Dombey and Son
suppose, Dombey, one by one, and perfect yourself in the day’s
instalment of subject A, before you turn at all to subject B. I am
sorry to say, Dombey, that your education appears to have been very
much neglected.”
“So Papa says,” returned Paul; “but I told you—I have been a weak
child. Florence knows I have. So does Wickam.”
“Who is Wickam?” asked Miss Blimber.
“She has been my nurse,” Paul answered.
“I must beg you not to mention Wickam to me, then,” said Miss Blimber.
“I couldn’t allow it”.
“You asked me who she was,” said Paul.
“Very well,” returned Miss Blimber; “but this is all very different
indeed from anything of that sort, Dombey, and I couldn’t think of
permitting it. As to having been weak, you must begin to be strong. And
now take away the top book, if you please, Dombey, and return when you
are master of the theme.”
Miss Blimber expressed her opinions on the subject of Paul’s
uninstructed state with a gloomy delight, as if she had expected this
result, and were glad to find that they must be in constant
communication. Paul withdrew with the top task, as he was told, and
laboured away at it, down below: sometimes remembering every word of
it, and sometimes forgetting it all, and everything else besides: until
at last he ventured upstairs again to repeat the lesson, when it was
nearly all driven out of his head before he began, by Miss Blimber’s
shutting up the book, and saying, “Go on, Dombey!” a proceeding so
suggestive of the knowledge inside of her, that Paul looked upon the
young lady with consternation, as a kind of learned Guy Fawkes, or
artificial Bogle, stuffed full of scholastic straw.
He acquitted himself very well, nevertheless; and Miss Blimber,
commending him as giving promise of getting on fast, immediately
provided him with subject B; from which he passed to C, and even D
before dinner. It was hard work, resuming his studies, soon after
dinner; and he felt giddy and confused and drowsy and dull. But all the
other young gentlemen had similar sensations, and were obliged to
resume their studies too, if there were any comfort in that. It was a
wonder that the great clock in the hall, instead of being constant to
its first inquiry, never said, “Gentlemen, we will now resume our
studies,” for that phrase was often enough repeated in its
neighbourhood. The studies went round like a mighty wheel, and the
young gentlemen were always stretched upon it.
After tea there were exercises again, and preparations for next day by
candlelight. And in due course there was bed; where, but for that
resumption of the studies which took place in dreams, were rest and
sweet forgetfulness.
Oh Saturdays! Oh happy Saturdays, when Florence always came at noon,
and never would, in any weather, stay away, though Mrs Pipchin snarled
and growled, and worried her bitterly. Those Saturdays were Sabbaths
for at least two little Christians among all the Jews, and did the holy
Sabbath work of strengthening and knitting up a brother’s and a
sister’s love.
Not even Sunday nights—the heavy Sunday nights, whose shadow darkened
the first waking burst of light on Sunday mornings—could mar those
precious Saturdays. Whether it was the great sea-shore, where they sat,
and strolled together; or whether it was only Mrs Pipchin’s dull back
room, in which she sang to him so softly, with his drowsy head upon her
arm; Paul never cared. It was Florence. That was all he thought of. So,
on Sunday nights, when the Doctor’s dark door stood agape to swallow
him up for another week, the time was come for taking leave of
Florence; no one else.
Mrs Wickam had been drafted home to the house in town, and Miss Nipper,
now a smart young woman, had come down. To many a single combat with
Mrs Pipchin, did Miss Nipper gallantly devote herself, and if ever Mrs
Pipchin in all her life had found her match, she had found it now. Miss
Nipper threw away the scabbard the first morning she arose in Mrs
Pipchin’s house. She asked and gave no quarter. She said it must be
war, and war it was; and Mrs Pipchin lived from that time in the midst
of surprises, harassings, and defiances, and skirmishing attacks that
came bouncing in upon her from the passage, even in unguarded moments
of chops, and carried desolation to her very toast.
Miss Nipper had returned one Sunday night with Florence, from walking
back with Paul to the Doctor’s, when Florence took from her bosom a
little piece of paper, on which she had pencilled down some words.
“See here, Susan,” she said. “These are the names of the little books
that Paul brings home to do those long exercises with, when he is so
tired. I copied them last night while he was writing.”
“Don’t show ’em to me, Miss Floy, if you please,” returned Nipper, “I’d
as soon see Mrs Pipchin.”
“I want you to buy them for me, Susan, if you will, tomorrow morning. I
have money enough,” said Florence.
“Why, goodness gracious me, Miss Floy,” returned Miss Nipper, “how can
you talk like that, when you have books upon books already, and
masterses and mississes a teaching of you everything continual, though
my belief is that your Pa, Miss Dombey, never would have learnt you
nothing, never would have thought of it, unless you’d asked him—when he
couldn’t well refuse; but giving consent when asked, and offering when
unasked, Miss, is quite two things; I may not have my objections to a
young man’s keeping company with me, and when he puts the question, may
say ‘yes,’ but that’s not saying ‘would you be so kind as like me.’”
“But you can buy me the books, Susan; and you will, when you know why I
want them.”
“Well, Miss, and why do you want ’em?” replied Nipper; adding, in a
lower voice, “If it was to fling at Mrs Pipchin’s head, I’d buy a
cart-load.”
