Dombey and Son
regarding his pewter badge, number one hundred and forty-seven, as,
somehow, a part of its formality and sternness. She spoke, too, in the
nursery, of his “blessed legs,” and was again troubled by his spectre
in uniform.
“I don’t know what I wouldn’t give,” said Polly, “to see the poor
little dear before he gets used to ’em.”
“Why, then, I tell you what, Mrs Richards,” retorted Nipper, who had
been admitted to her confidence, “see him and make your mind easy.”
“Mr Dombey wouldn’t like it,” said Polly.
“Oh, wouldn’t he, Mrs Richards!” retorted Nipper, “he’d like it very
much, I think when he was asked.”
“You wouldn’t ask him, I suppose, at all?” said Polly.
“No, Mrs Richards, quite contrairy,” returned Susan, “and them two
inspectors Tox and Chick, not intending to be on duty tomorrow, as I
heard ’em say, me and Miss Floy will go along with you tomorrow
morning, and welcome, Mrs Richards, if you like, for we may as well
walk there as up and down a street, and better too.”
Polly rejected the idea pretty stoutly at first; but by little and
little she began to entertain it, as she entertained more and more
distinctly the forbidden pictures of her children, and her own home. At
length, arguing that there could be no great harm in calling for a
moment at the door, she yielded to the Nipper proposition.
The matter being settled thus, little Paul began to cry most piteously,
as if he had a foreboding that no good would come of it.
“What’s the matter with the child?” asked Susan.
“He’s cold, I think,” said Polly, walking with him to and fro, and
hushing him.
It was a bleak autumnal afternoon indeed; and as she walked, and
hushed, and, glancing through the dreary windows, pressed the little
fellow closer to her breast, the withered leaves came showering down.
CHAPTER VI.
Paul’s Second Deprivation
Polly was beset by so many misgivings in the morning, that but for the
incessant promptings of her black-eyed companion, she would have
abandoned all thoughts of the expedition, and formally petitioned for
leave to see number one hundred and forty-seven, under the awful shadow
of Mr Dombey’s roof. But Susan who was personally disposed in favour of
the excursion, and who (like Tony Lumpkin), if she could bear the
disappointments of other people with tolerable fortitude, could not
abide to disappoint herself, threw so many ingenious doubts in the way
of this second thought, and stimulated the original intention with so
many ingenious arguments, that almost as soon as Mr Dombey’s stately
back was turned, and that gentleman was pursuing his daily road towards
the City, his unconscious son was on his way to Staggs’s Gardens.
This euphonious locality was situated in a suburb, known by the
inhabitants of Staggs’s Gardens by the name of Camberling Town; a
designation which the Strangers’ Map of London, as printed (with a view
to pleasant and commodious reference) on pocket handkerchiefs,
condenses, with some show of reason, into Camden Town. Hither the two
nurses bent their steps, accompanied by their charges; Richards
carrying Paul, of course, and Susan leading little Florence by the
hand, and giving her such jerks and pokes from time to time, as she
considered it wholesome to administer.
The first shock of a great earthquake had, just at that period, rent
the whole neighbourhood to its centre. Traces of its course were
visible on every side. Houses were knocked down; streets broken through
and stopped; deep pits and trenches dug in the ground; enormous heaps
of earth and clay thrown up; buildings that were undermined and
shaking, propped by great beams of wood. Here, a chaos of carts,
overthrown and jumbled together, lay topsy-turvy at the bottom of a
steep unnatural hill; there, confused treasures of iron soaked and
rusted in something that had accidentally become a pond. Everywhere
were bridges that led nowhere; thoroughfares that were wholly
impassable; Babel towers of chimneys, wanting half their height;
temporary wooden houses and enclosures, in the most unlikely
situations; carcases of ragged tenements, and fragments of unfinished
walls and arches, and piles of scaffolding, and wildernesses of bricks,
and giant forms of cranes, and tripods straddling above nothing. There
were a hundred thousand shapes and substances of incompleteness, wildly
mingled out of their places, upside down, burrowing in the earth,
aspiring in the air, mouldering in the water, and unintelligible as any
dream. Hot springs and fiery eruptions, the usual attendants upon
earthquakes, lent their contributions of confusion to the scene.
Boiling water hissed and heaved within dilapidated walls; whence, also,
the glare and roar of flames came issuing forth; and mounds of ashes
blocked up rights of way, and wholly changed the law and custom of the
neighbourhood.
In short, the yet unfinished and unopened Railroad was in progress;
and, from the very core of all this dire disorder, trailed smoothly
away, upon its mighty course of civilisation and improvement.
But as yet, the neighbourhood was shy to own the Railroad. One or two
bold speculators had projected streets; and one had built a little, but
had stopped among the mud and ashes to consider farther of it. A
bran-new Tavern, redolent of fresh mortar and size, and fronting
nothing at all, had taken for its sign The Railway Arms; but that might
be rash enterprise—and then it hoped to sell drink to the workmen. So,
the Excavators’ House of Call had sprung up from a beer-shop; and the
old-established Ham and Beef Shop had become the Railway Eating House,
with a roast leg of pork daily, through interested motives of a similar
immediate and popular description. Lodging-house keepers were
favourable in like manner; and for the like reasons were not to be
trusted. The general belief was very slow. There were frowzy fields,
and cow-houses, and dunghills, and dustheaps, and ditches, and gardens,
and summer-houses, and carpet-beating grounds, at the very door of the
Railway. Little tumuli of oyster shells in the oyster season, and of
lobster shells in the lobster season, and of broken crockery and faded
cabbage leaves in all seasons, encroached upon its high places. Posts,
and rails, and old cautions to trespassers, and backs of mean houses,
and patches of wretched vegetation, stared it out of countenance.
