Dombey and Son
driving Miss Tox in single harness. But at no time did he fall into it
so surely, as when, his little chair being carried down into his
father’s room, he sat there with him after dinner, by the fire. They
were the strangest pair at such a time that ever firelight shone upon.
Mr Dombey so erect and solemn, gazing at the glare; his little image,
with an old, old face, peering into the red perspective with the fixed
and rapt attention of a sage. Mr Dombey entertaining complicated
worldly schemes and plans; the little image entertaining Heaven knows
what wild fancies, half-formed thoughts, and wandering speculations. Mr
Dombey stiff with starch and arrogance; the little image by
inheritance, and in unconscious imitation. The two so very much alike,
and yet so monstrously contrasted.
On one of these occasions, when they had both been perfectly quiet for
a long time, and Mr Dombey only knew that the child was awake by
occasionally glancing at his eye, where the bright fire was sparkling
like a jewel, little Paul broke silence thus:
“Papa! what’s money?”
The abrupt question had such immediate reference to the subject of Mr
Dombey’s thoughts, that Mr Dombey was quite disconcerted.
“What is money, Paul?” he answered. “Money?”
“Yes,” said the child, laying his hands upon the elbows of his little
chair, and turning the old face up towards Mr Dombey’s; “what is
money?”
Mr Dombey was in a difficulty. He would have liked to give him some
explanation involving the terms circulating-medium, currency,
depreciation of currency, paper, bullion, rates of exchange, value of
precious metals in the market, and so forth; but looking down at the
little chair, and seeing what a long way down it was, he answered:
“Gold, and silver, and copper. Guineas, shillings, half-pence. You know
what they are?”
“Oh yes, I know what they are,” said Paul. “I don’t mean that, Papa. I
mean what’s money after all?”
Heaven and Earth, how old his face was as he turned it up again towards
his father’s!
“What is money after all!” said Mr Dombey, backing his chair a little,
that he might the better gaze in sheer amazement at the presumptuous
atom that propounded such an inquiry.
“I mean, Papa, what can it do?” returned Paul, folding his arms (they
were hardly long enough to fold), and looking at the fire, and up at
him, and at the fire, and up at him again.
Mr Dombey drew his chair back to its former place, and patted him on
the head. “You’ll know better by-and-by, my man,” he said. “Money,
Paul, can do anything.” He took hold of the little hand, and beat it
softly against one of his own, as he said so.
But Paul got his hand free as soon as he could; and rubbing it gently
to and fro on the elbow of his chair, as if his wit were in the palm,
and he were sharpening it—and looking at the fire again, as though the
fire had been his adviser and prompter—repeated, after a short pause:
“Anything, Papa?”
“Yes. Anything—almost,” said Mr Dombey.
“Anything means everything, don’t it, Papa?” asked his son: not
observing, or possibly not understanding, the qualification.
“It includes it: yes,” said Mr Dombey.
“Why didn’t money save me my Mama?” returned the child. “It isn’t
cruel, is it?”
“Cruel!” said Mr Dombey, settling his neckcloth, and seeming to resent
the idea. “No. A good thing can’t be cruel.”
“If it’s a good thing, and can do anything,” said the little fellow,
thoughtfully, as he looked back at the fire, “I wonder why it didn’t
save me my Mama.”
He didn’t ask the question of his father this time. Perhaps he had
seen, with a child’s quickness, that it had already made his father
uncomfortable. But he repeated the thought aloud, as if it were quite
an old one to him, and had troubled him very much; and sat with his
chin resting on his hand, still cogitating and looking for an
explanation in the fire.
Mr Dombey having recovered from his surprise, not to say his alarm (for
it was the very first occasion on which the child had ever broached the
subject of his mother to him, though he had had him sitting by his
side, in this same manner, evening after evening), expounded to him how
that money, though a very potent spirit, never to be disparaged on any
account whatever, could not keep people alive whose time was come to
die; and how that we must all die, unfortunately, even in the City,
though we were never so rich. But how that money caused us to be
honoured, feared, respected, courted, and admired, and made us powerful
and glorious in the eyes of all men; and how that it could, very often,
even keep off death, for a long time together. How, for example, it had
secured to his Mama the services of Mr Pilkins, by which he, Paul, had
often profited himself; likewise of the great Doctor Parker Peps, whom
he had never known. And how it could do all, that could be done. This,
with more to the same purpose, Mr Dombey instilled into the mind of his
son, who listened attentively, and seemed to understand the greater
part of what was said to him.
“It can’t make me strong and quite well, either, Papa; can it?” asked
Paul, after a short silence; rubbing his tiny hands.
“Why, you are strong and quite well,” returned Mr Dombey. “Are you
not?”
Oh! the age of the face that was turned up again, with an expression,
half of melancholy, half of slyness, on it!
“You are as strong and well as such little people usually are? Eh?”
said Mr Dombey.
“Florence is older than I am, but I’m not as strong and well as
Florence, “I know,” returned the child; “and I believe that when
Florence was as little as me, she could play a great deal longer at a
time without tiring herself. I am so tired sometimes,” said little
Paul, warming his hands, and looking in between the bars of the grate,
as if some ghostly puppet-show were performing there, “and my bones
ache so (Wickam says it’s my bones), that I don’t know what to do.”
