Dombey and Son
turns and looks upon him. I have dreamed that it is wounded, hunted,
set upon by dogs, but that it stands at bay, and will not yield; no,
that it cannot if it would; but that it is urged on to hate.”
Her clenched hand tightened on the trembling arm she had in hers, and
as she looked down on the alarmed and wondering face, frown subsided.
“Oh Florence!” she said, “I think I have been nearly mad tonight!” and
humbled her proud head upon her neck and wept again.
“Don’t leave me! be near me! I have no hope but in you!” These words
she said a score of times.
Soon she grew calmer, and was full of pity for the tears of Florence,
and for her waking at such untimely hours. And the day now dawning,
Edith folded her in her arms and laid her down upon her bed, and, not
lying down herself, sat by her, and bade her try to sleep.
“For you are weary, dearest, and unhappy, and should rest.”
“I am indeed unhappy, dear Mama, tonight,” said Florence. “But you are
weary and unhappy, too.”
“Not when you lie asleep so near me, sweet.”
They kissed each other, and Florence, worn out, gradually fell into a
gentle slumber; but as her eyes closed on the face beside her, it was
so sad to think upon the face downstairs, that her hand drew closer to
Edith for some comfort; yet, even in the act, it faltered, lest it
should be deserting him. So, in her sleep, she tried to reconcile the
two together, and to show them that she loved them both, but could not
do it, and her waking grief was part of her dreams.
Edith, sitting by, looked down at the dark eyelashes lying wet on the
flushed cheeks, and looked with gentleness and pity, for she knew the
truth. But no sleep hung upon her own eyes. As the day came on she
still sat watching and waking, with the placid hand in hers, and
sometimes whispered, as she looked at the hushed face, “Be near me,
Florence. I have no hope but in you!”
CHAPTER XLIV.
A Separation
With the day, though not so early as the sun, uprose Miss Susan Nipper.
There was a heaviness in this young maiden’s exceedingly sharp black
eyes, that abated somewhat of their sparkling, and suggested—which was
not their usual character—the possibility of their being sometimes
shut. There was likewise a swollen look about them, as if they had been
crying over-night. But the Nipper, so far from being cast down, was
singularly brisk and bold, and all her energies appeared to be braced
up for some great feat. This was noticeable even in her dress, which
was much more tight and trim than usual; and in occasional twitches of
her head as she went about the house, which were mightily expressive of
determination.
In a word, she had formed a determination, and an aspiring one: it
being nothing less than this—to penetrate to Mr Dombey’s presence, and
have speech of that gentleman alone. “I have often said I would,” she
remarked, in a threatening manner, to herself, that morning, with many
twitches of her head, “and now I will!”
Spurring herself on to the accomplishment of this desperate design,
with a sharpness that was peculiar to herself, Susan Nipper haunted the
hall and staircase during the whole forenoon, without finding a
favourable opportunity for the assault. Not at all baffled by this
discomfiture, which indeed had a stimulating effect, and put her on her
mettle, she diminished nothing of her vigilance; and at last
discovered, towards evening, that her sworn foe Mrs Pipchin, under
pretence of having sat up all night, was dozing in her own room, and
that Mr Dombey was lying on his sofa, unattended.
With a twitch—not of her head merely, this time, but of her whole
self—the Nipper went on tiptoe to Mr Dombey’s door, and knocked. “Come
in!” said Mr Dombey. Susan encouraged herself with a final twitch, and
went in.
Mr Dombey, who was eyeing the fire, gave an amazed look at his visitor,
and raised himself a little on his arm. The Nipper dropped a curtsey.
“What do you want?” said Mr Dombey.
“If you please, Sir, I wish to speak to you,” said Susan.
Mr Dombey moved his lips as if he were repeating the words, but he
seemed so lost in astonishment at the presumption of the young woman as
to be incapable of giving them utterance.
“I have been in your service, Sir,” said Susan Nipper, with her usual
rapidity, “now twelve “year a waiting on Miss Floy my own young lady
who couldn’t speak plain when I first come here and I was old in this
house when Mrs Richards was new, I may not be Meethosalem, but I am not
a child in arms.”
Mr Dombey, raised upon his arm and looking at her, offered no comment
on this preparatory statement of fact.
“There never was a dearer or a blesseder young lady than is my young
lady, Sir,” said Susan, “and I ought to know a great deal better than
some for I have seen her in her grief and I have seen her in her joy
(there’s not been much of it) and I have seen her with her brother and
I have seen her in her loneliness and some have never seen her, and I
say to some and all—I do!” and here the black-eyed shook her head, and
slightly stamped her foot; “that she’s the blessedest and dearest angel
is Miss Floy that ever drew the breath of life, the more that I was
torn to pieces Sir the more I’d say it though I may not be a Fox’s
Martyr.”
Mr Dombey turned yet paler than his fall had made him, with indignation
and astonishment; and kept his eyes upon the speaker as if he accused
them, and his ears too, of playing him false.
“No one could be anything but true and faithful to Miss Floy, Sir,”
pursued Susan, “and I take no merit for my service of twelve year, for
I love her—yes, I say to some and all I do!”—and here the black-eyed
shook her head again, and slightly stamped her foot again, and checked
a sob; “but true and faithful service gives me right to speak I hope,
and speak I must and will now, right or wrong.”
“What do you mean, woman?” said Mr Dombey, glaring at her. “How do you
dare?”
