Dombey and Son
before you go to bed, and not to distress yourself!”
It was with extreme difficulty that Nipper, the black-eyed, who looked
on steadfastly, contained herself at this crisis, and until the
subsequent departure of Mrs Chick. But the nursery being at length free
of visitors, she made herself some recompense for her late restraint.
“You might keep me in a strait-waistcoat for six weeks,” said Nipper,
“and when I got it off I’d only be more aggravated, who ever heard the
like of them two Griffins, Mrs Richards?”
“And then to talk of having been dreaming, poor dear!” said Polly.
“Oh you beauties!” cried Susan Nipper, affecting to salute the door by
which the ladies had departed. “Never be a Dombey won’t she? It’s to be
hoped she won’t, we don’t want any more such, one’s enough.”
“Don’t wake the children, Susan dear,” said Polly.
“I’m very much beholden to you, Mrs Richards,” said Susan, who was not
by any means discriminating in her wrath, “and really feel it as a
honour to receive your commands, being a black slave and a mulotter.
Mrs Richards, if there’s any other orders, you can give me, pray
mention ’em.”
“Nonsense; orders,” said Polly.
“Oh! bless your heart, Mrs Richards,” cried Susan, “temporaries always
orders permanencies here, didn’t you know that, why wherever was you
born, Mrs Richards? But wherever you was born, Mrs Richards,” pursued
Spitfire, shaking her head resolutely, “and whenever, and however
(which is best known to yourself), you may bear in mind, please, that
it’s one thing to give orders, and quite another thing to take ’em. A
person may tell a person to dive off a bridge head foremost into
five-and-forty feet of water, Mrs Richards, but a person may be very
far from diving.”
“There now,” said Polly, “you’re angry because you’re a good little
thing, and fond of Miss Florence; and yet you turn round on me, because
there’s nobody else.”
“It’s very easy for some to keep their tempers, and be soft-spoken, Mrs
Richards,” returned Susan, slightly mollified, “when their child’s made
as much of as a prince, and is petted and patted till it wishes its
friends further, but when a sweet young pretty innocent, that never
ought to have a cross word spoken to or of it, is rundown, the case is
very different indeed. My goodness gracious me, Miss Floy, you naughty,
sinful child, if you don’t shut your eyes this minute, I’ll call in
them hobgoblins that lives in the cock-loft to come and eat you up
alive!”
Here Miss Nipper made a horrible lowing, supposed to issue from a
conscientious goblin of the bull species, impatient to discharge the
severe duty of his position. Having further composed her young charge
by covering her head with the bedclothes, and making three or four
angry dabs at the pillow, she folded her arms, and screwed up her
mouth, and sat looking at the fire for the rest of the evening.
Though little Paul was said, in nursery phrase, “to take a deal of
notice for his age,” he took as little notice of all this as of the
preparations for his christening on the next day but one; which
nevertheless went on about him, as to his personal apparel, and that of
his sister and the two nurses, with great activity. Neither did he, on
the arrival of the appointed morning, show any sense of its importance;
being, on the contrary, unusually inclined to sleep, and unusually
inclined to take it ill in his attendants that they dressed him to go
out.
It happened to be an iron-grey autumnal day, with a shrewd east wind
blowing—a day in keeping with the proceedings. Mr Dombey represented in
himself the wind, the shade, and the autumn of the christening. He
stood in his library to receive the company, as hard and cold as the
weather; and when he looked out through the glass room, at the trees in
the little garden, their brown and yellow leaves came fluttering down,
as if he blighted them.
Ugh! They were black, cold rooms; and seemed to be in mourning, like
the inmates of the house. The books precisely matched as to size, and
drawn up in line, like soldiers, looked in their cold, hard, slippery
uniforms, as if they had but one idea among them, and that was a
freezer. The bookcase, glazed and locked, repudiated all familiarities.
Mr Pitt, in bronze, on the top, with no trace of his celestial origin
about him, guarded the unattainable treasure like an enchanted Moor. A
dusty urn at each high corner, dug up from an ancient tomb, preached
desolation and decay, as from two pulpits; and the chimney-glass,
reflecting Mr Dombey and his portrait at one blow, seemed fraught with
melancholy meditations.
The stiff and stark fire-irons appeared to claim a nearer relationship
than anything else there to Mr Dombey, with his buttoned coat, his
white cravat, his heavy gold watch-chain, and his creaking boots. But
this was before the arrival of Mr and Mrs Chick, his lawful relatives,
who soon presented themselves.
“My dear Paul,” Mrs Chick murmured, as she embraced him, “the
beginning, I hope, of many joyful days!”
“Thank you, Louisa,” said Mr Dombey, grimly. “How do you do, Mr John?”
“How do you do, Sir?” said Chick.
He gave Mr Dombey his hand, as if he feared it might electrify him. Mr
Dombey took it as if it were a fish, or seaweed, or some such clammy
substance, and immediately returned it to him with exalted politeness.
“Perhaps, Louisa,” said Mr Dombey, slightly turning his head in his
cravat, as if it were a socket, “you would have preferred a fire?”
“Oh, my dear Paul, no,” said Mrs Chick, who had much ado to keep her
teeth from chattering; “not for me.”
“Mr John,” said Mr Dombey, “you are not sensible of any chill?”
Mr John, who had already got both his hands in his pockets over the
wrists, and was on the very threshold of that same canine chorus which
had given Mrs Chick so much offence on a former occasion, protested
that he was perfectly comfortable.
