Dombey and Son
added Mrs Chick with increased dignity, as if she had withheld her
crushing argument until now, “I never did think it was.”
Mr Dombey walked to the window and back again.
“It is not to be supposed, Louisa,” he said (Mrs Chick had nailed her
colours to the mast, and repeated “I know it isn’t,” but he took no
notice of it), “but that there are many persons who, supposing that I
recognised any claim at all in such a case, have a claim upon me
superior to Miss Tox’s. But I do not. I recognise no such thing. Paul
and myself will be able, when the time comes, to hold our own—the
House, in other words, will be able to hold its own, and maintain its
own, and hand down its own of itself, and without any such common-place
aids. The kind of foreign help which people usually seek for their
children, I can afford to despise; being above it, I hope. So that
Paul’s infancy and childhood pass away well, and I see him becoming
qualified without waste of time for the career on which he is destined
to enter, I am satisfied. He will make what powerful friends he pleases
in after-life, when he is actively maintaining—and extending, if that
is possible—the dignity and credit of the Firm. Until then, I am enough
for him, perhaps, and all in all. I have no wish that people should
step in between us. I would much rather show my sense of the obliging
conduct of a deserving person like your friend. Therefore let it be so;
and your husband and myself will do well enough for the other sponsors,
I daresay.”
In the course of these remarks, delivered with great majesty and
grandeur, Mr Dombey had truly revealed the secret feelings of his
breast. An indescribable distrust of anybody stepping in between
himself and his son; a haughty dread of having any rival or partner in
the boy’s respect and deference; a sharp misgiving, recently acquired,
that he was not infallible in his power of bending and binding human
wills; as sharp a jealousy of any second check or cross; these were, at
that time the master keys of his soul. In all his life, he had never
made a friend. His cold and distant nature had neither sought one, nor
found one. And now, when that nature concentrated its whole force so
strongly on a partial scheme of parental interest and ambition, it
seemed as if its icy current, instead of being released by this
influence, and running clear and free, had thawed for but an instant to
admit its burden, and then frozen with it into one unyielding block.
Elevated thus to the godmothership of little Paul, in virtue of her
insignificance, Miss Tox was from that hour chosen and appointed to
office; and Mr Dombey further signified his pleasure that the ceremony,
already long delayed, should take place without further postponement.
His sister, who had been far from anticipating so signal a success,
withdrew as soon as she could, to communicate it to her best of
friends; and Mr Dombey was left alone in his library. He had already
laid his hand upon the bellrope to convey his usual summons to
Richards, when his eye fell upon a writing-desk, belonging to his
deceased wife, which had been taken, among other things, from a cabinet
in her chamber. It was not the first time that his eye had lighted on
it He carried the key in his pocket; and he brought it to his table and
opened it now—having previously locked the room door—with a
well-accustomed hand.
From beneath a leaf of torn and cancelled scraps of paper, he took one
letter that remained entire. Involuntarily holding his breath as he
opened this document, and “bating in the stealthy action something of
his arrogant demeanour, he sat down, resting his head upon one hand,
and read it through.
He read it slowly and attentively, and with a nice particularity to
every syllable. Otherwise than as his great deliberation seemed
unnatural, and perhaps the result of an effort equally great, he
allowed no sign of emotion to escape him. When he had read it through,
he folded and refolded it slowly several times, and tore it carefully
into fragments. Checking his hand in the act of throwing these away, he
put them in his pocket, as if unwilling to trust them even to the
chances of being re-united and deciphered; and instead of ringing, as
usual, for little Paul, he sat solitary, all the evening, in his
cheerless room.
There was anything but solitude in the nursery; for there, Mrs Chick
and Miss Tox were enjoying a social evening, so much to the disgust of
Miss Susan Nipper, that that young lady embraced every opportunity of
making wry faces behind the door. Her feelings were so much excited on
the occasion, that she found it indispensable to afford them this
relief, even without having the comfort of any audience or sympathy
whatever. As the knight-errants of old relieved their minds by carving
their mistress’s names in deserts, and wildernesses, and other savage
places where there was no probability of there ever being anybody to
read them, so did Miss Susan Nipper curl her snub nose into drawers and
wardrobes, put away winks of disparagement in cupboards, shed derisive
squints into stone pitchers, and contradict and call names out in the
passage.
The two interlopers, however, blissfully unconscious of the young
lady’s sentiments, saw little Paul safe through all the stages of
undressing, airy exercise, supper and bed; and then sat down to tea
before the fire. The two children now lay, through the good offices of
Polly, in one room; and it was not until the ladies were established at
their tea-table that, happening to look towards the little beds, they
thought of Florence.
“How sound she sleeps!” said Miss Tox.
“Why, you know, my dear, she takes a great deal of exercise in the
course of the day,” returned Mrs Chick, “playing about little Paul so
much.”
“She is a curious child,” said Miss Tox.
“My dear,” retorted Mrs Chick, in a low voice: “Her Mama, all over!”
“In-deed!” said Miss Tox. “Ah dear me!”
A tone of most extraordinary compassion Miss Tox said it in, though she
had no distinct idea why, except that it was expected of her.
“Florence will never, never, never be a Dombey,” said Mrs Chick, “not
if she lives to be a thousand years old.”
Miss Tox elevated her eyebrows, and was again full of commiseration.
