The only time that he unbent
his visage in the least, was when the clergyman, in delivering (very
unaffectedly and simply) the closing exhortation, relative to the future
examination of the child by the sponsors, happened to rest his eye on Mr
Chick; and then Mr Dombey might have been seen to express by a majestic
look, that he would like to catch him at it.
It might have been well for Mr Dombey, if he had thought of his own
dignity a little less; and had thought of the great origin and purpose of
the ceremony in which he took so formal and so stiff a part, a little more.
His arrogance contrasted strangely with its history.
When it was all over, he again gave his arm to Miss Tox, and conducted
her to the vestry, where he informed the clergyman how much pleasure it
would have given him to have solicited the honour of his company at dinner,
but for the unfortunate state of his household affairs. The register signed,
and the fees paid, and the pew-opener (whose cough was very bad again)
remembered, and the beadle gratified, and the sexton (who was accidentally
on the doorsteps, looking with great interest at the weather) not forgotten,
they got into the carriage again, and drove home in the same bleak
fellowship.
There they found Mr Pitt turning up his nose at a cold collation, set
forth in a cold pomp of glass and silver, and looking more like a dead
dinner lying in state than a social refreshment. On their arrival Miss Tox
produced a mug for her godson, and Mr Chick a knife and fork and spoon in a
case. Mr Dombey also produced a bracelet for Miss Tox; and, on the receipt
of this token, Miss Tox was tenderly affected.
'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, 'will you take the bottom of the table, if
you please? What have you got there, Mr John?'
'I have got a cold fillet of veal here, Sir,' replied Mr Chick, rubbing
his numbed hands hard together. 'What have you got there, Sir?'
'This,' returned Mr Dombey, 'is some cold preparation of calf's head, I
think. I see cold fowls - ham - patties - salad - lobster. Miss Tox will do
me the honour of taking some wine? Champagne to Miss Tox.'
There was a toothache in everything. The wine was so bitter cold that
it forced a little scream from Miss Tox, which she had great difficulty in
turning into a 'Hem!' The veal had come from such an airy pantry, that the
first taste of it had struck a sensation as of cold lead to Mr Chick's
extremities. Mr Dombey alone remained unmoved. He might have been hung up
for sale at a Russian fair as a specimen of a frozen gentleman.
The prevailing influence was too much even for his sister. She made no
effort at flattery or small talk, and directed all her efforts to looking as
warm as she could.
'Well, Sir,' said Mr Chick, making a desperate plunge, after a long
silence, and filling a glass of sherry; 'I shall drink this, if you'll allow
me, Sir, to little Paul.'
'Bless him!' murmured Miss Tox, taking a sip of wine.
'Dear little Dombey!' murmured Mrs Chick.
'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, with severe gravity, 'my son would feel and
express himself obliged to you, I have no doubt, if he could appreciate the
favour you have done him. He will prove, in time to come, I trust, equal to
any responsibility that the obliging disposition of his relations and
friends, in private, or the onerous nature of our position, in public, may
impose upon him.'
The tone in which this was said admitting of nothing more, Mr Chick
relapsed into low spirits and silence. Not so Miss Tox, who, having listened
to Mr Dombey with even a more emphatic attention than usual, and with a more
expressive tendency of her head to one side, now leant across the table, and
said to Mrs Chick softly:
'Louisa!'
'My dear,' said Mrs Chick.
'Onerous nature of our position in public may - I have forgotten
the exact term.'
'Expose him to,' said Mrs Chick.
'Pardon me, my dear,' returned Miss Tox, 'I think not. It was more
rounded and flowing. Obliging disposition of relations and friends in
private, or onerous nature of position in public - may - impose upon him!'
'Impose upon him, to be sure,' said Mrs Chick.
Miss Tox struck her delicate hands together lightly, in triumph; and
added, casting up her eyes, 'eloquence indeed!'
Mr Dombey, in the meanwhile, had issued orders for the attendance of
Richards, who now entered curtseying, but without the baby; Paul being
asleep after the fatigues of the morning. Mr Dombey, having delivered a
glass of wine to this vassal, addressed her in the following words: Miss Tox
previously settling her head on one side, and making other little
arrangements for engraving them on her heart.
'During the six months or so, Richards, which have seen you an inmate
of this house, you have done your duty. Desiring to connect some little
service to you with this occasion, I considered how I could best effect that
object, and I also advised with my sister, Mrs - '
'Chick,' interposed the gentleman of that name.
'Oh, hush if you please!' said Miss Tox.
'I was about to say to you, Richards,' resumed Mr Dombey, with an
appalling glance at Mr John, 'that I was further assisted in my decision, by
the recollection of a conversation I held with your husband in this room, on
the occasion of your being hired, when he disclosed to me the melancholy
fact that your family, himself at the head, were sunk and steeped in
ignorance.
Richards quailed under the magnificence of the reproof.
'I am far from being friendly,' pursued Mr Dombey, 'to what is called
by persons of levelling sentiments, general education. But it is necessary
that the inferior classes should continue to be taught to know their
position, and to conduct themselves properly. So far I approve of schools.
Having the power of nominating a child on the foundation of an ancient
establishment, called (from a worshipful company) the Charitable Grinders;
where not only is a wholesome education bestowed upon the scholars, but
where a dress and badge is likewise provided for them; I have (first
communicating, through Mrs Chick, with your family) nominated your eldest
son to an existing vacancy; and he has this day, I am informed, assumed the
habit. The number of her son, I believe,' said Mr Dombey, turning to his
sister and speaking of the child as if he were a hackney-coach, is one
hundred and forty-seven. Louisa, you can tell her.'
'One hundred and forty-seven,' said Mrs Chick 'The dress, Richards, is
a nice, warm, blue baize tailed coat and cap, turned up with orange coloured
binding; red worsted stockings; and very strong leather small-clothes. One
might wear the articles one's self,' said Mrs Chick, with enthusiasm, 'and
be grateful.'
'There, Richards!' said Miss Tox. 'Now, indeed, you may be proud. The
Charitable Grinders!'
'I am sure I am very much obliged, Sir,' returned Richards faintly,
'and take it very kind that you should remember my little ones.' At the same
time a vision of Biler as a Charitable Grinder, with his very small legs
encased in the serviceable clothing described by Mrs Chick, swam before
Richards's eyes, and made them water.
'I am very glad to see you have so much feeling, Richards,' said Miss
Tox.
'It makes one almost hope, it really does,' said Mrs Chick, who prided
herself on taking trustful views of human nature, 'that there may yet be
some faint spark of gratitude and right feeling in the world.'
Richards deferred to these compliments by curtseying and murmuring
her thanks; but finding it quite impossible to recover her spirits from
the disorder into which they had been thrown by the image of her son in his
precocious nether garments, she gradually approached the door and was
heartily relieved to escape by it.
Such temporary indications of a partial thaw that had appeared with
her, vanished with her; and the frost set in again, as cold and hard as
ever. Mr Chick was twice heard to hum a tune at the bottom of the table, but
on both occasions it was a fragment of the Dead March in Saul. The party
seemed to get colder and colder, and to be gradually resolving itself into a
congealed and solid state, like the collation round which it was assembled.
