Dombey and Son
refuge in corners, entangled themselves with company coming in, and
became barricaded behind sofas, and had doors opened smartly from
without against their heads, and underwent every sort of discomfiture.
When dinner was announced, Mr Dombey took down an old lady like a
crimson velvet pincushion stuffed with bank notes, who might have been
the identical old lady of Threadneedle Street, she was so rich, and
looked so unaccommodating; Cousin Feenix took down Mrs Dombey; Major
Bagstock took down Mrs Skewton; the young thing with the shoulders was
bestowed, as an extinguisher, upon the East India Director; and the
remaining ladies were left on view in the drawing-room by the remaining
gentlemen, until a forlorn hope volunteered to conduct them downstairs,
and those brave spirits with their captives blocked up the dining-room
door, shutting out seven mild men in the stony-hearted hall. When all
the rest were got in and were seated, one of these mild men still
appeared, in smiling confusion, totally destitute and unprovided for,
and, escorted by the butler, made the complete circuit of the table
twice before his chair could be found, which it finally was, on Mrs
Dombey’s left hand; after which the mild man never held up his head
again.
Now, the spacious dining-room, with the company seated round the
glittering table, busy with their glittering spoons, and knives and
forks, and plates, might have been taken for a grown-up exposition of
Tom Tiddler’s ground, where children pick up gold and silver. Mr
Dombey, as Tiddler, looked his character to admiration; and the long
plateau of precious metal frosted, separating him from Mrs Dombey,
whereon frosted Cupids offered scentless flowers to each of them, was
allegorical to see.
Cousin Feenix was in great force, and looked astonishingly young. But
he was sometimes thoughtless in his good humour—his memory occasionally
wandering like his legs—and on this occasion caused the company to
shudder. It happened thus. The young lady with the back, who regarded
Cousin Feenix with sentiments of tenderness, had entrapped the East
India Director into leading her to the chair next him; in return for
which good office, she immediately abandoned the Director, who, being
shaded on the other side by a gloomy black velvet hat surmounting a
bony and speechless female with a fan, yielded to a depression of
spirits and withdrew into himself. Cousin Feenix and the young lady
were very lively and humorous, and the young lady laughed so much at
something Cousin Feenix related to her, that Major Bagstock begged
leave to inquire on behalf of Mrs Skewton (they were sitting opposite,
a little lower down), whether that might not be considered public
property.
“Why, upon my life,” said Cousin Feenix, “there’s nothing in it; it
really is not worth repeating: in point of fact, it’s merely an
anecdote of Jack Adams. I dare say my friend Dombey;” for the general
attention was concentrated on Cousin Feenix; “may remember Jack Adams,
Jack Adams, not Joe; that was his brother. Jack—little Jack—man with a
cast in his eye, and slight impediment in his speech—man who sat for
somebody’s borough. We used to call him in my parliamentary time W. P.
Adams, in consequence of his being Warming Pan for a young fellow who
was in his minority. Perhaps my friend Dombey may have known the man?”
Mr Dombey, who was as likely to have known Guy Fawkes, replied in the
negative. But one of the seven mild men unexpectedly leaped into
distinction, by saying he had known him, and adding—“always wore
Hessian boots!”
“Exactly,” said Cousin Feenix, bending forward to see the mild man, and
smile encouragement at him down the table. “That was Jack. Joe wore—”
“Tops!” cried the mild man, rising in public estimation every Instant.
“Of course,” said Cousin Feenix, “you were intimate with em?”
“I knew them both,” said the mild man. With whom Mr Dombey immediately
took wine.
“Devilish good fellow, Jack!” said Cousin Feenix, again bending
forward, and smiling.
“Excellent,” returned the mild man, becoming bold on his success. “One
of the best fellows I ever knew.”
“No doubt you have heard the story?” said Cousin Feenix.
“I shall know,” replied the bold mild man, “when I have heard your
Ludship tell it.” With that, he leaned back in his chair and smiled at
the ceiling, as knowing it by heart, and being already tickled.
“In point of fact, it’s nothing of a story in itself,” said Cousin
Feenix, addressing the table with a smile, and a gay shake of his head,
“and not worth a word of preface. But it’s illustrative of the neatness
of Jack’s humour. The fact is, that Jack was invited down to a
marriage—which I think took place in Berkshire?”
“Shropshire,” said the bold mild man, finding himself appealed to.
“Was it? Well! In point of fact it might have been in any shire,” said
Cousin Feenix. “So my friend being invited down to this marriage in
Anyshire,” with a pleasant sense of the readiness of this joke, “goes.
Just as some of us, having had the honour of being invited to the
marriage of my lovely and accomplished relative with my friend Dombey,
didn’t require to be asked twice, and were devilish glad to be present
on so interesting an occasion.—Goes—Jack goes. Now, this marriage was,
in point of fact, the marriage of an uncommonly fine girl with a man
for whom she didn’t care a button, but whom she accepted on account of
his property, which was immense. When Jack returned to town, after the
nuptials, a man he knew, meeting him in the lobby of the House of
Commons, says, ‘Well, Jack, how are the ill-matched couple?’
‘Ill-matched,’ says Jack ‘Not at all. It’s a perfectly and equal
transaction. She is regularly bought, and you may take your oath he is
as regularly sold!’”