“What I mean, Sir, is to speak respectful and without offence, but out,
and how I dare I know not but I do!” said Susan. “Oh! you don’t know my
young lady Sir you don’t indeed, you’d never know so little of her, if
you did.”
Mr Dombey, in a fury, put his hand out for the bell-rope; but there was
no bell-rope on that side of the fire, and he could not rise and cross
to the other without assistance. The quick eye of the Nipper detected
his helplessness immediately, and now, as she afterwards observed, she
felt she had got him.
“Miss Floy,” said Susan Nipper, “is the most devoted and most patient
and most dutiful and beautiful of daughters, there ain’t no gentleman,
no Sir, though as great and rich as all the greatest and richest of
England put together, but might be proud of her and would and ought. If
he knew her value right, he’d rather lose his greatness and his fortune
piece by piece and beg his way in rags from door to door, I say to some
and all, he would!” cried Susan Nipper, bursting into tears, “than
bring the sorrow on her tender heart that I have seen it suffer in this
house!”
“Woman,” cried Mr Dombey, “leave the room.”
“Begging your pardon, not even if I am to leave the situation, Sir,”
replied the steadfast Nipper, “in which I have been so many years and
seen so much—although I hope you’d never have the heart to send me from
Miss Floy for such a cause—will I go now till I have said the rest, I
may not be a Indian widow Sir and I am not and I would not so become
but if I once made up my mind to burn myself alive, I’d do it! And I’ve
made my mind up to go on.”
Which was rendered no less clear by the expression of Susan Nipper’s
countenance, than by her words.
“There ain’t a person in your service, Sir,” pursued the black-eyed,
“that has always stood more in awe of you than me and you may think how
true it is when I make so bold as say that I have hundreds and hundreds
of times thought of speaking to you and never been able to make my mind
up to it till last night, but last night decided of me.”
Mr Dombey, in a paroxysm of rage, made another grasp at the bell-rope
that was not there, and, in its absence, pulled his hair rather than
nothing.
“I have seen,” said Susan Nipper, “Miss Floy strive and strive when
nothing but a child so sweet and patient that the best of women might
have copied from her, I’ve seen her sitting nights together half the
night through to help her delicate brother with his learning, I’ve seen
her helping him and watching him at other times—some well know
when—I’ve seen her, with no encouragement and no help, grow up to be a
lady, thank God! that is the grace and pride of every company she goes
in, and I’ve always seen her cruelly neglected and keenly feeling of
it—I say to some and all, I have!—and never said one word, but ordering
one’s self lowly and reverently towards one’s betters, is not to be a
worshipper of graven images, and I will and must speak!”
“Is there anybody there?” cried Mr Dombey, calling out. “Where are the
men? where are the women? Is there no one there?”
“I left my dear young lady out of bed late last night,” said Susan,
nothing checked, “and I knew why, for you was ill Sir and she didn’t
know how ill and that was enough to make her wretched as I saw it did.
I may not be a Peacock; but I have my eyes—and I sat up a little in my
own room thinking she might be lonesome and might want me, and I saw
her steal downstairs and come to this door as if it was a guilty thing
to look at her own Pa, and then steal back again and go into them
lonely drawing-rooms, a-crying so, that I could hardly bear to hear it.
I can not bear to hear it,” said Susan Nipper, wiping her black eyes,
and fixing them undauntingly on Mr Dombey’s infuriated face. “It’s not
the first time I have heard it, not by many and many a time you don’t
know your own daughter, Sir, you don’t know what you’re doing, Sir, I
say to some and all,” cried Susan Nipper, in a final burst, “that it’s
a sinful shame!”
“Why, hoity toity!” cried the voice of Mrs Pipchin, as the black
bombazeen garments of that fair Peruvian Miner swept into the room.
“What’s this, indeed?”
Susan favoured Mrs Pipchin with a look she had invented expressly for
her when they first became acquainted, and resigned the reply to Mr
Dombey.
“What’s this?” repeated Mr Dombey, almost foaming. “What’s this, Madam?
You who are at the head of this household, and bound to keep it in
order, have reason to inquire. Do you know this woman?”
“I know very little good of her, Sir,” croaked Mrs Pipchin. “How dare
you come here, you hussy? Go along with you!”
But the inflexible Nipper, merely honouring Mrs Pipchin with another
look, remained.
“Do you call it managing this establishment, Madam,” said Mr Dombey,
“to leave a person like this at liberty to come and talk to me! A
gentleman—in his own house—in his own room—assailed with the
impertinences of women-servants!”
“Well, Sir,” returned Mrs Pipchin, with vengeance in her hard grey eye,
“I exceedingly deplore it; nothing can be more irregular; nothing can
be more out of all bounds and reason; but I regret to say, Sir, that
this young woman is quite beyond control. She has been spoiled by Miss
Dombey, and is amenable to nobody. You know you’re not,” said Mrs
Pipchin, sharply, and shaking her head at Susan Nipper. “For shame, you
hussy! Go along with you!”
“If you find people in my service who are not to be controlled, Mrs
Pipchin,” said Mr Dombey, turning back towards the fire, “you know what
to do with them, I presume. You know what you are here for? Take her
away!”
“Sir, I know what to do,” retorted Mrs Pipchin, “and of course shall do
it. Susan Nipper,” snapping her up particularly short, “a month’s
warning from this hour.”
“Oh indeed!” cried Susan, loftily.