At length Mrs Chick looked at Miss Tox, and Miss Tox returned the look, and
they both rose and said it was really time to go. Mr Dombey receiving this
announcement with perfect equanimity, they took leave of that gentleman, and
presently departed under the protection of Mr Chick; who, when they had
turned their backs upon the house and left its master in his usual solitary
state, put his hands in his pockets, threw himself back in the carriage, and
whistled 'With a hey ho chevy!' all through; conveying into his face as he
did so, an expression of such gloomy and terrible defiance, that Mrs Chick
dared not protest, or in any way molest him.
Richards, though she had little Paul on her lap, could not forget her
own first-born. She felt it was ungrateful; but the influence of the day
fell even on the Charitable Grinders, and she could hardly help regarding
his pewter badge, number one hundred and forty-seven, as, somehow, a part of
its formality and sternness. She spoke, too, in the nursery, of his 'blessed
legs,' and was again troubled by his spectre in uniform.
'I don't know what I wouldn't give,' said Polly, 'to see the poor
little dear before he gets used to 'em.'
'Why, then, I tell you what, Mrs Richards,' retorted Nipper, who had
been admitted to her confidence, 'see him and make your mind easy.'
'Mr Dombey wouldn't like it,' said Polly.
'Oh, wouldn't he, Mrs Richards!' retorted Nipper, 'he'd like it very
much, I think when he was asked.'
'You wouldn't ask him, I suppose, at all?' said Polly.
'No, Mrs Richards, quite contrairy,' returned Susan, 'and them two
inspectors Tox and Chick, not intending to be on duty tomorrow, as I heard
'em say, me and Mid Floy will go along with you tomorrow morning, and
welcome, Mrs Richards, if you like, for we may as well walk there as up and
down a street, and better too.'
Polly rejected the idea pretty stoutly at first; but by little and
little she began to entertain it, as she entertained more and more
distinctly the forbidden pictures of her children, and her own home. At
length, arguing that there could be no great harm in calling for a moment at
the door, she yielded to the Nipper proposition.
The matter being settled thus, little Paul began to cry most piteously,
as if he had a foreboding that no good would come of it.
'What's the matter with the child?' asked Susan.
'He's cold, I think,' said Polly, walking with him to and fro, and
hushing him.
It was a bleak autumnal afternoon indeed; and as she walked, and
hushed, and, glancing through the dreary windows, pressed the little fellow
closer to her breast, the withered leaves came showering down.
Paul's Second Deprivation
Polly was beset by so many misgivings in the morning, that but for the
incessant promptings of her black-eyed companion, she would have abandoned
all thoughts of the expedition, and formally petitioned for leave to see
number one hundred and forty-seven, under the awful shadow of Mr Dombey's
roof. But Susan who was personally disposed in favour of the excursion, and
who (like Tony Lumpkin), if she could bear the disappointments of other
people with tolerable fortitude, could not abide to disappoint herself,
threw so many ingenious doubts in the way of this second thought, and
stimulated the original intention with so many ingenious arguments, that
almost as soon as Mr Dombey's stately back was turned, and that gentleman
was pursuing his daily road towards the City, his unconscious son was on his
way to Staggs's Gardens.
This euphonious locality was situated in a suburb, known by the
inhabitants of Staggs's Gardens by the name of Camberling Town; a
designation which the Strangers' Map of London, as printed (with a view to
pleasant and commodious reference) on pocket handkerchiefs, condenses, with
some show of reason, into Camden Town. Hither the two nurses bent their
steps, accompanied by their charges; Richards carrying Paul, of course, and
Susan leading little Florence by the hand, and giving her such jerks and
pokes from time to time, as she considered it wholesome to administer.
The first shock of a great earthquake had, just at that period, rent
the whole neighbourhood to its centre. Traces of its course were visible on
every side. Houses were knocked down; streets broken through and stopped;
deep pits and trenches dug in the ground; enormous heaps of earth and clay
thrown up; buildings that were undermined and shaking, propped by great
beams of wood. Here, a chaos of carts, overthrown and jumbled together, lay
topsy-turvy at the bottom of a steep unnatural hill; there, confused
treasures of iron soaked and rusted in something that had accidentally
become a pond. Everywhere were bridges that led nowhere; thoroughfares that
were wholly impassable; Babel towers of chimneys, wanting half their height;
temporary wooden houses and enclosures, in the most unlikely situations;
carcases of ragged tenements, and fragments of unfinished walls and arches,
and piles of scaffolding, and wildernesses of bricks, and giant forms of
cranes, and tripods straddling above nothing. There were a hundred thousand
shapes and substances of incompleteness, wildly mingled out of their places,
upside down, burrowing in the earth, aspiring in the air, mouldering in the
water, and unintelligible as any dream. Hot springs and fiery eruptions, the
usual attendants upon earthquakes, lent their contributions of confusion to
the scene. Boiling water hissed and heaved within dilapidated walls; whence,
also, the glare and roar of flames came issuing forth; and mounds of ashes
blocked up rights of way, and wholly changed the law and custom of the
neighbourhood.
In short, the yet unfinished and unopened Railroad was in progress;
and, from the very core of all this dire disorder, trailed smoothly away,
upon its mighty course of civilisation and improvement.
But as yet, the neighbourhood was shy to own the Railroad. One or two
bold speculators had projected streets; and one had built a little, but had
stopped among the mud and ashes to consider farther of it. A bran-new
Tavern, redolent of fresh mortar and size, and fronting nothing at all, had
taken for its sign The Railway Arms; but that might be rash enterprise - and
then it hoped to sell drink to the workmen. So, the Excavators' House of
Call had sprung up from a beer-shop; and the old-established Ham and Beef
Shop had become the Railway Eating House, with a roast leg of pork daily,
through interested motives of a similar immediate and popular description.
Lodging-house keepers were favourable in like manner; and for the like
reasons were not to be trusted. The general belief was very slow. There were
frowzy fields, and cow-houses, and dunghills, and dustheaps, and ditches,
and gardens, and summer-houses, and carpet-beating grounds, at the very door
of the Railway. Little tumuli of oyster shells in the oyster season, and of
lobster shells in the lobster season, and of broken crockery and faded
cabbage leaves in all seasons, encroached upon its high places. Posts, and
rails, and old cautions to trespassers, and backs of mean houses, and
patches of wretched vegetation, stared it out of countenance. Nothing was
the better for it, or thought of being so. If the miserable waste ground
lying near it could have laughed, it would have laughed it to scorn, like
many of the miserable neighbours.
Staggs's Gardens was uncommonly incredulous. It was a little row of
houses, with little squalid patches of ground before them, fenced off with
old doors, barrel staves, scraps of tarpaulin, and dead bushes; with
bottomless tin kettles and exhausted iron fenders, thrust into the gaps.
Here, the Staggs's Gardeners trained scarlet beans, kept fowls and rabbits,
erected rotten summer-houses (one was an old boat), dried clothes, and
smoked pipes. Some were of opinion that Staggs's Gardens derived its name
from a deceased capitalist, one Mr Staggs, who had built it for his
delectation. Others, who had a natural taste for the country, held that it
dated from those rural times when the antlered herd, under the familiar
denomination of Staggses, had resorted to its shady precincts. Be this as it
may, Staggs's Gardens was regarded by its population as a sacred grove not
to be withered by Railroads; and so confident were they generally of its
long outliving any such ridiculous inventions, that the master
chimney-sweeper at the corner, who was understood to take the lead in the
local politics of the Gardens, had publicly declared that on the occasion of
the Railroad opening, if ever it did open, two of his boys should ascend the
flues of his dwelling, with instructions to hail the failure with derisive
cheers from the chimney-pots.
