Dombey and Son
attempt, in his condition, was nearly to over-balance him. He then
abruptly opened the door, and shot away to rejoin the Cautious Clara
with all speed—supposed to be his invariable custom, whenever he
considered he had made a point.
As it was not his humour to be often sought, Captain Cuttle decided not
to go or send to him next day, or until he should make his gracious
pleasure known in such wise, or failing that, until some little time
should have lapsed. The Captain, therefore, renewed his solitary life
next morning, and thought profoundly, many mornings, noons, and nights,
of old Sol Gills, and Bunsby’s sentiments concerning him, and the hopes
there were of his return. Much of such thinking strengthened Captain
Cuttle’s hopes; and he humoured them and himself by watching for the
Instrument-maker at the door—as he ventured to do now, in his strange
liberty—and setting his chair in its place, and arranging the little
parlour as it used to be, in case he should come home unexpectedly. He
likewise, in his thoughtfulness, took down a certain little miniature
of Walter as a schoolboy, from its accustomed nail, lest it should
shock the old man on his return. The Captain had his presentiments,
too, sometimes, that he would come on such a day; and one particular
Sunday, even ordered a double allowance of dinner, he was so sanguine.
But come, old Solomon did not; and still the neighbours noticed how the
seafaring man in the glazed hat, stood at the shop-door of an evening,
looking up and down the street.
CHAPTER XL.
Domestic Relations
It was not in the nature of things that a man of Mr Dombey’s mood,
opposed to such a spirit as he had raised against himself, should be
softened in the imperious asperity of his temper; or that the cold hard
armour of pride in which he lived encased, should be made more flexible
by constant collision with haughty scorn and defiance. It is the curse
of such a nature—it is a main part of the heavy retribution on itself
it bears within itself—that while deference and concession swell its
evil qualities, and are the food it grows upon, resistance and a
questioning of its exacting claims, foster it too, no less. The evil
that is in it finds equally its means of growth and propagation in
opposites. It draws support and life from sweets and bitters; bowed
down before, or unacknowledged, it still enslaves the breast in which
it has its throne; and, worshipped or rejected, is as hard a master as
the Devil in dark fables.
Towards his first wife, Mr Dombey, in his cold and lofty arrogance, had
borne himself like the removed Being he almost conceived himself to be.
He had been “Mr Dombey” with her when she first saw him, and he was “Mr
Dombey” when she died. He had asserted his greatness during their whole
married life, and she had meekly recognised it. He had kept his distant
seat of state on the top of his throne, and she her humble station on
its lowest step; and much good it had done him, so to live in solitary
bondage to his one idea. He had imagined that the proud character of
his second wife would have been added to his own—would have merged into
it, and exalted his greatness. He had pictured himself haughtier than
ever, with Edith’s haughtiness subservient to his. He had never
entertained the possibility of its arraying itself against him. And
now, when he found it rising in his path at every step and turn of his
daily life, fixing its cold, defiant, and contemptuous face upon him,
this pride of his, instead of withering, or hanging down its head
beneath the shock, put forth new shoots, became more concentrated and
intense, more gloomy, sullen, irksome, and unyielding, than it had ever
been before.
Who wears such armour, too, bears with him ever another heavy
retribution. It is of proof against conciliation, love, and confidence;
against all gentle sympathy from without, all trust, all tenderness,
all soft emotion; but to deep stabs in the self-love, it is as
vulnerable as the bare breast to steel; and such tormenting festers
rankle there, as follow on no other wounds, no, though dealt with the
mailed hand of Pride itself, on weaker pride, disarmed and thrown down.
Such wounds were his. He felt them sharply, in the solitude of his old
rooms; whither he now began often to retire again, and pass long
solitary hours. It seemed his fate to be ever proud and powerful; ever
humbled and powerless where he would be most strong. Who seemed fated
to work out that doom?
Who? Who was it who could win his wife as she had won his boy? Who was
it who had shown him that new victory, as he sat in the dark corner?
Who was it whose least word did what his utmost means could not? Who
was it who, unaided by his love, regard or notice, thrived and grew
beautiful when those so aided died? Who could it be, but the same child
at whom he had often glanced uneasily in her motherless infancy, with a
kind of dread, lest he might come to hate her; and of whom his
foreboding was fulfilled, for he DID hate her in his heart?
Yes, and he would have it hatred, and he made it hatred, though some
sparkles of the light in which she had appeared before him on the
memorable night of his return home with his Bride, occasionally hung
about her still. He knew now that she was beautiful; he did not dispute
that she was graceful and winning, and that in the bright dawn of her
womanhood she had come upon him, a surprise. But he turned even this
against her. In his sullen and unwholesome brooding, the unhappy man,
with a dull perception of his alienation from all hearts, and a vague
yearning for what he had all his life repelled, made a distorted
picture of his rights and wrongs, and justified himself with it against
her. The worthier she promised to be of him, the greater claim he was
disposed to antedate upon her duty and submission. When had she ever
shown him duty and submission? Did she grace his life—or Edith’s? Had
her attractions been manifested first to him—or Edith? Why, he and she
had never been, from her birth, like father and child! They had always
been estranged. She had crossed him every way and everywhere. She was
leagued against him now. Her very beauty softened natures that were
obdurate to him, and insulted him with an unnatural triumph.