He added in a low voice, “With my tiddle tol toor rul”—when he was
providentially stopped by Towlinson, who announced:
“Miss Tox!”
And enter that fair enslaver, with a blue nose and indescribably frosty
face, referable to her being very thinly clad in a maze of fluttering
odds and ends, to do honour to the ceremony.
“How do you do, Miss Tox?” said Mr Dombey.
Miss Tox, in the midst of her spreading gauzes, went down altogether
like an opera-glass shutting-up; she curtseyed so low, in
acknowledgment of Mr Dombey’s advancing a step or two to meet her.
“I can never forget this occasion, Sir,” said Miss Tox, softly. “’Tis
impossible. My dear Louisa, I can hardly believe the evidence of my
senses.”
If Miss Tox could believe the evidence of one of her senses, it was a
very cold day. That was quite clear. She took an early opportunity of
promoting the circulation in the tip of her nose by secretly chafing it
with her pocket handkerchief, lest, by its very low temperature, it
should disagreeably astonish the baby when she came to kiss it.
The baby soon appeared, carried in great glory by Richards; while
Florence, in custody of that active young constable, Susan Nipper,
brought up the rear. Though the whole nursery party were dressed by
this time in lighter mourning than at first, there was enough in the
appearance of the bereaved children to make the day no brighter. The
baby too—it might have been Miss Tox’s nose—began to cry. Thereby, as
it happened, preventing Mr Chick from the awkward fulfilment of a very
honest purpose he had; which was, to make much of Florence. For this
gentleman, insensible to the superior claims of a perfect Dombey
(perhaps on account of having the honour to be united to a Dombey
himself, and being familiar with excellence), really liked her, and
showed that he liked her, and was about to show it in his own way now,
when Paul cried, and his helpmate stopped him short—
“Now Florence, child!” said her aunt, briskly, “what are you doing,
love? Show yourself to him. Engage his attention, my dear!”
The atmosphere became or might have become colder and colder, when Mr
Dombey stood frigidly watching his little daughter, who, clapping her
hands, and standing on tip-toe before the throne of his son and heir,
lured him to bend down from his high estate, and look at her. Some
honest act of Richards’s may have aided the effect, but he did look
down, and held his peace. As his sister hid behind her nurse, he
followed her with his eyes; and when she peeped out with a merry cry to
him, he sprang up and crowed lustily—laughing outright when she ran in
upon him; and seeming to fondle her curls with his tiny hands, while
she smothered him with kisses.
Was Mr Dombey pleased to see this? He testified no pleasure by the
relaxation of a nerve; but outward tokens of any kind of feeling were
unusual with him. If any sunbeam stole into the room to light the
children at their play, it never reached his face. He looked on so
fixedly and coldly, that the warm light vanished even from the laughing
eyes of little Florence, when, at last, they happened to meet his.
It was a dull, grey, autumn day indeed, and in a minute’s pause and
silence that took place, the leaves fell sorrowfully.
“Mr John,” said Mr Dombey, referring to his watch, and assuming his hat
and gloves. “Take my sister, if you please: my arm today is Miss Tox’s.
You had better go first with Master Paul, Richards. Be very careful.”
In Mr Dombey’s carriage, Dombey and Son, Miss Tox, Mrs Chick, Richards,
and Florence. In a little carriage following it, Susan Nipper and the
owner Mr Chick. Susan looking out of window, without intermission, as a
relief from the embarrassment of confronting the large face of that
gentleman, and thinking whenever anything rattled that he was putting
up in paper an appropriate pecuniary compliment for herself.
Once upon the road to church, Mr Dombey clapped his hands for the
amusement of his son. At which instance of parental enthusiasm Miss Tox
was enchanted. But exclusive of this incident, the chief difference
between the christening party and a party in a mourning coach consisted
in the colours of the carriage and horses.
Arrived at the church steps, they were received by a portentous beadle.
Mr Dombey dismounting first to help the ladies out, and standing near
him at the church door, looked like another beadle. A beadle less
gorgeous but more dreadful; the beadle of private life; the beadle of
our business and our bosoms.
Miss Tox’s hand trembled as she slipped it through Mr Dombey’s arm, and
felt herself escorted up the steps, preceded by a cocked hat and a
Babylonian collar. It seemed for a moment like that other solemn
institution, “Wilt thou have this man, Lucretia?” “Yes, I will.”
“Please to bring the child in quick out of the air there,” whispered
the beadle, holding open the inner door of the church.
Little Paul might have asked with Hamlet “into my grave?” so chill and
earthy was the place. The tall, shrouded pulpit and reading desk; the
dreary perspective of empty pews stretching away under the galleries,
and empty benches mounting to the roof and lost in the shadow of the
great grim organ; the dusty matting and cold stone slabs; the grisly
free seats in the aisles; and the damp corner by the bell-rope, where
the black trestles used for funerals were stowed away, along with some
shovels and baskets, and a coil or two of deadly-looking rope; the
strange, unusual, uncomfortable smell, and the cadaverous light; were
all in unison. It was a cold and dismal scene.
“There’s a wedding just on, Sir,” said the beadle, “but it’ll be over
directly, if you’ll walk into the westry here.”
Before he turned again to lead the way, he gave Mr Dombey a bow and a
half smile of recognition, importing that he (the beadle) remembered to