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which was to take her, Florence, and Edith to Brighton.
'And is Joseph absolutely banished?' said the Major, thrusting in his
purple face over the steps. 'Damme, Ma'am, is Cleopatra so hard-hearted as
to forbid her faithful Antony Bagstock to approach the presence?'
'Go along!' said Cleopatra, 'I can't bear you. You shall see me when I
come back, if you are very good.'
'Tell Joseph, he may live in hope, Ma'am,' said the Major; 'or he'll
die in despair.'
Cleopatra shuddered, and leaned back. 'Edith, my dear,' she said. 'Tell
him - '
'What?'
'Such dreadful words,' said Cleopatra. 'He uses such dreadful words!'
Edith signed to him to retire, gave the word to go on, and left the
objectionable Major to Mr Dombey. To whom he returned, whistling.
'I'll tell you what, Sir,' said the Major, with his hands behind him,
and his legs very wide asunder, 'a fair friend of ours has removed to Queer
Street.'
'What do you mean, Major?' inquired Mr Dombey.
'I mean to say, Dombey,' returned the Major, 'that you'll soon be an
orphan-in-law.'
Mr Dombey appeared to relish this waggish description of himself so
very little, that the Major wound up with the horse's cough, as an
expression of gravity.
'Damme, Sir,' said the Major, 'there is no use in disguising a fact.
Joe is blunt, Sir. That's his nature. If you take old Josh at all, you take
him as you find him; and a devilish rusty, old rasper, of a close-toothed,
J. B. file, you do find him. Dombey,' said the Major, 'your wife's mother is
on the move, Sir.'
'I fear,' returned Mr Dombey, with much philosophy, 'that Mrs Skewton
is shaken.'
'Shaken, Dombey!' said the Major. 'Smashed!'
'Change, however,' pursued Mr Dombey, 'and attention, may do much yet.'
'Don't believe it, Sir,' returned the Major. 'Damme, Sir, she never
wrapped up enough. If a man don't wrap up,' said the Major, taking in
another button of his buff waistcoat, 'he has nothing to fall back upon. But
some people will die. They will do it. Damme, they will. They're obstinate.
I tell you what, Dombey, it may not be ornamental; it may not be refined; it
may be rough and tough; but a little of the genuine old English Bagstock
stamina, Sir, would do all the good in the world to the human breed.'
After imparting this precious piece of information, the Major, who was
certainly true-blue, whatever other endowments he may have had or wanted,
coming within the 'genuine old English' classification, which has never been
exactly ascertained, took his lobster-eyes and his apoplexy to the club, and
choked there all day.
Cleopatra, at one time fretful, at another self-complacent, sometimes
awake, sometimes asleep, and at all times juvenile, reached Brighton the
same night, fell to pieces as usual, and was put away in bed; where a gloomy
fancy might have pictured a more potent skeleton than the maid, who should
have been one, watching at the rose-coloured curtains, which were carried
down to shed their bloom upon her.
It was settled in high council of medical authority that she should
take a carriage airing every day, and that it was important she should get
out every day, and walk if she could. Edith was ready to attend her - always
ready to attend her, with the same mechanical attention and immovable beauty
- and they drove out alone; for Edith had an uneasiness in the presence of
Florence, now that her mother was worse, and told Florence, with a kiss,
that she would rather they two went alone.
Mrs Skewton, on one particular day, was in the irresolute, exacting,
jealous temper that had developed itself on her recovery from her first
attack. After sitting silent in the carriage watching Edith for some time,
she took her hand and kissed it passionately. The hand was neither given nor
withdrawn, but simply yielded to her raising of it, and being released,
dropped down again, almost as if it were insensible. At this she began to
whimper and moan, and say what a mother she had been, and how she was
forgotten! This she continued to do at capricious intervals, even when they
had alighted: when she herself was halting along with the joint support of
Withers and a stick, and Edith was walking by her side, and the carriage
slowly following at a little distance.
It was a bleak, lowering, windy day, and they were out upon the Downs
with nothing but a bare sweep of land between them and the sky. The mother,
with a querulous satisfaction in the monotony of her complaint, was still
repeating it in a low voice from time to time, and the proud form of her
daughter moved beside her slowly, when there came advancing over a dark
ridge before them, two other figures, which in the distance, were so like an
exaggerated imitation of their own, that Edith stopped.
Almost as she stopped, the two figures stopped; and that one which to
Edith's thinking was like a distorted shadow of her mother, spoke to the
other, earnestly, and with a pointing hand towards them. That one seemed
inclined to turn back, but the other, in which Edith recognised enough that
was like herself to strike her with an unusual feeling, not quite free from
fear, came on; and then they came on together.
The greater part of this observation, she made while walking towards
them, for her stoppage had been momentary. Nearer observation showed her
that they were poorly dressed, as wanderers about the country; that the
younger woman carried knitted work or some such goods for sale; and that the
old one toiled on empty-handed.
And yet, however far removed she was in dress, in dignity, in beauty,
Edith could not but compare the younger woman with herself, still. It may
have been that she saw upon her face some traces which she knew were
lingering in her own soul, if not yet written on that index; but, as the
woman came on, returning her gaze, fixing her shining eyes upon her,
undoubtedly presenting something of her own air and stature, and appearing
to reciprocate her own thoughts, she felt a chill creep over her, as if the
day were darkening, and the wind were colder.
They had now come up. The old woman, holding out her hand
importunately, stopped to beg of Mrs Skewton. The younger one stopped too,
and she and Edith looked in one another's eyes.
'What is it that you have to sell?' said Edith.
'Only this,' returned the woman, holding out her wares, without looking
at them. 'I sold myself long ago.'
'My Lady, don't believe her,' croaked the old woman to Mrs Skewton;
'don't believe what she says. She loves to talk like that. She's my handsome
and undutiful daughter. She gives me nothing but reproaches, my Lady, for
all I have done for her. Look at her now, my Lady, how she turns upon her
poor old mother with her looks.'
As Mrs Skewton drew her purse out with a trembling hand, and eagerly
fumbled for some money, which the other old woman greedily watched for -
their heads all but touching, in their hurry and decrepitude - Edith
interposed:
'I have seen you,' addressing the old woman, 'before.'
'Yes, my Lady,' with a curtsey. 'Down in Warwickshire. The morning
among the trees. When you wouldn't give me nothing. But the gentleman, he
give me something! Oh, bless him, bless him!' mumbled the old woman, holding
up her skinny hand, and grinning frightfully at her daughter.
'It's of no use attempting to stay me, Edith!' said Mrs Skewton,
angrily anticipating an objection from her. 'You know nothing about it. I
won't be dissuaded. I am sure this is an excellent woman, and a good
mother.'
'Yes, my Lady, yes,' chattered the old woman, holding out her
avaricious hand. 'Thankee, my Lady. Lord bless you, my Lady. Sixpence more,
my pretty Lady, as a good mother yourself.'
'And treated undutifully enough, too, my good old creature, sometimes,
I assure you,' said Mrs Skewton, whimpering. 'There! Shake hands with me.
You're a very good old creature - full of what's-his-name - and all that.
You're all affection and et cetera, ain't you?'
'Oh, yes, my Lady!'
'Yes, I'm sure you are; and so's that gentlemanly creature Grangeby. I
must really shake hands with you again. And now you can go, you know; and I
hope,' addressing the daughter, 'that you'll show more gratitude, and
natural what's-its-name, and all the rest of it - but I never remember names
- for there never was a better mother than the good old creature's been to
you. Come, Edith!'
As the ruin of Cleopatra tottered off whimpering, and wiping its eyes
with a gingerly remembrance of rouge in their neighbourhood, the old woman
hobbled another way, mumbling and counting her money. Not one word more, nor
one other gesture, had been exchanged between Edith and the younger woman,
but neither had removed her eyes from the other for a moment. They had
remained confronted until now, when Edith, as awakening from a dream, passed
slowly on.
'You're a handsome woman,' muttered her shadow, looking after her; 'but
good looks won't save us. And you're a proud woman; but pride won't save us.
We had need to know each other when we meet again!'
New Voices in the Waves
All is going on as it was wont. The waves are hoarse with repetition of
their mystery; the dust lies piled upon the shore; the sea-birds soar and
hover; the winds and clouds go forth upon their trackless flight; the white
arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away.
With a tender melancholy pleasure, Florence finds herself again on the
old ground so sadly trodden, yet so happily, and thinks of him in the quiet
place, where he and she have many and many a time conversed together, with
the water welling up about his couch. And now, as she sits pensive there,
she hears in the wild low murmur of the sea, his little story told again,
his very words repeated; and finds that all her life and hopes, and griefs,
since - in the solitary house, and in the pageant it has changed to - have a
portion in the burden of the marvellous song.
And gentle Mr Toots, who wanders at a distance, looking wistfully
towards the figure that he dotes upon, and has followed there, but cannot in
his delicacy disturb at such a time, likewise hears the requiem of little
Dombey on the waters, rising and falling in the lulls of their eternal
madrigal in praise of Florence. Yes! and he faintly understands, poor Mr
Toots, that they are saying something of a time when he was sensible of
being brighter and not addle-brained; and the tears rising in his eyes when
he fears that he is dull and stupid now, and good for little but to be
laughed at, diminish his satisfaction in their soothing reminder that he is
relieved from present responsibility to the Chicken, by the absence of that
game head of poultry in the country, training (at Toots's cost) for his
great mill with the Larkey Boy.
But Mr Toots takes courage, when they whisper a kind thought to him;
and by slow degrees and with many indecisive stoppages on the way,
approaches Florence. Stammering and blushing, Mr Toots affects amazement
when he comes near her, and says (having followed close on the carriage in
which she travelled, every inch of the way from London, loving even to be
choked by the dust of its wheels) that he never was so surprised in all his
life.
