Dombey and Son
little friend, and bring him quickly forward, I daresay. I daresay.
Quite a virgin soil, I believe you said, Mr Dombey?”
“Except some ordinary preparation at home, and from this lady,” replied
Mr Dombey, introducing Mrs Pipchin, who instantly communicated a
rigidity to her whole muscular system, and snorted defiance beforehand,
in case the Doctor should disparage her; “except so far, Paul has, as
yet, applied himself to no studies at all.”
Doctor Blimber inclined his head, in gentle tolerance of such
insignificant poaching as Mrs Pipchin’s, and said he was glad to hear
it. It was much more satisfactory, he observed, rubbing his hands, to
begin at the foundation. And again he leered at Paul, as if he would
have liked to tackle him with the Greek alphabet, on the spot.
“That circumstance, indeed, Doctor Blimber,” pursued Mr Dombey,
glancing at his little son, “and the interview I have already had the
pleasure of holding with you, renders any further explanation, and
consequently, any further intrusion on your valuable time, so
unnecessary, that—”
“Now, Miss Dombey!” said the acid Pipchin.
“Permit me,” said the Doctor, “one moment. Allow me to present Mrs
Blimber and my daughter; who will be associated with the domestic life
of our young Pilgrim to Parnassus Mrs Blimber,” for the lady, who had
perhaps been in waiting, opportunely entered, followed by her daughter,
that fair Sexton in spectacles, “Mr Dombey. My daughter Cornelia, Mr
Dombey. Mr Dombey, my love,” pursued the Doctor, turning to his wife,
“is so confiding as to—do you see our little friend?”
Mrs Blimber, in an excess of politeness, of which Mr Dombey was the
object, apparently did not, for she was backing against the little
friend, and very much endangering his position on the table. But, on
this hint, she turned to admire his classical and intellectual
lineaments, and turning again to Mr Dombey, said, with a sigh, that she
envied his dear son.
“Like a bee, Sir,” said Mrs Blimber, with uplifted eyes, “about to
plunge into a garden of the choicest flowers, and sip the sweets for
the first time Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Terence, Plautus, Cicero. What a
world of honey have we here. It may appear remarkable, Mr Dombey, in
one who is a wife—the wife of such a husband—”
“Hush, hush,” said Doctor Blimber. “Fie for shame.”
“Mr Dombey will forgive the partiality of a wife,” said Mrs Blimber,
with an engaging smile.
Mr Dombey answered “Not at all:” applying those words, it is to be
presumed, to the partiality, and not to the forgiveness.
“And it may seem remarkable in one who is a mother also,” resumed Mrs
Blimber.
“And such a mother,” observed Mr Dombey, bowing with some confused idea
of being complimentary to Cornelia.
“But really,” pursued Mrs Blimber, “I think if I could have known
Cicero, and been his friend, and talked with him in his retirement at
Tusculum (beau-ti-ful Tusculum!), I could have died contented.”
A learned enthusiasm is so very contagious, that Mr Dombey half
believed this was exactly his case; and even Mrs Pipchin, who was not,
as we have seen, of an accommodating disposition generally, gave
utterance to a little sound between a groan and a sigh, as if she would
have said that nobody but Cicero could have proved a lasting
consolation under that failure of the Peruvian Mines, but that he
indeed would have been a very Davy-lamp of refuge.
Cornelia looked at Mr Dombey through her spectacles, as if she would
have liked to crack a few quotations with him from the authority in
question. But this design, if she entertained it, was frustrated by a
knock at the room-door.
“Who is that?” said the Doctor. “Oh! Come in, Toots; come in. Mr
Dombey, Sir.” Toots bowed. “Quite a coincidence!” said Doctor Blimber.
“Here we have the beginning and the end. Alpha and Omega. Our head boy,
Mr Dombey.”
The Doctor might have called him their head and shoulders boy, for he
was at least that much taller than any of the rest. He blushed very
much at finding himself among strangers, and chuckled aloud.
“An addition to our little Portico, Toots,” said the Doctor; “Mr
Dombey’s son.”
Young Toots blushed again; and finding, from a solemn silence which
prevailed, that he was expected to say something, said to Paul, “How
are you?” in a voice so deep, and a manner so sheepish, that if a lamb
had roared it couldn’t have been more surprising.
“Ask Mr Feeder, if you please, Toots,” said the Doctor, “to prepare a
few introductory volumes for Mr Dombey’s son, and to allot him a
convenient seat for study. My dear, I believe Mr Dombey has not seen
the dormitories.”
“If Mr Dombey will walk upstairs,” said Mrs Blimber, “I shall be more
than proud to show him the dominions of the drowsy god.”
With that, Mrs Blimber, who was a lady of great suavity, and a wiry
figure, and who wore a cap composed of sky-blue materials, proceeded
upstairs with Mr Dombey and Cornelia; Mrs Pipchin following, and
looking out sharp for her enemy the footman.
While they were gone, Paul sat upon the table, holding Florence by the
hand, and glancing timidly from the Doctor round and round the room,
while the Doctor, leaning back in his chair, with his hand in his
breast as usual, held a book from him at arm’s length, and read. There
was something very awful in this manner of reading. It was such a
determined, unimpassioned, inflexible, cold-blooded way of going to
work. It left the Doctor’s countenance exposed to view; and when the
Doctor smiled suspiciously at his author, or knit his brows, or shook
his head and made wry faces at him, as much as to say, “Don’t tell me,
Sir; I know better,” it was terrific.
Toots, too, had no business to be outside the door, ostentatiously
examining the wheels in his watch, and counting his half-crowns. But
that didn’t last long; for Doctor Blimber, happening to change the
position of his tight plump legs, as if he were going to get up, Toots
swiftly vanished, and appeared no more.