“I quite fret and worry myself about her,” said Mrs Chick, with a sigh
of modest merit. “I really don’t see what is to become of her when she
grows older, or what position she is to take. She don’t gain on her
Papa in the least. How can one expect she should, when she is so very
unlike a Dombey?”
Miss Tox looked as if she saw no way out of such a cogent argument as
that, at all.
“And the child, you see,” said Mrs Chick, in deep confidence, “has poor
dear Fanny’s nature. She’ll never make an effort in after-life, I’ll
venture to say. Never! She’ll never wind and twine herself about her
Papa’s heart like—”
“Like the ivy?” suggested Miss Tox.
“Like the ivy,” Mrs Chick assented. “Never! She’ll never glide and
nestle into the bosom of her Papa’s affections like—the—”
“Startled fawn?” suggested Miss Tox.
“Like the startled fawn,” said Mrs Chick. “Never! Poor Fanny! Yet, how
I loved her!”
“You must not distress yourself, my dear,” said Miss Tox, in a soothing
voice. “Now really! You have too much feeling.”
“We have all our faults,” said Mrs Chick, weeping and shaking her head.
“I daresay we have. I never was blind to hers. I never said I was. Far
from it. Yet how I loved her!”
What a satisfaction it was to Mrs Chick—a common-place piece of folly
enough, compared with whom her sister-in-law had been a very angel of
womanly intelligence and gentleness—to patronise and be tender to the
memory of that lady: in exact pursuance of her conduct to her in her
lifetime: and to thoroughly believe herself, and take herself in, and
make herself uncommonly comfortable on the strength of her toleration!
What a mighty pleasant virtue toleration should be when we are right,
to be so very pleasant when we are wrong, and quite unable to
demonstrate how we come to be invested with the privilege of exercising
it!
Mrs Chick was yet drying her eyes and shaking her head, when Richards
made bold to caution her that Miss Florence was awake and sitting in
her bed. She had risen, as the nurse said, and the lashes of her eyes
were wet with tears. But no one saw them glistening save Polly. No one
else leant over her, and whispered soothing words to her, or was near
enough to hear the flutter of her beating heart.
“Oh! dear nurse!” said the child, looking earnestly up in her face,
“let me lie by my brother!”
“Why, my pet?” said Richards.
“Oh! I think he loves me,” cried the child wildly. “Let me lie by him.
Pray do!”
Mrs Chick interposed with some motherly words about going to sleep like
a dear, but Florence repeated her supplication, with a frightened look,
and in a voice broken by sobs and tears.
“I’ll not wake him,” she said, covering her face and hanging down her
head. “I’ll only touch him with my hand, and go to sleep. Oh, pray,
pray, let me lie by my brother tonight, for I believe he’s fond of
me!”
Richards took her without a word, and carrying her to the little bed in
which the infant was sleeping, laid her down by his side. She crept as
near him as she could without disturbing his rest; and stretching out
one arm so that it timidly embraced his neck, and hiding her face on
the other, over which her damp and scattered hair fell loose, lay
motionless.
“Poor little thing,” said Miss Tox; “she has been dreaming, I daresay.”
Dreaming, perhaps, of loving tones for ever silent, of loving eyes for
ever closed, of loving arms again wound round her, and relaxing in that
dream within the dam which no tongue can relate. Seeking, perhaps—in
dreams—some natural comfort for a heart, deeply and sorely wounded,
though so young a child’s: and finding it, perhaps, in dreams, if not
in waking, cold, substantial truth. This trivial incident had so
interrupted the current of conversation, that it was difficult of
resumption; and Mrs Chick moreover had been so affected by the
contemplation of her own tolerant nature, that she was not in spirits.
The two friends accordingly soon made an end of their tea, and a
servant was despatched to fetch a hackney cabriolet for Miss Tox. Miss
Tox had great experience in hackney cabs, and her starting in one was
generally a work of time, as she was systematic in the preparatory
arrangements.
“Have the goodness, if you please, Towlinson,” said Miss Tox, “first of
all, to carry out a pen and ink and take his number legibly.”
“Yes, Miss,” said Towlinson.
“Then, if you please, Towlinson,” said Miss Tox, “have the goodness to
turn the cushion. Which,” said Miss Tox apart to Mrs Chick, “is
generally damp, my dear.”
“Yes, Miss,” said Towlinson.
“I’ll trouble you also, if you please, Towlinson,” said Miss Tox, “with
this card and this shilling. He’s to drive to the card, and is to
understand that he will not on any account have more than the
shilling.”
“No, Miss,” said Towlinson.
“And—I’m sorry to give you so much trouble, Towlinson,” said Miss Tox,
looking at him pensively.
“Not at all, Miss,” said Towlinson.
“Mention to the man, then, if you please, Towlinson,” said Miss Tox,
“that the lady’s uncle is a magistrate, and that if he gives her any of
his impertinence he will be punished terribly. You can pretend to say
that, if you please, Towlinson, in a friendly way, and because you know
it was done to another man, who died.”
“Certainly, Miss,” said Towlinson.
“And now good-night to my sweet, sweet, sweet, godson,” said Miss Tox,
with a soft shower of kisses at each repetition of the adjective; “and
Louisa, my dear friend, promise me to take a little something warm