To this unhallowed spot, the very name of which had hitherto been
carefully concealed from Mr Dombey by his sister, was little Paul now borne
by Fate and Richards
'That's my house, Susan,' said Polly, pointing it out.
'Is it, indeed, Mrs Richards?' said Susan, condescendingly.
'And there's my sister Jemima at the door, I do declare' cried Polly,
'with my own sweet precious baby in her arms!'
The sight added such an extensive pair of wings to Polly's impatience,
that she set off down the Gardens at a run, and bouncing on Jemima, changed
babies with her in a twinkling; to the unutterable astonishment of that
young damsel, on whom the heir of the Dombeys seemed to have fallen from the
clouds.
'Why, Polly!' cried Jemima. 'You! what a turn you have given me! who'd
have thought it! come along in Polly! How well you do look to be sure! The
children will go half wild to see you Polly, that they will.'
That they did, if one might judge from the noise they made, and the way
in which they dashed at Polly and dragged her to a low chair in the chimney
corner, where her own honest apple face became immediately the centre of a
bunch of smaller pippins, all laying their rosy cheeks close to it, and all
evidently the growth of the same tree. As to Polly, she was full as noisy
and vehement as the children; and it was not until she was quite out of
breath, and her hair was hanging all about her flushed face, and her new
christening attire was very much dishevelled, that any pause took place in
the confusion. Even then, the smallest Toodle but one remained in her lap,
holding on tight with both arms round her neck; while the smallest Toodle
but two mounted on the back of the chair, and made desperate efforts, with
one leg in the air, to kiss her round the corner.
'Look! there's a pretty little lady come to see you,' said Polly; 'and
see how quiet she is! what a beautiful little lady, ain't she?'
This reference to Florence, who had been standing by the door not
unobservant of what passed, directed the attention of the younger branches
towards her; and had likewise the happy effect of leading to the formal
recognition of Miss Nipper, who was not quite free from a misgiving that she
had been already slighted.
'Oh do come in and sit down a minute, Susan, please,' said Polly. 'This
is my sister Jemima, this is. Jemima, I don't know what I should ever do
with myself, if it wasn't for Susan Nipper; I shouldn't be here now but for
her.'
'Oh do sit down, Miss Nipper, if you please,' quoth Jemima.
Susan took the extreme corner of a chair, with a stately and
ceremonious aspect.
'I never was so glad to see anybody in all my life; now really I never
was, Miss Nipper,' said Jemima.
Susan relaxing, took a little more of the chair, and smiled graciously.
'Do untie your bonnet-strings, and make yourself at home, Miss Nipper,
please,' entreated Jemima. 'I am afraid it's a poorer place than you're used
to; but you'll make allowances, I'm sure.'
The black-eyed was so softened by this deferential behaviour, that she
caught up little Miss Toodle who was running past, and took her to Banbury
Cross immediately.
'But where's my pretty boy?' said Polly. 'My poor fellow? I came all
this way to see him in his new clothes.'
'Ah what a pity!' cried Jemima. 'He'll break his heart, when he hears
his mother has been here. He's at school, Polly.'
'Gone already!'
'Yes. He went for the first time yesterday, for fear he should lose any
learning. But it's half-holiday, Polly: if you could only stop till he comes
home - you and Miss Nipper, leastways,' said Jemima, mindful in good time of
the dignity of the black-eyed.
'And how does he look, Jemima, bless him!' faltered Polly.
'Well, really he don't look so bad as you'd suppose,' returned Jemima.
'Ah!' said Polly, with emotion, 'I knew his legs must be too short.'
His legs is short,' returned Jemima; 'especially behind; but they'll
get longer, Polly, every day.'
It was a slow, prospective kind of consolation; but the cheerfulness
and good nature with which it was administered, gave it a value it did not
intrinsically possess. After a moment's silence, Polly asked, in a more
sprightly manner:
'And where's Father, Jemima dear?' - for by that patriarchal
this document, and 'bating in the stealthy action something of his arrogant
demeanour, he s at down, resting his head upon one hand, and read it
through.
He read it slowly and attentively, and with a nice particularity to
every syllable. Otherwise than as his great deliberation seemed unnatural,
and perhaps the result of an effort equally great, he allowed no sign of
emotion to escape him. When he had read it through, he folded and refolded
it slowly several times, and tore it carefully into fragments. Checking his
hand in the act of throwing these away, he put them in his pocket, as if
unwilling to trust them even to the chances of being re-united and
deciphered; and instead of ringing, as usual, for little Paul, he sat
solitary, all the evening, in his cheerless room.
There was anything but solitude in the nursery; for there, Mrs Chick
and Miss Tox were enjoying a social evening, so much to the disgust of Miss
Susan Nipper, that that young lady embraced every opportunity of making wry
faces behind the door. Her feelings were so much excited on the occasion,
that she found it indispensable to afford them this relief, even without
having the comfort of any audience or sympathy whatever. As the
knight-errants of old relieved their minds by carving their mistress's names
in deserts, and wildernesses, and other savage places where there was no
probability of there ever being anybody to read them, so did Miss Susan
Nipper curl her snub nose into drawers and wardrobes, put away winks of
disparagement in cupboards, shed derisive squints into stone pitchers, and
contradict and call names out in the passage.
The two interlopers, however, blissfully unconscious of the young
lady's sentiments, saw little Paul safe through all the stages of
undressing, airy exercise, supper and bed; and then sat down to tea before
the fire. The two children now lay, through the good offices of Polly, in
one room; and it was not until the ladies were established at their
tea-table that, happening to look towards the little beds, they thought of
Florence.
'How sound she sleeps!' said Miss Tox.
'Why, you know, my dear, she takes a great deal of exercise in the
course of the day,' returned Mrs Chick, 'playing about little Paul so much.'
'She is a curious child,' said Miss Tox.
'My dear,' retorted Mrs Chick, in a low voice: 'Her Mama, all over!'
'In deed!' said Miss Tox. 'Ah dear me!'
A tone of most extraordinary compassion Miss Tox said it in, though she
had no distinct idea why, except that it was expected of her.
'Florence will never, never, never be a Dombey,'said Mrs Chick, 'not if
she lives to be a thousand years old.'
Miss Tox elevated her eyebrows, and was again full of
commiseration.
'I quite fret and worry myself about her,' said Mrs Chick, with a sigh
of modest merit. 'I really don't see what is to become of her when she grows
older, or what position she is to take. She don't gain on her Papa in the
least. How can one expect she should, when she is so very unlike a Dombey?'
Miss Tox looked as if she saw no way out of such a cogent argument as
that, at all.
'And the child, you see,' said Mrs Chick, in deep confidence, 'has poor
dear Fanny's nature. She'll never make an effort in after-life, I'll venture
to say. Never! She'll never wind and twine herself about her Papa's heart
like - '
'Like the ivy?' suggested Miss Tox.
