Dombey and Son
had called down that upon his head, which bowed it lower than the
heaviest stroke of fortune. He knew, now, what it was to be rejected
and deserted; now, when every loving blossom he had withered in his
innocent daughter’s heart was snowing down in ashes on him.
He thought of her, as she had been that night when he and his bride
came home. He thought of her as she had been, in all the home-events of
the abandoned house. He thought, now, that of all around him, she alone
had never changed. His boy had faded into dust, his proud wife had sunk
into a polluted creature, his flatterer and friend had been transformed
into the worst of villains, his riches had melted away, the very walls
that sheltered him looked on him as a stranger; she alone had turned
the same mild gentle look upon him always. Yes, to the latest and the
last. She had never changed to him—nor had he ever changed to her—and
she was lost.
As, one by one, they fell away before his mind—his baby—hope, his wife,
his friend, his fortune—oh how the mist, through which he had seen her,
cleared, and showed him her true self! Oh, how much better than this
that he had loved her as he had his boy, and lost her as he had his
boy, and laid them in their early grave together!
In his pride—for he was proud yet—he let the world go from him freely.
As it fell away, he shook it off. Whether he imagined its face as
expressing pity for him, or indifference to him, he shunned it alike.
It was in the same degree to be avoided, in either aspect. He had no
idea of any one companion in his misery, but the one he had driven
away. What he would have said to her, or what consolation submitted to
receive from her, he never pictured to himself. But he always knew she
would have been true to him, if he had suffered her. He always knew she
would have loved him better now, than at any other time; he was as
certain that it was in her nature, as he was that there was a sky above
him; and he sat thinking so, in his loneliness, from hour to hour. Day
after day uttered this speech; night after night showed him this
knowledge.
It began, beyond all doubt (however slow it advanced for some time), in
the receipt of her young husband’s letter, and the certainty that she
was gone. And yet—so proud he was in his ruin, or so reminiscent of her
only as something that might have been his, but was lost beyond
redemption—that if he could have heard her voice in an adjoining room,
he would not have gone to her. If he could have seen her in the street,
and she had done no more than look at him as she had been used to look,
he would have passed on with his old cold unforgiving face, and not
addressed her, or relaxed it, though his heart should have broken soon
afterwards. However turbulent his thoughts, or harsh his anger had
been, at first, concerning her marriage, or her husband, that was all
past now. He chiefly thought of what might have been, and what was not.
What was, was all summed up in this: that she was lost, and he bowed
down with sorrow and remorse.
And now he felt that he had had two children born to him in that house,
and that between him and the bare wide empty walls there was a tie,
mournful, but hard to rend asunder, connected with a double childhood,
and a double loss. He had thought to leave the house—knowing he must
go, not knowing whither—upon the evening of the day on which this
feeling first struck root in his breast; but he resolved to stay
another night, and in the night to ramble through the rooms once more.
He came out of his solitude when it was the dead of night, and with a
candle in his hand went softly up the stairs. Of all the footmarks
there, making them as common as the common street, there was not one,
he thought, but had seemed at the time to set itself upon his brain
while he had kept close, listening. He looked at their number, and
their hurry, and contention—foot treading foot out, and upward track
and downward jostling one another—and thought, with absolute dread and
wonder, how much he must have suffered during that trial, and what a
changed man he had cause to be. He thought, besides, oh was there,
somewhere in the world, a light footstep that might have worn out in a
moment half those marks!—and bent his head, and wept as he went up.
He almost saw it, going on before. He stopped, looking up towards the
skylight; and a figure, childish itself, but carrying a child, and
singing as it went, seemed to be there again. Anon, it was the same
figure, alone, stopping for an instant, with suspended breath; the
bright hair clustering loosely round its tearful face; and looking back
at him.
He wandered through the rooms: lately so luxurious; now so bare and
dismal and so changed, apparently, even in their shape and size. The
press of footsteps was as thick here; and the same consideration of the
suffering he had had, perplexed and terrified him. He began to fear
that all this intricacy in his brain would drive him mad; and that his
thoughts already lost coherence as the footprints did, and were pieced
on to one another, with the same trackless involutions, and varieties
of indistinct shapes.
He did not so much as know in which of these rooms she had lived, when
she was alone. He was glad to leave them, and go wandering higher up.
Abundance of associations were here, connected with his false wife, his
false friend and servant, his false grounds of pride; but he put them
all by now, and only recalled miserably, weakly, fondly, his two
children.
Everywhere, the footsteps! They had had no respect for the old room
high up, where the little bed had been; he could hardly find a clear
space there, to throw himself down, on the floor, against the wall,
poor broken man, and let his tears flow as they would. He had shed so
many tears here, long ago, that he was less ashamed of his weakness in
this place than in any other—perhaps, with that consciousness, had made
excuses to himself for coming here. Here, with stooping shoulders, and
his chin dropped on his breast, he had come. Here, thrown upon the bare
boards, in the dead of night, he wept, alone—a proud man, even then;
who, if a kind hand could have been stretched out, or a kind face could
have looked in, would have risen up, and turned away, and gone down to
his cell.