Nothing was the better for it, or thought of being so. If the miserable
waste ground lying near it could have laughed, it would have laughed it
to scorn, like many of the miserable neighbours.
Staggs’s Gardens was uncommonly incredulous. It was a little row of
houses, with little squalid patches of ground before them, fenced off
with old doors, barrel staves, scraps of tarpaulin, and dead bushes;
with bottomless tin kettles and exhausted iron fenders, thrust into the
gaps. Here, the Staggs’s Gardeners trained scarlet beans, kept fowls
and rabbits, erected rotten summer-houses (one was an old boat), dried
clothes, and smoked pipes. Some were of opinion that Staggs’s Gardens
derived its name from a deceased capitalist, one Mr Staggs, who had
built it for his delectation. Others, who had a natural taste for the
country, held that it dated from those rural times when the antlered
herd, under the familiar denomination of Staggses, had resorted to its
shady precincts. Be this as it may, Staggs’s Gardens was regarded by
its population as a sacred grove not to be withered by Railroads; and
so confident were they generally of its long outliving any such
ridiculous inventions, that the master chimney-sweeper at the corner,
who was understood to take the lead in the local politics of the
Gardens, had publicly declared that on the occasion of the Railroad
opening, if ever it did open, two of his boys should ascend the flues
of his dwelling, with instructions to hail the failure with derisive
cheers from the chimney-pots.
To this unhallowed spot, the very name of which had hitherto been
carefully concealed from Mr Dombey by his sister, was little Paul now
borne by Fate and Richards
“That’s my house, Susan,” said Polly, pointing it out.
“Is it, indeed, Mrs Richards?” said Susan, condescendingly.
“And there’s my sister Jemima at the door, I do declare” cried Polly,
“with my own sweet precious baby in her arms!”
The sight added such an extensive pair of wings to Polly’s impatience,
that she set off down the Gardens at a run, and bouncing on Jemima,
changed babies with her in a twinkling; to the unutterable astonishment
of that young damsel, on whom the heir of the Dombeys seemed to have
fallen from the clouds.
“Why, Polly!” cried Jemima. “You! what a turn you have given me! who’d
have thought it! come along in Polly! How well you do look to be sure!
The children will go half wild to see you Polly, that they will.”
That they did, if one might judge from the noise they made, and the way
in which they dashed at Polly and dragged her to a low chair in the
chimney corner, where her own honest apple face became immediately the
centre of a bunch of smaller pippins, all laying their rosy cheeks
close to it, and all evidently the growth of the same tree. As to
Polly, she was full as noisy and vehement as the children; and it was
not until she was quite out of breath, and her hair was hanging all
about her flushed face, and her new christening attire was very much
dishevelled, that any pause took place in the confusion. Even then, the
smallest Toodle but one remained in her lap, holding on tight with both
arms round her neck; while the smallest Toodle but two mounted on the
back of the chair, and made desperate efforts, with one leg in the air,
to kiss her round the corner.
“Look! there’s a pretty little lady come to see you,” said Polly; “and
see how quiet she is! what a beautiful little lady, ain’t she?”
This reference to Florence, who had been standing by the door not
unobservant of what passed, directed the attention of the younger
branches towards her; and had likewise the happy effect of leading to
the formal recognition of Miss Nipper, who was not quite free from a
misgiving that she had been already slighted.
“Oh do come in and sit down a minute, Susan, please,” said Polly. “This
is my sister Jemima, this is. Jemima, I don’t know what I should ever
do with myself, if it wasn’t for Susan Nipper; I shouldn’t be here now
but for her.”
“Oh do sit down, Miss Nipper, if you please,” quoth Jemima.
Susan took the extreme corner of a chair, with a stately and
ceremonious aspect.
“I never was so glad to see anybody in all my life; now really I never
was, Miss Nipper,” said Jemima.
Susan relaxing, took a little more of the chair, and smiled graciously.
“Do untie your bonnet-strings, and make yourself at home, Miss Nipper,
please,” entreated Jemima. “I am afraid it’s a poorer place than you’re
used to; but you’ll make allowances, I’m sure.”
The black-eyed was so softened by this deferential behaviour, that she
caught up little Miss Toodle who was running past, and took her to
Banbury Cross immediately.
“But where’s my pretty boy?” said Polly. “My poor fellow? I came all
this way to see him in his new clothes.”
“Ah what a pity!” cried Jemima. “He’ll break his heart, when he hears
his mother has been here. He’s at school, Polly.”
“Gone already!”
“Yes. He went for the first time yesterday, for fear he should lose any
learning. But it’s half-holiday, Polly: if you could only stop till he
comes home—you and Miss Nipper, leastways,” said Jemima, mindful in
good time of the dignity of the black-eyed.
“And how does he look, Jemima, bless him!” faltered Polly.
“Well, really he don’t look so bad as you’d suppose,” returned Jemima.
“Ah!” said Polly, with emotion, “I knew his legs must be too short.”