Dombey and Son
from his sleep, had asked for her, and had raised himself in his bed
and brightened when she came in!
To think of this presumptuous raker among coals and ashes going on
before there, with his sign of mourning! To think that he dared to
enter, even by a common show like that, into the trial and
disappointment of a proud gentleman’s secret heart! To think that this
lost child, who was to have divided with him his riches, and his
projects, and his power, and allied with whom he was to have shut out
all the world as with a double door of gold, should have let in such a
herd to insult him with their knowledge of his defeated hopes, and
their boasts of claiming community of feeling with himself, so far
removed: if not of having crept into the place wherein he would have
lorded it, alone!
He found no pleasure or relief in the journey. Tortured by these
thoughts he carried monotony with him, through the rushing landscape,
and hurried headlong, not through a rich and varied country, but a
wilderness of blighted plans and gnawing jealousies. The very speed at
which the train was whirled along, mocked the swift course of the young
life that had been borne away so steadily and so inexorably to its
foredoomed end. The power that forced itself upon its iron way—its
own—defiant of all paths and roads, piercing through the heart of every
obstacle, and dragging living creatures of all classes, ages, and
degrees behind it, was a type of the triumphant monster, Death.
Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, from the town, burrowing
among the dwellings of men and making the streets hum, flashing out
into the meadows for a moment, mining in through the damp earth,
booming on in darkness and heavy air, bursting out again into the sunny
day so bright and wide; away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle,
through the fields, through the woods, through the corn, through the
hay, through the chalk, through the mould, through the clay, through
the rock, among objects close at hand and almost in the grasp, ever
flying from the traveller, and a deceitful distance ever moving slowly
within him: like as in the track of the remorseless monster, Death!
Through the hollow, on the height, by the heath, by the orchard, by the
park, by the garden, over the canal, across the river, where the sheep
are feeding, where the mill is going, where the barge is floating,
where the dead are lying, where the factory is smoking, where the
stream is running, where the village clusters, where the great
cathedral rises, where the bleak moor lies, and the wild breeze smooths
or ruffles it at its inconstant will; away, with a shriek, and a roar,
and a rattle, and no trace to leave behind but dust and vapour: like as
in the track of the remorseless monster, Death!
Breasting the wind and light, the shower and sunshine, away, and still
away, it rolls and roars, fierce and rapid, smooth and certain, and
great works and massive bridges crossing up above, fall like a beam of
shadow an inch broad, upon the eye, and then are lost. Away, and still
away, onward and onward ever: glimpses of cottage-homes, of houses,
mansions, rich estates, of husbandry and handicraft, of people, of old
roads and paths that look deserted, small, and insignificant as they
are left behind: and so they do, and what else is there but such
glimpses, in the track of the indomitable monster, Death!
Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, plunging down into the
earth again, and working on in such a storm of energy and perseverance,
that amidst the darkness and whirlwind the motion seems reversed, and
to tend furiously backward, until a ray of light upon the wet wall
shows its surface flying past like a fierce stream. Away once more into
the day, and through the day, with a shrill yell of exultation,
roaring, rattling, tearing on, spurning everything with its dark
breath, sometimes pausing for a minute where a crowd of faces are, that
in a minute more are not; sometimes lapping water greedily, and before
the spout at which it drinks has ceased to drip upon the ground,
shrieking, roaring, rattling through the purple distance!
Louder and louder yet, it shrieks and cries as it comes tearing on
resistless to the goal: and now its way, still like the way of Death,
is strewn with ashes thickly. Everything around is blackened. There are
dark pools of water, muddy lanes, and miserable habitations far below.
There are jagged walls and falling houses close at hand, and through
the battered roofs and broken windows, wretched rooms are seen, where
want and fever hide themselves in many wretched shapes, while smoke and
crowded gables, and distorted chimneys, and deformity of brick and
mortar penning up deformity of mind and body, choke the murky distance.
As Mr Dombey looks out of his carriage window, it is never in his
thoughts that the monster who has brought him there has let the light
of day in on these things: not made or caused them. It was the
journey’s fitting end, and might have been the end of everything; it
was so ruinous and dreary.
So, pursuing the one course of thought, he had the one relentless
monster still before him. All things looked black, and cold, and deadly
upon him, and he on them. He found a likeness to his misfortune
everywhere. There was a remorseless triumph going on about him, and it
galled and stung him in his pride and jealousy, whatever form it took:
though most of all when it divided with him the love and memory of his
lost boy.
There was a face—he had looked upon it, on the previous night, and it
on him with eyes that read his soul, though they were dim with tears,
and hidden soon behind two quivering hands—that often had attended him
in fancy, on this ride. He had seen it, with the expression of last
night, timidly pleading to him. It was not reproachful, but there was
something of doubt, almost of hopeful incredulity in it, which, as he
once more saw that fade away into a desolate certainty of his dislike,
was like reproach. It was a trouble to him to think of this face of
Florence.