It may have been that in all this there were mutterings of an awakened
feeling in his breast, however selfishly aroused by his position of
disadvantage, in comparison with what she might have made his life. But
he silenced the distant thunder with the rolling of his sea of pride.
He would bear nothing but his pride. And in his pride, a heap of
inconsistency, and misery, and self-inflicted torment, he hated her.
To the moody, stubborn, sullen demon, that possessed him, his wife
opposed her different pride in its full force. They never could have
led a happy life together; but nothing could have made it more unhappy,
than the wilful and determined warfare of such elements. His pride was
set upon maintaining his magnificent supremacy, and forcing recognition
of it from her. She would have been racked to death, and turned but her
haughty glance of calm inflexible disdain upon him, to the last. Such
recognition from Edith! He little knew through what a storm and
struggle she had been driven onward to the crowning honour of his hand.
He little knew how much she thought she had conceded, when she suffered
him to call her wife.
Mr Dombey was resolved to show her that he was supreme. There must be
no will but his. Proud he desired that she should be, but she must be
proud for, not against him. As he sat alone, hardening, he would often
hear her go out and come home, treading the round of London life with
no more heed of his liking or disliking, pleasure or displeasure, than
if he had been her groom. Her cold supreme indifference—his own
unquestioned attribute usurped—stung him more than any other kind of
treatment could have done; and he determined to bend her to his
magnificent and stately will.
He had been long communing with these thoughts, when one night he
sought her in her own apartment, after he had heard her return home
late. She was alone, in her brilliant dress, and had but that moment
come from her mother’s room. Her face was melancholy and pensive, when
he came upon her; but it marked him at the door; for, glancing at the
mirror before it, he saw immediately, as in a picture-frame, the
knitted brow, and darkened beauty that he knew so well.
“Mrs Dombey,” he said, entering, “I must beg leave to have a few words
with you.”
“To-morrow,” she replied.
“There is no time like the present, Madam,” he returned. “You mistake
your position. I am used to choose my own times; not to have them
chosen for me. I think you scarcely understand who and what I am, Mrs
Dombey.”
“I think,” she answered, “that I understand you very well.”
She looked upon him as she said so, and folding her white arms,
sparkling with gold and gems, upon her swelling breast, turned away her
eyes.
If she had been less handsome, and less stately in her cold composure,
she might not have had the power of impressing him with the sense of
disadvantage that penetrated through his utmost pride. But she had the
power, and he felt it keenly. He glanced round the room: saw how the
splendid means of personal adornment, and the luxuries of dress, were
scattered here and there, and disregarded; not in mere caprice and
carelessness (or so he thought), but in a steadfast haughty disregard
of costly things: and felt it more and more. Chaplets of flowers,
plumes of feathers, jewels, laces, silks and satins; look where he
would, he saw riches, despised, poured out, and made of no account. The
very diamonds—a marriage gift—that rose and fell impatiently upon her
bosom, seemed to pant to break the chain that clasped them round her
neck, and roll down on the floor where she might tread upon them.
He felt his disadvantage, and he showed it. Solemn and strange among
this wealth of colour and voluptuous glitter, strange and constrained
towards its haughty mistress, whose repellent beauty it repeated, and
presented all around him, as in so many fragments of a mirror, he was
conscious of embarrassment and awkwardness. Nothing that ministered to
her disdainful self-possession could fail to gall him. Galled and
irritated with himself, he sat down, and went on, in no improved
humour:
“Mrs Dombey, it is very necessary that there should be some
understanding arrived at between us. Your conduct does not please me,
Madam.”
She merely glanced at him again, and again averted her eyes; but she
might have spoken for an hour, and expressed less.
“I repeat, Mrs Dombey, does not please me. I have already taken
occasion to request that it may be corrected. I now insist upon it.”
“You chose a fitting occasion for your first remonstrance, Sir, and you
adopt a fitting manner, and a fitting word for your second. You insist!
To me!”
“Madam,” said Mr Dombey, with his most offensive air of state, “I have
made you my wife. You bear my name. You are associated with my position
and my reputation. I will not say that the world in general may be
disposed to think you honoured by that association; but I will say that
I am accustomed to ‘insist,’ to my connexions and dependents.”
“Which may you be pleased to consider me? she asked.
“Possibly I may think that my wife should partake—or does partake, and
cannot help herself—of both characters, Mrs Dombey.”
She bent her eyes upon him steadily, and set her trembling lips. He saw
her bosom throb, and saw her face flush and turn white. All this he
could know, and did: but he could not know that one word was whispering
in the deep recesses of her heart, to keep her quiet; and that the word
was Florence.