'Like the ivy,' Mrs Chick assented. 'Never! She'll never glide and
nestle into the bosom of her Papa's affections like - the - '
'Startled fawn?' suggested Miss Tox.
'Like the startled fawn,' said Mrs Chick. 'Never! Poor Fanny! Yet, how
I loved her!'
'You must not distress yourself, my dear,' said Miss Tox, in a soothing
voice. 'Now really! You have too much feeling.'
'We have all our faults,' said Mrs Chick, weeping and shaking her head.
'I daresay we have. I never was blind to hers. I never said I was. Far from
it. Yet how I loved her!'
What a satisfaction it was to Mrs Chick - a common-place piece of folly
enough, compared with whom her sister-in-law had been a very angel of
womanly intelligence and gentleness - to patronise and be tender to the
memory of that lady: in exact pursuance of her conduct to her in her
lifetime: and to thoroughly believe herself, and take herself in, and make
herself uncommonly comfortable on the strength of her toleration! What a
mighty pleasant virtue toleration should be when we are right, to be so very
pleasant when we are wrong, and quite unable to demonstrate how we come to
be invested with the privilege of exercising it!
Mrs Chick was yet drying her eyes and shaking her head, when Richards
made bold to caution her that Miss Florence was awake and sitting in her
bed. She had risen, as the nurse said, and the lashes of her eyes were wet
with tears. But no one saw them glistening save Polly. No one else leant
over her, and whispered soothing words to her, or was near enough to hear
the flutter of her beating heart.
'Oh! dear nurse!' said the child, looking earnestly up in her face,
'let me lie by my brother!'
'Why, my pet?' said Richards.
'Oh! I think he loves me,' cried the child wildly. 'Let me lie by him.
Pray do!'
Mrs Chick interposed with some motherly words about going to sleep like
a dear, but Florence repeated her supplication, with a frightened look, and
in a voice broken by sobs and tears.
'I'll not wake him,' she said, covering her face and hanging down her
head. 'I'll only touch him with my hand, and go to sleep. Oh, pray, pray,
let me lie by my brother to-night, for I believe he's fond of me!'
Richards took her without a word, and carrying her to the little bed in
which the infant was sleeping, laid her down by his side. She crept as near
him as she could without disturbing his rest; and stretching out one arm so
that it timidly embraced his neck, and hiding her face on the other, over
which her damp and scattered hair fell loose, lay motionless.
'Poor little thing,' said Miss Tox; 'she has been dreaming, I daresay.'
Dreaming, perhaps, of loving tones for ever silent, of loving eyes for
ever closed, of loving arms again wound round her, and relaxing in that
dream within the dam which no tongue can relate. Seeking, perhaps - in
dreams - some natural comfort for a heart, deeply and sorely wounded, though
so young a child's: and finding it, perhaps, in dreams, if not in waking,
cold, substantial truth. This trivial incident had so interrupted the
current of conversation, that it was difficult of resumption; and Mrs Chick
moreover had been so affected by the contemplation of her own tolerant
nature, that she was not in spirits. The two friends accordingly soon made
an end of their tea, and a servant was despatched to fetch a hackney
cabriolet for Miss Tox. Miss Tox had great experience in hackney cabs, and
her starting in one was generally a work of time, as she was systematic in
the preparatory arrangements.
'Have the goodness, if you please, Towlinson,' said Miss Tox, 'first of
all, to carry out a pen and ink and take his number legibly.'
'Yes, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'Then, if you please, Towlinson,'said Miss Tox, 'have the goodness
to turn the cushion. Which,' said Miss Tox apart to Mrs Chick, 'is
generally damp, my dear.'
'Yes, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'I'll trouble you also, if you please, Towlinson,' said Miss Tox, 'with
this card and this shilling. He's to drive to the card, and is to understand
that he will not on any account have more than the shilling.'
'No, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'And - I'm sorry to give you so much trouble, Towlinson,' said Miss
Tox, looking at him pensively.
'Not at all, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'Mention to the man, then, if you please, Towlinson,' said Miss Tox,
'that the lady's uncle is a magistrate, and that if he gives her any of his
impertinence he will be punished terribly. You can pretend to say that, if
you please, Towlinson, in a friendly way, and because you know it was done
to another man, who died.'
'Certainly, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'And now good-night to my sweet, sweet, sweet, godson,' said Miss Tox,
with a soft shower of kisses at each repetition of the adjective; 'and
Louisa, my dear friend, promise me to take a little something warm before
you go to bed, and not to distress yourself!'
It was with extreme difficulty that Nipper, the black-eyed, who looked
on steadfastly, contained herself at this crisis, and until the subsequent
departure of Mrs Chick. But the nursery being at length free of visitors,
she made herself some recompense for her late restraint.
'You might keep me in a strait-waistcoat for six weeks,' said Nipper,
'and when I got it off I'd only be more aggravated, who ever heard the like
of them two Griffins, Mrs Richards?'
'And then to talk of having been dreaming, poor dear!' said Polly.
'Oh you beauties!' cried Susan Nipper, affecting to salute the door by
which the ladies had departed. 'Never be a Dombey won't she? It's to be
hoped she won't, we don't want any more such, one's enough.'
'Don't wake the children, Susan dear,' said Polly.
'I'm very much beholden to you, Mrs Richards,' said Susan, who was not
by any means discriminating in her wrath, 'and really feel it as a honour to
receive your commands, being a black slave and a mulotter. Mrs Richards, if
there's any other orders, you can give me, pray mention 'em.'
'Nonsense; orders,' said Polly.
'Oh! bless your heart, Mrs Richards,' cried Susan, 'temporaries always
orders permanencies here, didn't you know that, why wherever was you born,
Mrs Richards? But wherever you was born, Mrs Richards,' pursued Spitfire,
shaking her head resolutely, 'and whenever, and however (which is best known
to yourself), you may bear in mind, please, that it's one thing to give
orders, and quite another thing to take 'em. A person may tell a person to
dive off a bridge head foremost into five-and-forty feet of water, Mrs
Richards, but a person may be very far from diving.'
'There now,' said Polly, 'you're angry because you're a good little
thing, and fond of Miss Florence; and yet you turn round on me, because
there's nobody else.'
'It's very easy for some to keep their tempers, and be soft-spoken, Mrs
Richards,' returned Susan, slightly mollified, 'when their child's made as
much of as a prince, and is petted and patted till it wishes its friends
further, but when a sweet young pretty innocent, that never ought to have a
cross word spoken to or of it, is rundown, the case is very different
indeed. My goodness gracious me, Miss Floy, you naughty, sinful child, if
you don't shut your eyes this minute, I'll call in them hobgoblins that
lives in the cock-loft to come and eat you up alive!'
Here Miss Nipper made a horrible lowing, supposed to issue from a
conscientious goblin of the bull species, impatient to discharge the severe
duty of his position. Having further composed her young charge by covering
her head with the bedclothes, and making three or four angry dabs at the
pillow, she folded her arms, and screwed up her mouth, and sat looking at
the fire for the rest of the evening.
