Dombey and Son
since supposed that the Game One intended to signify Mr Dombey; “and
when you could knock the winner and all the kit of ’em dead out o’ wind
and time, are you going to give in? To give in?” said the Chicken, with
contemptuous emphasis. “Wy, it’s mean!”
“Chicken,” said Mr Toots, severely, “you’re a perfect Vulture! Your
sentiments are atrocious.”
“My sentiments is Game and Fancy, Master,” returned the Chicken.
“That’s wot my sentiments is. I can’t abear a meanness. I’m afore the
public, I’m to be heerd on at the bar of the Little Helephant, and no
Gov’ner o’ mine mustn’t go and do what’s mean. Wy, it’s mean,” said the
Chicken, with increased expression. “That’s where it is. It’s mean.”
“Chicken,” said Mr Toots, “you disgust me.”
“Master,” returned the Chicken, putting on his hat, “there’s a pair on
us, then. Come! Here’s a offer! You’ve spoke to me more than once”t or
twice’t about the public line. Never mind! Give me a fi’typunnote
to-morrow, and let me go.”
“Chicken,” returned Mr Toots, “after the odious sentiments you have
expressed, I shall be glad to part on such terms.”
“Done then,” said the Chicken. “It’s a bargain. This here conduct of
yourn won’t suit my book, Master. Wy, it’s mean,” said the Chicken; who
seemed equally unable to get beyond that point, and to stop short of
it. “That’s where it is; it’s mean!”
So Mr Toots and the Chicken agreed to part on this incompatibility of
moral perception; and Mr Toots lying down to sleep, dreamed happily of
Florence, who had thought of him as her friend upon the last night of
her maiden life, and who had sent him her dear love.
CHAPTER LVII.
Another Wedding
Mr Sownds the beadle, and Mrs Miff the pew-opener, are early at their
posts in the fine church where Mr Dombey was married. A yellow-faced
old gentleman from India, is going to take unto himself a young wife
this morning, and six carriages full of company are expected, and Mrs
Miff has been informed that the yellow-faced old gentleman could pave
the road to church with diamonds and hardly miss them.
The nuptial benediction is to be a superior one, proceeding from a very
reverend, a dean, and the lady is to be given away, as an extraordinary
present, by somebody who comes express from the Horse Guards.
Mrs Miff is more intolerant of common people this morning, than she
generally is; and she has always strong opinions on that subject, for
it is associated with free sittings. Mrs Miff is not a student of
political economy (she thinks the science is connected with dissenters;
“Baptists or Wesleyans, or some o’ them,” she says), but she can never
understand what business your common folks have to be married. “Drat
’em,” says Mrs Miff “you read the same things over ’em and instead of
sovereigns get sixpences!”
Mr Sownds the beadle is more liberal than Mrs Miff—but then he is not a
pew-opener. “It must be done, Ma’am,” he says. “We must marry ’em. We
must have our national schools to walk at the head of, and we must have
our standing armies. We must marry ’em, Ma’am,” says Mr Sownds, “and
keep the country going.”
Mr Sownds is sitting on the steps and Mrs Miff is dusting in the
church, when a young couple, plainly dressed, come in. The mortified
bonnet of Mrs Miff is sharply turned towards them, for she espies in
this early visit indications of a runaway match. But they don’t want to
be married—“Only,” says the gentleman, “to walk round the church.” And
as he slips a genteel compliment into the palm of Mrs Miff, her
vinegary face relaxes, and her mortified bonnet and her spare dry
figure dip and crackle.
Mrs Miff resumes her dusting and plumps up her cushions—for the
yellow-faced old gentleman is reported to have tender knees—but keeps
her glazed, pew-opening eye on the young couple who are walking round
the church. “Ahem,” coughs Mrs Miff whose cough is drier than the hay
in any hassock in her charge, “you’ll come to us one of these mornings,
my dears, unless I’m much mistaken!”
They are looking at a tablet on the wall, erected to the memory of
someone dead. They are a long way off from Mrs Miff, but Mrs Miff can
see with half an eye how she is leaning on his arm, and how his head is
bent down over her. “Well, well,” says Mrs Miff, “you might do worse.
For you’re a tidy pair!”
There is nothing personal in Mrs Miff’s remark. She merely speaks of
stock-in-trade. She is hardly more curious in couples than in coffins.
She is such a spare, straight, dry old lady—such a pew of a woman—that
you should find as many individual sympathies in a chip. Mr Sownds,
now, who is fleshy, and has scarlet in his coat, is of a different
temperament. He says, as they stand upon the steps watching the young
couple away, that she has a pretty figure, hasn’t she, and as well as
he could see (for she held her head down coming out), an uncommon
pretty face. “Altogether, Mrs Miff,” says Mr Sownds with a relish, “she
is what you may call a rose-bud.”
Mrs Miff assents with a spare nod of her mortified bonnet; but approves
of this so little, that she inwardly resolves she wouldn’t be the wife
of Mr Sownds for any money he could give her, Beadle as he is.
And what are the young couple saying as they leave the church, and go
out at the gate?
“Dear Walter, thank you! I can go away, now, happy.”
“And when we come back, Florence, we will come and see his grave
again.”
Florence lifts her eyes, so bright with tears, to his kind face; and
clasps her disengaged hand on that other modest little hand which
clasps his arm.
“It is very early, Walter, and the streets are almost empty yet. Let us
walk.”
