Dombey and Son
It was a declaration in a Christian spirit, and Mrs Chick felt that it
did her good. Not that she had anything particular to forgive in her
sister-in-law, nor indeed anything at all, except her having married
her brother—in itself a species of audacity—and her having, in the
course of events, given birth to a girl instead of a boy: which, as Mrs
Chick had frequently observed, was not quite what she had expected of
her, and was not a pleasant return for all the attention and
distinction she had met with.
Mr Dombey being hastily summoned out of the room at this moment, the
two ladies were left alone together. Miss Tox immediately became
spasmodic.
“I knew you would admire my brother. I told you so beforehand, my
dear,” said Louisa. Miss Tox’s hands and eyes expressed how much. “And
as to his property, my dear!”
“Ah!” said Miss Tox, with deep feeling.
“Im-mense!”
“But his deportment, my dear Louisa!” said Miss Tox. “His presence! His
dignity! No portrait that I have ever seen of anyone has been half so
replete with those qualities. Something so stately, you know: so
uncompromising: so very wide across the chest: so upright! A pecuniary
Duke of York, my love, and nothing short of it!” said Miss Tox. “That’s
what _I_ should designate him.”
“Why, my dear Paul!” exclaimed his sister, as he returned, “you look
quite pale! There’s nothing the matter?”
“I am sorry to say, Louisa, that they tell me that Fanny—”
“Now, my dear Paul,” returned his sister rising, “don’t believe it. Do
not allow yourself to receive a turn unnecessarily. Remember of what
importance you are to society, and do not allow yourself to be worried
by what is so very inconsiderately told you by people who ought to know
better. Really I’m surprised at them.”
“I hope I know, Louisa,” said Mr Dombey, stiffly, “how to bear myself
before the world.”
“Nobody better, my dear Paul. Nobody half so well. They would be
ignorant and base indeed who doubted it.”
“Ignorant and base indeed!” echoed Miss Tox softly.
“But,” pursued Louisa, “if you have any reliance on my experience,
Paul, you may rest assured that there is nothing wanting but an effort
on Fanny’s part. And that effort,” she continued, taking off her
bonnet, and adjusting her cap and gloves, in a business-like manner,
“she must be encouraged, and really, if necessary, urged to make. Now,
my dear Paul, come upstairs with me.”
Mr Dombey, who, besides being generally influenced by his sister for
the reason already mentioned, had really faith in her as an experienced
and bustling matron, acquiesced; and followed her, at once, to the sick
chamber.
The lady lay upon her bed as he had left her, clasping her little
daughter to her breast. The child clung close about her, with the same
intensity as before, and never raised her head, or moved her soft cheek
from her mother’s face, or looked on those who stood around, or spoke,
or moved, or shed a tear.
“Restless without the little girl,” the Doctor whispered Mr Dombey. “We
found it best to have her in again.”
“Can nothing be done?” asked Mr Dombey.
The Doctor shook his head. “We can do no more.”
The windows stood open, and the twilight was gathering without.
The scent of the restoratives that had been tried was pungent in the
room, but had no fragrance in the dull and languid air the lady
breathed.
There was such a solemn stillness round the bed; and the two medical
attendants seemed to look on the impassive form with so much compassion
and so little hope, that Mrs Chick was for the moment diverted from her
purpose. But presently summoning courage, and what she called presence
of mind, she sat down by the bedside, and said in the low precise tone
of one who endeavours to awaken a sleeper:
“Fanny! Fanny!”
There was no sound in answer but the loud ticking of Mr Dombey’s watch
and Doctor Parker Peps’s watch, which seemed in the silence to be
running a race.
“Fanny, my dear,” said Mrs Chick, with assumed lightness, “here’s Mr
Dombey come to see you. Won’t you speak to him? They want to lay your
little boy—the baby, Fanny, you know; you have hardly seen him yet, I
think—in bed; but they can’t till you rouse yourself a little. Don’t
you think it’s time you roused yourself a little? Eh?”
She bent her ear to the bed, and listened: at the same time looking
round at the bystanders, and holding up her finger.
“Eh?” she repeated, “what was it you said, Fanny? I didn’t hear you.”
No word or sound in answer. Mr Dombey’s watch and Dr Parker Peps’s
watch seemed to be racing faster.
“Now, really, Fanny my dear,” said the sister-in-law, altering her
position, and speaking less confidently, and more earnestly, in spite
of herself, “I shall have to be quite cross with you, if you don’t
rouse yourself. It’s necessary for you to make an effort, and perhaps a
very great and painful effort which you are not disposed to make; but
this is a world of effort you know, Fanny, and we must never yield,
when so much depends upon us. Come! Try! I must really scold you if you
don’t!”
The race in the ensuing pause was fierce and furious. The watches
seemed to jostle, and to trip each other up.
“Fanny!” said Louisa, glancing round, with a gathering alarm. “Only
look at me. Only open your eyes to show me that you hear and understand
me; will you? Good Heaven, gentlemen, what is to be done!”
The two medical attendants exchanged a look across the bed; and the
Physician, stooping down, whispered in the child’s ear. Not having
understood the purport of his whisper, the little creature turned her
perfectly colourless face and deep dark eyes towards him; but without
loosening her hold in the least.
The whisper was repeated.
“Mama!” said the child.
The little voice, familiar and dearly loved, awakened some show of
consciousness, even at that ebb. For a moment, the closed eye lids
trembled, and the nostril quivered, and the faintest shadow of a smile
was seen.