Though little Paul was said, in nursery phrase, 'to take a deal of
notice for his age,' he took as little notice of all this as of the
preparations for his christening on the next day but one; which nevertheless
went on about him, as to his personal apparel, and that of his sister and
the two nurses, with great activity. Neither did he, on the arrival of the
appointed morning, show any sense of its importance; being, on the contrary,
unusually inclined to sleep, and unusually inclined to take it ill in his
attendants that they dressed him to go out.
It happened to be an iron-grey autumnal day, with a shrewd east wind
blowing - a day in keeping with the proceedings. Mr Dombey represented in
himself the wind, the shade, and the autumn of the christening. He stood in
his library to receive the company, as hard and cold as the weather; and
when he looked out through the glass room, at the trees in the little
garden, their brown and yellow leaves came fluttering down, as if he
blighted them.
Ugh! They were black, cold rooms; and seemed to be in mourning, like
the inmates of the house. The books precisely matched as to size, and drawn
up in line, like soldiers, looked in their cold, hard, slippery uniforms, as
if they had but one idea among them, and that was a freezer. The bookcase,
glazed and locked, repudiated all familiarities. Mr Pitt, in bronze, on the
top, with no trace of his celestial origin' about him, guarded the
unattainable treasure like an enchanted Moor. A dusty urn at each high
corner, dug up from an ancient tomb, preached desolation and decay, as from
two pulpits; and the chimney-glass, reflecting Mr Dombey and his portrait at
one blow, seemed fraught with melancholy meditations.
The stiff and stark fire-irons appeared to claim a nearer relationship
than anything else there to Mr Dombey, with his buttoned coat, his white
cravat, his heavy gold watch-chain, and his creaking boots.
But this was before the arrival of Mr and Mrs Chick, his lawful
relatives, who soon presented themselves.
'My dear Paul,' Mrs Chick murmured, as she embraced him, 'the
beginning, I hope, of many joyful days!'
'Thank you, Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, grimly. 'How do you do, Mr John?'
'How do you do, Sir?' said Chick.
He gave Mr Dombey his hand, as if he feared it might electrify him. Mr
Dombey tool: it as if it were a fish, or seaweed, or some such clammy
substance, and immediately returned it to him with exalted politeness.
'Perhaps, Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, slightly turning his head in his
cravat, as if it were a socket, 'you would have preferred a fire?'
'Oh, my dear Paul, no,' said Mrs Chick, who had much ado to keep her
teeth from chattering; 'not for me.'
'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, 'you are not sensible of any chill?'
Mr John, who had already got both his hands in his pockets over the
wrists, and was on the very threshold of that same canine chorus which had
given Mrs Chick so much offence on a former occasion, protested that he was
perfectly comfortable.
He added in a low voice, 'With my tiddle tol toor rul' - when he was
providentially stopped by Towlinson, who announced:
'Miss Tox!'
And enter that fair enslaver, with a blue nose and indescribably frosty
face, referable to her being very thinly clad in a maze of fluttering odds
and ends, to do honour to the ceremony.
'How do you do, Miss Tox?' said Mr Dombey.
Miss Tox, in the midst of her spreading gauzes, went down altogether
like an opera-glass shutting-up; she curtseyed so low, in acknowledgment of
Mr Dombey's advancing a step or two to meet her.
'I can never forget this occasion, Sir,' said Miss Tox, softly. ''Tis
impossible. My dear Louisa, I can hardly believe the evidence of my senses.'
If Miss Tox could believe the evidence of one of her senses, it was a
very cold day. That was quite clear. She took an early opportunity of
promoting the circulation in the tip of her nose by secretly chafing it with
her pocket handkerchief, lest, by its very low temperature, it should
disagreeably astonish the baby when she came to kiss it.
The baby soon appeared, carried in great glory by Richards; while
Florence, in custody of that active young constable, Susan Nipper, brought
up the rear. Though the whole nursery party were dressed by this time in
lighter mourning than at first, there was enough in the appearance of the
bereaved children to make the day no brighter. The baby too - it might have
been Miss Tox's nose - began to cry. Thereby, as it happened, preventing Mr
Chick from the awkward fulfilment of a very honest purpose he had; which
was, to make much of Florence. For this gentleman, insensible to the
superior claims of a perfect Dombey (perhaps on account of having the honour
to be united to a Dombey himself, and being familiar with excellence),
really liked her, and showed that he liked her, and was about to show it in
his own way now, when Paul cried, and his helpmate stopped him short
'Now Florence, child!' said her aunt, briskly, 'what are you doing,
love? Show yourself to him. Engage his attention, my dear!'
The atmosphere became or might have become colder and colder, when Mr
Dombey stood frigidly watching his little daughter, who, clapping her hands,
and standing On tip-toe before the throne of his son and heir, lured him to
bend down from his high estate, and look at her. Some honest act of
Richards's may have aided the effect, but he did look down, and held his
peace. As his sister hid behind her nurse, he followed her with his eyes;
and when she peeped out with a merry cry to him, he sprang up and crowed
lustily - laughing outright when she ran in upon him; and seeming to fondle
her curls with his tiny hands, while she smothered him with kisses.
Was Mr Dombey pleased to see this? He testified no pleasure by the
relaxation of a nerve; but outward tokens of any kind of feeling were
unusual with him. If any sunbeam stole into the room to light the children
at their play, it never reached his face. He looked on so fixedly and
coldly, that the warm light vanished even from the laughing eyes of little
Florence, when, at last, they happened to meet his.
It was a dull, grey, autumn day indeed, and in a minute's pause and
silence that took place, the leaves fell sorrowfully.
'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, referring to his watch, and assuming his hat
and gloves. 'Take my sister, if you please: my arm today is Miss Tox's. You
had better go first with Master Paul, Richards. Be very careful.'
In Mr Dombey's carriage, Dombey and Son, Miss Tox, Mrs Chick, Richards,
and Florence. In a little carriage following it, Susan Nipper and the owner
Mr Chick. Susan looking out of window, without intermission, as a relief
from the embarrassment of confronting the large face of that gentleman, and
thinking whenever anything rattled that he was putting up in paper an
appropriate pecuniary compliment for herself.
Once upon the road to church, Mr Dombey clapped his hands for the
amusement of his son. At which instance of parental enthusiasm Miss Tox was
enchanted. But exclusive of this incident, the chief difference between the
christening party and a party in a mourning coach consisted in the colours
of the carriage and horses.
Arrived at the church steps, they were received by a portentous
beadle.' Mr Dombey dismounting first to help the ladies out, and standing
near him at the church door, looked like another beadle. A beadle less
gorgeous but more dreadful; the beadle of private life; the beadle of our
business and our bosoms.
Miss Tox's hand trembled as she slipped it through Mr Dombey's arm, and
felt herself escorted up the steps, preceded by a cocked hat and a
Babylonian collar. It seemed for a moment like that other solemn
institution, 'Wilt thou have this man, Lucretia?' 'Yes, I will.'
'Please to bring the child in quick out of the air there,' whispered
the beadle, holding open the inner door of the church.