When the day broke he was shut up in his rooms again. He had meant to
go away today, but clung to this tie in the house as the last and only
thing left to him. He would go to-morrow. To-morrow came. He would go
to-morrow. Every night, within the knowledge of no human creature, he
came forth, and wandered through the despoiled house like a ghost. Many
a morning when the day broke, his altered face, drooping behind the
closed blind in his window, imperfectly transparent to the light as
yet, pondered on the loss of his two children. It was one child no
more. He reunited them in his thoughts, and they were never asunder.
Oh, that he could have united them in his past love, and in death, and
that one had not been so much worse than dead!
Strong mental agitation and disturbance was no novelty to him, even
before his late sufferings. It never is, to obstinate and sullen
natures; for they struggle hard to be such. Ground, long undermined,
will often fall down in a moment; what was undermined here in so many
ways, weakened, and crumbled, little by little, more and more, as the
hand moved on the dial.
At last he began to think he need not go at all. He might yet give up
what his creditors had spared him (that they had not spared him more,
was his own act), and only sever the tie between him and the ruined
house, by severing that other link—
It was then that his footfall was audible in the late housekeeper’s
room, as he walked to and fro; but not audible in its true meaning, or
it would have had an appalling sound.
The world was very busy and restless about him. He became aware of that
again. It was whispering and babbling. It was never quiet. This, and
the intricacy and complication of the footsteps, harassed him to death.
Objects began to take a bleared and russet colour in his eyes. Dombey
and Son was no more—his children no more. This must be thought of,
well, to-morrow.
He thought of it to-morrow; and sitting thinking in his chair, saw in
the glass, from time to time, this picture:
A spectral, haggard, wasted likeness of himself, brooded and brooded
over the empty fireplace. Now it lifted up its head, examining the
lines and hollows in its face; now hung it down again, and brooded
afresh. Now it rose and walked about; now passed into the next room,
and came back with something from the dressing-table in its breast.
Now, it was looking at the bottom of the door, and thinking.
—Hush! what?
It was thinking that if blood were to trickle that way, and to leak out
into the hall, it must be a long time going so far. It would move so
stealthily and slowly, creeping on, with here a lazy little pool, and
there a start, and then another little pool, that a desperately wounded
man could only be discovered through its means, either dead or dying.
When it had thought of this a long while, it got up again, and walked
to and fro with its hand in its breast. He glanced at it occasionally,
very curious to watch its motions, and he marked how wicked and
murderous that hand looked.
Now it was thinking again! What was it thinking?
Whether they would tread in the blood when it crept so far, and carry
it about the house among those many prints of feet, or even out into
the street.
It sat down, with its eyes upon the empty fireplace, and as it lost
itself in thought there shone into the room a gleam of light; a ray of
sun. It was quite unmindful, and sat thinking. Suddenly it rose, with a
terrible face, and that guilty hand grasping what was in its breast.
Then it was arrested by a cry—a wild, loud, piercing, loving, rapturous
cry—and he only saw his own reflection in the glass, and at his knees,
his daughter!
Yes. His daughter! Look at her! Look here! Down upon the ground,
clinging to him, calling to him, folding her hands, praying to him.
“Papa! Dearest Papa! Pardon me, forgive me! I have come back to ask
forgiveness on my knees. I never can be happy more, without it!”
Unchanged still. Of all the world, unchanged. Raising the same face to
his, as on that miserable night. Asking his forgiveness!
“Dear Papa, oh don’t look strangely on me! I never meant to leave you.
I never thought of it, before or afterwards. I was frightened when I
went away, and could not think. Papa, dear, I am changed. I am
penitent. I know my fault. I know my duty better now. Papa, don’t cast
me off, or I shall die!”
He tottered to his chair. He felt her draw his arms about her neck; he
felt her put her own round his; he felt her kisses on his face; he felt
her wet cheek laid against his own; he felt—oh, how deeply!—all that he
had done.
Upon the breast that he had bruised, against the heart that he had
almost broken, she laid his face, now covered with his hands, and said,
sobbing:
“Papa, love, I am a mother. I have a child who will soon call Walter by
the name by which I call you. When it was born, and when I knew how
much I loved it, I knew what I had done in leaving you. Forgive me,
dear Papa! oh say God bless me, and my little child!”
He would have said it, if he could. He would have raised his hands and
besought her for pardon, but she caught them in her own, and put them
down, hurriedly.
“My little child was born at sea, Papa I prayed to God (and so did
Walter for me) to spare me, that I might come home. The moment I could
land, I came back to you. Never let us be parted any more, Papa. Never
let us be parted any more!”
His head, now grey, was encircled by her arm; and he groaned to think