Dombey and Son
which was more like a pad to carry loads on, she caught it in her hair
which grew luxuriantly, and could not immediately disentangle it. Good
Mrs Brown whipped out a large pair of scissors, and fell into an
unaccountable state of excitement.
“Why couldn’t you let me be!” said Mrs Brown, “when I was contented?
You little fool!”
“I beg your pardon. I don’t know what I have done,” panted Florence. “I
couldn’t help it.”
“Couldn’t help it!” cried Mrs Brown. “How do you expect I can help it?
Why, Lord!” said the old woman, ruffling her curls with a furious
pleasure, “anybody but me would have had ’em off, first of all.”
Florence was so relieved to find that it was only her hair and not her
head which Mrs Brown coveted, that she offered no resistance or
entreaty, and merely raised her mild eyes towards the face of that good
soul.
“If I hadn’t once had a gal of my own—beyond seas now—that was proud of
her hair,” said Mrs Brown, “I’d have had every lock of it. She’s far
away, she’s far away! Oho! Oho!”
Mrs Brown’s was not a melodious cry, but, accompanied with a wild
tossing up of her lean arms, it was full of passionate grief, and
thrilled to the heart of Florence, whom it frightened more than ever.
It had its part, perhaps, in saving her curls; for Mrs Brown, after
hovering about her with the scissors for some moments, like a new kind
of butterfly, bade her hide them under the bonnet and let no trace of
them escape to tempt her. Having accomplished this victory over
herself, Mrs Brown resumed her seat on the bones, and smoked a very
short black pipe, mowing and mumbling all the time, as if she were
eating the stem.
When the pipe was smoked out, she gave the child a rabbit-skin to
carry, that she might appear the more like her ordinary companion, and
told her that she was now going to lead her to a public street whence
she could inquire her way to her friends. But she cautioned her, with
threats of summary and deadly vengeance in case of disobedience, not to
talk to strangers, nor to repair to her own home (which may have been
too near for Mrs Brown’s convenience), but to her father’s office in
the City; also to wait at the street corner where she would be left,
until the clock struck three. These directions Mrs Brown enforced with
assurances that there would be potent eyes and ears in her employment
cognizant of all she did; and these directions Florence promised
faithfully and earnestly to observe.
At length, Mrs Brown, issuing forth, conducted her changed and ragged
little friend through a labyrinth of narrow streets and lanes and
alleys, which emerged, after a long time, upon a stable yard, with a
gateway at the end, whence the roar of a great thoroughfare made itself
audible. Pointing out this gateway, and informing Florence that when
the clocks struck three she was to go to the left, Mrs Brown, after
making a parting grasp at her hair which seemed involuntary and quite
beyond her own control, told her she knew what to do, and bade her go
and do it: remembering that she was watched.
With a lighter heart, but still sore afraid, Florence felt herself
released, and tripped off to the corner. When she reached it, she
looked back and saw the head of Good Mrs Brown peeping out of the low
wooden passage, where she had issued her parting injunctions; likewise
the fist of Good Mrs Brown shaking towards her. But though she often
looked back afterwards—every minute, at least, in her nervous
recollection of the old woman—she could not see her again.
Florence remained there, looking at the bustle in the street, and more
and more bewildered by it; and in the meanwhile the clocks appeared to
have made up their minds never to strike three any more. At last the
steeples rang out three o’clock; there was one close by, so she
couldn’t be mistaken; and—after often looking over her shoulder, and
often going a little way, and as often coming back again, lest the
all-powerful spies of Mrs Brown should take offence—she hurried off, as
fast as she could in her slipshod shoes, holding the rabbit-skin tight
in her hand.
All she knew of her father’s offices was that they belonged to Dombey
and Son, and that that was a great power belonging to the City. So she
could only ask the way to Dombey and Son’s in the City; and as she
generally made inquiry of children—being afraid to ask grown people—she
got very little satisfaction indeed. But by dint of asking her way to
the City after a while, and dropping the rest of her inquiry for the
present, she really did advance, by slow degrees, towards the heart of
that great region which is governed by the terrible Lord Mayor.
Tired of walking, repulsed and pushed about, stunned by the noise and
confusion, anxious for her brother and the nurses, terrified by what
she had undergone, and the prospect of encountering her angry father in
such an altered state; perplexed and frightened alike by what had
passed, and what was passing, and what was yet before her; Florence
went upon her weary way with tearful eyes, and once or twice could not
help stopping to ease her bursting heart by crying bitterly. But few
people noticed her at those times, in the garb she wore: or if they
did, believed that she was tutored to excite compassion, and passed on.
Florence, too, called to her aid all the firmness and self-reliance of
a character that her sad experience had prematurely formed and tried:
and keeping the end she had in view steadily before her, steadily
pursued it.
It was full two hours later in the afternoon than when she had started
on this strange adventure, when, escaping from the clash and clangour
of a narrow street full of carts and waggons, she peeped into a kind of
wharf or landing-place upon the river-side, where there were a great
many packages, casks, and boxes, strewn about; a large pair of wooden
scales; and a little wooden house on wheels, outside of which, looking
at the neighbouring masts and boats, a stout man stood whistling, with
his pen behind his ear, and his hands in his pockets, as if his day’s
work were nearly done.
