Dombey and Son
coaches from his observation.
In good time Mr Dombey’s mansion was gained again, and again there was
a noise of tongues in the library. Again, too, the coach was ordered to
wait—“for Mrs Richards,” one of Susan’s fellow-servants ominously
whispered, as she passed with Florence.
The entrance of the lost child made a slight sensation, but not much.
Mr Dombey, who had never found her, kissed her once upon the forehead,
and cautioned her not to run away again, or wander anywhere with
treacherous attendants. Mrs Chick stopped in her lamentations on the
corruption of human nature, even when beckoned to the paths of virtue
by a Charitable Grinder; and received her with a welcome something
short of the reception due to none but perfect Dombeys. Miss Tox
regulated her feelings by the models before her. Richards, the culprit
Richards, alone poured out her heart in broken words of welcome, and
bowed herself over the little wandering head as if she really loved it.
“Ah, Richards!” said Mrs Chick, with a sigh. “It would have been much
more satisfactory to those who wish to think well of their fellow
creatures, and much more becoming in you, if you had shown some proper
feeling, in time, for the little child that is now going to be
prematurely deprived of its natural nourishment.
“Cut off,” said Miss Tox, in a plaintive whisper, “from one common
fountain!”
“If it was my ungrateful case,” said Mrs Chick, solemnly, “and I had
your reflections, Richards, I should feel as if the Charitable
Grinders’ dress would blight my child, and the education choke him.”
For the matter of that—but Mrs Chick didn’t know it—he had been pretty
well blighted by the dress already; and as to the education, even its
retributive effect might be produced in time, for it was a storm of
sobs and blows.
“Louisa!” said Mr Dombey. “It is not necessary to prolong these
observations. The woman is discharged and paid. You leave this house,
Richards, for taking my son—my son,” said Mr Dombey, emphatically
repeating these two words, “into haunts and into society which are not
to be thought of without a shudder. As to the accident which befel Miss
Florence this morning, I regard that as, in one great sense, a happy
and fortunate circumstance; inasmuch as, but for that occurrence, I
never could have known—and from your own lips too—of what you had been
guilty. I think, Louisa, the other nurse, the young person,” here Miss
Nipper sobbed aloud, “being so much younger, and necessarily influenced
by Paul’s nurse, may remain. Have the goodness to direct that this
woman’s coach is paid to”—Mr Dombey stopped and winced—“to Staggs’s
Gardens.”
Polly moved towards the door, with Florence holding to her dress, and
crying to her in the most pathetic manner not to go away. It was a
dagger in the haughty father’s heart, an arrow in his brain, to see how
the flesh and blood he could not disown clung to this obscure stranger,
and he sitting by. Not that he cared to whom his daughter turned, or
from whom turned away. The swift sharp agony struck through him, as he
thought of what his son might do.
His son cried lustily that night, at all events. Sooth to say, poor
Paul had better reason for his tears than sons of that age often have,
for he had lost his second mother—his first, so far as he knew—by a
stroke as sudden as that natural affliction which had darkened the
beginning of his life. At the same blow, his sister too, who cried
herself to sleep so mournfully, had lost as good and true a friend. But
that is quite beside the question. Let us waste no words about it.
CHAPTER VII.
A Bird’s-eye Glimpse of Miss Tox’s Dwelling-place: also of the State of
Miss Tox’s Affections
Miss Tox inhabited a dark little house that had been squeezed, at some
remote period of English History, into a fashionable neighbourhood at
the west end of the town, where it stood in the shade like a poor
relation of the great street round the corner, coldly looked down upon
by mighty mansions. It was not exactly in a court, and it was not
exactly in a yard; but it was in the dullest of No-Thoroughfares,
rendered anxious and haggard by distant double knocks. The name of this
retirement, where grass grew between the chinks in the stone pavement,
was Princess’s Place; and in Princess’s Place was Princess’s Chapel,
with a tinkling bell, where sometimes as many as five-and-twenty people
attended service on a Sunday. The Princess’s Arms was also there, and
much resorted to by splendid footmen. A sedan chair was kept inside the
railing before the Princess’s Arms, but it had never come out within
the memory of man; and on fine mornings, the top of every rail (there
were eight-and-forty, as Miss Tox had often counted) was decorated with
a pewter-pot.
There was another private house besides Miss Tox’s in Princess’s Place:
not to mention an immense Pair of gates, with an immense pair of
lion-headed knockers on them, which were never opened by any chance,
and were supposed to constitute a disused entrance to somebody’s
stables. Indeed, there was a smack of stabling in the air of Princess’s
Place; and Miss Tox’s bedroom (which was at the back) commanded a vista
of Mews, where hostlers, at whatever sort of work engaged, were
continually accompanying themselves with effervescent noises; and where
the most domestic and confidential garments of coachmen and their wives
and families, usually hung, like Macbeth’s banners, on the outward
walls.
At this other private house in Princess’s Place, tenanted by a retired
butler who had married a housekeeper, apartments were let Furnished, to
a single gentleman: to wit, a wooden-featured, blue-faced Major, with
his eyes starting out of his head, in whom Miss Tox recognised, as she
herself expressed it, “something so truly military;” and between whom
and herself, an occasional interchange of newspapers and pamphlets, and
such Platonic dalliance, was effected through the medium of a dark
servant of the Major’s who Miss Tox was quite content to classify as a
“native,” without connecting him with any geographical idea whatever.
