Dombey and Son
image she would sometimes conjure up, of her dear brother yet alive,
and growing to be a man, who would protect and cherish her.
The change, if it may be called one, had stolen on her like the change
from childhood to womanhood, and had come with it. Florence was almost
seventeen, when, in her lonely musings, she was conscious of these
thoughts.
She was often alone now, for the old association between her and her
Mama was greatly changed. At the time of her father’s accident, and
when he was lying in his room downstairs, Florence had first observed
that Edith avoided her. Wounded and shocked, and yet unable to
reconcile this with her affection when they did meet, she sought her in
her own room at night, once more.
“Mama,” said Florence, stealing softly to her side, “have I offended
you?”
Edith answered “No.”
“I must have done something,” said Florence. “Tell me what it is. You
have changed your manner to me, dear Mama. I cannot say how instantly I
feel the least change; for I love you with my whole heart.”
“As I do you,” said Edith. “Ah, Florence, believe me never more than
now!”
“Why do you go away from me so often, and keep away?” asked Florence.
“And why do you sometimes look so strangely on me, dear Mama? You do
so, do you not?”
Edith signified assent with her dark eyes.
“Why?” returned Florence imploringly. “Tell me why, that I may know how
to please you better; and tell me this shall not be so any more.”
“My Florence,” answered Edith, taking the hand that embraced her neck,
and looking into the eyes that looked into hers so lovingly, as
Florence knelt upon the ground before her; “why it is, I cannot tell
you. It is neither for me to say, nor you to hear; but that it is, and
that it must be, I know. Should I do it if I did not?”
“Are we to be estranged, Mama?” asked Florence, gazing at her like one
frightened.
Edith’s silent lips formed “Yes.”
Florence looked at her with increasing fear and wonder, until she could
see her no more through the blinding tears that ran down her face.
“Florence! my life!” said Edith, hurriedly, “listen to me. I cannot
bear to see this grief. Be calmer. You see that I am composed, and is
it nothing to me?”
She resumed her steady voice and manner as she said the latter words,
and added presently:
“Not wholly estranged. Partially: and only that, in appearance,
Florence, for in my own breast I am still the same to you, and ever
will be. But what I do is not done for myself.”
“Is it for me, Mama?” asked Florence.
“It is enough,” said Edith, after a pause, “to know what it is; why,
matters little. Dear Florence, it is better—it is necessary—it must
be—that our association should be less frequent. The confidence there
has been between us must be broken off.”
“When?” cried Florence. “Oh, Mama, when?”
“Now,” said Edith.
“For all time to come?” asked Florence.
“I do not say that,” answered Edith. “I do not know that. Nor will I
say that companionship between us is, at the best, an ill-assorted and
unholy union, of which I might have known no good could come. My way
here has been through paths that you will never tread, and my way
henceforth may lie—God knows—I do not see it—”
Her voice died away into silence; and she sat, looking at Florence, and
almost shrinking from her, with the same strange dread and wild
avoidance that Florence had noticed once before. The same dark pride
and rage succeeded, sweeping over her form and features like an angry
chord across the strings of a wild harp. But no softness or humility
ensued on that. She did not lay her head down now, and weep, and say
that she had no hope but in Florence. She held it up as if she were a
beautiful Medusa, looking on him, face to face, to strike him dead.
Yes, and she would have done it, if she had had the charm.
“Mama,” said Florence, anxiously, “there is a change in you, in more
than what you say to me, which alarms me. Let me stay with you a
little.”
“No,” said Edith, “no, dearest. I am best left alone now, and I do best
to keep apart from you, of all else. Ask me no questions, but believe
that what I am when I seem fickle or capricious to you, I am not of my
own will, or for myself. Believe, though we are stranger to each other
than we have been, that I am unchanged to you within. Forgive me for
having ever darkened your dark home—I am a shadow on it, I know
well—and let us never speak of this again.”
“Mama,” sobbed Florence, “we are not to part?”
“We do this that we may not part,” said Edith. “Ask no more. Go,
Florence! My love and my remorse go with you!”
She embraced her, and dismissed her; and as Florence passed out of her
room, Edith looked on the retiring figure, as if her good angel went
out in that form, and left her to the haughty and indignant passions
that now claimed her for their own, and set their seal upon her brow.
From that hour, Florence and she were, as they had been, no more. For
days together, they would seldom meet, except at table, and when Mr
Dombey was present. Then Edith, imperious, inflexible, and silent,
never looked at her. Whenever Mr Carker was of the party, as he often
was, during the progress of Mr Dombey’s recovery, and afterwards, Edith
held herself more removed from her, and was more distant towards her,
than at other times. Yet she and Florence never encountered, when there
was no one by, but she would embrace her as affectionately as of old,
though not with the same relenting of her proud aspect; and often, when
she had been out late, she would steal up to Florence’s room, as she
had been used to do, in the dark, and whisper “Good-night,” on her
pillow. When unconscious, in her slumber, of such visits, Florence
would sometimes awake, as from a dream of those words, softly spoken,
and would seem to feel the touch of lips upon her face. But less and
less often as the months went on.
