Dombey and Son
speaking, very difficult to have betted on the winner. Often when Mr
Chick seemed beaten, he would suddenly make a start, turn the tables,
clatter them about the ears of Mrs Chick, and carry all before him.
Being liable himself to similar unlooked for checks from Mrs Chick,
their little contests usually possessed a character of uncertainty that
was very animating.
Miss Tox had arrived on the wheels just now alluded to, and came
running into the room in a breathless condition.
“My dear Louisa,” said Miss Tox, “is the vacancy still unsupplied?”
“You good soul, yes,” said Mrs Chick.
“Then, my dear Louisa,” returned Miss Tox, “I hope and believe—but in
one moment, my dear, I’ll introduce the party.”
Running downstairs again as fast as she had run up, Miss Tox got the
party out of the hackney-coach, and soon returned with it under convoy.
It then appeared that she had used the word, not in its legal or
business acceptation, when it merely expresses an individual, but as a
noun of multitude, or signifying many: for Miss Tox escorted a plump
rosy-cheeked wholesome apple-faced young woman, with an infant in her
arms; a younger woman not so plump, but apple-faced also, who led a
plump and apple-faced child in each hand; another plump and also
apple-faced boy who walked by himself; and finally, a plump and
apple-faced man, who carried in his arms another plump and apple-faced
boy, whom he stood down on the floor, and admonished, in a husky
whisper, to “kitch hold of his brother Johnny.”
“My dear Louisa,” said Miss Tox, “knowing your great anxiety, and
wishing to relieve it, I posted off myself to the Queen Charlotte’s
Royal Married Females,” which you had forgot, and put the question, Was
there anybody there that they thought would suit? No, they said there
was not. When they gave me that answer, I do assure you, my dear, I was
almost driven to despair on your account. But it did so happen, that
one of the Royal Married Females, hearing the inquiry, reminded the
matron of another who had gone to her own home, and who, she said,
would in all likelihood be most satisfactory. The moment I heard this,
and had it corroborated by the matron—excellent references and
unimpeachable character—I got the address, my dear, and posted off
again.”
“Like the dear good Tox, you are!” said Louisa.
“Not at all,” returned Miss Tox. “Don’t say so. Arriving at the house
(the cleanest place, my dear! You might eat your dinner off the floor),
I found the whole family sitting at table; and feeling that no account
of them could be half so comfortable to you and Mr Dombey as the sight
of them all together, I brought them all away. This gentleman,” said
Miss Tox, pointing out the apple-faced man, “is the father. Will you
have the goodness to come a little forward, Sir?”
The apple-faced man having sheepishly complied with this request, stood
chuckling and grinning in a front row.
“This is his wife, of course,” said Miss Tox, singling out the young
woman with the baby. “How do you do, Polly?”
“I’m pretty well, I thank you, Ma’am,” said Polly.
By way of bringing her out dexterously, Miss Tox had made the inquiry
as in condescension to an old acquaintance whom she hadn’t seen for a
fortnight or so.
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Miss Tox. “The other young woman is her
unmarried sister who lives with them, and would take care of her
children. Her name’s Jemima. How do you do, Jemima?”
“I’m pretty well, I thank you, Ma’am,” returned Jemima.
“I’m very glad indeed to hear it,” said Miss Tox. “I hope you’ll keep
so. Five children. Youngest six weeks. The fine little boy with the
blister on his nose is the eldest. The blister, I believe,” said Miss
Tox, looking round upon the family, “is not constitutional, but
accidental?”
The apple-faced man was understood to growl, “Flat iron.”
“I beg your pardon, Sir,” said Miss Tox, “did you—”
“Flat iron,” he repeated.
“Oh yes,” said Miss Tox. “Yes! quite true. I forgot. The little
creature, in his mother’s absence, smelt a warm flat iron. You’re quite
right, Sir. You were going to have the goodness to inform me, when we
arrived at the door that you were by trade a—”
“Stoker,” said the man.
“A choker!” said Miss Tox, quite aghast.
“Stoker,” said the man. “Steam ingine.”
“Oh-h! Yes!” returned Miss Tox, looking thoughtfully at him, and
seeming still to have but a very imperfect understanding of his
meaning.
“And how do you like it, Sir?”
“Which, Mum?” said the man.
“That,” replied Miss Tox. “Your trade.”
“Oh! Pretty well, Mum. The ashes sometimes gets in here;” touching his
chest: “and makes a man speak gruff, as at the present time. But it is
ashes, Mum, not crustiness.”
Miss Tox seemed to be so little enlightened by this reply, as to find a
difficulty in pursuing the subject. But Mrs Chick relieved her, by
entering into a close private examination of Polly, her children, her
marriage certificate, testimonials, and so forth. Polly coming out
unscathed from this ordeal, Mrs Chick withdrew with her report to her
brother’s room, and as an emphatic comment on it, and corroboration of
it, carried the two rosiest little Toodles with her. Toodle being the
family name of the apple-faced family.
