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and donjon-keep of light humour, to be on the most familiar terms with his
own name.
'Joey B., Sir,'the Major would say, with a flourish of his
walking-stick, 'is worth a dozen of you. If you had a few more of the
Bagstock breed among you, Sir, you'd be none the worse for it. Old Joe, Sir,
needn't look far for a wile even now, if he was on the look-out; but he's
hard-hearted, Sir, is Joe - he's tough, Sir, tough, and de-vilish sly!'
After such a declaration, wheezing sounds would be heard; and the Major's
blue would deepen into purple, while his eyes strained and started
convulsively.
Notwithstanding his very liberal laudation of himself, however, the
Major was selfish. It may be doubted whether there ever was a more entirely
selfish person at heart; or at stomach is perhaps a better expression,
seeing that he was more decidedly endowed with that latter organ than with
the former. He had no idea of being overlooked or slighted by anybody; least
of all, had he the remotest comprehension of being overlooked and slighted
by Miss Tox.
And yet, Miss Tox, as it appeared, forgot him - gradually forgot him.
She began to forget him soon after her discovery of the Toodle family. She
continued to forget him up to the time of the christening. She went on
forgetting him with compound interest after that. Something or somebody had
superseded him as a source of interest.
'Good morning, Ma'am,' said the Major, meeting Miss Tox in Princess's
Place, some weeks after the changes chronicled in the last chapter.
'Good morning, Sir,' said Miss Tox; very coldly.
'Joe Bagstock, Ma'am,' observed the Major, with his usual gallantry,
'has not had the happiness of bowing to you at your window, for a
considerable period. Joe has been hardly used, Ma'am. His sun has been
behind a cloud.'
Miss Tox inclined her head; but very coldly indeed.
'Joe's luminary has been out of town, Ma'am, perhaps,' inquired the
Major.
'I? out of town? oh no, I have not been out of town,' said Miss Tox. 'I
have been much engaged lately. My time is nearly all devoted to some very
intimate friends. I am afraid I have none to spare, even now. Good morning,
Sir!'
As Miss Tox, with her most fascinating step and carriage, disappeared
from Princess's Place, the Major stood looking after her with a bluer face
than ever: muttering and growling some not at all complimentary remarks.
'Why, damme, Sir,' said the Major, rolling his lobster eyes round and
round Princess's Place, and apostrophizing its fragrant air, 'six months
ago, the woman loved the ground Josh Bagstock walked on. What's the meaning
of it?'
The Major decided, after some consideration, that it meant mantraps;
that it meant plotting and snaring; that Miss Tox was digging pitfalls. 'But
you won't catch Joe, Ma'am,' said the Major. 'He's tough, Ma'am, tough, is
J.B. Tough, and de-vilish sly!' over which reflection he chuckled for the
rest of the day.
But still, when that day and many other days were gone and past, it
seemed that Miss Tox took no heed whatever of the Major, and thought nothing
at all about him. She had been wont, once upon a time, to look out at one of
her little dark windows by accident, and blushingly return the Major's
greeting; but now, she never gave the Major a chance, and cared nothing at
all whether he looked over the way or not. Other changes had come to pass
too. The Major, standing in the shade of his own apartment, could make out
that an air of greater smartness had recently come over Miss Tox's house;
that a new cage with gilded wires had been provided for the ancient little
canary bird; that divers ornaments, cut out of coloured card-boards and
paper, seemed to decorate the chimney-piece and tables; that a plant or two
had suddenly sprung up in the windows; that Miss Tox occasionally practised
on the harpsichord, whose garland of sweet peas was always displayed
ostentatiously, crowned with the Copenhagen and Bird Waltzes in a Music Book
of Miss Tox's own copying.
Over and above all this, Miss Tox had long been dressed with uncommon
care and elegance in slight mourning. But this helped the Major out of his
difficulty; and be determined within himself that she had come into a small
legacy, and grown proud.
It was on the very next day after he had eased his mind by arriving at
this decision, that the Major, sitting at his breakfast, saw an apparition
so tremendous and wonderful in Miss Tox's little drawing-room, that he
remained for some time rooted to his chair; then, rushing into the next
room, returned with a double-barrelled opera-glass, through which he
surveyed it intently for some minutes.
'It's a Baby, Sir,' said the Major, shutting up the glass again, 'for
fifty thousand pounds!'
The Major couldn't forget it. He could do nothing but whistle, and
stare to that extent, that his eyes, compared with what they now became, had
been in former times quite cavernous and sunken. Day after day, two, three,
four times a week, this Baby reappeared. The Major continued to stare and
whistle. To all other intents and purposes he was alone in Princess's Place.
Miss Tox had ceased to mind what he did. He might have been black as well as
blue, and it would have been of no consequence to her.
The perseverance with which she walked out of Princess's Place to fetch
this baby and its nurse, and walked back with them, and walked home with
them again, and continually mounted guard over them; and the perseverance
with which she nursed it herself, and fed it, and played with it, and froze
its young blood with airs upon the harpsichord, was extraordinary. At about
this same period too, she was seized with a passion for looking at a certain
bracelet; also with a passion for looking at the moon, of which she would
take long observations from her chamber window. But whatever she looked at;
sun, moon, stars, or bracelet; she looked no more at the Major. And the
Major whistled, and stared, and wondered, and dodged about his room, and
could make nothing of it.
'You'll quite win my brother Paul's heart, and that's the truth, my
dear,' said Mrs Chick, one day.
Miss Tox turned pale.
'He grows more like Paul every day,' said Mrs Chick.
Miss Tox returned no other reply than by taking the little Paul in her
arms, and making his cockade perfectly flat and limp with her caresses.
'His mother, my dear,' said Miss Tox, 'whose acquaintance I was to have
made through you, does he at all resemble her?'
'Not at all,' returned Louisa
'She was - she was pretty, I believe?' faltered Miss Tox.
'Why, poor dear Fanny was interesting,' said Mrs Chick, after some
judicial consideration. 'Certainly interesting. She had not that air of
commanding superiority which one would somehow expect, almost as a matter of
course, to find in my brother's wife; nor had she that strength and vigour
of mind which such a man requires.'
Miss Tox heaved a deep sigh.
'But she was pleasing:' said Mrs Chick: 'extremely so. And she meant! -
oh, dear, how well poor Fanny meant!'
'You Angel!' cried Miss Tox to little Paul. 'You Picture of your own
Papa!'
If the Major could have known how many hopes and ventures, what a
multitude of plans and speculations, rested on that baby head; and could
have seen them hovering, in all their heterogeneous confusion and disorder,
round the puckered cap of the unconscious little Paul; he might have stared
indeed. Then would he have recognised, among the crowd, some few ambitious
motes and beams belonging to Miss Tox; then would he perhaps have understood
the nature of that lady's faltering investment in the Dombey Firm.
If the child himself could have awakened in the night, and seen,
gathered about his cradle-curtains, faint reflections of the dreams that
other people had of him, they might have scared him, with good reason. But
he slumbered on, alike unconscious of the kind intentions of Miss Tox, the
wonder of the Major, the early sorrows of his sister, and the stern visions
of his father; and innocent that any spot of earth contained a Dombey or a
Son.
Paul's Further Progress, Growth and Character
Beneath the watching and attentive eyes of Time - so far another Major
- Paul's slumbers gradually changed. More and more light broke in upon them;
distincter and distincter dreams disturbed them; an accumulating crowd of
objects and impressions swarmed about his rest; and so he passed from
babyhood to childhood, and became a talking, walking, wondering Dombey.
On the downfall and banishment of Richards, the nursery may be said to
have been put into commission: as a Public Department is sometimes, when no
individual Atlas can be found to support it The Commissioners were, of
course, Mrs Chick and Miss Tox: who devoted themselves to their duties with
such astonishing ardour that Major Bagstock had every day some new reminder
of his being forsaken, while Mr Chick, bereft of domestic supervision, cast
himself upon the gay world, dined at clubs and coffee-houses, smelt of smoke
on three different occasions, went to the play by himself, and in short,
loosened (as Mrs Chick once told him) every social bond, and moral
obligation.
Yet, in spite of his early promise, all this vigilance and care could
not make little Paul a thriving boy. Naturally delicate, perhaps, he pined
and wasted after the dismissal of his nurse, and, for a long time, seemed
but to wait his opportunity of gliding through their hands, and seeking his
lost mother. This dangerous ground in his steeple-chase towards manhood
passed, he still found it very rough riding, and was grievously beset by all
the obstacles in his course. Every tooth was a break-neck fence, and every
pimple in the measles a stone wall to him. He was down in every fit of the
hooping-cough, and rolled upon and crushed by a whole field of small
diseases, that came trooping on each other's heels to prevent his getting up
again. Some bird of prey got into his throat instead of the thrush; and the
very chickens turning ferocious - if they have anything to do with that
infant malady to which they lend their name - worried him like tiger-cats.
The chill of Paul's christening had struck home, perhaps to some
sensitive part of his nature, which could not recover itself in the cold
shade of his father; but he was an unfortunate child from that day. Mrs
Wickam often said she never see a dear so put upon.
Mrs Wickam was a waiter's wife - which would seem equivalent to being
any other man's widow - whose application for an engagement in Mr Dombey's
service had been favourably considered, on account of the apparent
impossibility of her having any followers, or anyone to follow; and who,
from within a day or two of Paul's sharp weaning, had been engaged as his
nurse. Mrs Wickam was a meek woman, of a fair complexion, with her eyebrows
always elevated, and her head always drooping; who was always ready to pity
herself, or to be pitied, or to pity anybody else; and who had a surprising
natural gift of viewing all subjects in an utterly forlorn and pitiable
light, and bringing dreadful precedents to bear upon them, and deriving the
greatest consolation from the exercise of that talent.
