Dombey and Son
such a Roman matron) fortified herself, at the first glimpse of him,
behind the open street door, and refused to come out to the
contemplation of her blessed infants, until he was securely lodged in
his own room.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Father and Daughter
There is a hush through Mr Dombey’s house. Servants gliding up and down
stairs rustle, but make no sound of footsteps. They talk together
constantly, and sit long at meals, making much of their meat and drink,
and enjoying themselves after a grim unholy fashion. Mrs Wickam, with
her eyes suffused with tears, relates melancholy anecdotes; and tells
them how she always said at Mrs Pipchin’s that it would be so, and
takes more table-ale than usual, and is very sorry but sociable. Cook’s
state of mind is similar. She promises a little fry for supper, and
struggles about equally against her feelings and the onions. Towlinson
begins to think there’s a fate in it, and wants to know if anybody can
tell him of any good that ever came of living in a corner house. It
seems to all of them as having happened a long time ago; though yet the
child lies, calm and beautiful, upon his little bed.
After dark there come some visitors—noiseless visitors, with shoes of
felt—who have been there before; and with them comes that bed of rest
which is so strange a one for infant sleepers. All this time, the
bereaved father has not been seen even by his attendant; for he sits in
an inner corner of his own dark room when anyone is there, and never
seems to move at other times, except to pace it to and fro. But in the
morning it is whispered among the household that he was heard to go
upstairs in the dead night, and that he stayed there—in the room—until
the sun was shining.
At the offices in the City, the ground-glass windows are made more dim
by shutters; and while the lighted lamps upon the desks are half
extinguished by the day that wanders in, the day is half extinguished
by the lamps, and an unusual gloom prevails. There is not much business
done. The clerks are indisposed to work; and they make assignations to
eat chops in the afternoon, and go up the river. Perch, the messenger,
stays long upon his errands; and finds himself in bars of
public-houses, invited thither by friends, and holding forth on the
uncertainty of human affairs. He goes home to Ball’s Pond earlier in
the evening than usual, and treats Mrs Perch to a veal cutlet and
Scotch ale. Mr Carker the Manager treats no one; neither is he treated;
but alone in his own room he shows his teeth all day; and it would seem
that there is something gone from Mr Carker’s path—some obstacle
removed—which clears his way before him.
Now the rosy children living opposite to Mr Dombey’s house, peep from
their nursery windows down into the street; for there are four black
horses at his door, with feathers on their heads; and feathers tremble
on the carriage that they draw; and these, and an array of men with
scarves and staves, attract a crowd. The juggler who was going to twirl
the basin, puts his loose coat on again over his fine dress; and his
trudging wife, one-sided with her heavy baby in her arms, loiters to
see the company come out. But closer to her dingy breast she presses
her baby, when the burden that is so easily carried is borne forth; and
the youngest of the rosy children at the high window opposite, needs no
restraining hand to check her in her glee, when, pointing with her
dimpled finger, she looks into her nurse’s face, and asks “What’s
that?”
And now, among the knot of servants dressed in mourning, and the
weeping women, Mr Dombey passes through the hall to the other carriage
that is waiting to receive him. He is not “brought down,” these
observers think, by sorrow and distress of mind. His walk is as erect,
his bearing is as stiff as ever it has been. He hides his face behind
no handkerchief, and looks before him. But that his face is something
sunk and rigid, and is pale, it bears the same expression as of old. He
takes his place within the carriage, and three other gentlemen follow.
Then the grand funeral moves slowly down the street. The feathers are
yet nodding in the distance, when the juggler has the basin spinning on
a cane, and has the same crowd to admire it. But the juggler’s wife is
less alert than usual with the money-box, for a child’s burial has set
her thinking that perhaps the baby underneath her shabby shawl may not
grow up to be a man, and wear a sky-blue fillet round his head, and
salmon-coloured worsted drawers, and tumble in the mud.
The feathers wind their gloomy way along the streets, and come within
the sound of a church bell. In this same church, the pretty boy
received all that will soon be left of him on earth—a name. All of him
that is dead, they lay there, near the perishable substance of his
mother. It is well. Their ashes lie where Florence in her walks—oh
lonely, lonely walks!—may pass them any day.
The service over, and the clergyman withdrawn, Mr Dombey looks round,
demanding in a low voice, whether the person who has been requested to
attend to receive instructions for the tablet, is there?
Someone comes forward, and says “Yes.”
Mr Dombey intimates where he would have it placed; and shows him, with
his hand upon the wall, the shape and size; and how it is to follow the
memorial to the mother. Then, with his pencil, he writes out the
inscription, and gives it to him: adding, “I wish to have it done at
once.
“It shall be done immediately, Sir.”
“There is really nothing to inscribe but name and age, you see.”
The man bows, glancing at the paper, but appears to hesitate. Mr Dombey
not observing his hesitation, turns away, and leads towards the porch.
“I beg your pardon, Sir;” a touch falls gently on his mourning cloak;
“but as you wish it done immediately, and it may be put in hand when I
get back—”
“Well?”
“Will you be so good as read it over again? I think there’s a mistake.”
“Where?”
The statuary gives him back the paper, and points out, with his pocket
rule, the words, “beloved and only child.”
