Dombey and Son
to him, Mr Morfin, the hazel-eyed bachelor, since the first time he had
ever looked upon it, it pleased him less at that moment, lighted with a
ray of exultation, than it had ever pleased him before.
“I need not remind you,” said Harriet, casting down her eyes upon her
black dress, “through what means our circumstances changed. You have
not forgotten that our brother James, upon that dreadful day, left no
will, no relations but ourselves.”
The face was pleasanter to him now, though it was pale and melancholy,
than it had been a moment since. He seemed to breathe more cheerily.
“You know,” she said, “our history, the history of both my brothers, in
connexion with the unfortunate, unhappy gentleman, of whom you have
spoken so truly. You know how few our wants are—John’s and mine—and
what little use we have for money, after the life we have led together
for so many years; and now that he is earning an income that is ample
for us, through your kindness. You are not unprepared to hear what
favour I have come to ask of you?”
“I hardly know. I was, a minute ago. Now, I think, I am not.”
“Of my dead brother I say nothing. If the dead know what we do—but you
understand me. Of my living brother I could say much; but what need I
say more, than that this act of duty, in which I have come to ask your
indispensable assistance, is his own, and that he cannot rest until it
is performed!”
She raised her eyes again; and the light of exultation in her face
began to appear beautiful, in the observant eyes that watched her.
“Dear Sir,” she went on to say, “it must be done very quietly and
secretly. Your experience and knowledge will point out a way of doing
it. Mr Dombey may, perhaps, be led to believe that it is something
saved, unexpectedly, from the wreck of his fortunes; or that it is a
voluntary tribute to his honourable and upright character, from some of
those with whom he has had great dealings; or that it is some old lost
debt repaid. There must be many ways of doing it. I know you will
choose the best. The favour I have come to ask is, that you will do it
for us in your own kind, generous, considerate manner. That you will
never speak of it to John, whose chief happiness in this act of
restitution is to do it secretly, unknown, and unapproved of: that only
a very small part of the inheritance may be reserved to us, until Mr
Dombey shall have possessed the interest of the rest for the remainder
of his life; that you will keep our secret, faithfully—but that I am
sure you will; and that, from this time, it may seldom be whispered,
even between you and me, but may live in my thoughts only as a new
reason for thankfulness to Heaven, and joy and pride in my brother.”
Such a look of exultation there may be on Angels’ faces when the one
repentant sinner enters Heaven, among ninety-nine just men. It was not
dimmed or tarnished by the joyful tears that filled her eyes, but was
the brighter for them.
“My dear Harriet,” said Mr Morfin, after a silence, “I was not prepared
for this. Do I understand you that you wish to make your own part in
the inheritance available for your good purpose, as well as John’s?”
“Oh, yes,” she returned “When we have shared everything together for so
long a time, and have had no care, hope, or purpose apart, could I bear
to be excluded from my share in this? May I not urge a claim to be my
brother’s partner and companion to the last?”
“Heaven forbid that I should dispute it!” he replied.
“We may rely on your friendly help?” she said. “I knew we might!”
“I should be a worse man than,—than I hope I am, or would willingly
believe myself, if I could not give you that assurance from my heart
and soul. You may, implicitly. Upon my honour, I will keep your secret.
And if it should be found that Mr Dombey is so reduced as I fear he
will be, acting on a determination that there seem to be no means of
influencing, I will assist you to accomplish the design, on which you
and John are jointly resolved.”
She gave him her hand, and thanked him with a cordial, happy face.
“Harriet,” he said, detaining it in his. “To speak to you of the worth
of any sacrifice that you can make now—above all, of any sacrifice of
mere money—would be idle and presumptuous. To put before you any appeal
to reconsider your purpose or to set narrow limits to it, would be, I
feel, not less so. I have no right to mar the great end of a great
history, by any obtrusion of my own weak self. I have every right to
bend my head before what you confide to me, satisfied that it comes
from a higher and better source of inspiration than my poor worldly
knowledge. I will say only this: I am your faithful steward; and I
would rather be so, and your chosen friend, than I would be anybody in
the world, except yourself.”
She thanked him again, cordially, and wished him good-night.
“Are you going home?” he said. “Let me go with you.”
“Not tonight. I am not going home now; I have a visit to make alone.
Will you come to-morrow?”
“Well, well,” said he, “I’ll come to-morrow. In the meantime, I’ll
think of this, and how we can best proceed. And perhaps I’ll think of
it, dear Harriet, and—and—think of me a little in connexion with it.”
He handed her down to a coach she had in waiting at the door; and if
his landlady had not been deaf, she would have heard him muttering as
he went back upstairs, when the coach had driven off, that we were
creatures of habit, and it was a sorrowful habit to be an old bachelor.