It is hardly necessary to observe, that no touch of this quality ever
reached the magnificent knowledge of Mr Dombey. It would have been
remarkable, indeed, if any had; when no one in the house - not even Mrs
Chick or Miss Tox - dared ever whisper to him that there had, on any one
occasion, been the least reason for uneasiness in reference to little Paul.
He had settled, within himself, that the child must necessarily pass through
a certain routine of minor maladies, and that the sooner he did so the
better. If he could have bought him off, or provided a substitute, as in the
case of an unlucky drawing for the militia, he would have been glad to do
so, on liberal terms. But as this was not feasible, he merely wondered, in
his haughty-manner, now and then, what Nature meant by it; and comforted
himself with the reflection that there was another milestone passed upon the
road, and that the great end of the journey lay so much the nearer. For the
feeling uppermost in his mind, now and constantly intensifying, and
increasing in it as Paul grew older, was impatience. Impatience for the time
to come, when his visions of their united consequence and grandeur would be
triumphantly realized.
Some philosophers tell us that selfishness is at the root of our best
loves and affections.' Mr Dombey's young child was, from the beginning, so
distinctly important to him as a part of his own greatness, or (which is the
same thing) of the greatness of Dombey and Son, that there is no doubt his
parental affection might have been easily traced, like many a goodly
superstructure of fair fame, to a very low foundation. But he loved his son
with all the love he had. If there were a warm place in his frosty heart,
his son occupied it; if its very hard surface could receive the impression
of any image, the image of that son was there; though not so much as an
infant, or as a boy, but as a grown man - the 'Son' of the Firm. Therefore
he was impatient to advance into the future, and to hurry over the
intervening passages of his history. Therefore he had little or no anxiety'
about them, in spite of his love; feeling as if the boy had a charmed life,
and must become the man with whom he held such constant communication in his
thoughts, and for whom he planned and projected, as for an existing reality,
every day.
Thus Paul grew to be nearly five years old. He was a pretty little
fellow; though there was something wan and wistful in his small face, that
gave occasion to many significant shakes of Mrs Wickam's head, and many
long-drawn inspirations of Mrs Wickam's breath. His temper gave abundant
promise of being imperious in after-life; and he had as hopeful an
apprehension of his own importance, and the rightful subservience of all
other things and persons to it, as heart could desire. He was childish and
sportive enough at times, and not of a sullen disposition; but he had a
strange, old-fashioned, thoughtful way, at other times, of sitting brooding
in his miniature arm-chair, when he looked (and talked) like one of those
terrible little Beings in the Fairy tales, who, at a hundred and fifty or
two hundred years of age, fantastically represent the children for whom they
have been substituted. He would frequently be stricken with this precocious
mood upstairs in the nursery; and would sometimes lapse into it suddenly,
exclaiming that he was tired: even while playing with Florence, or driving
Miss Tox in single harness. But at no time did he fall into it so surely, as
when, his little chair being carried down into his father's room, he sat
there with him after dinner, by the fire. They were the strangest pair at
such a time that ever firelight shone upon. Mr Dombey so erect and solemn,
gazing at the blare; his little image, with an old, old face, peering into
the red perspective with the fixed and rapt attention of a sage. Mr Dombey
entertaining complicated worldly schemes and plans; the little image
entertaining Heaven knows what wild fancies, half-formed thoughts, and
wandering speculations. Mr Dombey stiff with starch and arrogance; the
little image by inheritance, and in unconscious imitation. The two so very
much alike, and yet so monstrously contrasted.
On one of these occasions, when they had both been perfectly quiet for
a long time, and Mr Dombey only knew that the child was awake by
occasionally glancing at his eye, where the bright fire was sparkling like a
jewel, little Paul broke silence thus:
'Papa! what's money?'
The abrupt question had such immediate reference to the subject of Mr
Dombey's thoughts, that Mr Dombey was quite disconcerted.
'What is money, Paul?' he answered. 'Money?'
'Yes,' said the child, laying his hands upon the elbows of his little
chair, and turning the old face up towards Mr Dombey's; 'what is money?'
Mr Dombey was in a difficulty. He would have liked to give him some
explanation involving the terms circulating-medium, currency, depreciation
of currency', paper, bullion, rates of exchange, value of precious metals in
the market, and so forth; but looking down at the little chair, and seeing
what a long way down it was, he answered: 'Gold, and silver, and copper.
Guineas, shillings, half-pence. You know what they are?'
'Oh yes, I know what they are,' said Paul. 'I don't mean that, Papa. I
mean what's money after all?'
Heaven and Earth, how old his face was as he turned it up again towards
his father's!
'What is money after all!' said Mr Dombey, backing his chair a little,
that he might the better gaze in sheer amazement at the presumptuous atom
that propounded such an inquiry.
'I mean, Papa, what can it do?' returned Paul, folding his arms (they
were hardly long enough to fold), and looking at the fire, and up at him,
and at the fire, and up at him again.
Mr Dombey drew his chair back to its former place, and patted him on
the head. 'You'll know better by-and-by, my man,' he said. 'Money, Paul, can
do anything.' He took hold of the little hand, and beat it softly against
one of his own, as he said so.
But Paul got his hand free as soon as he could; and rubbing it gently
to and fro on the elbow of his chair, as if his wit were in the palm, and he
were sharpening it - and looking at the fire again, as though the fire had
been his adviser and prompter - repeated, after a short pause:
'Anything, Papa?'
'Yes. Anything - almost,' said Mr Dombey.
'Anything means everything, don't it, Papa?' asked his son: not
observing, or possibly not understanding, the qualification.
'It includes it: yes,' said Mr Dombey.
'Why didn't money save me my Mama?' returned the child. 'It isn't
cruel, is it?'
'Cruel!' said Mr Dombey, settling his neckcloth, and seeming to resent
the idea. 'No. A good thing can't be cruel.'
'If it's a good thing, and can do anything,' said the little fellow,
thoughtfully, as he looked back at the fire, 'I wonder why it didn't save me
my Mama.'
He didn't ask the question of his father this time. Perhaps he had
seen, with a child's quickness, that it had already made his father
uncomfortable. But he repeated the thought aloud, as if it were quite an old
one to him, and had troubled him very much; and sat with his chin resting on
his hand, still cogitating and looking for an explanation in the fire.
Mr Dombey having recovered from his surprise, not to say his alarm (for
it was the very first occasion on which the child had ever broached the
subject of his mother to him, though he had had him sitting by his side, in
this same manner, evening after evening), expounded to him how that money,
though a very potent spirit, never to be disparaged on any account whatever,
could not keep people alive whose time was come to die; and how that we must
all die, unfortunately, even in the City, though we were never so rich. But
how that money caused us to be honoured, feared, respected, courted, and
admired, and made us powerful and glorious in the eyes of all men; and how
that it could, very often, even keep off death, for a long time together.
How, for example, it had secured to his Mama the services of Mr Pilkins, by
which be, Paul, had often profited himself; likewise of the great Doctor
Parker Peps, whom he had never known. And how it could do all, that could be
done. This, with more to the same purpose, Mr Dombey instilled into the mind
of his son, who listened attentively, and seemed to understand the greater
part of what was said to him.
'It can't make me strong and quite well, either, Papa; can it?' asked
Paul, after a short silence; rubbing his tiny hands.
'Why, you are strong and quite well,' returned Mr Dombey. 'Are you
not?'
Oh! the age of the face that was turned up again, with an expression,
half of melancholy, half of slyness, on it!
'You are as strong and well as such little people usually are? Eh?'
said Mr Dombey.
'Florence is older than I am, but I'm not as strong and well as
Florence, 'I know,' returned the child; 'and I believe that when Florence
was as little as me, she could play a great deal longer at a time without
tiring herself. I am so tired sometimes,' said little Paul, warming his
hands, and looking in between the bars of the grate, as if some ghostly
puppet-show were performing there, 'and my bones ache so (Wickam says it's
my bones), that I don't know what to do.'
'Ay! But that's at night,' said Mr Dombey, drawing his own chair closer
to his son's, and laying his hand gently on his back; 'little people should
be tired at night, for then they sleep well.'
'Oh, it's not at night, Papa,' returned the child, 'it's in the day;
and I lie down in Florence's lap, and she sings to me. At night I dream
about such cu-ri-ous things!'
And he went on, warming his hands again, and thinking about them, like
an old man or a young goblin.
Mr Dombey was so astonished, and so uncomfortable, and so perfectly at
a loss how to pursue the conversation, that he could only sit looking at his
son by the light of the fire, with his hand resting on his back, as if it
were detained there by some magnetic attraction. Once he advanced his other
hand, and turned the contemplative face towards his own for a moment. But it
sought the fire again as soon as he released it; and remained, addressed
towards the flickering blaze, until the nurse appeared, to summon him to
bed.
'I want Florence to come for me,' said Paul.
'Won't you come with your poor Nurse Wickam, Master Paul?' inquired
that attendant, with great pathos.
'No, I won't,' replied Paul, composing himself in his arm-chair again,
like the master of the house.
Invoking a blessing upon his innocence, Mrs Wickam withdrew, and
presently Florence appeared in her stead. The child immediately started up
with sudden readiness and animation, and raised towards his father in
bidding him good-night, a countenance so much brighter, so much younger, and
so much more child-like altogether, that Mr Dombey, while he felt greatly
reassured by the change, was quite amazed at it.