'And you've brought Diogenes, too, Miss Dombey!' says Mr Toots,
thrilled through and through by the touch of the small hand so pleasantly
and frankly given him.
No doubt Diogenes is there, and no doubt Mr Toots has reason to observe
him, for he comes straightway at Mr Toots's legs, and tumbles over himself
in the desperation with which he makes at him, like a very dog of Montargis.
But he is checked by his sweet mistress.
'Down, Di, down. Don't you remember who first made us friends, Di? For
shame!'
Oh! Well may Di lay his loving cheek against her hand, and run off, and
run back, and run round her, barking, and run headlong at anybody coming by,
to show his devotion. Mr Toots would run headlong at anybody, too. A
military gentleman goes past, and Mr Toots would like nothing better than to
run at him, full tilt.
'Diogenes is quite in his native air, isn't he, Miss Dombey?' says Mr
Toots.
Florence assents, with a grateful smile.
'Miss Dombey,' says Mr Toots, 'beg your pardon, but if you would like
to walk to Blimber's, I - I'm going there.'
Florence puts her arm in that of Mr Toots without a word, and they walk
away together, with Diogenes going on before. Mr Toots's legs shake under
him; and though he is splendidly dressed, he feels misfits, and sees
wrinkles, in the masterpieces of Burgess and Co., and wishes he had put on
that brightest pair of boots.
Doctor Blimber's house, outside, has as scholastic and studious an air
as ever; and up there is the window where she used to look for the pale
face, and where the pale face brightened when it saw her, and the wasted
little hand waved kisses as she passed. The door is opened by the same
weak-eyed young man, whose imbecility of grin at sight of Mr Toots is
feebleness of character personified. They are shown into the Doctor's study,
where blind Homer and Minerva give them audience as of yore, to the sober
ticking of the great clock in the hall; and where the globes stand still in
their accustomed places, as if the world were stationary too, and nothing in
it ever perished in obedience to the universal law, that, while it keeps it
on the roll, calls everything to earth.
And here is Doctor Blimber, with his learned legs; and here is Mrs
Blimber, with her sky-blue cap; and here Cornelia, with her sandy little row
of curls, and her bright spectacles, still working like a sexton in the
graves of languages. Here is the table upon which he sat forlorn and
strange, the 'new boy' of the school; and hither comes the distant cooing of
the old boys, at their old lives in the old room on the old principle!
'Toots,' says Doctor Blimber, 'I am very glad to see you, Toots.'
Mr Toots chuckles in reply.
'Also to see you, Toots, in such good company,' says Doctor Blimber.
Mr Toots, with a scarlet visage, explains that he has met Miss Dombey
by accident, and that Miss Dombey wishing, like himself, to see the old
place, they have come together.
'You will like,' says Doctor Blimber, 'to step among our young friends,
Miss Dombey, no doubt. All fellow-students of yours, Toots, once. I think we
have no new disciples in our little portico, my dear,' says Doctor Blimber
to Cornelia, 'since Mr Toots left us.'
'Except Bitherstone,' returns Cornelia.
'Ay, truly,' says the Doctor. 'Bitherstone is new to Mr Toots.'
New to Florence, too, almost; for, in the schoolroom, Bitherstone - no
longer Master Bitherstone of Mrs Pipchin's - shows in collars and a
neckcloth, and wears a watch. But Bitherstone, born beneath some Bengal star
of ill-omen, is extremely inky; and his Lexicon has got so dropsical from
constant reference, that it won't shut, and yawns as if it really could not
bear to be so bothered. So does Bitherstone its master, forced at Doctor
Blimber's highest pressure; but in the yawn of Bitherstone there is malice
and snarl, and he has been heard to say that he wishes he could catch 'old
Blimber' in India. He'd precious soon find himself carried up the country by
a few of his (Bitherstone's) Coolies, and handed over to the Thugs; he can
tell him that.
Briggs is still grinding in the mill of knowledge; and Tozer, too; and
Johnson, too; and all the rest; the older pupils being principally engaged
in forgetting, with prodigious labour, everything they knew when they were
younger. All are as polite and as pale as ever; and among them, Mr Feeder,
B.A., with his bony hand and bristly head, is still hard at it; with his
Herodotus stop on just at present, and his other barrels on a shelf behind
him.
A mighty sensation is created, even among these grave young gentlemen,
by a visit from the emancipated Toots; who is regarded with a kind of awe,
as one who has passed the Rubicon, and is pledged never to come back, and
concerning the cut of whose clothes, and fashion of whose jewellery,
whispers go about, behind hands; the bilious Bitherstone, who is not of Mr
Toots's time, affecting to despise the latter to the smaller boys, and
saying he knows better, and that he should like to see him coming that sort
of thing in Bengal, where his mother had got an emerald belonging to him
that was taken out of the footstool of a Rajah. Come now!
Bewildering emotions are awakened also by the sight of Florence, with
whom every young gentleman immediately falls in love, again; except, as
aforesaid, the bilious Bitherstone, who declines to do so, out of
contradiction. Black jealousies of Mr Toots arise, and Briggs is of opinion
that he ain't so very old after all. But this disparaging insinuation is
speedily made nought by Mr Toots saying aloud to Mr Feeder, B.A., 'How are
you, Feeder?' and asking him to come and dine with him to-day at the
Bedford; in right of which feats he might set up as Old Parr, if he chose,
unquestioned.
There is much shaking of hands, and much bowing, and a great desire on
the part of each young gentleman to take Toots down in Miss Dombey's good
graces; and then, Mr Toots having bestowed a chuckle on his old desk,
Florence and he withdraw with Mrs Blimber and Cornelia; and Doctor Blimber
is heard to observe behind them as he comes out last, and shuts the door,
'Gentlemen, we will now resume our studies,' For that and little else is
what the Doctor hears the sea say, or has heard it saying all his life.
Florence then steals away and goes upstairs to the old bedroom with Mrs
Blimber and Cornelia; Mr Toots, who feels that neither he nor anybody else
is wanted there, stands talking to the Doctor at the study-door, or rather
hearing the Doctor talk to him, and wondering how he ever thought the study
a great sanctuary, and the Doctor, with his round turned legs, like a
clerical pianoforte, an awful man. Florence soon comes down and takes leave;
Mr Toots takes leave; and Diogenes, who has been worrying the weak-eyed
young man pitilessly all the time, shoots out at the door, and barks a glad
defiance down the cliff; while Melia, and another of the Doctor's female
domestics, looks out of an upper window, laughing 'at that there Toots,' and
saying of Miss Dombey, 'But really though, now - ain't she like her brother,
only prettier?'
Mr Toots, who saw when Florence came down that there were tears upon
her face, is desperately anxious and uneasy, and at first fears that he did
wrong in proposing the visit. But he is soon relieved by her saying she is
very glad to have been there again, and by her talking quite cheerfully
about it all, as they walked on by the sea. What with the voices there, and
her sweet voice, when they come near Mr Dombey's house, and Mr Toots must
leave her, he is so enslaved that he has not a scrap of free-will left; when
she gives him her hand at parting, he cannot let it go.
'Miss Dombey, I beg your pardon,' says Mr Toots, in a sad fluster, 'but
if you would allow me to - to -
The smiling and unconscious look of Florence brings him to a dead stop.
'If you would allow me to - if you would not consider it a liberty,
Miss Dombey, if I was to - without any encouragement at all, if I was to
hope, you know,' says Mr Toots.
Florence looks at him inquiringly.
'Miss Dombey,' says Mr Toots, who feels that he is in for it now, 'I
really am in that state of adoration of you that I don't know what to do
with myself. I am the most deplorable wretch. If it wasn't at the corner of
the Square at present, I should go down on my knees, and beg and entreat of
you, without any encouragement at all, just to let me hope that I may - may
think it possible that you -
'Oh, if you please, don't!' cries Florence, for the moment quite
alarmed and distressed. 'Oh, pray don't, Mr Toots. Stop, if you please.
Don't say any more. As a kindness and a favour to me, don't.'
Mr Toots is dreadfully abashed, and his mouth opens.
'You have been so good to me,' says Florence, 'I am so grateful to you,
I have such reason to like you for being a kind friend to me, and I do like
you so much;' and here the ingenuous face smiles upon him with the
pleasantest look of honesty in the world; 'that I am sure you are only going
to say good-bye!'
'Certainly, Miss Dombey,' says Mr Toots, 'I - I - that's exactly what I
mean. It's of no consequence.'
'Good-bye!' cries Florence.
'Good-bye, Miss Dombey!' stammers Mr Toots. 'I hope you won't think
anything about it. It's - it's of no consequence, thank you. It's not of the
least consequence in the world.'
Poor Mr Toots goes home to his hotel in a state of desperation, locks
himself into his bedroom, flings himself upon his bed, and lies there for a
long time; as if it were of the greatest consequence, nevertheless. But Mr
Feeder, B.A., is coming to dinner, which happens well for Mr Toots, or there
is no knowing when he might get up again. Mr Toots is obliged to get up to
receive him, and to give him hospitable entertainment.
And the generous influence of that social virtue, hospitality (to make
no mention of wine and good cheer), opens Mr Toots's heart, and warms him to
conversation. He does not tell Mr Feeder, B.A., what passed at the corner of
the Square; but when Mr Feeder asks him 'When it is to come off?' Mr Toots
replies, 'that there are certain subjects' - which brings Mr Feeder down a
peg or two immediately. Mr Toots adds, that he don't know what right Blimber
had to notice his being in Miss Dombey's company, and that if he thought he
meant impudence by it, he'd have him out, Doctor or no Doctor; but he
supposes its only his ignorance. Mr Feeder says he has no doubt of it.
