Dombey and Son
surprise, he saw that a hackney-coach, going in the contrary direction,
had stopped at no great distance; that the coachman was looking back
from his box and making signals to him with his whip; and that a young
woman inside was leaning out of the window, and beckoning with immense
energy. Running up to this coach, he found that the young woman was
Miss Nipper, and that Miss Nipper was in such a flutter as to be almost
beside herself.
“Staggs’s Gardens, Mr Walter!” said Miss Nipper; “if you please, oh
do!”
“Eh?” cried Walter; “what is the matter?”
“Oh, Mr Walter, Staggs’s Gardens, if you please!” said Susan.
“There!” cried the coachman, appealing to Walter, with a sort of
exalting despair; “that’s the way the young lady’s been a goin’ on for
up’ards of a mortal hour, and me continivally backing out of no
thoroughfares, where she would drive up. I’ve had a many fares in this
coach, first and last, but never such a fare as her.”
“Do you want to go to Staggs’s Gardens, Susan?” inquired Walter.
“Ah! She wants to go there! WHERE IS IT?” growled the coachman.
“I don’t know where it is!” exclaimed Susan, wildly. “Mr Walter, I was
there once myself, along with Miss Floy and our poor darling Master
Paul, on the very day when you found Miss Floy in the City, for we lost
her coming home, Mrs Richards and me, and a mad bull, and Mrs
Richards’s eldest, and though I went there afterwards, I can’t remember
where it is, I think it’s sunk into the ground. Oh, Mr Walter, don’t
desert me, Staggs’s Gardens, if you please! Miss Floy’s darling—all our
darlings—little, meek, meek Master Paul! Oh Mr Walter!”
“Good God!” cried Walter. “Is he very ill?”
“The pretty flower!” cried Susan, wringing her hands, “has took the
fancy that he’d like to see his old nurse, and I’ve come to bring her
to his bedside, Mrs Staggs, of Polly Toodle’s Gardens, someone pray!”
Greatly moved by what he heard, and catching Susan’s earnestness
immediately, Walter, now that he understood the nature of her errand,
dashed into it with such ardour that the coachman had enough to do to
follow closely as he ran before, inquiring here and there and
everywhere, the way to Staggs’s Gardens.
There was no such place as Staggs’s Gardens. It had vanished from the
earth. Where the old rotten summer-houses once had stood, palaces now
reared their heads, and granite columns of gigantic girth opened a
vista to the railway world beyond. The miserable waste ground, where
the refuse-matter had been heaped of yore, was swallowed up and gone;
and in its frowsy stead were tiers of warehouses, crammed with rich
goods and costly merchandise. The old by-streets now swarmed with
passengers and vehicles of every kind: the new streets that had stopped
disheartened in the mud and waggon-ruts, formed towns within
themselves, originating wholesome comforts and conveniences belonging
to themselves, and never tried nor thought of until they sprung into
existence. Bridges that had led to nothing, led to villas, gardens,
churches, healthy public walks. The carcasses of houses, and beginnings
of new thoroughfares, had started off upon the line at steam’s own
speed, and shot away into the country in a monster train.
As to the neighbourhood which had hesitated to acknowledge the railroad
in its straggling days, that had grown wise and penitent, as any
Christian might in such a case, and now boasted of its powerful and
prosperous relation. There were railway patterns in its drapers’ shops,
and railway journals in the windows of its newsmen. There were railway
hotels, office-houses, lodging-houses, boarding-houses; railway plans,
maps, views, wrappers, bottles, sandwich-boxes, and time-tables;
railway hackney-coach and stands; railway omnibuses, railway streets
and buildings, railway hangers-on and parasites, and flatterers out of
all calculation. There was even railway time observed in clocks, as if
the sun itself had given in. Among the vanquished was the master
chimney-sweeper, whilom incredulous at Staggs’s Gardens, who now lived
in a stuccoed house three stories high, and gave himself out, with
golden flourishes upon a varnished board, as contractor for the
cleansing of railway chimneys by machinery.
To and from the heart of this great change, all day and night,
throbbing currents rushed and returned incessantly like its life’s
blood. Crowds of people and mountains of goods, departing and arriving
scores upon scores of times in every four-and-twenty hours, produced a
fermentation in the place that was always in action. The very houses
seemed disposed to pack up and take trips. Wonderful Members of
Parliament, who, little more than twenty years before, had made
themselves merry with the wild railroad theories of engineers, and
given them the liveliest rubs in cross-examination, went down into the
north with their watches in their hands, and sent on messages before by
the electric telegraph, to say that they were coming. Night and day the
conquering engines rumbled at their distant work, or, advancing
smoothly to their journey’s end, and gliding like tame dragons into the
allotted corners grooved out to the inch for their reception, stood
bubbling and trembling there, making the walls quake, as if they were
dilating with the secret knowledge of great powers yet unsuspected in
them, and strong purposes not yet achieved.
But Staggs’s Gardens had been cut up root and branch. Oh woe the day
when “not a rood of English ground”—laid out in Staggs’s Gardens—is
secure!
At last, after much fruitless inquiry, Walter, followed by the coach
and Susan, found a man who had once resided in that vanished land, and
who was no other than the master sweep before referred to, grown stout,
and knocking a double knock at his own door. He knowed Toodle, he said,
well. Belonged to the Railroad, didn’t he?