Little Paul might have asked with Hamlet 'into my grave?' so chill and
earthy was the place. The tall shrouded pulpit and reading desk; the dreary
perspective of empty pews stretching away under the galleries, and empty
benches mounting to the roof and lost in the shadow of the great grim organ;
the dusty matting and cold stone slabs; the grisly free seats' in the
aisles; and the damp corner by the bell-rope, where the black trestles used
for funerals were stowed away, along with some shovels and baskets, and a
coil or two of deadly-looking rope; the strange, unusual, uncomfortable
smell, and the cadaverous light; were all in unison. It was a cold and
dismal scene.
'There's a wedding just on, Sir,' said the beadle, 'but it'll be over
directly, if you'll walk into the westry here.
Before he turned again to lead the way, he gave Mr Dombey a bow and a
half smile of recognition, importing that he (the beadle) remembered to have
had the pleasure of attending on him when he buried his wife, and hoped he
had enjoyed himself since.
The very wedding looked dismal as they passed in front of the altar.
The bride was too old and the bridegroom too young, and a superannuated beau
with one eye and an eyeglass stuck in its blank companion, was giving away
the lady, while the friends were shivering. In the vestry the fire was
smoking; and an over-aged and over-worked and under-paid attorney's clerk,
'making a search,' was running his forefinger down the parchment pages of an
immense register (one of a long series of similar volumes) gorged with
burials. Over the fireplace was a ground-plan of the vaults underneath the
church; and Mr Chick, skimming the literary portion of it aloud, by way of
enlivening the company, read the reference to Mrs Dombey's tomb in full,
before he could stop himself.
After another cold interval, a wheezy little pew-opener afflicted with
an asthma, appropriate to the churchyard, if not to the church, summoned
them to the font - a rigid marble basin which seemed to have been playing a
churchyard game at cup and ball with its matter of fact pedestal, and to
have been just that moment caught on the top of it. Here they waited some
little time while the marriage party enrolled themselves; and meanwhile the
wheezy little pew-opener - partly in consequence of her infirmity, and
partly that the marriage party might not forget her - went about the
building coughing like a grampus.
Presently the clerk (the only cheerful-looking object there, and he was
an undertaker) came up with a jug of warm water, and said something, as he
poured it into the font, about taking the chill off; which millions of
gallons boiling hot could not have done for the occasion. Then the
clergyman, an amiable and mild-looking young curate, but obviously afraid of
the baby, appeared like the principal character in a ghost-story, 'a tall
figure all in white;' at sight of whom Paul rent the air with his cries, and
never left off again till he was taken out black in the face.
Even when that event had happened, to the great relief of everybody, he
was heard under the portico, during the rest of the ceremony, now fainter,
now louder, now hushed, now bursting forth again with an irrepressible sense
of his wrongs. This so distracted the attention of the two ladies, that Mrs
Chick was constantly deploying into the centre aisle, to send out messages
by the pew-opener, while Miss Tox kept her Prayer-book open at the Gunpowder
Plot, and occasionally read responses from that service.
During the whole of these proceedings, Mr Dombey remained as impassive
and gentlemanly as ever, and perhaps assisted in making it so cold, that the
young curate smoked at the mouth as he read. The only time that he unbent
his visage in the least, was when the clergyman, in delivering (very
unaffectedly and simply) the closing exhortation, relative to the future
examination of the child by the sponsors, happened to rest his eye on Mr
Chick; and then Mr Dombey might have been seen to express by a majestic
look, that he would like to catch him at it.
It might have been well for Mr Dombey, if he had thought of his own
dignity a little less; and had thought of the great origin and purpose of
the ceremony in which he took so formal and so stiff a part, a little more.
His arrogance contrasted strangely with its history.
When it was all over, he again gave his arm to Miss Tox, and conducted
her to the vestry, where he informed the clergyman how much pleasure it
would have given him to have solicited the honour of his company at dinner,
but for the unfortunate state of his household affairs. The register signed,
and the fees paid, and the pew-opener (whose cough was very bad again)
remembered, and the beadle gratified, and the sexton (who was accidentally
on the doorsteps, looking with great interest at the weather) not forgotten,
they got into the carriage again, and drove home in the same bleak
fellowship.
There they found Mr Pitt turning up his nose at a cold collation, set
forth in a cold pomp of glass and silver, and looking more like a dead
dinner lying in state than a social refreshment. On their arrival Miss Tox
produced a mug for her godson, and Mr Chick a knife and fork and spoon in a
case. Mr Dombey also produced a bracelet for Miss Tox; and, on the receipt
of this token, Miss Tox was tenderly affected.
'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, 'will you take the bottom of the table, if
you please? What have you got there, Mr John?'
'I have got a cold fillet of veal here, Sir,' replied Mr Chick, rubbing
his numbed hands hard together. 'What have you got there, Sir?'
'This,' returned Mr Dombey, 'is some cold preparation of calf's head, I
think. I see cold fowls - ham - patties - salad - lobster. Miss Tox will do
me the honour of taking some wine? Champagne to Miss Tox.'
There was a toothache in everything. The wine was so bitter cold that
it forced a little scream from Miss Tox, which she had great difficulty in
turning into a 'Hem!' The veal had come from such an airy pantry, that the
first taste of it had struck a sensation as of cold lead to Mr Chick's
extremities. Mr Dombey alone remained unmoved. He might have been hung up
for sale at a Russian fair as a specimen of a frozen gentleman.
The prevailing influence was too much even for his sister. She made no
effort at flattery or small talk, and directed all her efforts to looking as
warm as she could.
'Well, Sir,' said Mr Chick, making a desperate plunge, after a long
silence, and filling a glass of sherry; 'I shall drink this, if you'll allow
me, Sir, to little Paul.'
'Bless him!' murmured Miss Tox, taking a sip of wine.
'Dear little Dombey!' murmured Mrs Chick.
'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, with severe gravity, 'my son would feel and
express himself obliged to you, I have no doubt, if he could appreciate the
favour you have done him. He will prove, in time to come, I trust, equal to
any responsibility that the obliging disposition of his relations and
friends, in private, or the onerous nature of our position, in public, may
impose upon him.'
The tone in which this was said admitting of nothing more, Mr Chick
relapsed into low spirits and silence. Not so Miss Tox, who, having listened
to Mr Dombey with even a more emphatic attention than usual, and with a more
expressive tendency of her head to one side, now leant across the table, and
said to Mrs Chick softly:
'Louisa!'
'My dear,' said Mrs Chick.
'Onerous nature of our position in public may - I have forgotten
the exact term.'
'Expose him to,' said Mrs Chick.
'Pardon me, my dear,' returned Miss Tox, 'I think not. It was more
rounded and flowing. Obliging disposition of relations and friends in
private, or onerous nature of position in public - may - impose upon him!'
'Impose upon him, to be sure,' said Mrs Chick.
Miss Tox struck her delicate hands together lightly, in triumph; and
added, casting up her eyes, 'eloquence indeed!'
Mr Dombey, in the meanwhile, had issued orders for the attendance of
Richards, who now entered curtseying, but without the baby; Paul being
asleep after the fatigues of the morning. Mr Dombey, having delivered a
glass of wine to this vassal, addressed her in the following words: Miss Tox
previously settling her head on one side, and making other little
arrangements for engraving them on her heart.
'During the six months or so, Richards, which have seen you an inmate
of this house, you have done your duty. Desiring to connect some little
service to you with this occasion, I considered how I could best effect that
object, and I also advised with my sister, Mrs - '
'Chick,' interposed the gentleman of that name.