Mr Feeder, however, as an intimate friend, is not excluded from the
subject. Mr Toots merely requires that it should be mentioned mysteriously,
and with feeling. After a few glasses of wine, he gives Miss Dombey's
health, observing, 'Feeder, you have no idea of the sentiments with which I
propose that toast.' Mr Feeder replies, 'Oh, yes, I have, my dear Toots; and
greatly they redound to your honour, old boy.' Mr Feeder is then agitated by
friendship, and shakes hands; and says, if ever Toots wants a brother, he
knows where to find him, either by post or parcel. Mr Feeder like-wise says,
that if he may advise, he would recommend Mr Toots to learn the guitar, or,
at least the flute; for women like music, when you are paying your addresses
to 'em, and he has found the advantage of it himself.
This brings Mr Feeder, B.A., to the confession that he has his eye upon
Cornelia Blimber. He informs Mr Toots that he don't object to spectacles,
and that if the Doctor were to do the handsome thing and give up the
business, why, there they are - provided for. He says it's his opinion that
when a man has made a handsome sum by his business, he is bound to give it
up; and that Cornelia would be an assistance in it which any man might be
proud of. Mr Toots replies by launching wildly out into Miss Dombey's
praises, and by insinuations that sometimes he thinks he should like to blow
his brains out. Mr Feeder strongly urges that it would be a rash attempt,
and shows him, as a reconcilement to existence, Cornelia's portrait,
spectacles and all.
Thus these quiet spirits pass the evening; and when it has yielded
place to night, Mr Toots walks home with Mr Feeder, and parts with him at
Doctor Blimber's door. But Mr Feeder only goes up the steps, and when Mr
Toots is gone, comes down again, to stroll upon the beach alone, and think
about his prospects. Mr Feeder plainly hears the waves informing him, as he
loiters along, that Doctor Blimber will give up the business; and he feels a
soft romantic pleasure in looking at the outside of the house, and thinking
that the Doctor will first paint it, and put it into thorough repair.
Mr Toots is likewise roaming up and down, outside the casket that
contains his jewel; and in a deplorable condition of mind, and not
unsuspected by the police, gazes at a window where he sees a light, and
which he has no doubt is Florence's. But it is not, for that is Mrs
Skewton's room; and while Florence, sleeping in another chamber, dreams
lovingly, in the midst of the old scenes, and their old associations live
again, the figure which in grim reality is substituted for the patient boy's
on the same theatre, once more to connect it - but how differently! - with
decay and death, is stretched there, wakeful and complaining. Ugly and
haggard it lies upon its bed of unrest; and by it, in the terror of her
unimpassioned loveliness - for it has terror in the sufferer's failing eyes
- sits Edith. What do the waves say, in the stillness of the night, to them?
'Edith, what is that stone arm raised to strike me? Don't you see it?'
There is nothing, mother, but your fancy.'
'But my fancy! Everything is my fancy. Look! Is it possible that you
don't see it?'
'Indeed, mother, there is nothing. Should I sit unmoved, if there were
any such thing there?'
'Unmoved?' looking wildly at her - 'it's gone now - and why are you so
unmoved? That is not my fancy, Edith. It turns me cold to see you sitting at
my side.'
'I am sorry, mother.'
'Sorry! You seem always sorry. But it is not for me!'
With that, she cries; and tossing her restless head from side to side
upon her pillow, runs on about neglect, and the mother she has been, and the
mother the good old creature was, whom they met, and the cold return the
daughters of such mothers make. In the midst of her incoherence, she stops,
looks at her daughter, cries out that her wits are going, and hides her face
upon the bed.
Edith, in compassion, bends over her and speaks to her. The sick old
woman clutches her round the neck, and says, with a look of horror,
'Edith! we are going home soon; going back. You mean that I shall go
home again?'
'Yes, mother, yes.'
'And what he said - what's-his-name, I never could remember names -
Major - that dreadful word, when we came away - it's not true? Edith!' with
a shriek and a stare, 'it's not that that is the matter with me.'
Night after night, the lights burn in the window, and the figure lies
upon the bed, and Edith sits beside it, and the restless waves are calling
to them both the whole night long. Night after night, the waves are hoarse
with repetition of their mystery; the dust lies piled upon the shore; the
sea-birds soar and hover; the winds and clouds are on their trackless
flight; the white arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible country
far away.
And still the sick old woman looks into the corner, where the stone arm
- part of a figure of some tomb, she says - is raised to strike her. At last
it falls; and then a dumb old woman lies upon the the bed, and she is
crooked and shrunk up, and half of her is dead.
Such is the figure, painted and patched for the sun to mock, that is
drawn slowly through the crowd from day to day; looking, as it goes, for the
good old creature who was such a mother, and making mouths as it peers among
the crowd in vain. Such is the figure that is often wheeled down to the
margin of the sea, and stationed there; but on which no wind can blow
freshness, and for which the murmur of the ocean has no soothing word. She
lies and listens to it by the hour; but its speech is dark and gloomy to
her, and a dread is on her face, and when her eyes wander over the expanse,
they see but a broad stretch of desolation between earth and heaven.
Florence she seldom sees, and when she does, is angry with and mows at.
Edith is beside her always, and keeps Florence away; and Florence, in her
bed at night, trembles at the thought of death in such a shape, and often
wakes and listens, thinking it has come. No one attends on her but Edith. It
is better that few eyes should see her; and her daughter watches alone by
the bedside.
A shadow even on that shadowed face, a sharpening even of the sharpened
features, and a thickening of the veil before the eyes into a pall that
shuts out the dim world, is come. Her wandering hands upon the coverlet join
feebly palm to palm, and move towards her daughter; and a voice not like
hers, not like any voice that speaks our mortal language - says, 'For I
nursed you!'
Edith, without a tear, kneels down to bring her voice closer to the
sinking head, and answers:
'Mother, can you hear me?'
Staring wide, she tries to nod in answer.
'Can you recollect the night before I married?'
The head is motionless, but it expresses somehow that she does.
'I told you then that I forgave your part in it, and prayed God to
forgive my own. I told you that time past was at an end between us. I say so
now, again. Kiss me, mother.'
Edith touches the white lips, and for a moment all is still. A moment
afterwards, her mother, with her girlish laugh, and the skeleton of the
Cleopatra manner, rises in her bed.
Draw the rose-coloured curtains. There is something else upon its
flight besides the wind and clouds. Draw the rose-coloured curtains close!
Intelligence of the event is sent to Mr Dombey in town, who waits upon
Cousin Feenix (not yet able to make up his mind for Baden-Baden), who has
just received it too. A good-natured creature like Cousin Feenix is the very
man for a marriage or a funeral, and his position in the family renders it
right that he should be consulted.
'Dombey,' said Cousin Feenix, 'upon my soul, I am very much shocked to
see you on such a melancholy occasion. My poor aunt! She was a devilish
lively woman.'
Mr Dombey replies, 'Very much so.'
'And made up,' says Cousin Feenix, 'really young, you know,
considering. I am sure, on the day of your marriage, I thought she was good
for another twenty years. In point of fact, I said so to a man at Brooks's -
little Billy Joper - you know him, no doubt - man with a glass in his eye?'
Mr Dombey bows a negative. 'In reference to the obsequies,' he hints,
'whether there is any suggestion - '
'Well, upon my life,' says Cousin Feenix, stroking his chin, which he
has just enough of hand below his wristbands to do; 'I really don't know.
There's a Mausoleum down at my place, in the park, but I'm afraid it's in
bad repair, and, in point of fact, in a devil of a state. But for being a
little out at elbows, I should have had it put to rights; but I believe the
people come and make pic-nic parties there inside the iron railings.'
Mr Dombey is clear that this won't do.
'There's an uncommon good church in the village,' says Cousin Feenix,
thoughtfully; 'pure specimen of the Anglo-Norman style, and admirably well
sketched too by Lady Jane Finchbury - woman with tight stays - but they've
spoilt it with whitewash, I understand, and it's a long journey.
'Perhaps Brighton itself,' Mr Dombey suggests.
'Upon my honour, Dombey, I don't think we could do better,' says Cousin
Feenix. 'It's on the spot, you see, and a very cheerful place.'
'And when,' hints Mr Dombey, 'would it be convenient?'
'I shall make a point,' says Cousin Feenix, 'of pledging myself for any
day you think best. I shall have great pleasure (melancholy pleasure, of
course) in following my poor aunt to the confines of the - in point of fact,
to the grave,' says Cousin Feenix, failing in the other turn of speech.
'Would Monday do for leaving town?' says Mr Dombey.
'Monday would suit me to perfection,' replies Cousin Feenix. Therefore
Mr Dombey arranges to take Cousin Feenix down on that day, and presently
takes his leave, attended to the stairs by Cousin Feenix, who says, at
parting, 'I'm really excessively sorry, Dombey, that you should have so much
trouble about it;' to which Mr Dombey answers, 'Not at all.'
At the appointed time, Cousin Feenix and Mr Dombey meet, and go down to
Brighton, and representing, in their two selves, all the other mourners for
the deceased lady's loss, attend her remains to their place of rest. Cousin
Feenix, sitting in the mourning-coach, recognises innumerable acquaintances
on the road, but takes no other notice of them, in decorum, than checking
them off aloud, as they go by, for Mr Dombey's information, as 'Tom Johnson.
Man with cork leg, from White's. What, are you here, Tommy? Foley on a blood
mare. The Smalder girls' - and so forth. At the ceremony Cousin Feenix is
depressed, observing, that these are the occasions to make a man think, in
point of fact, that he is getting shaky; and his eyes are really moistened,
when it is over. But he soon recovers; and so do the rest of Mrs Skewton's
relatives and friends, of whom the Major continually tells the club that she
never did wrap up enough; while the young lady with the back, who has so
much trouble with her eyelids, says, with a little scream, that she must
have been enormously old, and that she died of all kinds of horrors, and you
mustn't mention it.