The violoncello lying on the sofa between the two chairs, he took it
up, without putting away the vacant chair, and sat droning on it, and
slowly shaking his head at the vacant chair, for a long, long time. The
expression he communicated to the instrument at first, though
monstrously pathetic and bland, was nothing to the expression he
communicated to his own face, and bestowed upon the empty chair: which
was so sincere, that he was obliged to have recourse to Captain
Cuttle’s remedy more than once, and to rub his face with his sleeve. By
degrees, however, the violoncello, in unison with his own frame of
mind, glided melodiously into the Harmonious Blacksmith, which he
played over and over again, until his ruddy and serene face gleamed
like true metal on the anvil of a veritable blacksmith. In fine, the
violoncello and the empty chair were the companions of his bachelorhood
until nearly midnight; and when he took his supper, the violoncello set
up on end in the sofa corner, big with the latent harmony of a whole
foundry full of harmonious blacksmiths, seemed to ogle the empty chair
out of its crooked eyes, with unutterable intelligence.
When Harriet left the house, the driver of her hired coach, taking a
course that was evidently no new one to him, went in and out by
bye-ways, through that part of the suburbs, until he arrived at some
open ground, where there were a few quiet little old houses standing
among gardens. At the garden-gate of one of these he stopped, and
Harriet alighted.
Her gentle ringing at the bell was responded to by a dolorous-looking
woman, of light complexion, with raised eyebrows, and head drooping on
one side, who curtseyed at sight of her, and conducted her across the
garden to the house.
“How is your patient, nurse, tonight?” said Harriet.
“In a poor way, Miss, I am afraid. Oh how she do remind me, sometimes,
of my Uncle’s Betsey Jane!” returned the woman of the light complexion,
in a sort of doleful rapture.
“In what respect?” asked Harriet.
“Miss, in all respects,” replied the other, “except that she’s grown
up, and Betsey Jane, when at death’s door, was but a child.”
“But you have told me she recovered,” observed Harriet mildly; “so
there is the more reason for hope, Mrs Wickam.”
“Ah, Miss, hope is an excellent thing for such as has the spirits to
bear it!” said Mrs Wickam, shaking her head. “My own spirits is not
equal to it, but I don’t owe it any grudge. I envys them that is so
blest!”
“You should try to be more cheerful,” remarked Harriet.
“Thank you, Miss, I’m sure,” said Mrs Wickam grimly. “If I was so
inclined, the loneliness of this situation—you’ll excuse my speaking so
free—would put it out of my power, in four and twenty hours; but I
ain’t at all. I’d rather not. The little spirits that I ever had, I was
bereaved of at Brighton some few years ago, and I think I feel myself
the better for it.”
In truth, this was the very Mrs Wickam who had superseded Mrs Richards
as the nurse of little Paul, and who considered herself to have gained
the loss in question, under the roof of the amiable Pipchin. The
excellent and thoughtful old system, hallowed by long prescription,
which has usually picked out from the rest of mankind the most dreary
and uncomfortable people that could possibly be laid hold of, to act as
instructors of youth, finger-posts to the virtues, matrons, monitors,
attendants on sick beds, and the like, had established Mrs Wickam in
very good business as a nurse, and had led to her serious qualities
being particularly commended by an admiring and numerous connexion.
Mrs Wickam, with her eyebrows elevated, and her head on one side,
lighted the way upstairs to a clean, neat chamber, opening on another
chamber dimly lighted, where there was a bed. In the first room, an old
woman sat mechanically staring out at the open window, on the darkness.
In the second, stretched upon the bed, lay the shadow of a figure that
had spurned the wind and rain, one wintry night; hardly to be
recognised now, but by the long black hair that showed so very black
against the colourless face, and all the white things about it.
Oh, the strong eyes, and the weak frame! The eyes that turned so
eagerly and brightly to the door when Harriet came in; the feeble head
that could not raise itself, and moved so slowly round upon its pillow!
“Alice!” said the visitor’s mild voice, “am I late tonight?”
“You always seem late, but are always early.”
Harriet had sat down by the bedside now, and put her hand upon the thin
hand lying there.
“You are better?”
Mrs Wickam, standing at the foot of the bed, like a disconsolate
spectre, most decidedly and forcibly shook her head to negative this
position.
“It matters very little!” said Alice, with a faint smile. “Better or
worse today, is but a day’s difference—perhaps not so much.”
Mrs Wickam, as a serious character, expressed her approval with a
groan; and having made some cold dabs at the bottom of the bedclothes,
as feeling for the patient’s feet and expecting to find them stony;
went clinking among the medicine bottles on the table, as who should
say, “while we are here, let us repeat the mixture as before.”
“No,” said Alice, whispering to her visitor, “evil courses, and
remorse, travel, want, and weather, storm within, and storm without,
have worn my life away. It will not last much longer.
She drew the hand up as she spoke, and laid her face against it.
“I lie here, sometimes, thinking I should like to live until I had had
a little time to show you how grateful I could be! It is a weakness,
and soon passes. Better for you as it is. Better for me!”
How different her hold upon the hand, from what it had been when she
took it by the fireside on the bleak winter evening! Scorn, rage,
defiance, recklessness, look here! This is the end.
Mrs Wickam having clinked sufficiently among the bottles, now produced
the mixture. Mrs Wickam looked hard at her patient in the act of
drinking, screwed her mouth up tight, her eyebrows also, and shook her
head, expressing that tortures shouldn’t make her say it was a hopeless
case. Mrs Wickam then sprinkled a little cooling-stuff about the room,
with the air of a female grave-digger, who was strewing ashes on ashes,