Dombey and Son
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 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