So Edith's mother lies unmentioned of her dear friends, who are deaf to
the waves that are hoarse with repetition of their mystery, and blind to the
dust that is piled upon the shore, and to the white arms that are beckoning,
in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away. But all goes on, as it
was wont, upon the margin of the unknown sea; and Edith standing there
alone, and listening to its waves, has dank weed cast up at her feet, to
strew her path in life withal.
Confidential and Accidental
Attired no more in Captain Cuttle's sable slops and sou'-wester hat,
but dressed in a substantial suit of brown livery, which, while it affected
to be a very sober and demure livery indeed, was really as self-satisfied
and confident a one as tailor need desire to make, Rob the Grinder, thus
transformed as to his outer man, and all regardless within of the Captain
and the Midshipman, except when he devoted a few minutes of his leisure time
to crowing over those inseparable worthies, and recalling, with much
applauding music from that brazen instrument, his conscience, the triumphant
manner in which he had disembarrassed himself of their company, now served
his patron, Mr Carker. Inmate of Mr Carker's house, and serving about his
person, Rob kept his round eyes on the white teeth with fear and trembling,
and felt that he had need to open them wider than ever.
He could not have quaked more, through his whole being, before the
teeth, though he had come into the service of some powerful enchanter, and
they had been his strongest spells. The boy had a sense of power and
authority in this patron of his that engrossed his whole attention and
exacted his most implicit submission and obedience. He hardly considered
himself safe in thinking about him when he was absent, lest he should feel
himself immediately taken by the throat again, as on the morning when he
first became bound to him, and should see every one of the teeth finding him
out, and taxing him with every fancy of his mind. Face to face with him, Rob
had no more doubt that Mr Carker read his secret thoughts, or that he could
read them by the least exertion of his will if he were so inclined, than he
had that Mr Carker saw him when he looked at him. The ascendancy was so
complete, and held him in such enthralment, that, hardly daring to think at
all, but with his mind filled with a constantly dilating impression of his
patron's irresistible command over him, and power of doing anything with
him, he would stand watching his pleasure, and trying to anticipate his
orders, in a state of mental suspension, as to all other things.
Rob had not informed himself perhaps - in his then state of mind it
would have been an act of no common temerity to inquire - whether he yielded
so completely to this influence in any part, because he had floating
suspicions of his patron's being a master of certain treacherous arts in
which he had himself been a poor scholar at the Grinders' School. But
certainly Rob admired him, as well as feared him. Mr Carker, perhaps, was
better acquainted with the sources of his power, which lost nothing by his
management of it.
On the very night when he left the Captain's service, Rob, after
disposing of his pigeons, and even making a bad bargain in his hurry, had
gone straight down to Mr Carker's house, and hotly presented himself before
his new master with a glowing face that seemed to expect commendation.
'What, scapegrace!' said Mr Carker, glancing at his bundle 'Have you
left your situation and come to me?'
'Oh if you please, Sir,' faltered Rob, 'you said, you know, when I come
here last - '
'I said,' returned Mr Carker, 'what did I say?'
'If you please, Sir, you didn't say nothing at all, Sir,' returned Rob,
warned by the manner of this inquiry, and very much disconcerted.
His patron looked at him with a wide display of gums, and shaking his
forefinger, observed:
'You'll come to an evil end, my vagabond friend, I foresee. There's
ruin in store for you.
'Oh if you please, don't, Sir!' cried Rob, with his legs trembling
under him. ' I'm sure, Sir, I only want to work for you, Sir, and to wait
upon you, Sir, and to do faithful whatever I'm bid, Sir.'
'You had better do faithfully whatever you are bid,' returned his
patron, 'if you have anything to do with me.'
'Yes, I know that, Sir,' pleaded the submissive Rob; 'I'm sure of that,
SIr. If you'll only be so good as try me, Sir! And if ever you find me out,
Sir, doing anything against your wishes, I give you leave to kill me.'
'You dog!' said Mr Carker, leaning back in his chair, and smiling at
him serenely. 'That's nothing to what I'd do to you, if you tried to deceive
me.'
'Yes, Sir,' replied the abject Grinder, 'I'm sure you would be down
upon me dreadful, Sir. I wouldn't attempt for to go and do it, Sir, not if I
was bribed with golden guineas.'
Thoroughly checked in his expectations of commendation, the crestfallen
Grinder stood looking at his patron, and vainly endeavouring not to look at
him, with the uneasiness which a cur will often manifest in a similar
situation.
'So you have left your old service, and come here to ask me to take you
into mine, eh?' said Mr Carker.
'Yes, if you please, Sir,' returned Rob, who, in doing so, had acted on
his patron's own instructions, but dared not justify himself by the least
insinuation to that effect.
'Well!' said Mr Carker. 'You know me, boy?'
'Please, Sir, yes, Sir,' returned Rob, tumbling with his hat, and still
fixed by Mr Carker's eye, and fruitlessly endeavouring to unfix himself.
Mr Carker nodded. 'Take care, then!'
Rob expressed in a number of short bows his lively understanding of
this caution, and was bowing himself back to the door, greatly relieved by
the prospect of getting on the outside of it, when his patron stopped him.
'Halloa!' he cried, calling him roughly back. 'You have been - shut
that door.'
Rob obeyed as if his life had depended on his alacrity.
'You have been used to eaves-dropping. Do you know what that means?'
'Listening, Sir?' Rob hazarded, after some embarrassed reflection.
His patron nodded. 'And watching, and so forth.'
'I wouldn't do such a thing here, Sir,' answered Rob; 'upon my word and
honour, I wouldn't, Sir, I wish I may die if I would, Sir, for anything that
could be promised to me. I should consider it is as much as all the world
was worth, to offer to do such a thing, unless I was ordered, Sir.'
'You had better not' You have been used, too, to babbling and
tattling,' said his patron with perfect coolness. 'Beware of that here, or
you're a lost rascal,' and he smiled again, and again cautioned him with his
forefinger.
The Grinder's breath came short and thick with consternation. He tried
to protest the purity of his intentions, but could only stare at the smiling
gentleman in a stupor of submission, with which the smiling gentleman seemed
well enough satisfied, for he ordered him downstairs, after observing him
for some moments in silence, and gave him to understand that he was retained
in his employment. This was the manner of Rob the Grinder's engagement by Mr
Carker, and his awe-stricken devotion to that gentleman had strengthened and
increased, if possible, with every minute of his service.
It was a service of some months' duration, when early one morning, Rob
opened the garden gate to Mr Dombey, who was come to breakfast with his
master, by appointment. At the same moment his master himself came, hurrying
forth to receive the distinguished guest, and give him welcome with all his
teeth.
'I never thought,' said Carker, when he had assisted him to alight from
his horse, 'to see you here, I'm sure. This is an extraordinary day in my
calendar. No occasion is very special to a man like you, who may do
anything; but to a man like me, the case is widely different.
'You have a tasteful place here, Carker,' said Mr Dombey, condescending
to stop upon the lawn, to look about him.
'You can afford to say so,' returned Carker. 'Thank you.'
'Indeed,' said Mr Dombey, in his lofty patronage, 'anyone might say so.
As far as it goes, it is a very commodious and well-arranged place - quite
elegant.'
'As far as it goes, truly,' returned Carker, with an air of
disparagement' 'It wants that qualification. Well! we have said enough about
it; and though you can afford to praise it, I thank you nonetheless. Will
you walk in?'
Mr Dombey, entering the house, noticed, as he had reason to do, the
complete arrangement of the rooms, and the numerous contrivances for comfort
and effect that abounded there. Mr Carker, in his ostentation of humility,
received this notice with a deferential smile, and said he understood its
delicate meaning, and appreciated it, but in truth the cottage was good
enough for one in his position - better, perhaps, than such a man should
occupy, poor as it was.
'But perhaps to you, who are so far removed, it really does look better
than it is,' he said, with his false mouth distended to its fullest stretch.
'Just as monarchs imagine attractions in the lives of beggars.'
He directed a sharp glance and a sharp smile at Mr Dombey as he spoke,
and a sharper glance, and a sharper smile yet, when Mr Dombey, drawing
himself up before the fire, in the attitude so often copied by his second in
command, looked round at the pictures on the walls. Cursorily as his cold
eye wandered over them, Carker's keen glance accompanied his, and kept pace
with his, marking exactly where it went, and what it saw. As it rested on
one picture in particular, Carker hardly seemed to breathe, his sidelong
scrutiny was so cat-like and vigilant, but the eye of his great chief passed
from that, as from the others, and appeared no more impressed by it than by
the rest.
Carker looked at it - it was the picture that resembled Edith - as if
it were a living thing; and with a wicked, silent laugh upon his face, that
seemed in part addressed to it, though it was all derisive of the great man
standing so unconscious beside him. Breakfast was soon set upon the table;
and, inviting Mr Dombey to a chair which had its back towards this picture,
he took his own seat opposite to it as usual.
Mr Dombey was even graver than it was his custom to be, and quite
silent. The parrot, swinging in the gilded hoop within her gaudy cage,
attempted in vain to attract notice, for Carker was too observant of his
visitor to heed her; and the visitor, abstracted in meditation, looked
fixedly, not to say sullenly, over his stiff neckcloth, without raising his
eyes from the table-cloth. As to Rob, who was in attendance, all his
faculties and energies were so locked up in observation of his master, that
he scarcely ventured to give shelter to the thought that the visitor was the
great gentleman before whom he had been carried as a certificate of the
family health, in his childhood, and to whom he had been indebted for his
leather smalls.
'Allow me,' said Carker suddenly, 'to ask how Mrs Dombey is?'
He leaned forward obsequiously, as he made the inquiry, with his chin
resting on his hand; and at the same time his eyes went up to the picture,
as if he said to it, 'Now, see, how I will lead him on!'
Mr Dombey reddened as he answered:
'Mrs Dombey is quite well. You remind me, Carker, of some conversation
that I wish to have with you.'