'Oh, hush if you please!' said Miss Tox.
'I was about to say to you, Richards,' resumed Mr Dombey, with an
appalling glance at Mr John, 'that I was further assisted in my decision, by
the recollection of a conversation I held with your husband in this room, on
the occasion of your being hired, when he disclosed to me the melancholy
fact that your family, himself at the head, were sunk and steeped in
ignorance.
Richards quailed under the magnificence of the reproof.
'I am far from being friendly,' pursued Mr Dombey, 'to what is called
by persons of levelling sentiments, general education. But it is necessary
that the inferior classes should continue to be taught to know their
position, and to conduct themselves properly. So far I approve of schools.
Having the power of nominating a child on the foundation of an ancient
establishment, called (from a worshipful company) the Charitable Grinders;
where not only is a wholesome education bestowed upon the scholars, but
where a dress and badge is likewise provided for them; I have (first
communicating, through Mrs Chick, with your family) nominated your eldest
son to an existing vacancy; and he has this day, I am informed, assumed the
habit. The number of her son, I believe,' said Mr Dombey, turning to his
sister and speaking of the child as if he were a hackney-coach, is one
hundred and forty-seven. Louisa, you can tell her.'
'One hundred and forty-seven,' said Mrs Chick 'The dress, Richards, is
a nice, warm, blue baize tailed coat and cap, turned up with orange coloured
binding; red worsted stockings; and very strong leather small-clothes. One
might wear the articles one's self,' said Mrs Chick, with enthusiasm, 'and
be grateful.'
'There, Richards!' said Miss Tox. 'Now, indeed, you may be proud. The
Charitable Grinders!'
'I am sure I am very much obliged, Sir,' returned Richards faintly,
'and take it very kind that you should remember my little ones.' At the same
time a vision of Biler as a Charitable Grinder, with his very small legs
encased in the serviceable clothing described by Mrs Chick, swam before
Richards's eyes, and made them water.
'I am very glad to see you have so much feeling, Richards,' said Miss
Tox.
'It makes one almost hope, it really does,' said Mrs Chick, who prided
herself on taking trustful views of human nature, 'that there may yet be
some faint spark of gratitude and right feeling in the world.'
Richards deferred to these compliments by curtseying and murmuring
her thanks; but finding it quite impossible to recover her spirits from
the disorder into which they had been thrown by the image of her son in his
precocious nether garments, she gradually approached the door and was
heartily relieved to escape by it.
Such temporary indications of a partial thaw that had appeared with
her, vanished with her; and the frost set in again, as cold and hard as
ever. Mr Chick was twice heard to hum a tune at the bottom of the table, but
on both occasions it was a fragment of the Dead March in Saul. The party
seemed to get colder and colder, and to be gradually resolving itself into a
congealed and solid state, like the collation round which it was assembled.
At length Mrs Chick looked at Miss Tox, and Miss Tox returned the look, and
they both rose and said it was really time to go. Mr Dombey receiving this
announcement with perfect equanimity, they took leave of that gentleman, and
presently departed under the protection of Mr Chick; who, when they had
turned their backs upon the house and left its master in his usual solitary
state, put his hands in his pockets, threw himself back in the carriage, and
whistled 'With a hey ho chevy!' all through; conveying into his face as he
did so, an expression of such gloomy and terrible defiance, that Mrs Chick
dared not protest, or in any way molest him.
Richards, though she had little Paul on her lap, could not forget her
own first-born. She felt it was ungrateful; but the influence of the day
fell even on the Charitable Grinders, and she could hardly help regarding
his pewter badge, number one hundred and forty-seven, as, somehow, a part of
its formality and sternness. She spoke, too, in the nursery, of his 'blessed
legs,' and was again troubled by his spectre in uniform.
'I don't know what I wouldn't give,' said Polly, 'to see the poor
little dear before he gets used to 'em.'
'Why, then, I tell you what, Mrs Richards,' retorted Nipper, who had
been admitted to her confidence, 'see him and make your mind easy.'
'Mr Dombey wouldn't like it,' said Polly.
'Oh, wouldn't he, Mrs Richards!' retorted Nipper, 'he'd like it very
much, I think when he was asked.'
'You wouldn't ask him, I suppose, at all?' said Polly.
'No, Mrs Richards, quite contrairy,' returned Susan, 'and them two
inspectors Tox and Chick, not intending to be on duty tomorrow, as I heard
'em say, me and Mid Floy will go along with you tomorrow morning, and
welcome, Mrs Richards, if you like, for we may as well walk there as up and
down a street, and better too.'
Polly rejected the idea pretty stoutly at first; but by little and
little she began to entertain it, as she entertained more and more
distinctly the forbidden pictures of her children, and her own home. At
length, arguing that there could be no great harm in calling for a moment at
the door, she yielded to the Nipper proposition.
The matter being settled thus, little Paul began to cry most piteously,
as if he had a foreboding that no good would come of it.
'What's the matter with the child?' asked Susan.
'He's cold, I think,' said Polly, walking with him to and fro, and
hushing him.
It was a bleak autumnal afternoon indeed; and as she walked, and
hushed, and, glancing through the dreary windows, pressed the little fellow
closer to her breast, the withered leaves came showering down.
Paul's Second Deprivation
Polly was beset by so many misgivings in the morning, that but for the
incessant promptings of her black-eyed companion, she would have abandoned
all thoughts of the expedition, and formally petitioned for leave to see
number one hundred and forty-seven, under the awful shadow of Mr Dombey's
roof. But Susan who was personally disposed in favour of the excursion, and
who (like Tony Lumpkin), if she could bear the disappointments of other
people with tolerable fortitude, could not abide to disappoint herself,
threw so many ingenious doubts in the way of this second thought, and
stimulated the original intention with so many ingenious arguments, that
almost as soon as Mr Dombey's stately back was turned, and that gentleman
was pursuing his daily road towards the City, his unconscious son was on his
way to Staggs's Gardens.
This euphonious locality was situated in a suburb, known by the
inhabitants of Staggs's Gardens by the name of Camberling Town; a
designation which the Strangers' Map of London, as printed (with a view to
pleasant and commodious reference) on pocket handkerchiefs, condenses, with
some show of reason, into Camden Town. Hither the two nurses bent their
steps, accompanied by their charges; Richards carrying Paul, of course, and
Susan leading little Florence by the hand, and giving her such jerks and
pokes from time to time, as she considered it wholesome to administer.
The first shock of a great earthquake had, just at that period, rent
the whole neighbourhood to its centre. Traces of its course were visible on
every side. Houses were knocked down; streets broken through and stopped;
deep pits and trenches dug in the ground; enormous heaps of earth and clay
thrown up; buildings that were undermined and shaking, propped by great
beams of wood. Here, a chaos of carts, overthrown and jumbled together, lay
topsy-turvy at the bottom of a steep unnatural hill; there, confused
treasures of iron soaked and rusted in something that had accidentally
become a pond. Everywhere were bridges that led nowhere; thoroughfares that
were wholly impassable; Babel towers of chimneys, wanting half their height;
temporary wooden houses and enclosures, in the most unlikely situations;
carcases of ragged tenements, and fragments of unfinished walls and arches,
and piles of scaffolding, and wildernesses of bricks, and giant forms of
cranes, and tripods straddling above nothing. There were a hundred thousand
shapes and substances of incompleteness, wildly mingled out of their places,
upside down, burrowing in the earth, aspiring in the air, mouldering in the
water, and unintelligible as any dream. Hot springs and fiery eruptions, the
usual attendants upon earthquakes, lent their contributions of confusion to
the scene. Boiling water hissed and heaved within dilapidated walls; whence,
also, the glare and roar of flames came issuing forth; and mounds of ashes
blocked up rights of way, and wholly changed the law and custom of the
neighbourhood.
