Dombey and Son
that day, in surveying Master Bitherstone from head to foot, and
watching all the workings of his countenance, with the interest
attaching to a boy of mysterious and terrible experiences.
At one o’clock there was a dinner, chiefly of the farinaceous and
vegetable kind, when Miss Pankey (a mild little blue-eyed morsel of a
child, who was shampoo’d every morning, and seemed in danger of being
rubbed away, altogether) was led in from captivity by the ogress
herself, and instructed that nobody who sniffed before visitors ever
went to Heaven. When this great truth had been thoroughly impressed
upon her, she was regaled with rice; and subsequently repeated the form
of grace established in the Castle, in which there was a special
clause, thanking Mrs Pipchin for a good dinner. Mrs Pipchin’s niece,
Berinthia, took cold pork. Mrs Pipchin, whose constitution required
warm nourishment, made a special repast of mutton-chops, which were
brought in hot and hot, between two plates, and smelt very nice.
As it rained after dinner, and they couldn’t go out walking on the
beach, and Mrs Pipchin’s constitution required rest after chops, they
went away with Berry (otherwise Berinthia) to the Dungeon; an empty
room looking out upon a chalk wall and a water-butt, and made ghastly
by a ragged fireplace without any stove in it. Enlivened by company,
however, this was the best place after all; for Berry played with them
there, and seemed to enjoy a game at romps as much as they did; until
Mrs Pipchin knocking angrily at the wall, like the Cock Lane Ghost
revived, they left off, and Berry told them stories in a whisper until
twilight.
For tea there was plenty of milk and water, and bread and butter, with
a little black tea-pot for Mrs Pipchin and Berry, and buttered toast
unlimited for Mrs Pipchin, which was brought in, hot and hot, like the
chops. Though Mrs Pipchin got very greasy, outside, over this dish, it
didn’t seem to lubricate her internally, at all; for she was as fierce
as ever, and the hard grey eye knew no softening.
After tea, Berry brought out a little work-box, with the Royal Pavilion
on the lid, and fell to working busily; while Mrs Pipchin, having put
on her spectacles and opened a great volume bound in green baize, began
to nod. And whenever Mrs Pipchin caught herself falling forward into
the fire, and woke up, she filliped Master Bitherstone on the nose for
nodding too.
At last it was the children’s bedtime, and after prayers they went to
bed. As little Miss Pankey was afraid of sleeping alone in the dark,
Mrs Pipchin always made a point of driving her upstairs herself, like a
sheep; and it was cheerful to hear Miss Pankey moaning long afterwards,
in the least eligible chamber, and Mrs Pipchin now and then going in to
shake her. At about half-past nine o’clock the odour of a warm
sweet-bread (Mrs Pipchin’s constitution wouldn’t go to sleep without
sweet-bread) diversified the prevailing fragrance of the house, which
Mrs Wickam said was “a smell of building;” and slumber fell upon the
Castle shortly after.
The breakfast next morning was like the tea over night, except that Mrs
Pipchin took her roll instead of toast, and seemed a little more irate
when it was over. Master Bitherstone read aloud to the rest a pedigree
from Genesis (judiciously selected by Mrs Pipchin), getting over the
names with the ease and clearness of a person tumbling up the
treadmill. That done, Miss Pankey was borne away to be shampoo’d; and
Master Bitherstone to have something else done to him with salt water,
from which he always returned very blue and dejected. Paul and Florence
went out in the meantime on the beach with Wickam—who was constantly in
tears—and at about noon Mrs Pipchin presided over some Early Readings.
It being a part of Mrs Pipchin’s system not to encourage a child’s mind
to develop and expand itself like a young flower, but to open it by
force like an oyster, the moral of these lessons was usually of a
violent and stunning character: the hero—a naughty boy—seldom, in the
mildest catastrophe, being finished off anything less than a lion, or a
bear.
Such was life at Mrs Pipchin’s. On Saturday Mr Dombey came down; and
Florence and Paul would go to his Hotel, and have tea. They passed the
whole of Sunday with him, and generally rode out before dinner; and on
these occasions Mr Dombey seemed to grow, like Falstaff’s assailants,
and instead of being one man in buckram, to become a dozen. Sunday
evening was the most melancholy evening in the week; for Mrs Pipchin
always made a point of being particularly cross on Sunday nights. Miss
Pankey was generally brought back from an aunt’s at Rottingdean, in
deep distress; and Master Bitherstone, whose relatives were all in
India, and who was required to sit, between the services, in an erect
position with his head against the parlour wall, neither moving hand
nor foot, suffered so acutely in his young spirits that he once asked
Florence, on a Sunday night, if she could give him any idea of the way
back to Bengal.
But it was generally said that Mrs Pipchin was a woman of system with
children; and no doubt she was. Certainly the wild ones went home tame
enough, after sojourning for a few months beneath her hospitable roof.
It was generally said, too, that it was highly creditable of Mrs
Pipchin to have devoted herself to this way of life, and to have made
such a sacrifice of her feelings, and such a resolute stand against her
troubles, when Mr Pipchin broke his heart in the Peruvian mines.
At this exemplary old lady, Paul would sit staring in his little
arm-chair by the fire, for any length of time. He never seemed to know
what weariness was, when he was looking fixedly at Mrs Pipchin. He was
not fond of her; he was not afraid of her; but in those old, old moods
of his, she seemed to have a grotesque attraction for him. There he
would sit, looking at her, and warming his hands, and looking at her,
until he sometimes quite confounded Mrs Pipchin, Ogress as she was.
Once she asked him, when they were alone, what he was thinking about.