'And is Joseph absolutely banished?' said the Major, thrusting in his
purple face over the steps. 'Damme, Ma'am, is Cleopatra so hard-hearted as
to forbid her faithful Antony Bagstock to approach the presence?'
'Go along!' said Cleopatra, 'I can't bear you. You shall see me when I
come back, if you are very good.'
'Tell Joseph, he may live in hope, Ma'am,' said the Major; 'or he'll
die in despair.'
Cleopatra shuddered, and leaned back. 'Edith, my dear,' she said. 'Tell
him - '
'What?'
'Such dreadful words,' said Cleopatra. 'He uses such dreadful words!'
Edith signed to him to retire, gave the word to go on, and left the
objectionable Major to Mr Dombey. To whom he returned, whistling.
'I'll tell you what, Sir,' said the Major, with his hands behind him,
and his legs very wide asunder, 'a fair friend of ours has removed to Queer
Street.'
'What do you mean, Major?' inquired Mr Dombey.
'I mean to say, Dombey,' returned the Major, 'that you'll soon be an
orphan-in-law.'
Mr Dombey appeared to relish this waggish description of himself so
very little, that the Major wound up with the horse's cough, as an
expression of gravity.
'Damme, Sir,' said the Major, 'there is no use in disguising a fact.
Joe is blunt, Sir. That's his nature. If you take old Josh at all, you take
him as you find him; and a devilish rusty, old rasper, of a close-toothed,
J. B. file, you do find him. Dombey,' said the Major, 'your wife's mother is
on the move, Sir.'
'I fear,' returned Mr Dombey, with much philosophy, 'that Mrs Skewton
is shaken.'
'Shaken, Dombey!' said the Major. 'Smashed!'
'Change, however,' pursued Mr Dombey, 'and attention, may do much yet.'
'Don't believe it, Sir,' returned the Major. 'Damme, Sir, she never
wrapped up enough. If a man don't wrap up,' said the Major, taking in
another button of his buff waistcoat, 'he has nothing to fall back upon. But
some people will die. They will do it. Damme, they will. They're obstinate.
I tell you what, Dombey, it may not be ornamental; it may not be refined; it
may be rough and tough; but a little of the genuine old English Bagstock
stamina, Sir, would do all the good in the world to the human breed.'
After imparting this precious piece of information, the Major, who was
certainly true-blue, whatever other endowments he may have had or wanted,
coming within the 'genuine old English' classification, which has never been
exactly ascertained, took his lobster-eyes and his apoplexy to the club, and
choked there all day.
Cleopatra, at one time fretful, at another self-complacent, sometimes
awake, sometimes asleep, and at all times juvenile, reached Brighton the
same night, fell to pieces as usual, and was put away in bed; where a gloomy
fancy might have pictured a more potent skeleton than the maid, who should
have been one, watching at the rose-coloured curtains, which were carried
down to shed their bloom upon her.
It was settled in high council of medical authority that she should
take a carriage airing every day, and that it was important she should get
out every day, and walk if she could. Edith was ready to attend her - always
ready to attend her, with the same mechanical attention and immovable beauty
- and they drove out alone; for Edith had an uneasiness in the presence of
Florence, now that her mother was worse, and told Florence, with a kiss,
that she would rather they two went alone.
Mrs Skewton, on one particular day, was in the irresolute, exacting,
jealous temper that had developed itself on her recovery from her first
attack. After sitting silent in the carriage watching Edith for some time,
she took her hand and kissed it passionately. The hand was neither given nor
withdrawn, but simply yielded to her raising of it, and being released,
dropped down again, almost as if it were insensible. At this she began to
whimper and moan, and say what a mother she had been, and how she was
forgotten! This she continued to do at capricious intervals, even when they
had alighted: when she herself was halting along with the joint support of
Withers and a stick, and Edith was walking by her side, and the carriage
slowly following at a little distance.
It was a bleak, lowering, windy day, and they were out upon the Downs
with nothing but a bare sweep of land between them and the sky. The mother,
with a querulous satisfaction in the monotony of her complaint, was still
repeating it in a low voice from time to time, and the proud form of her
daughter moved beside her slowly, when there came advancing over a dark
ridge before them, two other figures, which in the distance, were so like an
exaggerated imitation of their own, that Edith stopped.
Almost as she stopped, the two figures stopped; and that one which to
Edith's thinking was like a distorted shadow of her mother, spoke to the
other, earnestly, and with a pointing hand towards them. That one seemed
inclined to turn back, but the other, in which Edith recognised enough that
was like herself to strike her with an unusual feeling, not quite free from
fear, came on; and then they came on together.
The greater part of this observation, she made while walking towards
them, for her stoppage had been momentary. Nearer observation showed her
that they were poorly dressed, as wanderers about the country; that the
younger woman carried knitted work or some such goods for sale; and that the
old one toiled on empty-handed.
And yet, however far removed she was in dress, in dignity, in beauty,
Edith could not but compare the younger woman with herself, still. It may
have been that she saw upon her face some traces which she knew were
lingering in her own soul, if not yet written on that index; but, as the
woman came on, returning her gaze, fixing her shining eyes upon her,
undoubtedly presenting something of her own air and stature, and appearing
to reciprocate her own thoughts, she felt a chill creep over her, as if the
day were darkening, and the wind were colder.
They had now come up. The old woman, holding out her hand
importunately, stopped to beg of Mrs Skewton. The younger one stopped too,
and she and Edith looked in one another's eyes.
'What is it that you have to sell?' said Edith.
'Only this,' returned the woman, holding out her wares, without looking
at them. 'I sold myself long ago.'
'My Lady, don't believe her,' croaked the old woman to Mrs Skewton;
'don't believe what she says. She loves to talk like that. She's my handsome
and undutiful daughter. She gives me nothing but reproaches, my Lady, for
all I have done for her. Look at her now, my Lady, how she turns upon her
poor old mother with her looks.'
As Mrs Skewton drew her purse out with a trembling hand, and eagerly
fumbled for some money, which the other old woman greedily watched for -
their heads all but touching, in their hurry and decrepitude - Edith
interposed:
'I have seen you,' addressing the old woman, 'before.'
'Yes, my Lady,' with a curtsey. 'Down in Warwickshire. The morning
among the trees. When you wouldn't give me nothing. But the gentleman, he
give me something! Oh, bless him, bless him!' mumbled the old woman, holding
up her skinny hand, and grinning frightfully at her daughter.
'It's of no use attempting to stay me, Edith!' said Mrs Skewton,
angrily anticipating an objection from her. 'You know nothing about it. I
won't be dissuaded. I am sure this is an excellent woman, and a good
mother.'
'Yes, my Lady, yes,' chattered the old woman, holding out her
avaricious hand. 'Thankee, my Lady. Lord bless you, my Lady. Sixpence more,
my pretty Lady, as a good mother yourself.'
'And treated undutifully enough, too, my good old creature, sometimes,
I assure you,' said Mrs Skewton, whimpering. 'There! Shake hands with me.
You're a very good old creature - full of what's-his-name - and all that.
You're all affection and et cetera, ain't you?'
'Oh, yes, my Lady!'
'Yes, I'm sure you are; and so's that gentlemanly creature Grangeby. I
must really shake hands with you again. And now you can go, you know; and I
hope,' addressing the daughter, 'that you'll show more gratitude, and
natural what's-its-name, and all the rest of it - but I never remember names
- for there never was a better mother than the good old creature's been to
you. Come, Edith!'
As the ruin of Cleopatra tottered off whimpering, and wiping its eyes
with a gingerly remembrance of rouge in their neighbourhood, the old woman
hobbled another way, mumbling and counting her money. Not one word more, nor
one other gesture, had been exchanged between Edith and the younger woman,
but neither had removed her eyes from the other for a moment. They had
remained confronted until now, when Edith, as awakening from a dream, passed
slowly on.
'You're a handsome woman,' muttered her shadow, looking after her; 'but
good looks won't save us. And you're a proud woman; but pride won't save us.
We had need to know each other when we meet again!'
New Voices in the Waves
All is going on as it was wont. The waves are hoarse with repetition of
their mystery; the dust lies piled upon the shore; the sea-birds soar and
hover; the winds and clouds go forth upon their trackless flight; the white
arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away.
With a tender melancholy pleasure, Florence finds herself again on the
old ground so sadly trodden, yet so happily, and thinks of him in the quiet
place, where he and she have many and many a time conversed together, with
the water welling up about his couch. And now, as she sits pensive there,
she hears in the wild low murmur of the sea, his little story told again,
his very words repeated; and finds that all her life and hopes, and griefs,
since - in the solitary house, and in the pageant it has changed to - have a
portion in the burden of the marvellous song.
And gentle Mr Toots, who wanders at a distance, looking wistfully
towards the figure that he dotes upon, and has followed there, but cannot in
his delicacy disturb at such a time, likewise hears the requiem of little
Dombey on the waters, rising and falling in the lulls of their eternal
madrigal in praise of Florence. Yes! and he faintly understands, poor Mr
Toots, that they are saying something of a time when he was sensible of
being brighter and not addle-brained; and the tears rising in his eyes when
he fears that he is dull and stupid now, and good for little but to be
laughed at, diminish his satisfaction in their soothing reminder that he is
relieved from present responsibility to the Chicken, by the absence of that
game head of poultry in the country, training (at Toots's cost) for his
great mill with the Larkey Boy.
But Mr Toots takes courage, when they whisper a kind thought to him;
and by slow degrees and with many indecisive stoppages on the way,
approaches Florence. Stammering and blushing, Mr Toots affects amazement
when he comes near her, and says (having followed close on the carriage in
which she travelled, every inch of the way from London, loving even to be
choked by the dust of its wheels) that he never was so surprised in all his
life.