In short, the yet unfinished and unopened Railroad was in progress;
and, from the very core of all this dire disorder, trailed smoothly away,
upon its mighty course of civilisation and improvement.
But as yet, the neighbourhood was shy to own the Railroad. One or two
bold speculators had projected streets; and one had built a little, but had
stopped among the mud and ashes to consider farther of it. A bran-new
Tavern, redolent of fresh mortar and size, and fronting nothing at all, had
taken for its sign The Railway Arms; but that might be rash enterprise - and
then it hoped to sell drink to the workmen. So, the Excavators' House of
Call had sprung up from a beer-shop; and the old-established Ham and Beef
Shop had become the Railway Eating House, with a roast leg of pork daily,
through interested motives of a similar immediate and popular description.
Lodging-house keepers were favourable in like manner; and for the like
reasons were not to be trusted. The general belief was very slow. There were
frowzy fields, and cow-houses, and dunghills, and dustheaps, and ditches,
and gardens, and summer-houses, and carpet-beating grounds, at the very door
of the Railway. Little tumuli of oyster shells in the oyster season, and of
lobster shells in the lobster season, and of broken crockery and faded
cabbage leaves in all seasons, encroached upon its high places. Posts, and
rails, and old cautions to trespassers, and backs of mean houses, and
patches of wretched vegetation, stared it out of countenance. Nothing was
the better for it, or thought of being so. If the miserable waste ground
lying near it could have laughed, it would have laughed it to scorn, like
many of the miserable neighbours.
Staggs's Gardens was uncommonly incredulous. It was a little row of
houses, with little squalid patches of ground before them, fenced off with
old doors, barrel staves, scraps of tarpaulin, and dead bushes; with
bottomless tin kettles and exhausted iron fenders, thrust into the gaps.
Here, the Staggs's Gardeners trained scarlet beans, kept fowls and rabbits,
erected rotten summer-houses (one was an old boat), dried clothes, and
smoked pipes. Some were of opinion that Staggs's Gardens derived its name
from a deceased capitalist, one Mr Staggs, who had built it for his
delectation. Others, who had a natural taste for the country, held that it
dated from those rural times when the antlered herd, under the familiar
denomination of Staggses, had resorted to its shady precincts. Be this as it
may, Staggs's Gardens was regarded by its population as a sacred grove not
to be withered by Railroads; and so confident were they generally of its
long outliving any such ridiculous inventions, that the master
chimney-sweeper at the corner, who was understood to take the lead in the
local politics of the Gardens, had publicly declared that on the occasion of
the Railroad opening, if ever it did open, two of his boys should ascend the
flues of his dwelling, with instructions to hail the failure with derisive
cheers from the chimney-pots.
To this unhallowed spot, the very name of which had hitherto been
carefully concealed from Mr Dombey by his sister, was little Paul now borne
by Fate and Richards
'That's my house, Susan,' said Polly, pointing it out.
'Is it, indeed, Mrs Richards?' said Susan, condescendingly.
'And there's my sister Jemima at the door, I do declare' cried Polly,
'with my own sweet precious baby in her arms!'
The sight added such an extensive pair of wings to Polly's impatience,
that she set off down the Gardens at a run, and bouncing on Jemima, changed
babies with her in a twinkling; to the unutterable astonishment of that
young damsel, on whom the heir of the Dombeys seemed to have fallen from the
clouds.
'Why, Polly!' cried Jemima. 'You! what a turn you have given me! who'd
have thought it! come along in Polly! How well you do look to be sure! The
children will go half wild to see you Polly, that they will.'
That they did, if one might judge from the noise they made, and the way
in which they dashed at Polly and dragged her to a low chair in the chimney
corner, where her own honest apple face became immediately the centre of a
bunch of smaller pippins, all laying their rosy cheeks close to it, and all
evidently the growth of the same tree. As to Polly, she was full as noisy
and vehement as the children; and it was not until she was quite out of
breath, and her hair was hanging all about her flushed face, and her new
christening attire was very much dishevelled, that any pause took place in
the confusion. Even then, the smallest Toodle but one remained in her lap,
holding on tight with both arms round her neck; while the smallest Toodle
but two mounted on the back of the chair, and made desperate efforts, with
one leg in the air, to kiss her round the corner.
'Look! there's a pretty little lady come to see you,' said Polly; 'and
see how quiet she is! what a beautiful little lady, ain't she?'
This reference to Florence, who had been standing by the door not
unobservant of what passed, directed the attention of the younger branches
towards her; and had likewise the happy effect of leading to the formal
recognition of Miss Nipper, who was not quite free from a misgiving that she
had been already slighted.
'Oh do come in and sit down a minute, Susan, please,' said Polly. 'This
is my sister Jemima, this is. Jemima, I don't know what I should ever do
with myself, if it wasn't for Susan Nipper; I shouldn't be here now but for
her.'
'Oh do sit down, Miss Nipper, if you please,' quoth Jemima.
Susan took the extreme corner of a chair, with a stately and
ceremonious aspect.
'I never was so glad to see anybody in all my life; now really I never
was, Miss Nipper,' said Jemima.
Susan relaxing, took a little more of the chair, and smiled graciously.
'Do untie your bonnet-strings, and make yourself at home, Miss Nipper,
please,' entreated Jemima. 'I am afraid it's a poorer place than you're used
to; but you'll make allowances, I'm sure.'
The black-eyed was so softened by this deferential behaviour, that she
caught up little Miss Toodle who was running past, and took her to Banbury
Cross immediately.
'But where's my pretty boy?' said Polly. 'My poor fellow? I came all
this way to see him in his new clothes.'
'Ah what a pity!' cried Jemima. 'He'll break his heart, when he hears
his mother has been here. He's at school, Polly.'
'Gone already!'
'Yes. He went for the first time yesterday, for fear he should lose any
learning. But it's half-holiday, Polly: if you could only stop till he comes
home - you and Miss Nipper, leastways,' said Jemima, mindful in good time of
the dignity of the black-eyed.
'And how does he look, Jemima, bless him!' faltered Polly.
'Well, really he don't look so bad as you'd suppose,' returned Jemima.
'Ah!' said Polly, with emotion, 'I knew his legs must be too short.'
His legs is short,' returned Jemima; 'especially behind; but they'll
get longer, Polly, every day.'
It was a slow, prospective kind of consolation; but the cheerfulness
and good nature with which it was administered, gave it a value it did not
intrinsically possess. After a moment's silence, Polly asked, in a more
sprightly manner:
'And where's Father, Jemima dear?' - for by that patriarchal