“Yes sir, yes!” cried Susan Nipper from the coach window.
Where did he live now? hastily inquired Walter.
He lived in the Company’s own Buildings, second turning to the right,
down the yard, cross over, and take the second on the right again. It
was number eleven; they couldn’t mistake it; but if they did, they had
only to ask for Toodle, Engine Fireman, and any one would show them
which was his house. At this unexpected stroke of success Susan Nipper
dismounted from the coach with all speed, took Walter’s arm, and set
off at a breathless pace on foot; leaving the coach there to await
their return.
“Has the little boy been long ill, Susan?” inquired Walter, as they
hurried on.
“Ailing for a deal of time, but no one knew how much,” said Susan;
adding, with excessive sharpness, “Oh, them Blimbers!”
“Blimbers?” echoed Walter.
“I couldn’t forgive myself at such a time as this, Mr Walter,” said
Susan, “and when there’s so much serious distress to think about, if I
rested hard on anyone, especially on them that little darling Paul
speaks well of, but I may wish that the family was set to work in a
stony soil to make new roads, and that Miss Blimber went in front, and
had the pickaxe!”
Miss Nipper then took breath, and went on faster than before, as if
this extraordinary aspiration had relieved her. Walter, who had by this
time no breath of his own to spare, hurried along without asking any
more questions; and they soon, in their impatience, burst in at a
little door and came into a clean parlour full of children.
“Where’s Mrs Richards?” exclaimed Susan Nipper, looking round. “Oh Mrs
Richards, Mrs Richards, come along with me, my dear creetur!”
“Why, if it ain’t Susan!” cried Polly, rising with her honest face and
motherly figure from among the group, in great surprise.
“Yes, Mrs Richards, it’s me,” said Susan, “and I wish it wasn’t, though
I may not seem to flatter when I say so, but little Master Paul is very
ill, and told his Pa today that he would like to see the face of his
old nurse, and him and Miss Floy hope you’ll come along with me—and Mr
Walter, Mrs Richards—forgetting what is past, and do a kindness to the
sweet dear that is withering away. Oh, Mrs Richards, withering away!”
Susan Nipper crying, Polly shed tears to see her, and to hear what she
had said; and all the children gathered round (including numbers of new
babies); and Mr Toodle, who had just come home from Birmingham, and was
eating his dinner out of a basin, laid down his knife and fork, and put
on his wife’s bonnet and shawl for her, which were hanging up behind
the door; then tapped her on the back; and said, with more fatherly
feeling than eloquence, “Polly! cut away!”
So they got back to the coach, long before the coachman expected them;
and Walter, putting Susan and Mrs Richards inside, took his seat on the
box himself that there might be no more mistakes, and deposited them
safely in the hall of Mr Dombey’s house—where, by the bye, he saw a
mighty nosegay lying, which reminded him of the one Captain Cuttle had
purchased in his company that morning. He would have lingered to know
more of the young invalid, or waited any length of time to see if he
could render the least service; but, painfully sensible that such
conduct would be looked upon by Mr Dombey as presumptuous and forward,
he turned slowly, sadly, anxiously, away.
He had not gone five minutes’ walk from the door, when a man came
running after him, and begged him to return. Walter retraced his steps
as quickly as he could, and entered the gloomy house with a sorrowful
foreboding.
CHAPTER XVI.
What the Waves were always saying
Paul had never risen from his little bed. He lay there, listening to
the noises in the street, quite tranquilly; not caring much how the
time went, but watching it and watching everything about him with
observing eyes.
When the sunbeams struck into his room through the rustling blinds, and
quivered on the opposite wall like golden water, he knew that evening
was coming on, and that the sky was red and beautiful. As the
reflection died away, and a gloom went creeping up the wall, he watched
it deepen, deepen, deepen, into night. Then he thought how the long
streets were dotted with lamps, and how the peaceful stars were shining
overhead. His fancy had a strange tendency to wander to the river,
which he knew was flowing through the great city; and now he thought
how black it was, and how deep it would look, reflecting the hosts of
stars—and more than all, how steadily it rolled away to meet the sea.
As it grew later in the night, and footsteps in the street became so
rare that he could hear them coming, count them as they passed, and
lose them in the hollow distance, he would lie and watch the
many-coloured ring about the candle, and wait patiently for day. His
only trouble was, the swift and rapid river. He felt forced, sometimes,
to try to stop it—to stem it with his childish hands—or choke its way
with sand—and when he saw it coming on, resistless, he cried out! But a
word from Florence, who was always at his side, restored him to
himself; and leaning his poor head upon her breast, he told Floy of his
dream, and smiled.
When day began to dawn again, he watched for the sun; and when its
cheerful light began to sparkle in the room, he pictured to
himself—pictured! he saw—the high church towers rising up into the
morning sky, the town reviving, waking, starting into life once more,
the river glistening as it rolled (but rolling fast as ever), and the
country bright with dew. Familiar sounds and cries came by degrees into
the street below; the servants in the house were roused and busy; faces
looked in at the door, and voices asked his attendants softly how he
was. Paul always answered for himself, “I am better. I am a great deal
better, thank you! Tell Papa so!”
By little and little, he got tired of the bustle of the day, the noise