Mr Dombey had remained in his own apartment since the death of his
wife, absorbed in visions of the youth, education, and destination of
his baby son. Something lay at the bottom of his cool heart, colder and
heavier than its ordinary load; but it was more a sense of the child’s
loss than his own, awakening within him an almost angry sorrow. That
the life and progress on which he built such hopes, should be
endangered in the outset by so mean a want; that Dombey and Son should
be tottering for a nurse, was a sore humiliation. And yet in his pride
and jealousy, he viewed with so much bitterness the thought of being
dependent for the very first step towards the accomplishment of his
soul’s desire, on a hired serving-woman who would be to the child, for
the time, all that even his alliance could have made his own wife, that
in every new rejection of a candidate he felt a secret pleasure. The
time had now come, however, when he could no longer be divided between
these two sets of feelings. The less so, as there seemed to be no flaw
in the title of Polly Toodle after his sister had set it forth, with
many commendations on the indefatigable friendship of Miss Tox.
“These children look healthy,” said Mr Dombey. “But my God, to think of
their some day claiming a sort of relationship to Paul!”
“But what relationship is there!” Louisa began—
“Is there!” echoed Mr Dombey, who had not intended his sister to
participate in the thought he had unconsciously expressed. “Is there,
did you say, Louisa!”
“Can there be, I mean—”
“Why none,” said Mr Dombey, sternly. “The whole world knows that, I
presume. Grief has not made me idiotic, Louisa. Take them away, Louisa!
Let me see this woman and her husband.”
Mrs Chick bore off the tender pair of Toodles, and presently returned
with that tougher couple whose presence her brother had commanded.
“My good woman,” said Mr Dombey, turning round in his easy chair, as
one piece, and not as a man with limbs and joints, “I understand you
are poor, and wish to earn money by nursing the little boy, my son, who
has been so prematurely deprived of what can never be replaced. I have
no objection to your adding to the comforts of your family by that
means. So far as I can tell, you seem to be a deserving object. But I
must impose one or two conditions on you, before you enter my house in
that capacity. While you are here, I must stipulate that you are always
known as—say as Richards—an ordinary name, and convenient. Have you any
objection to be known as Richards? You had better consult your
husband.”
“Well?” said Mr Dombey, after a pretty long pause. “What does your
husband say to your being called Richards?”
As the husband did nothing but chuckle and grin, and continually draw
his right hand across his mouth, moistening the palm, Mrs Toodle, after
nudging him twice or thrice in vain, dropped a curtsey and replied
“that perhaps if she was to be called out of her name, it would be
considered in the wages.”
“Oh, of course,” said Mr Dombey. “I desire to make it a question of
wages, altogether. Now, Richards, if you nurse my bereaved child, I
wish you to remember this always. You will receive a liberal stipend in
return for the discharge of certain duties, in the performance of
which, I wish you to see as little of your family as possible. When
those duties cease to be required and rendered, and the stipend ceases
to be paid, there is an end of all relations between us. Do you
understand me?”
Mrs Toodle seemed doubtful about it; and as to Toodle himself, he had
evidently no doubt whatever, that he was all abroad.
“You have children of your own,” said Mr Dombey. “It is not at all in
this bargain that you need become attached to my child, or that my
child need become attached to you. I don’t expect or desire anything of
the kind. Quite the reverse. When you go away from here, you will have
concluded what is a mere matter of bargain and sale, hiring and
letting: and will stay away. The child will cease to remember you; and
you will cease, if you please, to remember the child.”
Mrs Toodle, with a little more colour in her cheeks than she had had
before, said “she hoped she knew her place.”
“I hope you do, Richards,” said Mr Dombey. “I have no doubt you know it
very well. Indeed it is so plain and obvious that it could hardly be
otherwise. Louisa, my dear, arrange with Richards about money, and let
her have it when and how she pleases. Mr what’s-your name, a word with
you, if you please!”
Thus arrested on the threshold as he was following his wife out of the
room, Toodle returned and confronted Mr Dombey alone. He was a strong,
loose, round-shouldered, shuffling, shaggy fellow, on whom his clothes
sat negligently: with a good deal of hair and whisker, deepened in its
natural tint, perhaps by smoke and coal-dust: hard knotty hands: and a
square forehead, as coarse in grain as the bark of an oak. A thorough
contrast in all respects, to Mr Dombey, who was one of those
close-shaved close-cut moneyed gentlemen who are glossy and crisp like
new bank-notes, and who seem to be artificially braced and tightened as
by the stimulating action of golden showerbaths.
“You have a son, I believe?” said Mr Dombey.
“Four on ’em, Sir. Four hims and a her. All alive!”
“Why, it’s as much as you can afford to keep them!” said Mr Dombey.
“I couldn’t hardly afford but one thing in the world less, Sir.”
“What is that?”
“To lose ’em, Sir.”
“Can you read?” asked Mr Dombey.
“Why, not partickk’ller, Sir.”
“Write?”
“With chalk, Sir?”
“With anything?”
“I could make shift to chalk a little bit, I think, if I was put to
it,” said Toodle after some reflection.
“And yet,” said Mr Dombey, “you are two or three and thirty, I
suppose?”
“Thereabouts, I suppose, Sir,” answered Toodle, after more reflection
“Then why don’t you learn?” asked Mr Dombey.
“So I’m a going to, Sir. One of my little boys is a going to learn me,
when he’s old enough, and been to school himself.”
“Well,” said Mr Dombey, after looking at him attentively, and with no
great favour, as he stood gazing round the room (principally round the
ceiling) and still drawing his hand across and across his mouth. “You
heard what I said to your wife just now?”
“Polly heerd it,” said Toodle, jerking his hat over his shoulder in the
direction of the door, with an air of perfect confidence in his better
half. “It’s all right.”
“But I ask you if you heard it. You did, I suppose, and understood it?”
pursued Mr Dombey.