“It should be, ‘son,’ I think, Sir?”
“You are right. Of course. Make the correction.”
The father, with a hastier step, pursues his way to the coach. When the
other three, who follow closely, take their seats, his face is hidden
for the first time—shaded by his cloak. Nor do they see it any more
that day. He alights first, and passes immediately into his own room.
The other mourners (who are only Mr Chick, and two of the medical
attendants) proceed upstairs to the drawing-room, to be received by Mrs
Chick and Miss Tox. And what the face is, in the shut-up chamber
underneath: or what the thoughts are: what the heart is, what the
contest or the suffering: no one knows.
The chief thing that they know, below stairs, in the kitchen, is that
“it seems like Sunday.” They can hardly persuade themselves but that
there is something unbecoming, if not wicked, in the conduct of the
people out of doors, who pursue their ordinary occupations, and wear
their everyday attire. It is quite a novelty to have the blinds up, and
the shutters open; and they make themselves dismally comfortable over
bottles of wine, which are freely broached as on a festival. They are
much inclined to moralise. Mr Towlinson proposes with a sigh,
“Amendment to us all!” for which, as Cook says with another sigh,
“There’s room enough, God knows.” In the evening, Mrs Chick and Miss
Tox take to needlework again. In the evening also, Mr Towlinson goes
out to take the air, accompanied by the housemaid, who has not yet
tried her mourning bonnet. They are very tender to each other at dusky
street-corners, and Towlinson has visions of leading an altered and
blameless existence as a serious greengrocer in Oxford Market.
There is sounder sleep and deeper rest in Mr Dombey’s house tonight,
than there has been for many nights. The morning sun awakens the old
household, settled down once more in their old ways. The rosy children
opposite run past with hoops. There is a splendid wedding in the
church. The juggler’s wife is active with the money-box in another
quarter of the town. The mason sings and whistles as he chips out
P-A-U-L in the marble slab before him.
And can it be that in a world so full and busy, the loss of one weak
creature makes a void in any heart, so wide and deep that nothing but
the width and depth of vast eternity can fill it up! Florence, in her
innocent affliction, might have answered, “Oh my brother, oh my dearly
loved and loving brother! Only friend and companion of my slighted
childhood! Could any less idea shed the light already dawning on your
early grave, or give birth to the softened sorrow that is springing
into life beneath this rain of tears!”
“My dear child,” said Mrs Chick, who held it as a duty incumbent on
her, to improve the occasion, “when you are as old as I am—”
“Which will be the prime of life,” observed Miss Tox.
“You will then,” pursued Mrs Chick, gently squeezing Miss Tox’s hand in
acknowledgment of her friendly remark, “you will then know that all
grief is unavailing, and that it is our duty to submit.”
“I will try, dear aunt I do try,” answered Florence, sobbing.
“I am glad to hear it,” said Mrs Chick, “because; my love, as our dear
Miss Tox—of whose sound sense and excellent judgment, there cannot
possibly be two opinions—”
“My dear Louisa, I shall really be proud, soon,” said Miss Tox.
“—will tell you, and confirm by her experience,” pursued Mrs Chick, “we
are called upon on all occasions to make an effort It is required of
us. If any—my dear,” turning to Miss Tox, “I want a word. Mis—Mis-”
“Demeanour?” suggested Miss Tox.
“No, no, no,” said Mrs Chic “How can you! Goodness me, it’s on, the end
of my tongue. Mis-”
“Placed affection?” suggested Miss Tox, timidly.
“Good gracious, Lucretia!” returned Mrs Chick “How very monstrous!
Misanthrope, is the word I want. The idea! Misplaced affection! I say,
if any misanthrope were to put, in my presence, the question ‘Why were
we born?’ I should reply, ‘To make an effort’.”
“Very good indeed,” said Miss Tox, much impressed by the originality of
the sentiment “Very good.”
“Unhappily,” pursued Mrs Chick, “we have a warning under our own eyes.
We have but too much reason to suppose, my dear child, that if an
effort had been made in time, in this family, a train of the most
trying and distressing circumstances might have been avoided. Nothing
shall ever persuade me,” observed the good matron, with a resolute air,
“but that if that effort had been made by poor dear Fanny, the poor
dear darling child would at least have had a stronger constitution.”
Mrs Chick abandoned herself to her feelings for half a moment; but, as
a practical illustration of her doctrine, brought herself up short, in
the middle of a sob, and went on again.
“Therefore, Florence, pray let us see that you have some strength of
mind, and do not selfishly aggravate the distress in which your poor
Papa is plunged.”
“Dear aunt!” said Florence, kneeling quickly down before her, that she
might the better and more earnestly look into her face. “Tell me more
about Papa. Pray tell me about him! Is he quite heartbroken?”
Miss Tox was of a tender nature, and there was something in this appeal
that moved her very much. Whether she saw it in a succession, on the
part of the neglected child, to the affectionate concern so often
expressed by her dead brother—or a love that sought to twine itself
about the heart that had loved him, and that could not bear to be shut
out from sympathy with such a sorrow, in such sad community of love and
grief—or whether she only recognised the earnest and devoted spirit
which, although discarded and repulsed, was wrung with tenderness long