After they had left the room together, he thought he heard a soft voice
singing; and remembering that Paul had said his sister sung to him, he had
the curiosity to open the door and listen, and look after them. She was
toiling up the great, wide, vacant staircase, with him in her arms; his head
was lying on her shoulder, one of his arms thrown negligently round her
neck. So they went, toiling up; she singing all the way, and Paul sometimes
crooning out a feeble accompaniment. Mr Dombey looked after them until they
reached the top of the staircase - not without halting to rest by the way -
and passed out of his sight; and then he still stood gazing upwards, until
the dull rays of the moon, glimmering in a melancholy manner through the dim
skylight, sent him back to his room.
Mrs Chick and Miss Tox were convoked in council at dinner next day; and
when the cloth was removed, Mr Dombey opened the proceedings by requiring to
be informed, without any gloss or reservation, whether there was anything
the matter with Paul, and what Mr Pilkins said about him.
'For the child is hardly,' said Mr Dombey, 'as stout as I could wish.'
'My dear Paul,' returned Mrs Chick, 'with your usual happy
discrimination, which I am weak enough to envy you, every time I am in your
company; and so I think is Miss Tox
'Oh my dear!' said Miss Tox, softly, 'how could it be otherwise?
Presumptuous as it is to aspire to such a level; still, if the bird of night
may - but I'll not trouble Mr Dombey with the sentiment. It merely relates
to the Bulbul.'
Mr Dombey bent his head in stately recognition of the Bulbuls as an
old-established body.
'With your usual happy discrimination, my dear Paul,' resumed Mrs
Chick, 'you have hit the point at once. Our darling is altogether as stout
as we could wish. The fact is, that his mind is too much for him. His soul
is a great deal too large for his frame. I am sure the way in which that
dear child talks!'said Mrs Chick, shaking her head; 'no one would believe.
His expressions, Lucretia, only yesterday upon the subject of Funerals!
'I am afraid,' said Mr Dombey, interrupting her testily, 'that some of
those persons upstairs suggest improper subjects to the child. He was
speaking to me last night about his - about his Bones,' said Mr Dombey,
laying an irritated stress upon the word. 'What on earth has anybody to do
with the - with the - Bones of my son? He is not a living skeleton, I
suppose.
'Very far from it,' said Mrs Chick, with unspeakable expression.
'I hope so,' returned her brother. 'Funerals again! who talks to the
child of funerals? We are not undertakers, or mutes, or grave-diggers, I
believe.'
'Very far from it,' interposed Mrs Chick, with the same profound
expression as before.
'Then who puts such things into his head?' said Mr Dombey. 'Really I
was quite dismayed and shocked last night. Who puts such things into his
head, Louisa?'
'My dear Paul,' said Mrs Chick, after a moment's silence, 'it is of no
use inquiring. I do not think, I will tell you candidly that Wickam is a
person of very cheerful spirit, or what one would call a - '
'A daughter of Momus,' Miss Tox softly suggested.
'Exactly so,' said Mrs Chick; 'but she is exceedingly attentive and
useful, and not at all presumptuous; indeed I never saw a more biddable
woman. I would say that for her, if I was put upon my trial before a Court
of Justice.'
'Well! you are not put upon your trial before a Court of Justice, at
present, Louisa,' returned Mr Dombey, chafing,' and therefore it don't
matter.
'My dear Paul,' said Mrs Chick, in a warning voice, 'I must be spoken
to kindly, or there is an end of me,' at the same time a premonitory redness
developed itself in Mrs Chick's eyelids which was an invariable sign of
rain, unless the weather changed directly.
'I was inquiring, Louisa,' observed Mr Dombey, in an altered voice, and
after a decent interval, 'about Paul's health and actual state.
'If the dear child,' said Mrs Chick, in the tone of one who was summing
up what had been previously quite agreed upon, instead of saying it all for
the first time, 'is a little weakened by that last attack, and is not in
quite such vigorous health as we could wish; and if he has some temporary
weakness in his system, and does occasionally seem about to lose, for the
moment, the use of his - '
Mrs Chick was afraid to say limbs, after Mr Dombey's recent objection
to bones, and therefore waited for a suggestion from Miss Tox, who, true to
her office, hazarded 'members.'
'Members!' repeated Mr Dombey.
'I think the medical gentleman mentioned legs this morning, my dear
Louisa, did he not?' said Miss Tox.
'Why, of course he did, my love,' retorted Mrs Chick, mildly
reproachful. 'How can you ask me? You heard him. I say, if our dear Paul
should lose, for the moment, the use of his legs, these are casualties
common to many children at his time of life, and not to be prevented by any
care or caution. The sooner you understand that, Paul, and admit that, the
better. If you have any doubt as to the amount of care, and caution, and
affection, and self-sacrifice, that has been bestowed upon little Paul, I
should wish to refer the question to your medical attendant, or to any of
your dependants in this house. Call Towlinson,' said Mrs Chick, 'I believe
he has no prejudice in our favour; quite the contrary. I should wish to hear
what accusation Towlinson can make!'
'Surely you must know, Louisa,' observed Mr Dombey, 'that I don't
question your natural devotion to, and regard for, the future head of my
house.'
'I am glad to hear it, Paul,' said Mrs Chick; 'but really you are very
odd, and sometimes talk very strangely, though without meaning it, I know.
If your dear boy's soul is too much for his body, Paul, you should remember
whose fault that is - who he takes after, I mean - and make the best of it.
He's as like his Papa as he can be. People have noticed it in the streets.
The very beadle, I am informed, observed it, so long ago as at his
christening. He's a very respectable man, with children of his own. He ought
to know.'
'Mr Pilkins saw Paul this morning, I believe?' said Mr Dombey.
'Yes, he did,' returned his sister. 'Miss Tox and myself were present.
Miss Tox and myself are always present. We make a point of it. Mr Pilkins
has seen him for some days past, and a very clever man I believe him to be.
He says it is nothing to speak of; which I can confirm, if that is any
consolation; but he recommended, to-day, sea-air. Very wisely, Paul, I feel
convinced.'
'Sea-air,' repeated Mr Dombey, looking at his sister.
'There is nothing to be made uneasy by, in that,'said Mrs Chick. 'My
George and Frederick were both ordered sea-air, when they were about his
age; and I have been ordered it myself a great many times. I quite agree
with you, Paul, that perhaps topics may be incautiously mentioned upstairs
before him, which it would be as well for his little mind not to expatiate
upon; but I really don't see how that is to be helped, in the case of a
child of his quickness. If he were a common child, there would be nothing in
it. I must say I think, with Miss Tox, that a short absence from this house,
the air of Brighton, and the bodily and mental training of so judicious a
person as Mrs Pipchin for instance - '
'Who is Mrs Pipchin, Louisa?' asked Mr Dombey; aghast at this familiar
introduction of a name he had never heard before.
'Mrs Pipchin, my dear Paul,' returned his sister, 'is an elderly lady -
Miss Tox knows her whole history - who has for some time devoted all the
energies of her mind, with the greatest success, to the study and treatment
of infancy, and who has been extremely well connected. Her husband broke his
heart in - how did you say her husband broke his heart, my dear? I forget
the precise circumstances.
'In pumping water out of the Peruvian Mines,' replied Miss Tox.
'Not being a Pumper himself, of course,' said Mrs Chick, glancing at
her brother; and it really did seem necessary to offer the explanation, for
Miss Tox had spoken of him as if he had died at the handle; 'but having
invested money in the speculation, which failed. I believe that Mrs
Pipchin's management of children is quite astonishing. I have heard it
commended in private circles ever since I was - dear me - how high!' Mrs
Chick's eye wandered about the bookcase near the bust of Mr Pitt, which was
about ten feet from the ground.
'Perhaps I should say of Mrs Pipchin, my dear Sir,' observed Miss Tox,
with an ingenuous blush, 'having been so pointedly referred to, that the
encomium which has been passed upon her by your sweet sister is well
merited. Many ladies and gentleman, now grown up to be interesting members
of society, have been indebted to her care. The humble individual who
addresses you was once under her charge. I believe juvenile nobility itself
is no stranger to her establishment.'
'Do I understand that this respectable matron keeps an establishment,
Miss Tox?' the Mr Dombey, condescendingly.
'Why, I really don't know,' rejoined that lady, 'whether I am justified
in calling it so. It is not a Preparatory School by any means. Should I
express my meaning,' said Miss Tox, with peculiar sweetness,'if I designated
it an infantine Boarding-House of a very select description?'
'On an exceedingly limited and particular scale,' suggested Mrs Chick,
with a glance at her brother.
'Oh! Exclusion itself!' said Miss Tox.
There was something in this. Mrs Pipchin's husband having broken his
heart of the Peruvian mines was good. It had a rich sound. Besides, Mr
Dombey was in a state almost amounting to consternation at the idea of Paul
remaining where he was one hour after his removal had been recommended by
the medical practitioner. It was a stoppage and delay upon the road the
child must traverse, slowly at the best, before the goal was reached. Their
recommendation of Mrs Pipchin had great weight with him; for he knew that
they were jealous of any interference with their charge, and he never for a
moment took it into account that they might be solicitous to divide a
responsibility, of which he had, as shown just now, his own established
views. Broke his heart of the Peruvian mines, mused Mr Dombey. Well! a very
respectable way of doing It.
'Supposing we should decide, on to-morrow's inquiries, to send Paul
down to Brighton to this lady, who would go with him?' inquired Mr Dombey,
after some reflection.
'I don't think you could send the child anywhere at present without
Florence, my dear Paul,' returned his sister, hesitating. 'It's quite an
infatuation with him. He's very young, you know, and has his fancies.'
Mr Dombey turned his head away, and going slowly to the bookcase, and
unlocking it, brought back a book to read.
'Anybody else, Louisa?' he said, without looking up, and turning over
the leaves.
