Dombey and Son
house. But that she ever thought of it, or watched it, was a secret
which she kept within her own young breast.
And did that breast of Florence—Florence, so ingenuous and true—so
worthy of the love that he had borne her, and had whispered in his last
faint words—whose guileless heart was mirrored in the beauty of her
face, and breathed in every accent of her gentle voice—did that young
breast hold any other secret? Yes. One more.
When no one in the house was stirring, and the lights were all
extinguished, she would softly leave her own room, and with noiseless
feet descend the staircase, and approach her father’s door. Against it,
scarcely breathing, she would rest her face and head, and press her
lips, in the yearning of her love. She crouched upon the cold stone
floor outside it, every night, to listen even for his breath; and in
her one absorbing wish to be allowed to show him some affection, to be
a consolation to him, to win him over to the endurance of some
tenderness from her, his solitary child, she would have knelt down at
his feet, if she had dared, in humble supplication.
No one knew it. No one thought of it. The door was ever closed, and he
shut up within. He went out once or twice, and it was said in the house
that he was very soon going on his country journey; but he lived in
those rooms, and lived alone, and never saw her, or inquired for her.
Perhaps he did not even know that she was in the house.
One day, about a week after the funeral, Florence was sitting at her
work, when Susan appeared, with a face half laughing and half crying,
to announce a visitor.
“A visitor! To me, Susan!” said Florence, looking up in astonishment.
“Well, it is a wonder, ain’t it now, Miss Floy?” said Susan; “but I
wish you had a many visitors, I do, indeed, for you’d be all the better
for it, and it’s my opinion that the sooner you and me goes even to
them old Skettleses, Miss, the better for both, I may not wish to live
in crowds, Miss Floy, but still I’m not a oyster.”
To do Miss Nipper justice, she spoke more for her young mistress than
herself; and her face showed it.
“But the visitor, Susan,” said Florence.
Susan, with an hysterical explosion that was as much a laugh as a sob,
and as much a sob as a laugh, answered,
“Mr Toots!”
The smile that appeared on Florence’s face passed from it in a moment,
and her eyes filled with tears. But at any rate it was a smile, and
that gave great satisfaction to Miss Nipper.
“My own feelings exactly, Miss Floy,” said Susan, putting her apron to
her eyes, and shaking her head. “Immediately I see that Innocent in the
Hall, Miss Floy, I burst out laughing first, and then I choked.”
Susan Nipper involuntarily proceeded to do the like again on the spot.
In the meantime Mr Toots, who had come upstairs after her, all
unconscious of the effect he produced, announced himself with his
knuckles on the door, and walked in very briskly.
“How d’ye do, Miss Dombey?” said Mr Toots. “I’m very well, I thank you;
how are you?”
Mr Toots—than whom there were few better fellows in the world, though
there may have been one or two brighter spirits—had laboriously
invented this long burst of discourse with the view of relieving the
feelings both of Florence and himself. But finding that he had run
through his property, as it were, in an injudicious manner, by
squandering the whole before taking a chair, or before Florence had
uttered a word, or before he had well got in at the door, he deemed it
advisable to begin again.
“How d’ye do, Miss Dombey?” said Mr Toots. “I’m very well, I thank you;
how are you?”
Florence gave him her hand, and said she was very well.
“I’m very well indeed,” said Mr Toots, taking a chair. “Very well
indeed, I am. I don’t remember,” said Mr Toots, after reflecting a
little, “that I was ever better, thank you.”
“It’s very kind of you to come,” said Florence, taking up her work, “I
am very glad to see you.”
Mr Toots responded with a chuckle. Thinking that might be too lively,
he corrected it with a sigh. Thinking that might be too melancholy, he
corrected it with a chuckle. Not thoroughly pleasing himself with
either mode of reply, he breathed hard.
“You were very kind to my dear brother,” said Florence, obeying her own
natural impulse to relieve him by saying so. “He often talked to me
about you.”
“Oh it’s of no consequence,” said Mr Toots hastily. “Warm, ain’t it?”
“It is beautiful weather,” replied Florence.
“It agrees with me!” said Mr Toots. “I don’t think I ever was so well
as I find myself at present, I’m obliged to you.
After stating this curious and unexpected fact, Mr Toots fell into a
deep well of silence.
“You have left Dr Blimber’s, I think?” said Florence, trying to help
him out.
“I should hope so,” returned Mr Toots. And tumbled in again.
He remained at the bottom, apparently drowned, for at least ten
minutes. At the expiration of that period, he suddenly floated, and
said,
“Well! Good morning, Miss Dombey.”
“Are you going?” asked Florence, rising.
“I don’t know, though. No, not just at present,” said Mr Toots, sitting
down again, most unexpectedly. “The fact is—I say, Miss Dombey!”
“Don’t be afraid to speak to me,” said Florence, with a quiet smile, “I
should be very glad if you would talk about my brother.”
“Would you, though?” retorted Mr Toots, with sympathy in every fibre of
his otherwise expressionless face. “Poor Dombey! I’m sure I never
thought that Burgess and Co.—fashionable tailors (but very dear), that
we used to talk about—would make this suit of clothes for such a
purpose.” Mr Toots was dressed in mourning. “Poor Dombey! I say! Miss
Dombey!” blubbered Toots.
“Yes,” said Florence.
“There’s a friend he took to very much at last. I thought you’d like to
have him, perhaps, as a sort of keepsake. You remember his remembering
Diogenes?”