“Now then!” said this man, happening to turn round. “We haven’t got
anything for you, little girl. Be off!”
“If you please, is this the City?” asked the trembling daughter of the
Dombeys.
“Ah! It’s the City. You know that well enough, I daresay. Be off! We
haven’t got anything for you.”
“I don’t want anything, thank you,” was the timid answer. “Except to
know the way to Dombey and Son’s.”
The man who had been strolling carelessly towards her, seemed surprised
by this reply, and looking attentively in her face, rejoined:
“Why, what can you want with Dombey and Son’s?”
“To know the way there, if you please.”
The man looked at her yet more curiously, and rubbed the back of his
head so hard in his wonderment that he knocked his own hat off.
“Joe!” he called to another man—a labourer—as he picked it up and put
it on again.
“Joe it is!” said Joe.
“Where’s that young spark of Dombey’s who’s been watching the shipment
of them goods?”
“Just gone, by tt’other gate,” said Joe.
“Call him back a minute.”
Joe ran up an archway, bawling as he went, and very soon returned with
a blithe-looking boy.
“You’re Dombey’s jockey, ain’t you?” said the first man.
“I’m in Dombey’s House, Mr Clark,” returned the boy.
“Look’ye here, then,” said Mr Clark.
Obedient to the indication of Mr Clark’s hand, the boy approached
towards Florence, wondering, as well he might, what he had to do with
her. But she, who had heard what passed, and who, besides the relief of
so suddenly considering herself safe at her journey’s end, felt
reassured beyond all measure by his lively youthful face and manner,
ran eagerly up to him, leaving one of the slipshod shoes upon the
ground and caught his hand in both of hers.
“I am lost, if you please!” said Florence.
“Lost!” cried the boy.
“Yes, I was lost this morning, a long way from here—and I have had my
clothes taken away, since—and I am not dressed in my own now—and my
name is Florence Dombey, my little brother’s only sister—and, oh dear,
dear, take care of me, if you please!” sobbed Florence, giving full
vent to the childish feelings she had so long suppressed, and bursting
into tears. At the same time her miserable bonnet falling off, her hair
came tumbling down about her face: moving to speechless admiration and
commiseration, young Walter, nephew of Solomon Gills, Ships’
Instrument-maker in general.
Mr Clark stood rapt in amazement: observing under his breath, I never
saw such a start on this wharf before. Walter picked up the shoe, and
put it on the little foot as the Prince in the story might have fitted
Cinderella’s slipper on. He hung the rabbit-skin over his left arm;
gave the right to Florence; and felt, not to say like Richard
Whittington—that is a tame comparison—but like Saint George of England,
with the dragon lying dead before him.
“Don’t cry, Miss Dombey,” said Walter, in a transport of enthusiasm.
“What a wonderful thing for me that I am here! You are as safe now as
if you were guarded by a whole boat’s crew of picked men from a
man-of-war. Oh, don’t cry.”
“I won’t cry any more,” said Florence. “I am only crying for joy.”
“Crying for joy!” thought Walter, “and I’m the cause of it! Come along,
Miss Dombey. There’s the other shoe off now! Take mine, Miss Dombey.”
“No, no, no,” said Florence, checking him in the act of impetuously
pulling off his own. “These do better. These do very well.”
“Why, to be sure,” said Walter, glancing at her foot, “mine are a mile
too large. What am I thinking about! You never could walk in mine! Come
along, Miss Dombey. Let me see the villain who will dare molest you
now.”
So Walter, looking immensely fierce, led off Florence, looking very
happy; and they went arm-in-arm along the streets, perfectly
indifferent to any astonishment that their appearance might or did
excite by the way.
It was growing dark and foggy, and beginning to rain too; but they
cared nothing for this: being both wholly absorbed in the late
adventures of Florence, which she related with the innocent good faith
and confidence of her years, while Walter listened as if, far from the
mud and grease of Thames Street, they were rambling alone among the
broad leaves and tall trees of some desert island in the tropics—as he
very likely fancied, for the time, they were.
“Have we far to go?” asked Florence at last, lilting up her eyes to her
companion’s face.
“Ah! By-the-bye,” said Walter, stopping, “let me see; where are we? Oh!
I know. But the offices are shut up now, Miss Dombey. There’s nobody
there. Mr Dombey has gone home long ago. I suppose we must go home too?
or, stay. Suppose I take you to my Uncle’s, where I live—it’s very near
here—and go to your house in a coach to tell them you are safe, and
bring you back some clothes. Won’t that be best?”
“I think so,” answered Florence. “Don’t you? What do you think?”
As they stood deliberating in the street, a man passed them, who
glanced quickly at Walter as he went by, as if he recognised him; but
seeming to correct that first impression, he passed on without
stopping.
“Why, I think it’s Mr Carker,” said Walter. “Carker in our House. Not
Carker our Manager, Miss Dombey—the other Carker; the Junior—Halloa! Mr
Carker!”
“Is that Walter Gay?” said the other, stopping and returning. “I
couldn’t believe it, with such a strange companion.”
As he stood near a lamp, listening with surprise to Walter’s hurried
explanation, he presented a remarkable contrast to the two youthful
figures arm-in-arm before him. He was not old, but his hair was white;
his body was bent, or bowed as if by the weight of some great trouble:
and there were deep lines in his worn and melancholy face. The fire of