'Wickam, of course. Wickam would be quite sufficient, I should say,'
returned his sister. 'Paul being in such hands as Mrs Pipchin's, you could
hardly send anybody who would be a further check upon her. You would go down
yourself once a week at least, of course.'
'Of course,' said Mr Dombey; and sat looking at one page for an hour
afterwards, without reading one word.
This celebrated Mrs Pipchin was a marvellous ill-favoured,
ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping figure, with a mottled face, like
bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard grey eye, that looked as if it might
have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury. Forty years
at least had elapsed since the Peruvian mines had been the death of Mr
Pipchin; but his relict still wore black bombazeen, of such a lustreless,
deep, dead, sombre shade, that gas itself couldn't light her up after dark,
and her presence was a quencher to any number of candles. She was generally
spoken of as 'a great manager' of children; and the secret of her management
was, to give them everything that they didn't like, and nothing that they
did - which was found to sweeten their dispositions very much. She was such
a bitter old lady, that one was tempted to believe there had been some
mistake in the application of the Peruvian machinery, and that all her
waters of gladness and milk of human kindness, had been pumped out dry,
instead of the mines.
The Castle of this ogress and child-queller was in a steep by-street at
Brighton; where the soil was more than usually chalky, flinty, and sterile,
and the houses were more than usually brittle and thin; where the small
front-gardens had the unaccountable property of producing nothing but
marigolds, whatever was sown in them; and where snails were constantly
discovered holding on to the street doors, and other public places they were
not expected to ornament, with the tenacity of cupping-glasses. In the
winter time the air couldn't be got out of the Castle, and in the summer
time it couldn't be got in. There was such a continual reverberation of wind
in it, that it sounded like a great shell, which the inhabitants were
obliged to hold to their ears night and day, whether they liked it or no. It
was not, naturally, a fresh-smelling house; and in the window of the front
parlour, which was never opened, Mrs Pipchin kept a collection of plants in
pots, which imparted an earthy flavour of their own to the establishment.
However choice examples of their kind, too, these plants were of a kind
peculiarly adapted to the embowerment of Mrs Pipchin. There were
half-a-dozen specimens of the cactus, writhing round bits of lath, like
hairy serpents; another specimen shooting out broad claws, like a green
lobster; several creeping vegetables, possessed of sticky and adhesive
leaves; and one uncomfortable flower-pot hanging to the ceiling, which
appeared to have boiled over, and tickling people underneath with its long
green ends, reminded them of spiders - in which Mrs Pipchin's dwelling was
uncommonly prolific, though perhaps it challenged competition still more
proudly, in the season, in point of earwigs.
Mrs Pipchin's scale of charges being high, however, to all who could
afford to pay, and Mrs Pipchin very seldom sweetening the equable acidity of
her nature in favour of anybody, she was held to be an old 'lady of
remarkable firmness, who was quite scientific in her knowledge of the
childish character.' On this reputation, and on the broken heart of Mr
Pipchin, she had contrived, taking one year with another, to eke out a
tolerable sufficient living since her husband's demise. Within three days
after Mrs Chick's first allusion to her, this excellent old lady had the
satisfaction of anticipating a handsome addition to her current receipts,
from the pocket of Mr Dombey; and of receiving Florence and her little
brother Paul, as inmates of the Castle.
Mrs Chick and Miss Tox, who had brought them down on the previous night
(which they all passed at an Hotel), had just driven away from the door, on
their journey home again; and Mrs Pipchin, with her back to the fire, stood,
reviewing the new-comers, like an old soldier. Mrs Pipchin's middle-aged
niece, her good-natured and devoted slave, but possessing a gaunt and
iron-bound aspect, and much afflicted with boils on her nose, was divesting
Master Bitherstone of the clean collar he had worn on parade. Miss Pankey,
the only other little boarder at present, had that moment been walked off to
the Castle Dungeon (an empty apartment at the back, devoted to correctional
purposes), for having sniffed thrice, in the presence of visitors.
'Well, Sir,' said Mrs Pipchin to Paul, 'how do you think you shall like
me?'
'I don't think I shall like you at all,' replied Paul. 'I want to go
away. This isn't my house.'
'No. It's mine,' retorted Mrs Pipchin.
'It's a very nasty one,' said Paul.
'There's a worse place in it than this though,' said Mrs Pipchin,
'where we shut up our bad boys.'
'Has he ever been in it?' asked Paul: pointing out Master Bitherstone.
Mrs Pipchin nodded assent; and Paul had enough to do, for the rest of
that day, in surveying Master Bitherstone from head to foot, and watching
all the workings of his countenance, with the interest attaching to a boy of
mysterious and terrible experiences.
At one o'clock there was a dinner, chiefly of the farinaceous and
vegetable kind, when Miss Pankey (a mild little blue-eyed morsel of a child,
who was shampoo'd every morning, and seemed in danger of being rubbed away,
altogether) was led in from captivity by the ogress herself, and instructed
that nobody who sniffed before visitors ever went to Heaven. When this great
truth had been thoroughly impressed upon her, she was regaled with rice; and
subsequently repeated the form of grace established in the Castle, in which
there was a special clause, thanking Mrs Pipchin for a good dinner. Mrs
Pipchin's niece, Berinthia, took cold pork. Mrs Pipchin, whose constitution
required warm nourishment, made a special repast of mutton-chops, which were
brought in hot and hot, between two plates, and smelt very nice.
As it rained after dinner, and they couldn't go out walking on the
beach, and Mrs Pipchin's constitution required rest after chops, they went
away with Berry (otherwise Berinthia) to the Dungeon; an empty room looking
out upon a chalk wall and a water-butt, and made ghastly by a ragged
fireplace without any stove in it. Enlivened by company, however, this was
the best place after all; for Berry played with them there, and seemed to
enjoy a game at romps as much as they did; until Mrs Pipchin knocking
angrily at the wall, like the Cock Lane Ghost' revived, they left off, and
Berry told them stories in a whisper until twilight.
For tea there was plenty of milk and water, and bread and butter, with
a little black tea-pot for Mrs Pipchin and Berry, and buttered toast
unlimited for Mrs Pipchin, which was brought in, hot and hot, like the
chops. Though Mrs Pipchin got very greasy, outside, over this dish, it
didn't seem to lubricate her internally, at all; for she was as fierce as
ever, and the hard grey eye knew no softening.
After tea, Berry brought out a little work-box, with the Royal Pavilion
on the lid, and fell to working busily; while Mrs Pipchin, having put on her
spectacles and opened a great volume bound in green baize, began to nod. And
whenever Mrs Pipchin caught herself falling forward into the fire, and woke
up, she filliped Master Bitherstone on the nose for nodding too.
At last it was the children's bedtime, and after prayers they went to
bed. As little Miss Pankey was afraid of sleeping alone in the dark, Mrs
Pipchin always made a point of driving her upstairs herself, like a sheep;
and it was cheerful to hear Miss Pankey moaning long afterwards, in the
least eligible chamber, and Mrs Pipchin now and then going in to shake her.
At about half-past nine o'clock the odour of a warm sweet-bread (Mrs
Pipchin's constitution wouldn't go to sleep without sweet-bread) diversified
the prevailing fragrance of the house, which Mrs Wickam said was 'a smell of
building;' and slumber fell upon the Castle shortly after.
The breakfast next morning was like the tea over night, except that Mrs
Pipchin took her roll instead of toast, and seemed a little more irate when
it was over. Master Bitherstone read aloud to the rest a pedigree from
Genesis judiciously selected by Mrs Pipchin), getting over the names with
the ease and clearness of a person tumbling up the treadmill. That done,
Miss Pankey was borne away to be shampoo'd; and Master Bitherstone to have
something else done to him with salt water, from which he always returned
very blue and dejected. Paul and Florence went out in the meantime on the
beach with Wickam - who was constantly in tears - and at about noon Mrs
Pipchin presided over some Early Readings. It being a part of Mrs Pipchin's
system not to encourage a child's mind to develop and expand itself like a
young flower, but to open it by force like an oyster, the moral of these
lessons was usually of a violent and stunning character: the hero - a
naughty boy - seldom, in the mildest catastrophe, being finished off
anything less than a lion, or a bear.
Such was life at Mrs Pipchin's. On Saturday Mr Dombey came down; and
Florence and Paul would go to his Hotel, and have tea They passed the whole
of Sunday with him, and generally rode out before dinner; and on these
occasions Mr Dombey seemed to grow, like Falstaff's assailants, and instead
of being one man in buckram, to become a dozen. Sunday evening was the most
melancholy evening in the week; for Mrs Pipchin always made a point of being
particularly cross on Sunday nights. Miss Pankey was generally brought back
from an aunt's at Rottingdean, in deep distress; and Master Bitherstone,
whose relatives were all in India, and who was required to sit, between the
services, in an erect position with his head against the parlour wall,
neither moving hand nor foot, suffered so acutely in his young spirits that
he once asked Florence, on a Sunday night, if she could give him any idea of
the way back to Bengal.
But it was generally said that Mrs Pipchin was a woman of system with
children; and no doubt she was. Certainly the wild ones went home tame
enough, after sojourning for a few months beneath her hospitable roof. It
was generally said, too, that it was highly creditable of Mrs Pipchin to
have devoted herself to this way of life, and to have made such a sacrifice
of her feelings, and such a resolute stand against her troubles, when Mr
Pipchin broke his heart in the Peruvian mines.
At this exemplary old lady, Paul would sit staring in his little
arm-chair by the fire, for any length of time. He never seemed to know what
weariness was, when he was looking fixedly at Mrs Pipchin. He was not fond
of her; he was not afraid of her; but in those old, old moods of his, she
seemed to have a grotesque attraction for him. There he would sit, looking
own name.