Mr Dombey and his conductress were soon heard coming downstairs again,
talking all the way; and presently they re-entered the Doctor’s study.
“I hope, Mr Dombey,” said the Doctor, laying down his book, “that the
arrangements meet your approval.”
“They are excellent, Sir,” said Mr Dombey.
“Very fair, indeed,” said Mrs Pipchin, in a low voice; never disposed
to give too much encouragement.
“Mrs Pipchin,” said Mr Dombey, wheeling round, “will, with your
permission, Doctor and Mrs Blimber, visit Paul now and then.”
“Whenever Mrs Pipchin pleases,” observed the Doctor.
“Always happy to see her,” said Mrs Blimber.
“I think,” said Mr Dombey, “I have given all the trouble I need, and
may take my leave. Paul, my child,” he went close to him, as he sat
upon the table. “Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Papa.”
The limp and careless little hand that Mr Dombey took in his, was
singularly out of keeping with the wistful face. But he had no part in
its sorrowful expression. It was not addressed to him. No, no. To
Florence—all to Florence.
If Mr Dombey in his insolence of wealth, had ever made an enemy, hard
to appease and cruelly vindictive in his hate, even such an enemy might
have received the pang that wrung his proud heart then, as compensation
for his injury.
He bent down, over his boy, and kissed him. If his sight were dimmed as
he did so, by something that for a moment blurred the little face, and
made it indistinct to him, his mental vision may have been, for that
short time, the clearer perhaps.
“I shall see you soon, Paul. You are free on Saturdays and Sundays, you
know.”
“Yes, Papa,” returned Paul: looking at his sister. “On Saturdays and
Sundays.”
“And you’ll try and learn a great deal here, and be a clever man,” said
Mr Dombey; “won’t you?”
“I’ll try,” returned the child, wearily.
“And you’ll soon be grown up now!” said Mr Dombey.
“Oh! very soon!” replied the child. Once more the old, old look passed
rapidly across his features like a strange light. It fell on Mrs
Pipchin, and extinguished itself in her black dress. That excellent
ogress stepped forward to take leave and to bear off Florence, which
she had long been thirsting to do. The move on her part roused Mr
Dombey, whose eyes were fixed on Paul. After patting him on the head,
and pressing his small hand again, he took leave of Doctor Blimber, Mrs
Blimber, and Miss Blimber, with his usual polite frigidity, and walked
out of the study.
Despite his entreaty that they would not think of stirring, Doctor
Blimber, Mrs Blimber, and Miss Blimber all pressed forward to attend
him to the hall; and thus Mrs Pipchin got into a state of entanglement
with Miss Blimber and the Doctor, and was crowded out of the study
before she could clutch Florence. To which happy accident Paul stood
afterwards indebted for the dear remembrance, that Florence ran back to
throw her arms round his neck, and that hers was the last face in the
doorway: turned towards him with a smile of encouragement, the brighter
for the tears through which it beamed.
It made his childish bosom heave and swell when it was gone; and sent
the globes, the books, blind Homer and Minerva, swimming round the
room. But they stopped, all of a sudden; and then he heard the loud
clock in the hall still gravely inquiring “how, is, my, lit, tle,
friend? how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?” as it had done before.
He sat, with folded hands, upon his pedestal, silently listening. But
he might have answered “weary, weary! very lonely, very sad!” And
there, with an aching void in his young heart, and all outside so cold,
and bare, and strange, Paul sat as if he had taken life unfurnished,
and the upholsterer were never coming.
CHAPTER XII.
Paul’s Education
After the lapse of some minutes, which appeared an immense time to
little Paul Dombey on the table, Doctor Blimber came back. The Doctor’s
walk was stately, and calculated to impress the juvenile mind with
solemn feelings. It was a sort of march; but when the Doctor put out
his right foot, he gravely turned upon his axis, with a semi-circular
sweep towards the left; and when he put out his left foot, he turned in
the same manner towards the right. So that he seemed, at every stride
he took, to look about him as though he were saying, “Can anybody have
the goodness to indicate any subject, in any direction, on which I am
uninformed? I rather think not.”
Mrs Blimber and Miss Blimber came back in the Doctor’s company; and the
Doctor, lifting his new pupil off the table, delivered him over to Miss
Blimber.
“Cornelia,” said the Doctor, “Dombey will be your charge at first.
Bring him on, Cornelia, bring him on.”
Miss Blimber received her young ward from the Doctor’s hands; and Paul,
feeling that the spectacles were surveying him, cast down his eyes.
“How old are you, Dombey?” said Miss Blimber.
“Six,” answered Paul, wondering, as he stole a glance at the young
lady, why her hair didn’t grow long like Florence’s, and why she was
like a boy.
“How much do you know of your Latin Grammar, Dombey?” said Miss
Blimber.
“None of it,” answered Paul. Feeling that the answer was a shock to
Miss Blimber’s sensibility, he looked up at the three faces that were
looking down at him, and said:
“I haven’t been well. I have been a weak child. I couldn’t learn a
Latin Grammar when I was out, every day, with old Glubb. I wish you’d
tell old Glubb to come and see me, if you please.”
“What a dreadfully low name” said Mrs Blimber. “Unclassical to a
degree! Who is the monster, child?”
“What monster?” inquired Paul.
“Glubb,” said Mrs Blimber, with a great disrelish.
“He’s no more a monster than you are,” returned Paul.
“What!” cried the Doctor, in a terrible voice. “Ay, ay, ay? Aha! What’s
that?”