“You,” said Paul, without the least reserve.
“And what are you thinking about me?” asked Mrs Pipchin.
“I’m thinking how old you must be,” said Paul.
“You mustn’t say such things as that, young gentleman,” returned the
dame. “That’ll never do.”
“Why not?” asked Paul.
“Because it’s not polite,” said Mrs Pipchin, snappishly.
“Not polite?” said Paul.
“No.”
“It’s not polite,” said Paul, innocently, “to eat all the mutton chops
and toast”, Wickam says.
“Wickam,” retorted Mrs Pipchin, colouring, “is a wicked, impudent,
bold-faced hussy.”
“What’s that?” inquired Paul.
“Never you mind, Sir,” retorted Mrs Pipchin. “Remember the story of the
little boy that was gored to death by a mad bull for asking questions.”
“If the bull was mad,” said Paul, “how did he know that the boy had
asked questions? Nobody can go and whisper secrets to a mad bull. I
don’t believe that story.”
“You don’t believe it, Sir?” repeated Mrs Pipchin, amazed.
“No,” said Paul.
“Not if it should happen to have been a tame bull, you little Infidel?”
said Mrs Pipchin.
As Paul had not considered the subject in that light, and had founded
his conclusions on the alleged lunacy of the bull, he allowed himself
to be put down for the present. But he sat turning it over in his mind,
with such an obvious intention of fixing Mrs Pipchin presently, that
even that hardy old lady deemed it prudent to retreat until he should
have forgotten the subject.
From that time, Mrs Pipchin appeared to have something of the same odd
kind of attraction towards Paul, as Paul had towards her. She would
make him move his chair to her side of the fire, instead of sitting
opposite; and there he would remain in a nook between Mrs Pipchin and
the fender, with all the light of his little face absorbed into the
black bombazeen drapery, studying every line and wrinkle of her
countenance, and peering at the hard grey eye, until Mrs Pipchin was
sometimes fain to shut it, on pretence of dozing. Mrs Pipchin had an
old black cat, who generally lay coiled upon the centre foot of the
fender, purring egotistically, and winking at the fire until the
contracted pupils of his eyes were like two notes of admiration. The
good old lady might have been—not to record it disrespectfully—a witch,
and Paul and the cat her two familiars, as they all sat by the fire
together. It would have been quite in keeping with the appearance of
the party if they had all sprung up the chimney in a high wind one
night, and never been heard of any more.
This, however, never came to pass. The cat, and Paul, and Mrs Pipchin,
were constantly to be found in their usual places after dark; and Paul,
eschewing the companionship of Master Bitherstone, went on studying Mrs
Pipchin, and the cat, and the fire, night after night, as if they were
a book of necromancy, in three volumes.
Mrs Wickam put her own construction on Paul’s eccentricities; and being
confirmed in her low spirits by a perplexed view of chimneys from the
room where she was accustomed to sit, and by the noise of the wind, and
by the general dulness (gashliness was Mrs Wickam’s strong expression)
of her present life, deduced the most dismal reflections from the
foregoing premises. It was a part of Mrs Pipchin’s policy to prevent
her own “young hussy”—that was Mrs Pipchin’s generic name for female
servant—from communicating with Mrs Wickam: to which end she devoted
much of her time to concealing herself behind doors, and springing out
on that devoted maiden, whenever she made an approach towards Mrs
Wickam’s apartment. But Berry was free to hold what converse she could
in that quarter, consistently with the discharge of the multifarious
duties at which she toiled incessantly from morning to night; and to
Berry Mrs Wickam unburdened her mind.
“What a pretty fellow he is when he’s asleep!” said Berry, stopping to
look at Paul in bed, one night when she took up Mrs Wickam’s supper.
“Ah!” sighed Mrs Wickam. “He need be.”
“Why, he’s not ugly when he’s awake,” observed Berry.
“No, Ma’am. Oh, no. No more was my Uncle’s Betsey Jane,” said Mrs
Wickam.
Berry looked as if she would like to trace the connexion of ideas
between Paul Dombey and Mrs Wickam’s Uncle’s Betsey Jane.
“My Uncle’s wife,” Mrs Wickam went on to say, “died just like his Mama.
My Uncle’s child took on just as Master Paul do.”
“Took on! You don’t think he grieves for his Mama, sure?” argued Berry,
sitting down on the side of the bed. “He can’t remember anything about
her, you know, Mrs Wickam. It’s not possible.”
“No, Ma’am,” said Mrs Wickam “No more did my Uncle’s child. But my
Uncle’s child said very strange things sometimes, and looked very
strange, and went on very strange, and was very strange altogether. My
Uncle’s child made people’s blood run cold, some times, she did!”
“How?” asked Berry.
“I wouldn’t have sat up all night alone with Betsey Jane!” said Mrs
Wickam, “not if you’d have put Wickam into business next morning for
himself. I couldn’t have done it, Miss Berry.
Miss Berry naturally asked why not? But Mrs Wickam, agreeably to the
usage of some ladies in her condition, pursued her own branch of the
subject, without any compunction.
“Betsey Jane,” said Mrs Wickam, “was as sweet a child as I could wish
to see. I couldn’t wish to see a sweeter. Everything that a child could
have in the way of illnesses, Betsey Jane had come through. The cramps
was as common to her,” said Mrs Wickam, “as biles is to yourself, Miss
Berry.” Miss Berry involuntarily wrinkled her nose.
“But Betsey Jane,” said Mrs Wickam, lowering her voice, and looking
round the room, and towards Paul in bed, “had been minded, in her