“Ay! But that’s at night,” said Mr Dombey, drawing his own chair closer
to his son’s, and laying his hand gently on his back; “little people
should be tired at night, for then they sleep well.”
“Oh, it’s not at night, Papa,” returned the child, “it’s in the day;
and I lie down in Florence’s lap, and she sings to me. At night I dream
about such cu-ri-ous things!”
And he went on, warming his hands again, and thinking about them, like
an old man or a young goblin.
Mr Dombey was so astonished, and so uncomfortable, and so perfectly at
a loss how to pursue the conversation, that he could only sit looking
at his son by the light of the fire, with his hand resting on his back,
as if it were detained there by some magnetic attraction. Once he
advanced his other hand, and turned the contemplative face towards his
own for a moment. But it sought the fire again as soon as he released
it; and remained, addressed towards the flickering blaze, until the
nurse appeared, to summon him to bed.
“I want Florence to come for me,” said Paul.
“Won’t you come with your poor Nurse Wickam, Master Paul?” inquired
that attendant, with great pathos.
“No, I won’t,” replied Paul, composing himself in his arm-chair again,
like the master of the house.
Invoking a blessing upon his innocence, Mrs Wickam withdrew, and
presently Florence appeared in her stead. The child immediately started
up with sudden readiness and animation, and raised towards his father
in bidding him good-night, a countenance so much brighter, so much
younger, and so much more child-like altogether, that Mr Dombey, while
he felt greatly reassured by the change, was quite amazed at it.
After they had left the room together, he thought he heard a soft voice
singing; and remembering that Paul had said his sister sung to him, he
had the curiosity to open the door and listen, and look after them. She
was toiling up the great, wide, vacant staircase, with him in her arms;
his head was lying on her shoulder, one of his arms thrown negligently
round her neck. So they went, toiling up; she singing all the way, and
Paul sometimes crooning out a feeble accompaniment. Mr Dombey looked
after them until they reached the top of the staircase—not without
halting to rest by the way—and passed out of his sight; and then he
still stood gazing upwards, until the dull rays of the moon, glimmering
in a melancholy manner through the dim skylight, sent him back to his
room.
Mrs Chick and Miss Tox were convoked in council at dinner next day; and
when the cloth was removed, Mr Dombey opened the proceedings by
requiring to be informed, without any gloss or reservation, whether
there was anything the matter with Paul, and what Mr Pilkins said about
him.
“For the child is hardly,” said Mr Dombey, “as stout as I could wish.”
“My dear Paul,” returned Mrs Chick, “with your usual happy
discrimination, which I am weak enough to envy you, every time I am in
your company; and so I think is Miss Tox.”
“Oh my dear!” said Miss Tox, softly, “how could it be otherwise?
Presumptuous as it is to aspire to such a level; still, if the bird of
night may—but I’ll not trouble Mr Dombey with the sentiment. It merely
relates to the Bulbul.”
Mr Dombey bent his head in stately recognition of the Bulbuls as an
old-established body.
“With your usual happy discrimination, my dear Paul,” resumed Mrs
Chick, “you have hit the point at once. Our darling is altogether as
stout as we could wish. The fact is, that his mind is too much for him.
His soul is a great deal too large for his frame. I am sure the way in
which that dear child talks!” said Mrs Chick, shaking her head; “no one
would believe. His expressions, Lucretia, only yesterday upon the
subject of Funerals!”
“I am afraid,” said Mr Dombey, interrupting her testily, “that some of
those persons upstairs suggest improper subjects to the child. He was
speaking to me last night about his—about his Bones,” said Mr Dombey,
laying an irritated stress upon the word. “What on earth has anybody to
do with the—with the—Bones of my son? He is not a living skeleton, I
suppose.”
“Very far from it,” said Mrs Chick, with unspeakable expression.
“I hope so,” returned her brother. “Funerals again! who talks to the
child of funerals? We are not undertakers, or mutes, or grave-diggers,
I believe.”
“Very far from it,” interposed Mrs Chick, with the same profound
expression as before.
“Then who puts such things into his head?” said Mr Dombey. “Really I
was quite dismayed and shocked last night. Who puts such things into
his head, Louisa?”
“My dear Paul,” said Mrs Chick, after a moment’s silence, “it is of no
use inquiring. I do not think, I will tell you candidly that Wickam is
a person of very cheerful spirit, or what one would call a—”
“A daughter of Momus,” Miss Tox softly suggested.
“Exactly so,” said Mrs Chick; “but she is exceedingly attentive and
useful, and not at all presumptuous; indeed I never saw a more biddable
woman. I would say that for her, if I was put upon my trial before a
Court of Justice.”
“Well! you are not put upon your trial before a Court of Justice, at
present, Louisa,” returned Mr Dombey, chafing, “and therefore it don’t
matter.”
“My dear Paul,” said Mrs Chick, in a warning voice, “I must be spoken
to kindly, or there is an end of me,” at the same time a premonitory
redness developed itself in Mrs Chick’s eyelids which was an invariable
sign of rain, unless the weather changed directly.
“I was inquiring, Louisa,” observed Mr Dombey, in an altered voice, and
after a decent interval, “about Paul’s health and actual state.”
“If the dear child,” said Mrs Chick, in the tone of one who was summing
up what had been previously quite agreed upon, instead of saying it all
for the first time, “is a little weakened by that last attack, and is
not in quite such vigorous health as we could wish; and if he has some