'And you've brought Diogenes, too, Miss Dombey!' says Mr Toots,
thrilled through and through by the touch of the small hand so pleasantly
and frankly given him.
No doubt Diogenes is there, and no doubt Mr Toots has reason to observe
him, for he comes straightway at Mr Toots's legs, and tumbles over himself
in the desperation with which he makes at him, like a very dog of Montargis.
But he is checked by his sweet mistress.
'Down, Di, down. Don't you remember who first made us friends, Di? For
shame!'
Oh! Well may Di lay his loving cheek against her hand, and run off, and
run back, and run round her, barking, and run headlong at anybody coming by,
to show his devotion. Mr Toots would run headlong at anybody, too. A
military gentleman goes past, and Mr Toots would like nothing better than to
run at him, full tilt.
'Diogenes is quite in his native air, isn't he, Miss Dombey?' says Mr
Toots.
Florence assents, with a grateful smile.
'Miss Dombey,' says Mr Toots, 'beg your pardon, but if you would like
to walk to Blimber's, I - I'm going there.'
Florence puts her arm in that of Mr Toots without a word, and they walk
away together, with Diogenes going on before. Mr Toots's legs shake under
him; and though he is splendidly dressed, he feels misfits, and sees
wrinkles, in the masterpieces of Burgess and Co., and wishes he had put on
that brightest pair of boots.
Doctor Blimber's house, outside, has as scholastic and studious an air
as ever; and up there is the window where she used to look for the pale
face, and where the pale face brightened when it saw her, and the wasted
little hand waved kisses as she passed. The door is opened by the same
weak-eyed young man, whose imbecility of grin at sight of Mr Toots is
feebleness of character personified. They are shown into the Doctor's study,
where blind Homer and Minerva give them audience as of yore, to the sober
ticking of the great clock in the hall; and where the globes stand still in
their accustomed places, as if the world were stationary too, and nothing in
it ever perished in obedience to the universal law, that, while it keeps it
on the roll, calls everything to earth.
And here is Doctor Blimber, with his learned legs; and here is Mrs
Blimber, with her sky-blue cap; and here Cornelia, with her sandy little row
of curls, and her bright spectacles, still working like a sexton in the
graves of languages. Here is the table upon which he sat forlorn and
strange, the 'new boy' of the school; and hither comes the distant cooing of
the old boys, at their old lives in the old room on the old principle!
'Toots,' says Doctor Blimber, 'I am very glad to see you, Toots.'
Mr Toots chuckles in reply.
'Also to see you, Toots, in such good company,' says Doctor Blimber.
Mr Toots, with a scarlet visage, explains that he has met Miss Dombey
by accident, and that Miss Dombey wishing, like himself, to see the old
place, they have come together.
'You will like,' says Doctor Blimber, 'to step among our young friends,
Miss Dombey, no doubt. All fellow-students of yours, Toots, once. I think we
have no new disciples in our little portico, my dear,' says Doctor Blimber
to Cornelia, 'since Mr Toots left us.'
'Except Bitherstone,' returns Cornelia.
'Ay, truly,' says the Doctor. 'Bitherstone is new to Mr Toots.'
New to Florence, too, almost; for, in the schoolroom, Bitherstone - no
longer Master Bitherstone of Mrs Pipchin's - shows in collars and a
neckcloth, and wears a watch. But Bitherstone, born beneath some Bengal star
of ill-omen, is extremely inky; and his Lexicon has got so dropsical from
constant reference, that it won't shut, and yawns as if it really could not
bear to be so bothered. So does Bitherstone its master, forced at Doctor
Blimber's highest pressure; but in the yawn of Bitherstone there is malice
and snarl, and he has been heard to say that he wishes he could catch 'old
Blimber' in India. He'd precious soon find himself carried up the country by
a few of his (Bitherstone's) Coolies, and handed over to the Thugs; he can
tell him that.
Briggs is still grinding in the mill of knowledge; and Tozer, too; and
Johnson, too; and all the rest; the older pupils being principally engaged
in forgetting, with prodigious labour, everything they knew when they were
younger. All are as polite and as pale as ever; and among them, Mr Feeder,
B.A., with his bony hand and bristly head, is still hard at it; with his
Herodotus stop on just at present, and his other barrels on a shelf behind
him.
A mighty sensation is created, even among these grave young gentlemen,
by a visit from the emancipated Toots; who is regarded with a kind of awe,
as one who has passed the Rubicon, and is pledged never to come back, and
concerning the cut of whose clothes, and fashion of whose jewellery,
whispers go about, behind hands; the bilious Bitherstone, who is not of Mr
Toots's time, affecting to despise the latter to the smaller boys, and
saying he knows better, and that he should like to see him coming that sort
of thing in Bengal, where his mother had got an emerald belonging to him
that was taken out of the footstool of a Rajah. Come now!
Bewildering emotions are awakened also by the sight of Florence, with
whom every young gentleman immediately falls in love, again; except, as
aforesaid, the bilious Bitherstone, who declines to do so, out of
contradiction. Black jealousies of Mr Toots arise, and Briggs is of opinion
that he ain't so very old after all. But this disparaging insinuation is
speedily made nought by Mr Toots saying aloud to Mr Feeder, B.A., 'How are
you, Feeder?' and asking him to come and dine with him to-day at the
Bedford; in right of which feats he might set up as Old Parr, if he chose,
unquestioned.
There is much shaking of hands, and much bowing, and a great desire on
the part of each young gentleman to take Toots down in Miss Dombey's good
graces; and then, Mr Toots having bestowed a chuckle on his old desk,
Florence and he withdraw with Mrs Blimber and Cornelia; and Doctor Blimber
is heard to observe behind them as he comes out last, and shuts the door,
'Gentlemen, we will now resume our studies,' For that and little else is
what the Doctor hears the sea say, or has heard it saying all his life.
Florence then steals away and goes upstairs to the old bedroom with Mrs
Blimber and Cornelia; Mr Toots, who feels that neither he nor anybody else
is wanted there, stands talking to the Doctor at the study-door, or rather
hearing the Doctor talk to him, and wondering how he ever thought the study
a great sanctuary, and the Doctor, with his round turned legs, like a
clerical pianoforte, an awful man. Florence soon comes down and takes leave;
Mr Toots takes leave; and Diogenes, who has been worrying the weak-eyed
young man pitilessly all the time, shoots out at the door, and barks a glad
defiance down the cliff; while Melia, and another of the Doctor's female
domestics, looks out of an upper window, laughing 'at that there Toots,' and
saying of Miss Dombey, 'But really though, now - ain't she like her brother,
only prettier?'
Mr Toots, who saw when Florence came down that there were tears upon
her face, is desperately anxious and uneasy, and at first fears that he did
wrong in proposing the visit. But he is soon relieved by her saying she is
very glad to have been there again, and by her talking quite cheerfully
about it all, as they walked on by the sea. What with the voices there, and
her sweet voice, when they come near Mr Dombey's house, and Mr Toots must
leave her, he is so enslaved that he has not a scrap of free-will left; when
she gives him her hand at parting, he cannot let it go.
'Miss Dombey, I beg your pardon,' says Mr Toots, in a sad fluster, 'but
if you would allow me to - to -
The smiling and unconscious look of Florence brings him to a dead stop.
'If you would allow me to - if you would not consider it a liberty,
Miss Dombey, if I was to - without any encouragement at all, if I was to
hope, you know,' says Mr Toots.
Florence looks at him inquiringly.
'Miss Dombey,' says Mr Toots, who feels that he is in for it now, 'I
really am in that state of adoration of you that I don't know what to do
with myself. I am the most deplorable wretch. If it wasn't at the corner of
the Square at present, I should go down on my knees, and beg and entreat of
you, without any encouragement at all, just to let me hope that I may - may
think it possible that you -
'Oh, if you please, don't!' cries Florence, for the moment quite
alarmed and distressed. 'Oh, pray don't, Mr Toots. Stop, if you please.
Don't say any more. As a kindness and a favour to me, don't.'
Mr Toots is dreadfully abashed, and his mouth opens.
'You have been so good to me,' says Florence, 'I am so grateful to you,
I have such reason to like you for being a kind friend to me, and I do like
you so much;' and here the ingenuous face smiles upon him with the
pleasantest look of honesty in the world; 'that I am sure you are only going
to say good-bye!'
'Certainly, Miss Dombey,' says Mr Toots, 'I - I - that's exactly what I
mean. It's of no consequence.'
'Good-bye!' cries Florence.
'Good-bye, Miss Dombey!' stammers Mr Toots. 'I hope you won't think
anything about it. It's - it's of no consequence, thank you. It's not of the
least consequence in the world.'
Poor Mr Toots goes home to his hotel in a state of desperation, locks
himself into his bedroom, flings himself upon his bed, and lies there for a
long time; as if it were of the greatest consequence, nevertheless. But Mr
Feeder, B.A., is coming to dinner, which happens well for Mr Toots, or there
is no knowing when he might get up again. Mr Toots is obliged to get up to
receive him, and to give him hospitable entertainment.
And the generous influence of that social virtue, hospitality (to make
no mention of wine and good cheer), opens Mr Toots's heart, and warms him to
conversation. He does not tell Mr Feeder, B.A., what passed at the corner of
the Square; but when Mr Feeder asks him 'When it is to come off?' Mr Toots
replies, 'that there are certain subjects' - which brings Mr Feeder down a
peg or two immediately. Mr Toots adds, that he don't know what right Blimber
had to notice his being in Miss Dombey's company, and that if he thought he
meant impudence by it, he'd have him out, Doctor or no Doctor; but he
supposes its only his ignorance. Mr Feeder says he has no doubt of it.