“But you will be so tired, my love.”
“Oh no! I was very tired the first time that we ever walked together,
but I shall not be so today.”
And thus—not much changed—she, as innocent and earnest-hearted—he, as
frank, as hopeful, and more proud of her—Florence and Walter, on their
bridal morning, walk through the streets together.
Not even in that childish walk of long ago, were they so far removed
from all the world about them as today. The childish feet of long ago,
did not tread such enchanted ground as theirs do now. The confidence
and love of children may be given many times, and will spring up in
many places; but the woman’s heart of Florence, with its undivided
treasure, can be yielded only once, and under slight or change, can
only droop and die.
They take the streets that are the quietest, and do not go near that in
which her old home stands. It is a fair, warm summer morning, and the
sun shines on them, as they walk towards the darkening mist that
overspreads the City. Riches are uncovering in shops; jewels, gold, and
silver flash in the goldsmith’s sunny windows; and great houses cast a
stately shade upon them as they pass. But through the light, and
through the shade, they go on lovingly together, lost to everything
around; thinking of no other riches, and no prouder home, than they
have now in one another.
Gradually they come into the darker, narrower streets, where the sun,
now yellow, and now red, is seen through the mist, only at street
corners, and in small open spaces where there is a tree, or one of the
innumerable churches, or a paved way and a flight of steps, or a
curious little patch of garden, or a burying-ground, where the few
tombs and tombstones are almost black. Lovingly and trustfully, through
all the narrow yards and alleys and the shady streets, Florence goes,
clinging to his arm, to be his wife.
Her heart beats quicker now, for Walter tells her that their church is
very near. They pass a few great stacks of warehouses, with waggons at
the doors, and busy carmen stopping up the way—but Florence does not
see or hear them—and then the air is quiet, and the day is darkened,
and she is trembling in a church which has a strange smell like a
cellar.
The shabby little old man, ringer of the disappointed bell, is standing
in the porch, and has put his hat in the font—for he is quite at home
there, being sexton. He ushers them into an old brown, panelled, dusty
vestry, like a corner-cupboard with the shelves taken out; where the
wormy registers diffuse a smell like faded snuff, which has set the
tearful Nipper sneezing.
Youthful, and how beautiful, the young bride looks, in this old dusty
place, with no kindred object near her but her husband. There is a
dusty old clerk, who keeps a sort of evaporated news shop underneath an
archway opposite, behind a perfect fortification of posts. There is a
dusty old pew-opener who only keeps herself, and finds that quite
enough to do. There is a dusty old beadle (these are Mr Toots’s beadle
and pew-opener of last Sunday), who has something to do with a
Worshipful Company who have got a Hall in the next yard, with a
stained-glass window in it that no mortal ever saw. There are dusty
wooden ledges and cornices poked in and out over the altar, and over
the screen and round the gallery, and over the inscription about what
the Master and Wardens of the Worshipful Company did in one thousand
six hundred and ninety-four. There are dusty old sounding-boards over
the pulpit and reading-desk, looking like lids to be let down on the
officiating ministers in case of their giving offence. There is every
possible provision for the accommodation of dust, except in the
churchyard, where the facilities in that respect are very limited.
The Captain, Uncle Sol, and Mr Toots are come; the clergyman is putting
on his surplice in the vestry, while the clerk walks round him, blowing
the dust off it; and the bride and bridegroom stand before the altar.
There is no bridesmaid, unless Susan Nipper is one; and no better
father than Captain Cuttle. A man with a wooden leg, chewing a faint
apple and carrying a blue bag in has hand, looks in to see what is
going on; but finding it nothing entertaining, stumps off again, and
pegs his way among the echoes out of doors.
No gracious ray of light is seen to fall on Florence, kneeling at the
altar with her timid head bowed down. The morning luminary is built
out, and don’t shine there. There is a meagre tree outside, where the
sparrows are chirping a little; and there is a blackbird in an
eyelet-hole of sun in a dyer’s garret, over against the window, who
whistles loudly whilst the service is performing; and there is the man
with the wooden leg stumping away. The amens of the dusty clerk appear,
like Macbeth’s, to stick in his throat a little; but Captain Cuttle
helps him out, and does it with so much goodwill that he interpolates
three entirely new responses of that word, never introduced into the
service before.
They are married, and have signed their names in one of the old sneezy
registers, and the clergyman’s surplice is restored to the dust, and
the clergyman is gone home. In a dark corner of the dark church,
Florence has turned to Susan Nipper, and is weeping in her arms. Mr
Toots’s eyes are red. The Captain lubricates his nose. Uncle Sol has
pulled down his spectacles from his forehead, and walked out to the
door.
“God bless you, Susan; dearest Susan! If you ever can bear witness to
the love I have for Walter, and the reason that I have to love him, do
it for his sake. Good-bye! Good-bye!”
They have thought it better not to go back to the Midshipman, but to
part so; a coach is waiting for them, near at hand.
Miss Nipper cannot speak; she only sobs and chokes, and hugs her
mistress. Mr Toots advances, urges her to cheer up, and takes charge of
her. Florence gives him her hand—gives him, in the fulness of her
heart, her lips—kisses Uncle Sol, and Captain Cuttle, and is borne away
by her young husband.
But Susan cannot bear that Florence should go away with a mournful
recollection of her. She had meant to be so different, that she