'Joey B., Sir,'the Major would say, with a flourish of his
walking-stick, 'is worth a dozen of you. If you had a few more of the
Bagstock breed among you, Sir, you'd be none the worse for it. Old Joe, Sir,
needn't look far for a wile even now, if he was on the look-out; but he's
hard-hearted, Sir, is Joe - he's tough, Sir, tough, and de-vilish sly!'
After such a declaration, wheezing sounds would be heard; and the Major's
blue would deepen into purple, while his eyes strained and started
convulsively.
Notwithstanding his very liberal laudation of himself, however, the
Major was selfish. It may be doubted whether there ever was a more entirely
selfish person at heart; or at stomach is perhaps a better expression,
seeing that he was more decidedly endowed with that latter organ than with
the former. He had no idea of being overlooked or slighted by anybody; least
of all, had he the remotest comprehension of being overlooked and slighted
by Miss Tox.
And yet, Miss Tox, as it appeared, forgot him - gradually forgot him.
She began to forget him soon after her discovery of the Toodle family. She
continued to forget him up to the time of the christening. She went on
forgetting him with compound interest after that. Something or somebody had
superseded him as a source of interest.
'Good morning, Ma'am,' said the Major, meeting Miss Tox in Princess's
Place, some weeks after the changes chronicled in the last chapter.
'Good morning, Sir,' said Miss Tox; very coldly.
'Joe Bagstock, Ma'am,' observed the Major, with his usual gallantry,
'has not had the happiness of bowing to you at your window, for a
considerable period. Joe has been hardly used, Ma'am. His sun has been
behind a cloud.'
Miss Tox inclined her head; but very coldly indeed.
'Joe's luminary has been out of town, Ma'am, perhaps,' inquired the
Major.
'I? out of town? oh no, I have not been out of town,' said Miss Tox. 'I
have been much engaged lately. My time is nearly all devoted to some very
intimate friends. I am afraid I have none to spare, even now. Good morning,
Sir!'
As Miss Tox, with her most fascinating step and carriage, disappeared
from Princess's Place, the Major stood looking after her with a bluer face
than ever: muttering and growling some not at all complimentary remarks.
'Why, damme, Sir,' said the Major, rolling his lobster eyes round and
round Princess's Place, and apostrophizing its fragrant air, 'six months
ago, the woman loved the ground Josh Bagstock walked on. What's the meaning
of it?'
The Major decided, after some consideration, that it meant mantraps;
that it meant plotting and snaring; that Miss Tox was digging pitfalls. 'But
you won't catch Joe, Ma'am,' said the Major. 'He's tough, Ma'am, tough, is
J.B. Tough, and de-vilish sly!' over which reflection he chuckled for the
rest of the day.
But still, when that day and many other days were gone and past, it
seemed that Miss Tox took no heed whatever of the Major, and thought nothing
at all about him. She had been wont, once upon a time, to look out at one of
her little dark windows by accident, and blushingly return the Major's
greeting; but now, she never gave the Major a chance, and cared nothing at
all whether he looked over the way or not. Other changes had come to pass
too. The Major, standing in the shade of his own apartment, could make out
that an air of greater smartness had recently come over Miss Tox's house;
that a new cage with gilded wires had been provided for the ancient little
canary bird; that divers ornaments, cut out of coloured card-boards and
paper, seemed to decorate the chimney-piece and tables; that a plant or two
had suddenly sprung up in the windows; that Miss Tox occasionally practised
on the harpsichord, whose garland of sweet peas was always displayed
ostentatiously, crowned with the Copenhagen and Bird Waltzes in a Music Book
of Miss Tox's own copying.
Over and above all this, Miss Tox had long been dressed with uncommon
care and elegance in slight mourning. But this helped the Major out of his
difficulty; and be determined within himself that she had come into a small
legacy, and grown proud.
It was on the very next day after he had eased his mind by arriving at
this decision, that the Major, sitting at his breakfast, saw an apparition
so tremendous and wonderful in Miss Tox's little drawing-room, that he
remained for some time rooted to his chair; then, rushing into the next
room, returned with a double-barrelled opera-glass, through which he
surveyed it intently for some minutes.
'It's a Baby, Sir,' said the Major, shutting up the glass again, 'for
fifty thousand pounds!'
The Major couldn't forget it. He could do nothing but whistle, and
stare to that extent, that his eyes, compared with what they now became, had
been in former times quite cavernous and sunken. Day after day, two, three,
four times a week, this Baby reappeared. The Major continued to stare and
whistle. To all other intents and purposes he was alone in Princess's Place.
Miss Tox had ceased to mind what he did. He might have been black as well as
blue, and it would have been of no consequence to her.
The perseverance with which she walked out of Princess's Place to fetch
this baby and its nurse, and walked back with them, and walked home with
them again, and continually mounted guard over them; and the perseverance
with which she nursed it herself, and fed it, and played with it, and froze
its young blood with airs upon the harpsichord, was extraordinary. At about
this same period too, she was seized with a passion for looking at a certain
bracelet; also with a passion for looking at the moon, of which she would
take long observations from her chamber window. But whatever she looked at;
sun, moon, stars, or bracelet; she looked no more at the Major. And the
Major whistled, and stared, and wondered, and dodged about his room, and
could make nothing of it.
'You'll quite win my brother Paul's heart, and that's the truth, my
dear,' said Mrs Chick, one day.
Miss Tox turned pale.
'He grows more like Paul every day,' said Mrs Chick.
Miss Tox returned no other reply than by taking the little Paul in her
arms, and making his cockade perfectly flat and limp with her caresses.
'His mother, my dear,' said Miss Tox, 'whose acquaintance I was to have
made through you, does he at all resemble her?'
'Not at all,' returned Louisa
'She was - she was pretty, I believe?' faltered Miss Tox.
'Why, poor dear Fanny was interesting,' said Mrs Chick, after some
judicial consideration. 'Certainly interesting. She had not that air of
commanding superiority which one would somehow expect, almost as a matter of
course, to find in my brother's wife; nor had she that strength and vigour
of mind which such a man requires.'
Miss Tox heaved a deep sigh.
'But she was pleasing:' said Mrs Chick: 'extremely so. And she meant! -
oh, dear, how well poor Fanny meant!'
'You Angel!' cried Miss Tox to little Paul. 'You Picture of your own
Papa!'
If the Major could have known how many hopes and ventures, what a
multitude of plans and speculations, rested on that baby head; and could
have seen them hovering, in all their heterogeneous confusion and disorder,
round the puckered cap of the unconscious little Paul; he might have stared
indeed. Then would he have recognised, among the crowd, some few ambitious
motes and beams belonging to Miss Tox; then would he perhaps have understood
the nature of that lady's faltering investment in the Dombey Firm.
If the child himself could have awakened in the night, and seen,
gathered about his cradle-curtains, faint reflections of the dreams that
other people had of him, they might have scared him, with good reason. But
he slumbered on, alike unconscious of the kind intentions of Miss Tox, the
wonder of the Major, the early sorrows of his sister, and the stern visions
of his father; and innocent that any spot of earth contained a Dombey or a
Son.
Paul's Further Progress, Growth and Character
Beneath the watching and attentive eyes of Time - so far another Major
- Paul's slumbers gradually changed. More and more light broke in upon them;
distincter and distincter dreams disturbed them; an accumulating crowd of
objects and impressions swarmed about his rest; and so he passed from
babyhood to childhood, and became a talking, walking, wondering Dombey.
On the downfall and banishment of Richards, the nursery may be said to
have been put into commission: as a Public Department is sometimes, when no
individual Atlas can be found to support it The Commissioners were, of
course, Mrs Chick and Miss Tox: who devoted themselves to their duties with
such astonishing ardour that Major Bagstock had every day some new reminder
of his being forsaken, while Mr Chick, bereft of domestic supervision, cast
himself upon the gay world, dined at clubs and coffee-houses, smelt of smoke
on three different occasions, went to the play by himself, and in short,
loosened (as Mrs Chick once told him) every social bond, and moral
obligation.
Yet, in spite of his early promise, all this vigilance and care could
not make little Paul a thriving boy. Naturally delicate, perhaps, he pined
and wasted after the dismissal of his nurse, and, for a long time, seemed
but to wait his opportunity of gliding through their hands, and seeking his
lost mother. This dangerous ground in his steeple-chase towards manhood
passed, he still found it very rough riding, and was grievously beset by all
the obstacles in his course. Every tooth was a break-neck fence, and every
pimple in the measles a stone wall to him. He was down in every fit of the
hooping-cough, and rolled upon and crushed by a whole field of small
diseases, that came trooping on each other's heels to prevent his getting up
again. Some bird of prey got into his throat instead of the thrush; and the
very chickens turning ferocious - if they have anything to do with that
infant malady to which they lend their name - worried him like tiger-cats.
The chill of Paul's christening had struck home, perhaps to some
sensitive part of his nature, which could not recover itself in the cold
shade of his father; but he was an unfortunate child from that day. Mrs
Wickam often said she never see a dear so put upon.
Mrs Wickam was a waiter's wife - which would seem equivalent to being
any other man's widow - whose application for an engagement in Mr Dombey's
service had been favourably considered, on account of the apparent
impossibility of her having any followers, or anyone to follow; and who,
from within a day or two of Paul's sharp weaning, had been engaged as his
nurse. Mrs Wickam was a meek woman, of a fair complexion, with her eyebrows
always elevated, and her head always drooping; who was always ready to pity
herself, or to be pitied, or to pity anybody else; and who had a surprising
natural gift of viewing all subjects in an utterly forlorn and pitiable
light, and bringing dreadful precedents to bear upon them, and deriving the
greatest consolation from the exercise of that talent.