“Mama!” cried the child sobbing aloud. “Oh dear Mama! oh dear Mama!”
The Doctor gently brushed the scattered ringlets of the child, aside
from the face and mouth of the mother. Alas how calm they lay there;
how little breath there was to stir them!
Thus, clinging fast to that slight spar within her arms, the mother
drifted out upon the dark and unknown sea that rolls round all the
world.
CHAPTER II.
In which Timely Provision is made for an Emergency that will sometimes
arise in the best-regulated Families.
I shall never cease to congratulate myself,” said Mrs Chick,” on having
said, when I little thought what was in store for us,—really as if I
was inspired by something,—that I forgave poor dear Fanny everything.
Whatever happens, that must always be a comfort to me!”
Mrs Chick made this impressive observation in the drawing-room, after
having descended thither from the inspection of the mantua-makers
upstairs, who were busy on the family mourning. She delivered it for
the behoof of Mr Chick, who was a stout bald gentleman, with a very
large face, and his hands continually in his pockets, and who had a
tendency in his nature to whistle and hum tunes, which, sensible of the
indecorum of such sounds in a house of grief, he was at some pains to
repress at present.
“Don’t you over-exert yourself, Loo,” said Mr Chick, “or you’ll be laid
up with spasms, I see. Right tol loor rul! Bless my soul, I forgot!
We’re here one day and gone the next!”
Mrs Chick contented herself with a glance of reproof, and then
proceeded with the thread of her discourse.
“I am sure,” she said, “I hope this heart-rending occurrence will be a
warning to all of us, to accustom ourselves to rouse ourselves, and to
make efforts in time where they’re required of us. There’s a moral in
everything, if we would only avail ourselves of it. It will be our own
faults if we lose sight of this one.”
Mr Chick invaded the grave silence which ensued on this remark with the
singularly inappropriate air of “A cobbler there was;” and checking
himself, in some confusion, observed, that it was undoubtedly our own
faults if we didn’t improve such melancholy occasions as the present.
“Which might be better improved, I should think, Mr C.,” retorted his
helpmate, after a short pause, “than by the introduction, either of the
college hornpipe, or the equally unmeaning and unfeeling remark of
rump-te-iddity, bow-wow-wow!”—which Mr Chick had indeed indulged in,
under his breath, and which Mrs Chick repeated in a tone of withering
scorn.
“Merely habit, my dear,” pleaded Mr Chick.
“Nonsense! Habit!” returned his wife. “If you’re a rational being,
don’t make such ridiculous excuses. Habit! If I was to get a habit (as
you call it) of walking on the ceiling, like the flies, I should hear
enough of it, I daresay.”
It appeared so probable that such a habit might be attended with some
degree of notoriety, that Mr Chick didn’t venture to dispute the
position.
“Bow-wow-wow!” repeated Mrs Chick with an emphasis of blighting
contempt on the last syllable. “More like a professional singer with
the hydrophobia, than a man in your station of life!”
“How’s the Baby, Loo?” asked Mr Chick: to change the subject.
“What Baby do you mean?” answered Mrs Chick.
“The poor bereaved little baby,” said Mr Chick. “I don’t know of any
other, my dear.”
“You don’t know of any other,” retorted Mrs Chick. “More shame for you,
I was going to say.”
Mr Chick looked astonished.
“I am sure the morning I have had, with that dining-room downstairs,
one mass of babies, no one in their senses would believe.”
“One mass of babies!” repeated Mr Chick, staring with an alarmed
expression about him.
“It would have occurred to most men,” said Mrs Chick, “that poor dear
Fanny being no more,—those words of mine will always be a balm and
comfort to me,” here she dried her eyes; “it becomes necessary to
provide a Nurse.”
“Oh! Ah!” said Mr Chick. “Toor-ru!—such is life, I mean. I hope you are
suited, my dear.”
“Indeed I am not,” said Mrs Chick; “nor likely to be, so far as I can
see, and in the meantime the poor child seems likely to be starved to
death. Paul is so very particular—naturally so, of course, having set
his whole heart on this one boy—and there are so many objections to
everybody that offers, that I don’t see, myself, the least chance of an
arrangement. Meanwhile, of course, the child is—”
“Going to the Devil,” said Mr Chick, thoughtfully, “to be sure.”
Admonished, however, that he had committed himself, by the indignation
expressed in Mrs Chick’s countenance at the idea of a Dombey going
there; and thinking to atone for his misconduct by a bright suggestion,
he added:
“Couldn’t something temporary be done with a teapot?”
If he had meant to bring the subject prematurely to a close, he could
not have done it more effectually. After looking at him for some
moments in silent resignation, Mrs Chick said she trusted he hadn’t
said it in aggravation, because that would do very little honour to his
heart. She trusted he hadn’t said it seriously, because that would do
very little honour to his head. As in any case, he couldn’t, however
sanguine his disposition, hope to offer a remark that would be a
greater outrage on human nature in general, we would beg to leave the
discussion at that point.
Mrs Chick then walked majestically to the window and peeped through the
blind, attracted by the sound of wheels. Mr Chick, finding that his
destiny was, for the time, against him, said no more, and walked off.
But it was not always thus with Mr Chick. He was often in the ascendant
himself, and at those times punished Louisa roundly. In their
matrimonial bickerings they were, upon the whole, a well-matched,
fairly-balanced, give-and-take couple. It would have been, generally