And now the void in Florence’s own heart began again, indeed, to make a
solitude around her. As the image of the father whom she loved had
insensibly become a mere abstraction, so Edith, following the fate of
all the rest about whom her affections had entwined themselves, was
fleeting, fading, growing paler in the distance, every day. Little by
little, she receded from Florence, like the retiring ghost of what she
had been; little by little, the chasm between them widened and seemed
deeper; little by little, all the power of earnestness and tenderness
she had shown, was frozen up in the bold, angry hardihood with which
she stood, upon the brink of a deep precipice unseen by Florence,
daring to look down.
There was but one consideration to set against the heavy loss of Edith,
and though it was slight comfort to her burdened heart, she tried to
think it some relief. No longer divided between her affection and duty
to the two, Florence could love both and do no injustice to either. As
shadows of her fond imagination, she could give them equal place in her
own bosom, and wrong them with no doubts.
So she tried to do. At times, and often too, wondering speculations on
the cause of this change in Edith, would obtrude themselves upon her
mind and frighten her; but in the calm of its abandonment once more to
silent grief and loneliness, it was not a curious mind. Florence had
only to remember that her star of promise was clouded in the general
gloom that hung upon the house, and to weep and be resigned.
Thus living, in a dream wherein the overflowing love of her young heart
expended itself on airy forms, and in a real world where she had
experienced little but the rolling back of that strong tide upon
itself, Florence grew to be seventeen. Timid and retiring as her
solitary life had made her, it had not embittered her sweet temper, or
her earnest nature. A child in innocent simplicity; a woman in her
modest self-reliance, and her deep intensity of feeling; both child and
woman seemed at once expressed in her face and fragile delicacy of
shape, and gracefully to mingle there;—as if the spring should be
unwilling to depart when summer came, and sought to blend the earlier
beauties of the flowers with their bloom. But in her thrilling voice,
in her calm eyes, sometimes in a sage ethereal light that seemed to
rest upon her head, and always in a certain pensive air upon her
beauty, there was an expression, such as had been seen in the dead boy;
and the council in the Servants’ Hall whispered so among themselves,
and shook their heads, and ate and drank the more, in a closer bond of
good-fellowship.
This observant body had plenty to say of Mr and Mrs Dombey, and of Mr
Carker, who appeared to be a mediator between them, and who came and
went as if he were trying to make peace, but never could. They all
deplored the uncomfortable state of affairs, and all agreed that Mrs
Pipchin (whose unpopularity was not to be surpassed) had some hand in
it; but, upon the whole, it was agreeable to have so good a subject for
a rallying point, and they made a great deal of it, and enjoyed
themselves very much.
The general visitors who came to the house, and those among whom Mr and
Mrs Dombey visited, thought it a pretty equal match, as to haughtiness,
at all events, and thought nothing more about it. The young lady with
the back did not appear for some time after Mrs Skewton’s death;
observing to some particular friends, with her usual engaging little
scream, that she couldn’t separate the family from a notion of
tombstones, and horrors of that sort; but when she did come, she saw
nothing wrong, except Mr Dombey’s wearing a bunch of gold seals to his
watch, which shocked her very much, as an exploded superstition. This
youthful fascinator considered a daughter-in-law objectionable in
principle; otherwise, she had nothing to say against Florence, but that
she sadly wanted “style”—which might mean back, perhaps. Many, who only
came to the house on state occasions, hardly knew who Florence was, and
said, going home, “Indeed, was that Miss Dombey, in the corner? Very
pretty, but a little delicate and thoughtful in appearance!”
None the less so, certainly, for her life of the last six months.
Florence took her seat at the dinner-table, on the day before the
second anniversary of her father’s marriage to Edith (Mrs Skewton had
been lying stricken with paralysis when the first came round), with an
uneasiness, amounting to dread. She had no other warrant for it, than
the occasion, the expression of her father’s face, in the hasty glance
she caught of it, and the presence of Mr Carker, which, always
unpleasant to her, was more so on this day, than she had ever felt it
before.
Edith was richly dressed, for she and Mr Dombey were engaged in the
evening to some large assembly, and the dinner-hour that day was late.
She did not appear until they were seated at table, when Mr Carker rose
and led her to her chair. Beautiful and lustrous as she was, there was
that in her face and air which seemed to separate her hopelessly from
Florence, and from everyone, for ever more. And yet, for an instant,
Florence saw a beam of kindness in her eyes, when they were turned on
her, that made the distance to which she had withdrawn herself a
greater cause of sorrow and regret than ever.
There was very little said at dinner. Florence heard her father speak
to Mr Carker sometimes on business matters, and heard him softly reply,
but she paid little attention to what they said, and only wished the
dinner at an end. When the dessert was placed upon the table, and they
were left alone, with no servant in attendance, Mr Dombey, who had been
several times clearing his throat in a manner that augured no good,
said:
“Mrs Dombey, you know, I suppose, that I have instructed the
housekeeper that there will be some company to dinner here to-morrow.”