“Oh yes! oh yes” cried Florence.
“Poor Dombey! So do I,” said Mr Toots.
Mr Toots, seeing Florence in tears, had great difficulty in getting
beyond this point, and had nearly tumbled into the well again. But a
chuckle saved him on the brink.
“I say,” he proceeded, “Miss Dombey! I could have had him stolen for
ten shillings, if they hadn’t given him up: and I would: but they were
glad to get rid of him, I think. If you’d like to have him, he’s at the
door. I brought him on purpose for you. He ain’t a lady’s dog, you
know,” said Mr Toots, “but you won’t mind that, will you?”
In fact, Diogenes was at that moment, as they presently ascertained
from looking down into the street, staring through the window of a
hackney cabriolet, into which, for conveyance to that spot, he had been
ensnared, on a false pretence of rats among the straw. Sooth to say, he
was as unlike a lady’s dog as might be; and in his gruff anxiety to get
out, presented an appearance sufficiently unpromising, as he gave short
yelps out of one side of his mouth, and overbalancing himself by the
intensity of every one of those efforts, tumbled down into the straw,
and then sprung panting up again, putting out his tongue, as if he had
come express to a Dispensary to be examined for his health.
But though Diogenes was as ridiculous a dog as one would meet with on a
summer’s day; a blundering, ill-favoured, clumsy, bullet-headed dog,
continually acting on a wrong idea that there was an enemy in the
neighbourhood, whom it was meritorious to bark at; and though he was
far from good-tempered, and certainly was not clever, and had hair all
over his eyes, and a comic nose, and an inconsistent tail, and a gruff
voice; he was dearer to Florence, in virtue of that parting remembrance
of him, and that request that he might be taken care of, than the most
valuable and beautiful of his kind. So dear, indeed, was this same ugly
Diogenes, and so welcome to her, that she took the jewelled hand of Mr
Toots and kissed it in her gratitude. And when Diogenes, released, came
tearing up the stairs and bouncing into the room (such a business as
there was, first, to get him out of the cabriolet!), dived under all
the furniture, and wound a long iron chain, that dangled from his neck,
round legs of chairs and tables, and then tugged at it until his eyes
became unnaturally visible, in consequence of their nearly starting out
of his head; and when he growled at Mr Toots, who affected familiarity;
and went pell-mell at Towlinson, morally convinced that he was the
enemy whom he had barked at round the corner all his life and had never
seen yet; Florence was as pleased with him as if he had been a miracle
of discretion.
Mr Toots was so overjoyed by the success of his present, and was so
delighted to see Florence bending down over Diogenes, smoothing his
coarse back with her little delicate hand—Diogenes graciously allowing
it from the first moment of their acquaintance—that he felt it
difficult to take leave, and would, no doubt, have been a much longer
time in making up his mind to do so, if he had not been assisted by
Diogenes himself, who suddenly took it into his head to bay Mr Toots,
and to make short runs at him with his mouth open. Not exactly seeing
his way to the end of these demonstrations, and sensible that they
placed the pantaloons constructed by the art of Burgess and Co. in
jeopardy, Mr Toots, with chuckles, lapsed out at the door: by which,
after looking in again two or three times, without any object at all,
and being on each occasion greeted with a fresh run from Diogenes, he
finally took himself off and got away.
“Come, then, Di! Dear Di! Make friends with your new mistress. Let us
love each other, Di!” said Florence, fondling his shaggy head. And Di,
the rough and gruff, as if his hairy hide were pervious to the tear
that dropped upon it, and his dog’s heart melted as it fell, put his
nose up to her face, and swore fidelity.
Diogenes the man did not speak plainer to Alexander the Great than
Diogenes the dog spoke to Florence. He subscribed to the offer of his
little mistress cheerfully, and devoted himself to her service. A
banquet was immediately provided for him in a corner; and when he had
eaten and drunk his fill, he went to the window where Florence was
sitting, looking on, rose up on his hind legs, with his awkward fore
paws on her shoulders, licked her face and hands, nestled his great
head against her heart, and wagged his tail till he was tired. Finally,
Diogenes coiled himself up at her feet and went to sleep.
Although Miss Nipper was nervous in regard of dogs, and felt it
necessary to come into the room with her skirts carefully collected
about her, as if she were crossing a brook on stepping-stones; also to
utter little screams and stand up on chairs when Diogenes stretched
himself, she was in her own manner affected by the kindness of Mr
Toots, and could not see Florence so alive to the attachment and
society of this rude friend of little Paul’s, without some mental
comments thereupon that brought the water to her eyes. Mr Dombey, as a
part of her reflections, may have been, in the association of ideas,
connected with the dog; but, at any rate, after observing Diogenes and
his mistress all the evening, and after exerting herself with much
good-will to provide Diogenes a bed in an ante-chamber outside his
mistress’s door, she said hurriedly to Florence, before leaving her for
the night:
“Your Pa’s a going off, Miss Floy, tomorrow morning.”
“To-morrow morning, Susan?”
“Yes, Miss; that’s the orders. Early.”
“Do you know,” asked Florence, without looking at her, “where Papa is
going, Susan?”
“Not exactly, Miss. He’s going to meet that precious Major first, and I
must say if I was acquainted with any Major myself (which Heavens
forbid), it shouldn’t be a blue one!”
“Hush, Susan!” urged Florence gently.