Perhaps there never was a smaller entry and staircase, than the entry
and staircase of Miss Tox’s house. Perhaps, taken altogether, from top
to bottom, it was the most inconvenient little house in England, and
the crookedest; but then, Miss Tox said, what a situation! There was
very little daylight to be got there in the winter: no sun at the best
of times: air was out of the question, and traffic was walled out.
Still Miss Tox said, think of the situation! So said the blue-faced
Major, whose eyes were starting out of his head: who gloried in
Princess’s Place: and who delighted to turn the conversation at his
club, whenever he could, to something connected with some of the great
people in the great street round the corner, that he might have the
satisfaction of saying they were his neighbours.
In short, with Miss Tox and the blue-faced Major, it was enough for
Princess’s Place—as with a very small fragment of society, it is enough
for many a little hanger-on of another sort—to be well connected, and
to have genteel blood in its veins. It might be poor, mean, shabby,
stupid, dull. No matter. The great street round the corner trailed off
into Princess’s Place; and that which of High Holborn would have become
a choleric word, spoken of Princess’s Place became flat blasphemy.
The dingy tenement inhabited by Miss Tox was her own; having been
devised and bequeathed to her by the deceased owner of the fishy eye in
the locket, of whom a miniature portrait, with a powdered head and a
pigtail, balanced the kettle-holder on opposite sides of the parlour
fireplace. The greater part of the furniture was of the powdered-head
and pig-tail period: comprising a plate-warmer, always languishing and
sprawling its four attenuated bow legs in somebody’s way; and an
obsolete harpsichord, illuminated round the maker’s name with a painted
garland of sweet peas. In any part of the house, visitors were usually
cognizant of a prevailing mustiness; and in warm weather Miss Tox had
been seen apparently writing in sundry chinks and crevices of the
wainscoat with the wrong end of a pen dipped in spirits of
turpentine.
Although Major Bagstock had arrived at what is called in polite
literature, the grand meridian of life, and was proceeding on his
journey downhill with hardly any throat, and a very rigid pair of
jaw-bones, and long-flapped elephantine ears, and his eyes and
complexion in the state of artificial excitement already mentioned, he
was mightily proud of awakening an interest in Miss Tox, and tickled
his vanity with the fiction that she was a splendid woman who had her
eye on him. This he had several times hinted at the club: in connexion
with little jocularities, of which old Joe Bagstock, old Joey Bagstock,
old J. Bagstock, old Josh Bagstock, or so forth, was the perpetual
theme: it being, as it were, the Major’s stronghold and donjon-keep of
light humour, to be on the most familiar terms with his own name.
“Joey B., Sir,” the Major would say, with a flourish of his
walking-stick, “is worth a dozen of you. If you had a few more of the
Bagstock breed among you, Sir, you’d be none the worse for it. Old Joe,
Sir, needn’t look far for a wife even now, if he was on the look-out;
but he’s hard-hearted, Sir, is Joe—he’s tough, Sir, tough, and
de-vilish sly!” After such a declaration, wheezing sounds would be
heard; and the Major’s blue would deepen into purple, while his eyes
strained and started convulsively.
Notwithstanding his very liberal laudation of himself, however, the
Major was selfish. It may be doubted whether there ever was a more
entirely selfish person at heart; or at stomach is perhaps a better
expression, seeing that he was more decidedly endowed with that latter
organ than with the former. He had no idea of being overlooked or
slighted by anybody; least of all, had he the remotest comprehension of
being overlooked and slighted by Miss Tox.
And yet, Miss Tox, as it appeared, forgot him—gradually forgot him. She
began to forget him soon after her discovery of the Toodle family. She
continued to forget him up to the time of the christening. She went on
forgetting him with compound interest after that. Something or somebody
had superseded him as a source of interest.
“Good morning, Ma’am,” said the Major, meeting Miss Tox in Princess’s
Place, some weeks after the changes chronicled in the last chapter.
“Good morning, Sir,” said Miss Tox; very coldly.
“Joe Bagstock, Ma’am,” observed the Major, with his usual gallantry,
“has not had the happiness of bowing to you at your window, for a
considerable period. Joe has been hardly used, Ma’am. His sun has been
behind a cloud.”
Miss Tox inclined her head; but very coldly indeed.
“Joe’s luminary has been out of town, Ma’am, perhaps,” inquired the
Major.
“I? out of town? oh no, I have not been out of town,” said Miss Tox. “I
have been much engaged lately. My time is nearly all devoted to some
very intimate friends. I am afraid I have none to spare, even now. Good
morning, Sir!”
As Miss Tox, with her most fascinating step and carriage, disappeared
from Princess’s Place, the Major stood looking after her with a bluer
face than ever: muttering and growling some not at all complimentary
remarks.
“Why, damme, Sir,” said the Major, rolling his lobster eyes round and
round Princess’s Place, and apostrophizing its fragrant air, “six
months ago, the woman loved the ground Josh Bagstock walked on. What’s
the meaning of it?”
The Major decided, after some consideration, that it meant mantraps;
that it meant plotting and snaring; that Miss Tox was digging pitfalls.
“But you won’t catch Joe, Ma’am,” said the Major. “He’s tough, Ma’am,