Dombey and Son
dust on dust—for she was a serious character—and withdrew to partake of
certain funeral baked meats downstairs.
“How long is it,” asked Alice, “since I went to you and told you what I
had done, and when you were advised it was too late for anyone to
follow?”
“It is a year and more,” said Harriet.
“A year and more,” said Alice, thoughtfully intent upon her face.
“Months upon months since you brought me here!”
Harriet answered “Yes.”
“Brought me here, by force of gentleness and kindness. Me!” said Alice,
shrinking with her face behind her hand, “and made me human by woman’s
looks and words, and angel’s deeds!”
Harriet bending over her, composed and soothed her. By and bye, Alice
lying as before, with the hand against her face, asked to have her
mother called.
Harriet called to her more than once, but the old woman was so absorbed
looking out at the open window on the darkness, that she did not hear.
It was not until Harriet went to her and touched her, that she rose up,
and came.
“Mother,” said Alice, taking the hand again, and fixing her lustrous
eyes lovingly upon her visitor, while she merely addressed a motion of
her finger to the old woman, “tell her what you know.”
“Tonight, my deary?”
“Ay, mother,” answered Alice, faintly and solemnly, “tonight!”
The old woman, whose wits appeared disorderly by alarm, remorse, or
grief, came creeping along the side of the bed, opposite to that on
which Harriet sat; and kneeling down, so as to bring her withered face
upon a level with the coverlet, and stretching out her hand, so as to
touch her daughter’s arm, began:
“My handsome gal—”
Heaven, what a cry was that, with which she stopped there, gazing at
the poor form lying on the bed!
“Changed, long ago, mother! Withered, long ago,” said Alice, without
looking at her. “Don’t grieve for that now.”
“—My daughter,” faltered the old woman, “my gal who’ll soon get better,
and shame ’em all with her good looks.”
Alice smiled mournfully at Harriet, and fondled her hand a little
closer, but said nothing.
“Who’ll soon get better, I say,” repeated the old woman, menacing the
vacant air with her shrivelled fist, “and who’ll shame ’em all with her
good looks—she will. I say she will! she shall!”—as if she were in
passionate contention with some unseen opponent at the bedside, who
contradicted her—“my daughter has been turned away from, and cast out,
but she could boast relationship to proud folks too, if she chose. Ah!
To proud folks! There’s relationship without your clergy and your
wedding rings—they may make it, but they can’t break it—and my
daughter’s well related. Show me Mrs Dombey, and I’ll show you my
Alice’s first cousin.”
Harriet glanced from the old woman to the lustrous eyes intent upon her
face, and derived corroboration from them.
“What!” cried the old woman, her nodding head bridling with a ghastly
vanity. “Though I am old and ugly now,—much older by life and habit
than years though,—I was once as young as any. Ah! as pretty too, as
many! I was a fresh country wench in my time, darling,” stretching out
her arm to Harriet, across the bed, “and looked it, too. Down in my
country, Mrs Dombey’s father and his brother were the gayest gentlemen
and the best-liked that came a visiting from London—they have long been
dead, though! Lord, Lord, this long while! The brother, who was my
Ally’s father, longest of the two.”
She raised her head a little, and peered at her daughter’s face; as if
from the remembrance of her own youth, she had flown to the remembrance
of her child’s. Then, suddenly, she laid her face down on the bed, and
shut her head up in her hands and arms.
“They were as like,” said the old woman, without looking up, as you
could see two brothers, so near an age—there wasn’t much more than a
year between them, as I recollect—and if you could have seen my gal, as
I have seen her once, side by side with the other’s daughter, you’d
have seen, for all the difference of dress and life, that they were
like each other. Oh! is the likeness gone, and is it my gal—only my
gal—that’s to change so!”
“We shall all change, mother, in our turn,” said Alice.
“Turn!” cried the old woman, “but why not hers as soon as my gal’s! The
mother must have changed—she looked as old as me, and full as wrinkled
through her paint—but she was handsome. What have I done, I, what have
I done worse than her, that only my gal is to lie there fading!”
With another of those wild cries, she went running out into the room
from which she had come; but immediately, in her uncertain mood,
returned, and creeping up to Harriet, said:
“That’s what Alice bade me tell you, deary. That’s all. I found it out
when I began to ask who she was, and all about her, away in
Warwickshire there, one summer-time. Such relations was no good to me,
then. They wouldn’t have owned me, and had nothing to give me. I should
have asked ’em, maybe, for a little money, afterwards, if it hadn’t
been for my Alice; she’d a’most have killed me, if I had, I think. She
was as proud as t’other in her way,” said the old woman, touching the
face of her daughter fearfully, and withdrawing her hand, “for all
she’s so quiet now; but she’ll shame ’em with her good looks yet. Ha,
ha! She’ll shame ’em, will my handsome daughter!”
Her laugh, as she retreated, was worse than her cry; worse than the
burst of imbecile lamentation in which it ended; worse than the doting
air with which she sat down in her old seat, and stared out at the
darkness.