Mr Feeder, however, as an intimate friend, is not excluded from the
subject. Mr Toots merely requires that it should be mentioned mysteriously,
and with feeling. After a few glasses of wine, he gives Miss Dombey's
health, observing, 'Feeder, you have no idea of the sentiments with which I
propose that toast.' Mr Feeder replies, 'Oh, yes, I have, my dear Toots; and
greatly they redound to your honour, old boy.' Mr Feeder is then agitated by
friendship, and shakes hands; and says, if ever Toots wants a brother, he
knows where to find him, either by post or parcel. Mr Feeder like-wise says,
that if he may advise, he would recommend Mr Toots to learn the guitar, or,
at least the flute; for women like music, when you are paying your addresses
to 'em, and he has found the advantage of it himself.
This brings Mr Feeder, B.A., to the confession that he has his eye upon
Cornelia Blimber. He informs Mr Toots that he don't object to spectacles,
and that if the Doctor were to do the handsome thing and give up the
business, why, there they are - provided for. He says it's his opinion that
when a man has made a handsome sum by his business, he is bound to give it
up; and that Cornelia would be an assistance in it which any man might be
proud of. Mr Toots replies by launching wildly out into Miss Dombey's
praises, and by insinuations that sometimes he thinks he should like to blow
his brains out. Mr Feeder strongly urges that it would be a rash attempt,
and shows him, as a reconcilement to existence, Cornelia's portrait,
spectacles and all.
Thus these quiet spirits pass the evening; and when it has yielded
place to night, Mr Toots walks home with Mr Feeder, and parts with him at
Doctor Blimber's door. But Mr Feeder only goes up the steps, and when Mr
Toots is gone, comes down again, to stroll upon the beach alone, and think
about his prospects. Mr Feeder plainly hears the waves informing him, as he
loiters along, that Doctor Blimber will give up the business; and he feels a
soft romantic pleasure in looking at the outside of the house, and thinking
that the Doctor will first paint it, and put it into thorough repair.
Mr Toots is likewise roaming up and down, outside the casket that
contains his jewel; and in a deplorable condition of mind, and not
unsuspected by the police, gazes at a window where he sees a light, and
which he has no doubt is Florence's. But it is not, for that is Mrs
Skewton's room; and while Florence, sleeping in another chamber, dreams
lovingly, in the midst of the old scenes, and their old associations live
again, the figure which in grim reality is substituted for the patient boy's
on the same theatre, once more to connect it - but how differently! - with
decay and death, is stretched there, wakeful and complaining. Ugly and
haggard it lies upon its bed of unrest; and by it, in the terror of her
unimpassioned loveliness - for it has terror in the sufferer's failing eyes
- sits Edith. What do the waves say, in the stillness of the night, to them?
'Edith, what is that stone arm raised to strike me? Don't you see it?'
There is nothing, mother, but your fancy.'
'But my fancy! Everything is my fancy. Look! Is it possible that you
don't see it?'
'Indeed, mother, there is nothing. Should I sit unmoved, if there were
any such thing there?'
'Unmoved?' looking wildly at her - 'it's gone now - and why are you so
unmoved? That is not my fancy, Edith. It turns me cold to see you sitting at
my side.'
'I am sorry, mother.'
'Sorry! You seem always sorry. But it is not for me!'
With that, she cries; and tossing her restless head from side to side
upon her pillow, runs on about neglect, and the mother she has been, and the
mother the good old creature was, whom they met, and the cold return the
daughters of such mothers make. In the midst of her incoherence, she stops,
looks at her daughter, cries out that her wits are going, and hides her face
upon the bed.
Edith, in compassion, bends over her and speaks to her. The sick old
woman clutches her round the neck, and says, with a look of horror,
'Edith! we are going home soon; going back. You mean that I shall go
home again?'
'Yes, mother, yes.'
'And what he said - what's-his-name, I never could remember names -
Major - that dreadful word, when we came away - it's not true? Edith!' with
a shriek and a stare, 'it's not that that is the matter with me.'
Night after night, the lights burn in the window, and the figure lies
upon the bed, and Edith sits beside it, and the restless waves are calling
to them both the whole night long. Night after night, the waves are hoarse
with repetition of their mystery; the dust lies piled upon the shore; the
sea-birds soar and hover; the winds and clouds are on their trackless
flight; the white arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible country
far away.
And still the sick old woman looks into the corner, where the stone arm
- part of a figure of some tomb, she says - is raised to strike her. At last
it falls; and then a dumb old woman lies upon the the bed, and she is
crooked and shrunk up, and half of her is dead.
Such is the figure, painted and patched for the sun to mock, that is
drawn slowly through the crowd from day to day; looking, as it goes, for the
good old creature who was such a mother, and making mouths as it peers among
the crowd in vain. Such is the figure that is often wheeled down to the
margin of the sea, and stationed there; but on which no wind can blow
freshness, and for which the murmur of the ocean has no soothing word. She
lies and listens to it by the hour; but its speech is dark and gloomy to
her, and a dread is on her face, and when her eyes wander over the expanse,
they see but a broad stretch of desolation between earth and heaven.
Florence she seldom sees, and when she does, is angry with and mows at.
Edith is beside her always, and keeps Florence away; and Florence, in her
bed at night, trembles at the thought of death in such a shape, and often
wakes and listens, thinking it has come. No one attends on her but Edith. It
is better that few eyes should see her; and her daughter watches alone by
the bedside.
A shadow even on that shadowed face, a sharpening even of the sharpened
features, and a thickening of the veil before the eyes into a pall that
shuts out the dim world, is come. Her wandering hands upon the coverlet join
feebly palm to palm, and move towards her daughter; and a voice not like
hers, not like any voice that speaks our mortal language - says, 'For I
nursed you!'
Edith, without a tear, kneels down to bring her voice closer to the
sinking head, and answers:
'Mother, can you hear me?'
Staring wide, she tries to nod in answer.
'Can you recollect the night before I married?'
The head is motionless, but it expresses somehow that she does.
'I told you then that I forgave your part in it, and prayed God to
forgive my own. I told you that time past was at an end between us. I say so
now, again. Kiss me, mother.'
Edith touches the white lips, and for a moment all is still. A moment
afterwards, her mother, with her girlish laugh, and the skeleton of the
Cleopatra manner, rises in her bed.
Draw the rose-coloured curtains. There is something else upon its
flight besides the wind and clouds. Draw the rose-coloured curtains close!
Intelligence of the event is sent to Mr Dombey in town, who waits upon
Cousin Feenix (not yet able to make up his mind for Baden-Baden), who has
just received it too. A good-natured creature like Cousin Feenix is the very
man for a marriage or a funeral, and his position in the family renders it
right that he should be consulted.
'Dombey,' said Cousin Feenix, 'upon my soul, I am very much shocked to
see you on such a melancholy occasion. My poor aunt! She was a devilish
lively woman.'
Mr Dombey replies, 'Very much so.'
'And made up,' says Cousin Feenix, 'really young, you know,
considering. I am sure, on the day of your marriage, I thought she was good
for another twenty years. In point of fact, I said so to a man at Brooks's -
little Billy Joper - you know him, no doubt - man with a glass in his eye?'
Mr Dombey bows a negative. 'In reference to the obsequies,' he hints,
'whether there is any suggestion - '
'Well, upon my life,' says Cousin Feenix, stroking his chin, which he
has just enough of hand below his wristbands to do; 'I really don't know.
There's a Mausoleum down at my place, in the park, but I'm afraid it's in
bad repair, and, in point of fact, in a devil of a state. But for being a
little out at elbows, I should have had it put to rights; but I believe the
people come and make pic-nic parties there inside the iron railings.'
Mr Dombey is clear that this won't do.
'There's an uncommon good church in the village,' says Cousin Feenix,
thoughtfully; 'pure specimen of the Anglo-Norman style, and admirably well
sketched too by Lady Jane Finchbury - woman with tight stays - but they've
spoilt it with whitewash, I understand, and it's a long journey.
'Perhaps Brighton itself,' Mr Dombey suggests.
'Upon my honour, Dombey, I don't think we could do better,' says Cousin
Feenix. 'It's on the spot, you see, and a very cheerful place.'
'And when,' hints Mr Dombey, 'would it be convenient?'
'I shall make a point,' says Cousin Feenix, 'of pledging myself for any
day you think best. I shall have great pleasure (melancholy pleasure, of
course) in following my poor aunt to the confines of the - in point of fact,
to the grave,' says Cousin Feenix, failing in the other turn of speech.
'Would Monday do for leaving town?' says Mr Dombey.
'Monday would suit me to perfection,' replies Cousin Feenix. Therefore
Mr Dombey arranges to take Cousin Feenix down on that day, and presently
takes his leave, attended to the stairs by Cousin Feenix, who says, at
parting, 'I'm really excessively sorry, Dombey, that you should have so much
trouble about it;' to which Mr Dombey answers, 'Not at all.'
At the appointed time, Cousin Feenix and Mr Dombey meet, and go down to
Brighton, and representing, in their two selves, all the other mourners for
the deceased lady's loss, attend her remains to their place of rest. Cousin
Feenix, sitting in the mourning-coach, recognises innumerable acquaintances
on the road, but takes no other notice of them, in decorum, than checking
them off aloud, as they go by, for Mr Dombey's information, as 'Tom Johnson.
Man with cork leg, from White's. What, are you here, Tommy? Foley on a blood
mare. The Smalder girls' - and so forth. At the ceremony Cousin Feenix is
depressed, observing, that these are the occasions to make a man think, in
point of fact, that he is getting shaky; and his eyes are really moistened,
when it is over. But he soon recovers; and so do the rest of Mrs Skewton's
relatives and friends, of whom the Major continually tells the club that she
never did wrap up enough; while the young lady with the back, who has so
much trouble with her eyelids, says, with a little scream, that she must
have been enormously old, and that she died of all kinds of horrors, and you
mustn't mention it.