“Paul has a great deal too much to do, Susan,” said Florence, “I am
sure of it.”
“And well you may be, Miss,” returned her maid, “and make your mind
quite easy that the willing dear is worked and worked away. If those is
Latin legs,” exclaimed Miss Nipper, with strong feeling—in allusion to
Paul’s; “give me English ones.”
“I am afraid he feels lonely and lost at Doctor Blimber’s, Susan,”
pursued Florence, turning away her face.
“Ah,” said Miss Nipper, with great sharpness, “Oh, them ‘Blimbers’”
“Don’t blame anyone,” said Florence. “It’s a mistake.”
“I say nothing about blame, Miss,” cried Miss Nipper, “for I know that
you object, but I may wish, Miss, that the family was set to work to
make new roads, and that Miss Blimber went in front and had the
pickaxe.”
After this speech, Miss Nipper, who was perfectly serious, wiped her
eyes.
“I think I could perhaps give Paul some help, Susan, if I had these
books,” said Florence, “and make the coming week a little easier to
him. At least I want to try. So buy them for me, dear, and I will never
forget how kind it was of you to do it!”
It must have been a harder heart than Susan Nipper’s that could have
rejected the little purse Florence held out with these words, or the
gentle look of entreaty with which she seconded her petition. Susan put
the purse in her pocket without reply, and trotted out at once upon her
errand.
The books were not easy to procure; and the answer at several shops
was, either that they were just out of them, or that they never kept
them, or that they had had a great many last month, or that they
expected a great many next week But Susan was not easily baffled in
such an enterprise; and having entrapped a white-haired youth, in a
black calico apron, from a library where she was known, to accompany
her in her quest, she led him such a life in going up and down, that he
exerted himself to the utmost, if it were only to get rid of her; and
finally enabled her to return home in triumph.
With these treasures then, after her own daily lessons were over,
Florence sat down at night to track Paul’s footsteps through the thorny
ways of learning; and being possessed of a naturally quick and sound
capacity, and taught by that most wonderful of masters, love, it was
not long before she gained upon Paul’s heels, and caught and passed
him.
Not a word of this was breathed to Mrs Pipchin: but many a night when
they were all in bed, and when Miss Nipper, with her hair in papers and
herself asleep in some uncomfortable attitude, reposed unconscious by
her side; and when the chinking ashes in the grate were cold and grey;
and when the candles were burnt down and guttering out;—Florence tried
so hard to be a substitute for one small Dombey, that her fortitude and
perseverance might have almost won her a free right to bear the name
herself.
And high was her reward, when one Saturday evening, as little Paul was
sitting down as usual to “resume his studies,” she sat down by his
side, and showed him all that was so rough, made smooth, and all that
was so dark, made clear and plain, before him. It was nothing but a
startled look in Paul’s wan face—a flush—a smile—and then a close
embrace—but God knows how her heart leapt up at this rich payment for
her trouble.
“Oh, Floy!” cried her brother, “how I love you! How I love you, Floy!”
“And I you, dear!”
“Oh! I am sure of that, Floy.”
He said no more about it, but all that evening sat close by her, very
quiet; and in the night he called out from his little room within hers,
three or four times, that he loved her.
Regularly, after that, Florence was prepared to sit down with Paul on
Saturday night, and patiently assist him through so much as they could
anticipate together of his next week’s work. The cheering thought that
he was labouring on where Florence had just toiled before him, would,
of itself, have been a stimulant to Paul in the perpetual resumption of
his studies; but coupled with the actual lightening of his load,
consequent on this assistance, it saved him, possibly, from sinking
underneath the burden which the fair Cornelia Blimber piled upon his
back.
It was not that Miss Blimber meant to be too hard upon him, or that
Doctor Blimber meant to bear too heavily on the young gentlemen in
general. Cornelia merely held the faith in which she had been bred; and
the Doctor, in some partial confusion of his ideas, regarded the young
gentlemen as if they were all Doctors, and were born grown up.
Comforted by the applause of the young gentlemen’s nearest relations,
and urged on by their blind vanity and ill-considered haste, it would
have been strange if Doctor Blimber had discovered his mistake, or
trimmed his swelling sails to any other tack.
Thus in the case of Paul. When Doctor Blimber said he made great
progress and was naturally clever, Mr Dombey was more bent than ever on
his being forced and crammed. In the case of Briggs, when Doctor
Blimber reported that he did not make great progress yet, and was not
naturally clever, Briggs senior was inexorable in the same purpose. In
short, however high and false the temperature at which the Doctor kept
his hothouse, the owners of the plants were always ready to lend a
helping hand at the bellows, and to stir the fire.
Such spirits as he had in the outset, Paul soon lost of course. But he
retained all that was strange, and old, and thoughtful in his
character: and under circumstances so favourable to the development of
those tendencies, became even more strange, and old, and thoughtful,
than before.
The only difference was, that he kept his character to himself. He grew
more thoughtful and reserved, every day; and had no such curiosity in
any living member of the Doctor’s household, as he had had in Mrs
Pipchin. He loved to be alone; and in those short intervals when he was
not occupied with his books, liked nothing so well as wandering about
the house by himself, or sitting on the stairs, listening to the great