The eyes of Alice had all this time been fixed on Harriet, whose hand
she had never released. She said now:
“I have felt, lying here, that I should like you to know this. It might
explain, I have thought, something that used to help to harden me. I
had heard so much, in my wrongdoing, of my neglected duty, that I took
up with the belief that duty had not been done to me, and that as the
seed was sown, the harvest grew. I somehow made it out that when ladies
had bad homes and mothers, they went wrong in their way, too; but that
their way was not so foul a one as mine, and they had need to bless God
for it. That is all past. It is like a dream, now, which I cannot quite
remember or understand. It has been more and more like a dream, every
day, since you began to sit here, and to read to me. I only tell it
you, as I can recollect it. Will you read to me a little more?”
Harriet was withdrawing her hand to open the book, when Alice detained
it for a moment.
“You will not forget my mother? I forgive her, if I have any cause. I
know that she forgives me, and is sorry in her heart. You will not
forget her?”
“Never, Alice!”
“A moment yet. Lay your head so, dear, that as you read I may see the
words in your kind face.”
Harriet complied and read—read the eternal book for all the weary, and
the heavy-laden; for all the wretched, fallen, and neglected of this
earth—read the blessed history, in which the blind lame palsied beggar,
the criminal, the woman stained with shame, the shunned of all our
dainty clay, has each a portion, that no human pride, indifference, or
sophistry, through all the ages that this world shall last, can take
away, or by the thousandth atom of a grain reduce—read the ministry of
Him who, through the round of human life, and all its hopes and griefs,
from birth to death, from infancy to age, had sweet compassion for, and
interest in, its every scene and stage, its every suffering and sorrow.
“I shall come,” said Harriet, when she shut the book, “very early in
the morning.”
The lustrous eyes, yet fixed upon her face, closed for a moment, then
opened; and Alice kissed and blest her.
The same eyes followed her to the door; and in their light, and on the
tranquil face, there was a smile when it was closed.
They never turned away. She laid her hand upon her breast, murmuring
the sacred name that had been read to her; and life passed from her
face, like light removed.
Nothing lay there, any longer, but the ruin of the mortal house on
which the rain had beaten, and the black hair that had fluttered in the
wintry wind.
CHAPTER LIX.
Retribution
Changes have come again upon the great house in the long dull street,
once the scene of Florence’s childhood and loneliness. It is a great
house still, proof against wind and weather, without breaches in the
roof, or shattered windows, or dilapidated walls; but it is a ruin none
the less, and the rats fly from it.
Mr Towlinson and company are, at first, incredulous in respect of the
shapeless rumours that they hear. Cook says our people’s credit ain’t
so easy shook as that comes to, thank God; and Mr Towlinson expects to
hear it reported next, that the Bank of England’s a-going to break, or
the jewels in the Tower to be sold up. But, next come the Gazette, and
Mr Perch; and Mr Perch brings Mrs Perch to talk it over in the kitchen,
and to spend a pleasant evening.
As soon as there is no doubt about it, Mr Towlinson’s main anxiety is
that the failure should be a good round one—not less than a hundred
thousand pound. Mr Perch don’t think himself that a hundred thousand
pound will nearly cover it. The women, led by Mrs Perch and Cook, often
repeat “a hun-dred thou-sand pound!” with awful satisfaction—as if
handling the words were like handling the money; and the housemaid, who
has her eye on Mr Towlinson, wishes she had only a hundredth part of
the sum to bestow on the man of her choice. Mr Towlinson, still mindful
of his old wrong, opines that a foreigner would hardly know what to do
with so much money, unless he spent it on his whiskers; which bitter
sarcasm causes the housemaid to withdraw in tears.
But not to remain long absent; for Cook, who has the reputation of
being extremely good-hearted, says, whatever they do, let ’em stand by
one another now, Towlinson, for there’s no telling how soon they may be
divided. They have been in that house (says Cook) through a funeral, a
wedding, and a running-away; and let it not be said that they couldn’t
agree among themselves at such a time as the present. Mrs Perch is
immensely affected by this moving address, and openly remarks that Cook
is an angel. Mr Towlinson replies to Cook, far be it from him to stand
in the way of that good feeling which he could wish to see; and
adjourning in quest of the housemaid, and presently returning with that
young lady on his arm, informs the kitchen that foreigners is only his
fun, and that him and Anne have now resolved to take one another for
better for worse, and to settle in Oxford Market in the general
greengrocery and herb and leech line, where your kind favours is
particular requested. This announcement is received with acclamation;
and Mrs Perch, projecting her soul into futurity, says, “girls,” in
Cook’s ear, in a solemn whisper.
Misfortune in the family without feasting, in these lower regions,
couldn’t be. Therefore Cook tosses up a hot dish or two for supper, and
Mr Towlinson compounds a lobster salad to be devoted to the same
hospitable purpose. Even Mrs Pipchin, agitated by the occasion, rings
her bell, and sends down word that she requests to have that little bit
of sweetbread that was left, warmed up for her supper, and sent to her
on a tray with about a quarter of a tumbler-full of mulled sherry; for
she feels poorly.
There is a little talk about Mr Dombey, but very little. It is chiefly
speculation as to how long he has known that this was going to happen.
Cook says shrewdly, “Oh a long time, bless you! Take your oath of
that.” And reference being made to Mr Perch, he confirms her view of
the case. Somebody wonders what he’ll do, and whether he’ll go out in
any situation. Mr Towlinson thinks not, and hints at a refuge in one of
them genteel almshouses of the better kind. “Ah, where he’ll have his