It is hardly necessary to observe, that no touch of this quality ever
reached the magnificent knowledge of Mr Dombey. It would have been
remarkable, indeed, if any had; when no one in the house - not even Mrs
Chick or Miss Tox - dared ever whisper to him that there had, on any one
occasion, been the least reason for uneasiness in reference to little Paul.
He had settled, within himself, that the child must necessarily pass through
a certain routine of minor maladies, and that the sooner he did so the
better. If he could have bought him off, or provided a substitute, as in the
case of an unlucky drawing for the militia, he would have been glad to do
so, on liberal terms. But as this was not feasible, he merely wondered, in
his haughty-manner, now and then, what Nature meant by it; and comforted
himself with the reflection that there was another milestone passed upon the
road, and that the great end of the journey lay so much the nearer. For the
feeling uppermost in his mind, now and constantly intensifying, and
increasing in it as Paul grew older, was impatience. Impatience for the time
to come, when his visions of their united consequence and grandeur would be
triumphantly realized.
Some philosophers tell us that selfishness is at the root of our best
loves and affections.' Mr Dombey's young child was, from the beginning, so
distinctly important to him as a part of his own greatness, or (which is the
same thing) of the greatness of Dombey and Son, that there is no doubt his
parental affection might have been easily traced, like many a goodly
superstructure of fair fame, to a very low foundation. But he loved his son
with all the love he had. If there were a warm place in his frosty heart,
his son occupied it; if its very hard surface could receive the impression
of any image, the image of that son was there; though not so much as an
infant, or as a boy, but as a grown man - the 'Son' of the Firm. Therefore
he was impatient to advance into the future, and to hurry over the
intervening passages of his history. Therefore he had little or no anxiety'
about them, in spite of his love; feeling as if the boy had a charmed life,
and must become the man with whom he held such constant communication in his
thoughts, and for whom he planned and projected, as for an existing reality,
every day.
Thus Paul grew to be nearly five years old. He was a pretty little
fellow; though there was something wan and wistful in his small face, that
gave occasion to many significant shakes of Mrs Wickam's head, and many
long-drawn inspirations of Mrs Wickam's breath. His temper gave abundant
promise of being imperious in after-life; and he had as hopeful an
apprehension of his own importance, and the rightful subservience of all
other things and persons to it, as heart could desire. He was childish and
sportive enough at times, and not of a sullen disposition; but he had a
strange, old-fashioned, thoughtful way, at other times, of sitting brooding
in his miniature arm-chair, when he looked (and talked) like one of those
terrible little Beings in the Fairy tales, who, at a hundred and fifty or
two hundred years of age, fantastically represent the children for whom they
have been substituted. He would frequently be stricken with this precocious
mood upstairs in the nursery; and would sometimes lapse into it suddenly,
exclaiming that he was tired: even while playing with Florence, or driving
Miss Tox in single harness. But at no time did he fall into it so surely, as
when, his little chair being carried down into his father's room, he sat
there with him after dinner, by the fire. They were the strangest pair at
such a time that ever firelight shone upon. Mr Dombey so erect and solemn,
gazing at the blare; his little image, with an old, old face, peering into
the red perspective with the fixed and rapt attention of a sage. Mr Dombey
entertaining complicated worldly schemes and plans; the little image
entertaining Heaven knows what wild fancies, half-formed thoughts, and
wandering speculations. Mr Dombey stiff with starch and arrogance; the
little image by inheritance, and in unconscious imitation. The two so very
much alike, and yet so monstrously contrasted.
On one of these occasions, when they had both been perfectly quiet for
a long time, and Mr Dombey only knew that the child was awake by
occasionally glancing at his eye, where the bright fire was sparkling like a
jewel, little Paul broke silence thus:
'Papa! what's money?'
The abrupt question had such immediate reference to the subject of Mr
Dombey's thoughts, that Mr Dombey was quite disconcerted.
'What is money, Paul?' he answered. 'Money?'
'Yes,' said the child, laying his hands upon the elbows of his little
chair, and turning the old face up towards Mr Dombey's; 'what is money?'
Mr Dombey was in a difficulty. He would have liked to give him some
explanation involving the terms circulating-medium, currency, depreciation
of currency', paper, bullion, rates of exchange, value of precious metals in
the market, and so forth; but looking down at the little chair, and seeing
what a long way down it was, he answered: 'Gold, and silver, and copper.
Guineas, shillings, half-pence. You know what they are?'
'Oh yes, I know what they are,' said Paul. 'I don't mean that, Papa. I
mean what's money after all?'
Heaven and Earth, how old his face was as he turned it up again towards
his father's!
'What is money after all!' said Mr Dombey, backing his chair a little,
that he might the better gaze in sheer amazement at the presumptuous atom
that propounded such an inquiry.
'I mean, Papa, what can it do?' returned Paul, folding his arms (they
were hardly long enough to fold), and looking at the fire, and up at him,
and at the fire, and up at him again.
Mr Dombey drew his chair back to its former place, and patted him on
the head. 'You'll know better by-and-by, my man,' he said. 'Money, Paul, can
do anything.' He took hold of the little hand, and beat it softly against
one of his own, as he said so.
But Paul got his hand free as soon as he could; and rubbing it gently
to and fro on the elbow of his chair, as if his wit were in the palm, and he
were sharpening it - and looking at the fire again, as though the fire had
been his adviser and prompter - repeated, after a short pause:
'Anything, Papa?'
'Yes. Anything - almost,' said Mr Dombey.
'Anything means everything, don't it, Papa?' asked his son: not
observing, or possibly not understanding, the qualification.
'It includes it: yes,' said Mr Dombey.
'Why didn't money save me my Mama?' returned the child. 'It isn't
cruel, is it?'
'Cruel!' said Mr Dombey, settling his neckcloth, and seeming to resent
the idea. 'No. A good thing can't be cruel.'
'If it's a good thing, and can do anything,' said the little fellow,
thoughtfully, as he looked back at the fire, 'I wonder why it didn't save me
my Mama.'
He didn't ask the question of his father this time. Perhaps he had
seen, with a child's quickness, that it had already made his father
uncomfortable. But he repeated the thought aloud, as if it were quite an old
one to him, and had troubled him very much; and sat with his chin resting on
his hand, still cogitating and looking for an explanation in the fire.
Mr Dombey having recovered from his surprise, not to say his alarm (for
it was the very first occasion on which the child had ever broached the
subject of his mother to him, though he had had him sitting by his side, in
this same manner, evening after evening), expounded to him how that money,
though a very potent spirit, never to be disparaged on any account whatever,
could not keep people alive whose time was come to die; and how that we must
all die, unfortunately, even in the City, though we were never so rich. But
how that money caused us to be honoured, feared, respected, courted, and
admired, and made us powerful and glorious in the eyes of all men; and how
that it could, very often, even keep off death, for a long time together.
How, for example, it had secured to his Mama the services of Mr Pilkins, by
which be, Paul, had often profited himself; likewise of the great Doctor
Parker Peps, whom he had never known. And how it could do all, that could be
done. This, with more to the same purpose, Mr Dombey instilled into the mind
of his son, who listened attentively, and seemed to understand the greater
part of what was said to him.
'It can't make me strong and quite well, either, Papa; can it?' asked
Paul, after a short silence; rubbing his tiny hands.
'Why, you are strong and quite well,' returned Mr Dombey. 'Are you
not?'
Oh! the age of the face that was turned up again, with an expression,
half of melancholy, half of slyness, on it!
'You are as strong and well as such little people usually are? Eh?'
said Mr Dombey.
'Florence is older than I am, but I'm not as strong and well as
Florence, 'I know,' returned the child; 'and I believe that when Florence
was as little as me, she could play a great deal longer at a time without
tiring herself. I am so tired sometimes,' said little Paul, warming his
hands, and looking in between the bars of the grate, as if some ghostly
puppet-show were performing there, 'and my bones ache so (Wickam says it's
my bones), that I don't know what to do.'
'Ay! But that's at night,' said Mr Dombey, drawing his own chair closer
to his son's, and laying his hand gently on his back; 'little people should
be tired at night, for then they sleep well.'
'Oh, it's not at night, Papa,' returned the child, 'it's in the day;
and I lie down in Florence's lap, and she sings to me. At night I dream
about such cu-ri-ous things!'
And he went on, warming his hands again, and thinking about them, like
an old man or a young goblin.
Mr Dombey was so astonished, and so uncomfortable, and so perfectly at
a loss how to pursue the conversation, that he could only sit looking at his
son by the light of the fire, with his hand resting on his back, as if it
were detained there by some magnetic attraction. Once he advanced his other
hand, and turned the contemplative face towards his own for a moment. But it
sought the fire again as soon as he released it; and remained, addressed
towards the flickering blaze, until the nurse appeared, to summon him to
bed.
'I want Florence to come for me,' said Paul.
'Won't you come with your poor Nurse Wickam, Master Paul?' inquired
that attendant, with great pathos.
'No, I won't,' replied Paul, composing himself in his arm-chair again,
like the master of the house.
Invoking a blessing upon his innocence, Mrs Wickam withdrew, and
presently Florence appeared in her stead. The child immediately started up
with sudden readiness and animation, and raised towards his father in
bidding him good-night, a countenance so much brighter, so much younger, and
so much more child-like altogether, that Mr Dombey, while he felt greatly
reassured by the change, was quite amazed at it.