Because he felt any new compunction towards it? No. Because the feeling
it awakened in him—of which he had had some old foreshadowing in older
times—was full-formed now, and spoke out plainly, moving him too much,
and threatening to grow too strong for his composure. Because the face
was abroad, in the expression of defeat and persecution that seemed to
encircle him like the air. Because it barbed the arrow of that cruel
and remorseless enemy on which his thoughts so ran, and put into its
grasp a double-handed sword. Because he knew full well, in his own
breast, as he stood there, tinging the scene of transition before him
with the morbid colours of his own mind, and making it a ruin and a
picture of decay, instead of hopeful change, and promise of better
things, that life had quite as much to do with his complainings as
death. One child was gone, and one child left. Why was the object of
his hope removed instead of her?
The sweet, calm, gentle presence in his fancy, moved him to no
reflection but that. She had been unwelcome to him from the first; she
was an aggravation of his bitterness now. If his son had been his only
child, and the same blow had fallen on him, it would have been heavy to
bear; but infinitely lighter than now, when it might have fallen on her
(whom he could have lost, or he believed it, without a pang), and had
not. Her loving and innocent face rising before him, had no softening
or winning influence. He rejected the angel, and took up with the
tormenting spirit crouching in his bosom. Her patience, goodness,
youth, devotion, love, were as so many atoms in the ashes upon which he
set his heel. He saw her image in the blight and blackness all around
him, not irradiating but deepening the gloom. More than once upon this
journey, and now again as he stood pondering at this journey’s end,
tracing figures in the dust with his stick, the thought came into his
mind, what was there he could interpose between himself and it?
The Major, who had been blowing and panting all the way down, like
another engine, and whose eye had often wandered from his newspaper to
leer at the prospect, as if there were a procession of discomfited Miss
Toxes pouring out in the smoke of the train, and flying away over the
fields to hide themselves in any place of refuge, aroused his friends
by informing him that the post-horses were harnessed and the carriage
ready.
“Dombey,” said the Major, rapping him on the arm with his cane, “don’t
be thoughtful. It’s a bad habit, Old Joe, Sir, wouldn’t be as tough as
you see him, if he had ever encouraged it. You are too great a man,
Dombey, to be thoughtful. In your position, Sir, you’re far above that
kind of thing.”
The Major even in his friendly remonstrances, thus consulting the
dignity and honour of Mr Dombey, and showing a lively sense of their
importance, Mr Dombey felt more than ever disposed to defer to a
gentleman possessing so much good sense and such a well-regulated mind;
accordingly he made an effort to listen to the Major’s stories, as they
trotted along the turnpike road; and the Major, finding both the pace
and the road a great deal better adapted to his conversational powers
than the mode of travelling they had just relinquished, came out of his
entertainment.
But still the Major, blunt and tough as he was, and as he so very often
said he was, administered some palatable catering to his companion’s
appetite. He related, or rather suffered it to escape him,
accidentally, and as one might say, grudgingly and against his will,
how there was great curiosity and excitement at the club, in regard of
his friend Dombey. How he was suffocated with questions, Sir. How old
Joe Bagstock was a greater man than ever, there, on the strength of
Dombey. How they said, “Bagstock, your friend Dombey now, what is the
view he takes of such and such a question? Though, by the Rood, Sir,”
said the Major, with a broad stare, “how they discovered that J. B.
ever came to know you, is a mystery!”
In this flow of spirits and conversation, only interrupted by his usual
plethoric symptoms, and by intervals of lunch, and from time to time by
some violent assault upon the Native, who wore a pair of ear-rings in
his dark-brown ears, and on whom his European clothes sat with an
outlandish impossibility of adjustment—being, of their own accord, and
without any reference to the tailor’s art, long where they ought to be
short, short where they ought to be long, tight where they ought to be
loose, and loose where they ought to be tight—and to which he imparted
a new grace, whenever the Major attacked him, by shrinking into them
like a shrivelled nut, or a cold monkey—in this flow of spirits and
conversation, the Major continued all day: so that when evening came
on, and found them trotting through the green and leafy road near
Leamington, the Major’s voice, what with talking and eating and
chuckling and choking, appeared to be in the box under the rumble, or
in some neighbouring hay-stack. Nor did the Major improve it at the
Royal Hotel, where rooms and dinner had been ordered, and where he so
oppressed his organs of speech by eating and drinking, that when he
retired to bed he had no voice at all, except to cough with, and could
only make himself intelligible to the dark servant by gasping at him.
He not only rose next morning, however, like a giant refreshed, but
conducted himself, at breakfast like a giant refreshing. At this meal
they arranged their daily habits. The Major was to take the
responsibility of ordering everything to eat and drink; and they were
to have a late breakfast together every morning, and a late dinner
together every day. Mr Dombey would prefer remaining in his own room,