In his full enjoyment of this culminating point of his story, the
shudder, which had gone all round the table like an electric spark,
struck Cousin Feenix, and he stopped. Not a smile occasioned by the
only general topic of conversation broached that day, appeared on any
face. A profound silence ensued; and the wretched mild man, who had
been as innocent of any real foreknowledge of the story as the child
unborn, had the exquisite misery of reading in every eye that he was
regarded as the prime mover of the mischief.
Mr Dombey’s face was not a changeful one, and being cast in its mould
of state that day, showed little other apprehension of the story, if
any, than that which he expressed when he said solemnly, amidst the
silence, that it was “Very good.” There was a rapid glance from Edith
towards Florence, but otherwise she remained, externally, impassive and
unconscious.
Through the various stages of rich meats and wines, continual gold and
silver, dainties of earth, air, fire, and water, heaped-up fruits, and
that unnecessary article in Mr Dombey’s banquets—ice—the dinner slowly
made its way: the later stages being achieved to the sonorous music of
incessant double knocks, announcing the arrival of visitors, whose
portion of the feast was limited to the smell thereof. When Mrs Dombey
rose, it was a sight to see her lord, with stiff throat and erect head,
hold the door open for the withdrawal of the ladies; and to see how she
swept past him with his daughter on her arm.
Mr Dombey was a grave sight, behind the decanters, in a state of
dignity; and the East India Director was a forlorn sight near the
unoccupied end of the table, in a state of solitude; and the Major was
a military sight, relating stories of the Duke of York to six of the
seven mild men (the ambitious one was utterly quenched); and the Bank
Director was a lowly sight, making a plan of his little attempt at a
pinery, with dessert-knives, for a group of admirers; and Cousin Feenix
was a thoughtful sight, as he smoothed his long wristbands and
stealthily adjusted his wig. But all these sights were of short
duration, being speedily broken up by coffee, and the desertion of the
room.
There was a throng in the state-rooms upstairs, increasing every
minute; but still Mr Dombey’s list of visitors appeared to have some
native impossibility of amalgamation with Mrs Dombey’s list, and no one
could have doubted which was which. The single exception to this rule
perhaps was Mr Carker, who now smiled among the company, and who, as he
stood in the circle that was gathered about Mrs Dombey—watchful of her,
of them, his chief, Cleopatra and the Major, Florence, and everything
around—appeared at ease with both divisions of guests, and not marked
as exclusively belonging to either.
Florence had a dread of him, which made his presence in the room a
nightmare to her. She could not avoid the recollection of it, for her
eyes were drawn towards him every now and then, by an attraction of
dislike and distrust that she could not resist. Yet her thoughts were
busy with other things; for as she sat apart—not unadmired or unsought,
but in the gentleness of her quiet spirit—she felt how little part her
father had in what was going on, and saw, with pain, how ill at ease he
seemed to be, and how little regarded he was as he lingered about near
the door, for those visitors whom he wished to distinguish with
particular attention, and took them up to introduce them to his wife,
who received them with proud coldness, but showed no interest or wish
to please, and never, after the bare ceremony of reception, in
consultation of his wishes, or in welcome of his friends, opened her
lips. It was not the less perplexing or painful to Florence, that she
who acted thus, treated her so kindly and with such loving
consideration, that it almost seemed an ungrateful return on her part
even to know of what was passing before her eyes.
Happy Florence would have been, might she have ventured to bear her
father company, by so much as a look; and happy Florence was, in little
suspecting the main cause of his uneasiness. But afraid of seeming to
know that he was placed at any disadvantage, lest he should be
resentful of that knowledge; and divided between her impulse towards
him, and her grateful affection for Edith; she scarcely dared to raise
her eyes towards either. Anxious and unhappy for them both, the thought
stole on her through the crowd, that it might have been better for them
if this noise of tongues and tread of feet had never come there,—if the
old dulness and decay had never been replaced by novelty and
splendour,—if the neglected child had found no friend in Edith, but had
lived her solitary life, unpitied and forgotten.
Mrs Chick had some such thoughts too, but they were not so quietly
developed in her mind. This good matron had been outraged in the first
instance by not receiving an invitation to dinner. That blow partially
recovered, she had gone to a vast expense to make such a figure before
Mrs Dombey at home, as should dazzle the senses of that lady, and heap
mortification, mountains high, on the head of Mrs Skewton.
“But I am made,” said Mrs Chick to Mr Chick, “of no more account than
Florence! Who takes the smallest notice of me? No one!”
“No one, my dear,” assented Mr Chick, who was seated by the side of Mrs
Chick against the wall, and could console himself, even there, by
softly whistling.
“Does it at all appear as if I was wanted here?” exclaimed Mrs Chick,
with flashing eyes.
“No, my dear, I don’t think it does,” said Mr Chick.
“Paul’s mad!” said Mrs Chick.
Mr Chick whistled.
“Unless you are a monster, which I sometimes think you are,” said Mrs
Chick with candour, “don’t sit there humming tunes. How anyone with the
most distant feelings of a man, can see that mother-in-law of Paul’s,
dressed as she is, going on like that, with Major Bagstock, for whom,
among other precious things, we are indebted to your Lucretia Tox.”