After they had left the room together, he thought he heard a soft voice
singing; and remembering that Paul had said his sister sung to him, he had
the curiosity to open the door and listen, and look after them. She was
toiling up the great, wide, vacant staircase, with him in her arms; his head
was lying on her shoulder, one of his arms thrown negligently round her
neck. So they went, toiling up; she singing all the way, and Paul sometimes
crooning out a feeble accompaniment. Mr Dombey looked after them until they
reached the top of the staircase - not without halting to rest by the way -
and passed out of his sight; and then he still stood gazing upwards, until
the dull rays of the moon, glimmering in a melancholy manner through the dim
skylight, sent him back to his room.
Mrs Chick and Miss Tox were convoked in council at dinner next day; and
when the cloth was removed, Mr Dombey opened the proceedings by requiring to
be informed, without any gloss or reservation, whether there was anything
the matter with Paul, and what Mr Pilkins said about him.
'For the child is hardly,' said Mr Dombey, 'as stout as I could wish.'
'My dear Paul,' returned Mrs Chick, 'with your usual happy
discrimination, which I am weak enough to envy you, every time I am in your
company; and so I think is Miss Tox
'Oh my dear!' said Miss Tox, softly, 'how could it be otherwise?
Presumptuous as it is to aspire to such a level; still, if the bird of night
may - but I'll not trouble Mr Dombey with the sentiment. It merely relates
to the Bulbul.'
Mr Dombey bent his head in stately recognition of the Bulbuls as an
old-established body.
'With your usual happy discrimination, my dear Paul,' resumed Mrs
Chick, 'you have hit the point at once. Our darling is altogether as stout
as we could wish. The fact is, that his mind is too much for him. His soul
is a great deal too large for his frame. I am sure the way in which that
dear child talks!'said Mrs Chick, shaking her head; 'no one would believe.
His expressions, Lucretia, only yesterday upon the subject of Funerals!
'I am afraid,' said Mr Dombey, interrupting her testily, 'that some of
those persons upstairs suggest improper subjects to the child. He was
speaking to me last night about his - about his Bones,' said Mr Dombey,
laying an irritated stress upon the word. 'What on earth has anybody to do
with the - with the - Bones of my son? He is not a living skeleton, I
suppose.
'Very far from it,' said Mrs Chick, with unspeakable expression.
'I hope so,' returned her brother. 'Funerals again! who talks to the
child of funerals? We are not undertakers, or mutes, or grave-diggers, I
believe.'
'Very far from it,' interposed Mrs Chick, with the same profound
expression as before.
'Then who puts such things into his head?' said Mr Dombey. 'Really I
was quite dismayed and shocked last night. Who puts such things into his
head, Louisa?'
'My dear Paul,' said Mrs Chick, after a moment's silence, 'it is of no
use inquiring. I do not think, I will tell you candidly that Wickam is a
person of very cheerful spirit, or what one would call a - '
'A daughter of Momus,' Miss Tox softly suggested.
'Exactly so,' said Mrs Chick; 'but she is exceedingly attentive and
useful, and not at all presumptuous; indeed I never saw a more biddable
woman. I would say that for her, if I was put upon my trial before a Court
of Justice.'
'Well! you are not put upon your trial before a Court of Justice, at
present, Louisa,' returned Mr Dombey, chafing,' and therefore it don't
matter.
'My dear Paul,' said Mrs Chick, in a warning voice, 'I must be spoken
to kindly, or there is an end of me,' at the same time a premonitory redness
developed itself in Mrs Chick's eyelids which was an invariable sign of
rain, unless the weather changed directly.
'I was inquiring, Louisa,' observed Mr Dombey, in an altered voice, and
after a decent interval, 'about Paul's health and actual state.
'If the dear child,' said Mrs Chick, in the tone of one who was summing
up what had been previously quite agreed upon, instead of saying it all for
the first time, 'is a little weakened by that last attack, and is not in
quite such vigorous health as we could wish; and if he has some temporary
weakness in his system, and does occasionally seem about to lose, for the
moment, the use of his - '
Mrs Chick was afraid to say limbs, after Mr Dombey's recent objection
to bones, and therefore waited for a suggestion from Miss Tox, who, true to
her office, hazarded 'members.'
'Members!' repeated Mr Dombey.
'I think the medical gentleman mentioned legs this morning, my dear
Louisa, did he not?' said Miss Tox.
'Why, of course he did, my love,' retorted Mrs Chick, mildly
reproachful. 'How can you ask me? You heard him. I say, if our dear Paul
should lose, for the moment, the use of his legs, these are casualties
common to many children at his time of life, and not to be prevented by any
care or caution. The sooner you understand that, Paul, and admit that, the
better. If you have any doubt as to the amount of care, and caution, and
affection, and self-sacrifice, that has been bestowed upon little Paul, I
should wish to refer the question to your medical attendant, or to any of
your dependants in this house. Call Towlinson,' said Mrs Chick, 'I believe
he has no prejudice in our favour; quite the contrary. I should wish to hear
what accusation Towlinson can make!'
'Surely you must know, Louisa,' observed Mr Dombey, 'that I don't
question your natural devotion to, and regard for, the future head of my
house.'
'I am glad to hear it, Paul,' said Mrs Chick; 'but really you are very
odd, and sometimes talk very strangely, though without meaning it, I know.
If your dear boy's soul is too much for his body, Paul, you should remember
whose fault that is - who he takes after, I mean - and make the best of it.
He's as like his Papa as he can be. People have noticed it in the streets.
The very beadle, I am informed, observed it, so long ago as at his
christening. He's a very respectable man, with children of his own. He ought
to know.'
'Mr Pilkins saw Paul this morning, I believe?' said Mr Dombey.
'Yes, he did,' returned his sister. 'Miss Tox and myself were present.
Miss Tox and myself are always present. We make a point of it. Mr Pilkins
has seen him for some days past, and a very clever man I believe him to be.
He says it is nothing to speak of; which I can confirm, if that is any
consolation; but he recommended, to-day, sea-air. Very wisely, Paul, I feel
convinced.'
'Sea-air,' repeated Mr Dombey, looking at his sister.
'There is nothing to be made uneasy by, in that,'said Mrs Chick. 'My
George and Frederick were both ordered sea-air, when they were about his
age; and I have been ordered it myself a great many times. I quite agree
with you, Paul, that perhaps topics may be incautiously mentioned upstairs
before him, which it would be as well for his little mind not to expatiate
upon; but I really don't see how that is to be helped, in the case of a
child of his quickness. If he were a common child, there would be nothing in
it. I must say I think, with Miss Tox, that a short absence from this house,
the air of Brighton, and the bodily and mental training of so judicious a
person as Mrs Pipchin for instance - '
'Who is Mrs Pipchin, Louisa?' asked Mr Dombey; aghast at this familiar
introduction of a name he had never heard before.
'Mrs Pipchin, my dear Paul,' returned his sister, 'is an elderly lady -
Miss Tox knows her whole history - who has for some time devoted all the
energies of her mind, with the greatest success, to the study and treatment
of infancy, and who has been extremely well connected. Her husband broke his
heart in - how did you say her husband broke his heart, my dear? I forget
the precise circumstances.
'In pumping water out of the Peruvian Mines,' replied Miss Tox.
'Not being a Pumper himself, of course,' said Mrs Chick, glancing at
her brother; and it really did seem necessary to offer the explanation, for
Miss Tox had spoken of him as if he had died at the handle; 'but having
invested money in the speculation, which failed. I believe that Mrs
Pipchin's management of children is quite astonishing. I have heard it
commended in private circles ever since I was - dear me - how high!' Mrs
Chick's eye wandered about the bookcase near the bust of Mr Pitt, which was
about ten feet from the ground.
'Perhaps I should say of Mrs Pipchin, my dear Sir,' observed Miss Tox,
with an ingenuous blush, 'having been so pointedly referred to, that the
encomium which has been passed upon her by your sweet sister is well
merited. Many ladies and gentleman, now grown up to be interesting members
of society, have been indebted to her care. The humble individual who
addresses you was once under her charge. I believe juvenile nobility itself
is no stranger to her establishment.'
'Do I understand that this respectable matron keeps an establishment,
Miss Tox?' the Mr Dombey, condescendingly.
'Why, I really don't know,' rejoined that lady, 'whether I am justified
in calling it so. It is not a Preparatory School by any means. Should I
express my meaning,' said Miss Tox, with peculiar sweetness,'if I designated
it an infantine Boarding-House of a very select description?'
'On an exceedingly limited and particular scale,' suggested Mrs Chick,
with a glance at her brother.
'Oh! Exclusion itself!' said Miss Tox.
There was something in this. Mrs Pipchin's husband having broken his
heart of the Peruvian mines was good. It had a rich sound. Besides, Mr
Dombey was in a state almost amounting to consternation at the idea of Paul
remaining where he was one hour after his removal had been recommended by
the medical practitioner. It was a stoppage and delay upon the road the
child must traverse, slowly at the best, before the goal was reached. Their
recommendation of Mrs Pipchin had great weight with him; for he knew that
they were jealous of any interference with their charge, and he never for a
moment took it into account that they might be solicitous to divide a
responsibility, of which he had, as shown just now, his own established
views. Broke his heart of the Peruvian mines, mused Mr Dombey. Well! a very
respectable way of doing It.
'Supposing we should decide, on to-morrow's inquiries, to send Paul
down to Brighton to this lady, who would go with him?' inquired Mr Dombey,
after some reflection.
'I don't think you could send the child anywhere at present without
Florence, my dear Paul,' returned his sister, hesitating. 'It's quite an
infatuation with him. He's very young, you know, and has his fancies.'
Mr Dombey turned his head away, and going slowly to the bookcase, and
unlocking it, brought back a book to read.
'Anybody else, Louisa?' he said, without looking up, and turning over
the leaves.