So Edith's mother lies unmentioned of her dear friends, who are deaf to
the waves that are hoarse with repetition of their mystery, and blind to the
dust that is piled upon the shore, and to the white arms that are beckoning,
in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away. But all goes on, as it
was wont, upon the margin of the unknown sea; and Edith standing there
alone, and listening to its waves, has dank weed cast up at her feet, to
strew her path in life withal.
Confidential and Accidental
Attired no more in Captain Cuttle's sable slops and sou'-wester hat,
but dressed in a substantial suit of brown livery, which, while it affected
to be a very sober and demure livery indeed, was really as self-satisfied
and confident a one as tailor need desire to make, Rob the Grinder, thus
transformed as to his outer man, and all regardless within of the Captain
and the Midshipman, except when he devoted a few minutes of his leisure time
to crowing over those inseparable worthies, and recalling, with much
applauding music from that brazen instrument, his conscience, the triumphant
manner in which he had disembarrassed himself of their company, now served
his patron, Mr Carker. Inmate of Mr Carker's house, and serving about his
person, Rob kept his round eyes on the white teeth with fear and trembling,
and felt that he had need to open them wider than ever.
He could not have quaked more, through his whole being, before the
teeth, though he had come into the service of some powerful enchanter, and
they had been his strongest spells. The boy had a sense of power and
authority in this patron of his that engrossed his whole attention and
exacted his most implicit submission and obedience. He hardly considered
himself safe in thinking about him when he was absent, lest he should feel
himself immediately taken by the throat again, as on the morning when he
first became bound to him, and should see every one of the teeth finding him
out, and taxing him with every fancy of his mind. Face to face with him, Rob
had no more doubt that Mr Carker read his secret thoughts, or that he could
read them by the least exertion of his will if he were so inclined, than he
had that Mr Carker saw him when he looked at him. The ascendancy was so
complete, and held him in such enthralment, that, hardly daring to think at
all, but with his mind filled with a constantly dilating impression of his
patron's irresistible command over him, and power of doing anything with
him, he would stand watching his pleasure, and trying to anticipate his
orders, in a state of mental suspension, as to all other things.
Rob had not informed himself perhaps - in his then state of mind it
would have been an act of no common temerity to inquire - whether he yielded
so completely to this influence in any part, because he had floating
suspicions of his patron's being a master of certain treacherous arts in
which he had himself been a poor scholar at the Grinders' School. But
certainly Rob admired him, as well as feared him. Mr Carker, perhaps, was
better acquainted with the sources of his power, which lost nothing by his
management of it.
On the very night when he left the Captain's service, Rob, after
disposing of his pigeons, and even making a bad bargain in his hurry, had
gone straight down to Mr Carker's house, and hotly presented himself before
his new master with a glowing face that seemed to expect commendation.
'What, scapegrace!' said Mr Carker, glancing at his bundle 'Have you
left your situation and come to me?'
'Oh if you please, Sir,' faltered Rob, 'you said, you know, when I come
here last - '
'I said,' returned Mr Carker, 'what did I say?'
'If you please, Sir, you didn't say nothing at all, Sir,' returned Rob,
warned by the manner of this inquiry, and very much disconcerted.
His patron looked at him with a wide display of gums, and shaking his
forefinger, observed:
'You'll come to an evil end, my vagabond friend, I foresee. There's
ruin in store for you.
'Oh if you please, don't, Sir!' cried Rob, with his legs trembling
under him. ' I'm sure, Sir, I only want to work for you, Sir, and to wait
upon you, Sir, and to do faithful whatever I'm bid, Sir.'
'You had better do faithfully whatever you are bid,' returned his
patron, 'if you have anything to do with me.'
'Yes, I know that, Sir,' pleaded the submissive Rob; 'I'm sure of that,
SIr. If you'll only be so good as try me, Sir! And if ever you find me out,
Sir, doing anything against your wishes, I give you leave to kill me.'
'You dog!' said Mr Carker, leaning back in his chair, and smiling at
him serenely. 'That's nothing to what I'd do to you, if you tried to deceive
me.'
'Yes, Sir,' replied the abject Grinder, 'I'm sure you would be down
upon me dreadful, Sir. I wouldn't attempt for to go and do it, Sir, not if I
was bribed with golden guineas.'
Thoroughly checked in his expectations of commendation, the crestfallen
Grinder stood looking at his patron, and vainly endeavouring not to look at
him, with the uneasiness which a cur will often manifest in a similar
situation.
'So you have left your old service, and come here to ask me to take you
into mine, eh?' said Mr Carker.
'Yes, if you please, Sir,' returned Rob, who, in doing so, had acted on
his patron's own instructions, but dared not justify himself by the least
insinuation to that effect.
'Well!' said Mr Carker. 'You know me, boy?'
'Please, Sir, yes, Sir,' returned Rob, tumbling with his hat, and still
fixed by Mr Carker's eye, and fruitlessly endeavouring to unfix himself.
Mr Carker nodded. 'Take care, then!'
Rob expressed in a number of short bows his lively understanding of
this caution, and was bowing himself back to the door, greatly relieved by
the prospect of getting on the outside of it, when his patron stopped him.
'Halloa!' he cried, calling him roughly back. 'You have been - shut
that door.'
Rob obeyed as if his life had depended on his alacrity.
'You have been used to eaves-dropping. Do you know what that means?'
'Listening, Sir?' Rob hazarded, after some embarrassed reflection.
His patron nodded. 'And watching, and so forth.'
'I wouldn't do such a thing here, Sir,' answered Rob; 'upon my word and
honour, I wouldn't, Sir, I wish I may die if I would, Sir, for anything that
could be promised to me. I should consider it is as much as all the world
was worth, to offer to do such a thing, unless I was ordered, Sir.'
'You had better not' You have been used, too, to babbling and
tattling,' said his patron with perfect coolness. 'Beware of that here, or
you're a lost rascal,' and he smiled again, and again cautioned him with his
forefinger.
The Grinder's breath came short and thick with consternation. He tried
to protest the purity of his intentions, but could only stare at the smiling
gentleman in a stupor of submission, with which the smiling gentleman seemed
well enough satisfied, for he ordered him downstairs, after observing him
for some moments in silence, and gave him to understand that he was retained
in his employment. This was the manner of Rob the Grinder's engagement by Mr
Carker, and his awe-stricken devotion to that gentleman had strengthened and
increased, if possible, with every minute of his service.
It was a service of some months' duration, when early one morning, Rob
opened the garden gate to Mr Dombey, who was come to breakfast with his
master, by appointment. At the same moment his master himself came, hurrying
forth to receive the distinguished guest, and give him welcome with all his
teeth.
'I never thought,' said Carker, when he had assisted him to alight from
his horse, 'to see you here, I'm sure. This is an extraordinary day in my
calendar. No occasion is very special to a man like you, who may do
anything; but to a man like me, the case is widely different.
'You have a tasteful place here, Carker,' said Mr Dombey, condescending
to stop upon the lawn, to look about him.
'You can afford to say so,' returned Carker. 'Thank you.'
'Indeed,' said Mr Dombey, in his lofty patronage, 'anyone might say so.
As far as it goes, it is a very commodious and well-arranged place - quite
elegant.'
'As far as it goes, truly,' returned Carker, with an air of
disparagement' 'It wants that qualification. Well! we have said enough about
it; and though you can afford to praise it, I thank you nonetheless. Will
you walk in?'
Mr Dombey, entering the house, noticed, as he had reason to do, the
complete arrangement of the rooms, and the numerous contrivances for comfort
and effect that abounded there. Mr Carker, in his ostentation of humility,
received this notice with a deferential smile, and said he understood its
delicate meaning, and appreciated it, but in truth the cottage was good
enough for one in his position - better, perhaps, than such a man should
occupy, poor as it was.
'But perhaps to you, who are so far removed, it really does look better
than it is,' he said, with his false mouth distended to its fullest stretch.
'Just as monarchs imagine attractions in the lives of beggars.'
He directed a sharp glance and a sharp smile at Mr Dombey as he spoke,
and a sharper glance, and a sharper smile yet, when Mr Dombey, drawing
himself up before the fire, in the attitude so often copied by his second in
command, looked round at the pictures on the walls. Cursorily as his cold
eye wandered over them, Carker's keen glance accompanied his, and kept pace
with his, marking exactly where it went, and what it saw. As it rested on
one picture in particular, Carker hardly seemed to breathe, his sidelong
scrutiny was so cat-like and vigilant, but the eye of his great chief passed
from that, as from the others, and appeared no more impressed by it than by
the rest.
Carker looked at it - it was the picture that resembled Edith - as if
it were a living thing; and with a wicked, silent laugh upon his face, that
seemed in part addressed to it, though it was all derisive of the great man
standing so unconscious beside him. Breakfast was soon set upon the table;
and, inviting Mr Dombey to a chair which had its back towards this picture,
he took his own seat opposite to it as usual.
Mr Dombey was even graver than it was his custom to be, and quite
silent. The parrot, swinging in the gilded hoop within her gaudy cage,
attempted in vain to attract notice, for Carker was too observant of his
visitor to heed her; and the visitor, abstracted in meditation, looked
fixedly, not to say sullenly, over his stiff neckcloth, without raising his
eyes from the table-cloth. As to Rob, who was in attendance, all his
faculties and energies were so locked up in observation of his master, that
he scarcely ventured to give shelter to the thought that the visitor was the
great gentleman before whom he had been carried as a certificate of the
family health, in his childhood, and to whom he had been indebted for his
leather smalls.
'Allow me,' said Carker suddenly, 'to ask how Mrs Dombey is?'
He leaned forward obsequiously, as he made the inquiry, with his chin
resting on his hand; and at the same time his eyes went up to the picture,
as if he said to it, 'Now, see, how I will lead him on!'
Mr Dombey reddened as he answered:
'Mrs Dombey is quite well. You remind me, Carker, of some conversation
that I wish to have with you.'