'Wickam, of course. Wickam would be quite sufficient, I should say,'
returned his sister. 'Paul being in such hands as Mrs Pipchin's, you could
hardly send anybody who would be a further check upon her. You would go down
yourself once a week at least, of course.'
'Of course,' said Mr Dombey; and sat looking at one page for an hour
afterwards, without reading one word.
This celebrated Mrs Pipchin was a marvellous ill-favoured,
ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping figure, with a mottled face, like
bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard grey eye, that looked as if it might
have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury. Forty years
at least had elapsed since the Peruvian mines had been the death of Mr
Pipchin; but his relict still wore black bombazeen, of such a lustreless,
deep, dead, sombre shade, that gas itself couldn't light her up after dark,
and her presence was a quencher to any number of candles. She was generally
spoken of as 'a great manager' of children; and the secret of her management
was, to give them everything that they didn't like, and nothing that they
did - which was found to sweeten their dispositions very much. She was such
a bitter old lady, that one was tempted to believe there had been some
mistake in the application of the Peruvian machinery, and that all her
waters of gladness and milk of human kindness, had been pumped out dry,
instead of the mines.
The Castle of this ogress and child-queller was in a steep by-street at
Brighton; where the soil was more than usually chalky, flinty, and sterile,
and the houses were more than usually brittle and thin; where the small
front-gardens had the unaccountable property of producing nothing but
marigolds, whatever was sown in them; and where snails were constantly
discovered holding on to the street doors, and other public places they were
not expected to ornament, with the tenacity of cupping-glasses. In the
winter time the air couldn't be got out of the Castle, and in the summer
time it couldn't be got in. There was such a continual reverberation of wind
in it, that it sounded like a great shell, which the inhabitants were
obliged to hold to their ears night and day, whether they liked it or no. It
was not, naturally, a fresh-smelling house; and in the window of the front
parlour, which was never opened, Mrs Pipchin kept a collection of plants in
pots, which imparted an earthy flavour of their own to the establishment.
However choice examples of their kind, too, these plants were of a kind
peculiarly adapted to the embowerment of Mrs Pipchin. There were
half-a-dozen specimens of the cactus, writhing round bits of lath, like
hairy serpents; another specimen shooting out broad claws, like a green
lobster; several creeping vegetables, possessed of sticky and adhesive
leaves; and one uncomfortable flower-pot hanging to the ceiling, which
appeared to have boiled over, and tickling people underneath with its long
green ends, reminded them of spiders - in which Mrs Pipchin's dwelling was
uncommonly prolific, though perhaps it challenged competition still more
proudly, in the season, in point of earwigs.
Mrs Pipchin's scale of charges being high, however, to all who could
afford to pay, and Mrs Pipchin very seldom sweetening the equable acidity of
her nature in favour of anybody, she was held to be an old 'lady of
remarkable firmness, who was quite scientific in her knowledge of the
childish character.' On this reputation, and on the broken heart of Mr
Pipchin, she had contrived, taking one year with another, to eke out a
tolerable sufficient living since her husband's demise. Within three days
after Mrs Chick's first allusion to her, this excellent old lady had the
satisfaction of anticipating a handsome addition to her current receipts,
from the pocket of Mr Dombey; and of receiving Florence and her little
brother Paul, as inmates of the Castle.
Mrs Chick and Miss Tox, who had brought them down on the previous night
(which they all passed at an Hotel), had just driven away from the door, on
their journey home again; and Mrs Pipchin, with her back to the fire, stood,
reviewing the new-comers, like an old soldier. Mrs Pipchin's middle-aged
niece, her good-natured and devoted slave, but possessing a gaunt and
iron-bound aspect, and much afflicted with boils on her nose, was divesting
Master Bitherstone of the clean collar he had worn on parade. Miss Pankey,
the only other little boarder at present, had that moment been walked off to
the Castle Dungeon (an empty apartment at the back, devoted to correctional
purposes), for having sniffed thrice, in the presence of visitors.
'Well, Sir,' said Mrs Pipchin to Paul, 'how do you think you shall like
me?'
'I don't think I shall like you at all,' replied Paul. 'I want to go
away. This isn't my house.'
'No. It's mine,' retorted Mrs Pipchin.
'It's a very nasty one,' said Paul.
'There's a worse place in it than this though,' said Mrs Pipchin,
'where we shut up our bad boys.'
'Has he ever been in it?' asked Paul: pointing out Master Bitherstone.
Mrs Pipchin nodded assent; and Paul had enough to do, for the rest of
that day, in surveying Master Bitherstone from head to foot, and watching
all the workings of his countenance, with the interest attaching to a boy of
mysterious and terrible experiences.
At one o'clock there was a dinner, chiefly of the farinaceous and
vegetable kind, when Miss Pankey (a mild little blue-eyed morsel of a child,
who was shampoo'd every morning, and seemed in danger of being rubbed away,
altogether) was led in from captivity by the ogress herself, and instructed
that nobody who sniffed before visitors ever went to Heaven. When this great
truth had been thoroughly impressed upon her, she was regaled with rice; and
subsequently repeated the form of grace established in the Castle, in which
there was a special clause, thanking Mrs Pipchin for a good dinner. Mrs
Pipchin's niece, Berinthia, took cold pork. Mrs Pipchin, whose constitution
required warm nourishment, made a special repast of mutton-chops, which were
brought in hot and hot, between two plates, and smelt very nice.
As it rained after dinner, and they couldn't go out walking on the
beach, and Mrs Pipchin's constitution required rest after chops, they went
away with Berry (otherwise Berinthia) to the Dungeon; an empty room looking
out upon a chalk wall and a water-butt, and made ghastly by a ragged
fireplace without any stove in it. Enlivened by company, however, this was
the best place after all; for Berry played with them there, and seemed to
enjoy a game at romps as much as they did; until Mrs Pipchin knocking
angrily at the wall, like the Cock Lane Ghost' revived, they left off, and
Berry told them stories in a whisper until twilight.
For tea there was plenty of milk and water, and bread and butter, with
a little black tea-pot for Mrs Pipchin and Berry, and buttered toast
unlimited for Mrs Pipchin, which was brought in, hot and hot, like the
chops. Though Mrs Pipchin got very greasy, outside, over this dish, it
didn't seem to lubricate her internally, at all; for she was as fierce as
ever, and the hard grey eye knew no softening.
After tea, Berry brought out a little work-box, with the Royal Pavilion
on the lid, and fell to working busily; while Mrs Pipchin, having put on her
spectacles and opened a great volume bound in green baize, began to nod. And
whenever Mrs Pipchin caught herself falling forward into the fire, and woke
up, she filliped Master Bitherstone on the nose for nodding too.
At last it was the children's bedtime, and after prayers they went to
bed. As little Miss Pankey was afraid of sleeping alone in the dark, Mrs
Pipchin always made a point of driving her upstairs herself, like a sheep;
and it was cheerful to hear Miss Pankey moaning long afterwards, in the
least eligible chamber, and Mrs Pipchin now and then going in to shake her.
At about half-past nine o'clock the odour of a warm sweet-bread (Mrs
Pipchin's constitution wouldn't go to sleep without sweet-bread) diversified
the prevailing fragrance of the house, which Mrs Wickam said was 'a smell of
building;' and slumber fell upon the Castle shortly after.
The breakfast next morning was like the tea over night, except that Mrs
Pipchin took her roll instead of toast, and seemed a little more irate when
it was over. Master Bitherstone read aloud to the rest a pedigree from
Genesis judiciously selected by Mrs Pipchin), getting over the names with
the ease and clearness of a person tumbling up the treadmill. That done,
Miss Pankey was borne away to be shampoo'd; and Master Bitherstone to have
something else done to him with salt water, from which he always returned
very blue and dejected. Paul and Florence went out in the meantime on the
beach with Wickam - who was constantly in tears - and at about noon Mrs
Pipchin presided over some Early Readings. It being a part of Mrs Pipchin's
system not to encourage a child's mind to develop and expand itself like a
young flower, but to open it by force like an oyster, the moral of these
lessons was usually of a violent and stunning character: the hero - a
naughty boy - seldom, in the mildest catastrophe, being finished off
anything less than a lion, or a bear.
Such was life at Mrs Pipchin's. On Saturday Mr Dombey came down; and
Florence and Paul would go to his Hotel, and have tea They passed the whole
of Sunday with him, and generally rode out before dinner; and on these
occasions Mr Dombey seemed to grow, like Falstaff's assailants, and instead
of being one man in buckram, to become a dozen. Sunday evening was the most
melancholy evening in the week; for Mrs Pipchin always made a point of being
particularly cross on Sunday nights. Miss Pankey was generally brought back
from an aunt's at Rottingdean, in deep distress; and Master Bitherstone,
whose relatives were all in India, and who was required to sit, between the
services, in an erect position with his head against the parlour wall,
neither moving hand nor foot, suffered so acutely in his young spirits that
he once asked Florence, on a Sunday night, if she could give him any idea of
the way back to Bengal.
But it was generally said that Mrs Pipchin was a woman of system with
children; and no doubt she was. Certainly the wild ones went home tame
enough, after sojourning for a few months beneath her hospitable roof. It
was generally said, too, that it was highly creditable of Mrs Pipchin to
have devoted herself to this way of life, and to have made such a sacrifice
of her feelings, and such a resolute stand against her troubles, when Mr
Pipchin broke his heart in the Peruvian mines.
At this exemplary old lady, Paul would sit staring in his little
arm-chair by the fire, for any length of time. He never seemed to know what
weariness was, when he was looking fixedly at Mrs Pipchin. He was not fond
of her; he was not afraid of her; but in those old, old moods of his, she
seemed to have a grotesque attraction for him. There he would sit, looking