Dombey and Son
or walking in the country by himself, on that first day of their
sojourn at Leamington; but next morning he would be happy to accompany
the Major to the Pump-room, and about the town. So they parted until
dinner-time. Mr Dombey retired to nurse his wholesome thoughts in his
own way. The Major, attended by the Native carrying a camp-stool, a
great-coat, and an umbrella, swaggered up and down through all the
public places: looking into subscription books to find out who was
there, looking up old ladies by whom he was much admired, reporting J.
B. tougher than ever, and puffing his rich friend Dombey wherever he
went. There never was a man who stood by a friend more staunchly than
the Major, when in puffing him, he puffed himself.
It was surprising how much new conversation the Major had to let off at
dinner-time, and what occasion he gave Mr Dombey to admire his social
qualities. At breakfast next morning, he knew the contents of the
latest newspapers received; and mentioned several subjects in connexion
with them, on which his opinion had recently been sought by persons of
such power and might, that they were only to be obscurely hinted at. Mr
Dombey, who had been so long shut up within himself, and who had
rarely, at any time, overstepped the enchanted circle within which the
operations of Dombey and Son were conducted, began to think this an
improvement on his solitary life; and in place of excusing himself for
another day, as he had thought of doing when alone, walked out with the
Major arm-in-arm.
CHAPTER XXI.
New Faces
The MAJOR, more blue-faced and staring—more over-ripe, as it were, than
ever—and giving vent, every now and then, to one of the horse’s coughs,
not so much of necessity as in a spontaneous explosion of importance,
walked arm-in-arm with Mr Dombey up the sunny side of the way, with his
cheeks swelling over his tight stock, his legs majestically wide apart,
and his great head wagging from side to side, as if he were
remonstrating within himself for being such a captivating object. They
had not walked many yards, before the Major encountered somebody he
knew, nor many yards farther before the Major encountered somebody else
he knew, but he merely shook his fingers at them as he passed, and led
Mr Dombey on: pointing out the localities as they went, and enlivening
the walk with any current scandal suggested by them.
In this manner the Major and Mr Dombey were walking arm-in-arm, much to
their own satisfaction, when they beheld advancing towards them, a
wheeled chair, in which a lady was seated, indolently steering her
carriage by a kind of rudder in front, while it was propelled by some
unseen power in the rear. Although the lady was not young, she was very
blooming in the face—quite rosy—and her dress and attitude were
perfectly juvenile. Walking by the side of the chair, and carrying her
gossamer parasol with a proud and weary air, as if so great an effort
must be soon abandoned and the parasol dropped, sauntered a much
younger lady, very handsome, very haughty, very wilful, who tossed her
head and drooped her eyelids, as though, if there were anything in all
the world worth looking into, save a mirror, it certainly was not the
earth or sky.
“Why, what the devil have we here, Sir!” cried the Major, stopping as
this little cavalcade drew near.
“My dearest Edith!” drawled the lady in the chair, “Major Bagstock!”
The Major no sooner heard the voice, than he relinquished Mr Dombey’s
arm, darted forward, took the hand of the lady in the chair and pressed
it to his lips. With no less gallantry, the Major folded both his
gloves upon his heart, and bowed low to the other lady. And now, the
chair having stopped, the motive power became visible in the shape of a
flushed page pushing behind, who seemed to have in part outgrown and in
part out-pushed his strength, for when he stood upright he was tall,
and wan, and thin, and his plight appeared the more forlorn from his
having injured the shape of his hat, by butting at the carriage with
his head to urge it forward, as is sometimes done by elephants in
Oriental countries.
“Joe Bagstock,” said the Major to both ladies, “is a proud and happy
man for the rest of his life.”
“You false creature!” said the old lady in the chair, insipidly. “Where
do you come from? I can’t bear you.”
“Then suffer old Joe to present a friend, Ma’am,” said the Major,
promptly, “as a reason for being tolerated. Mr Dombey, Mrs Skewton.”
The lady in the chair was gracious. “Mr Dombey, Mrs Granger.” The lady
with the parasol was faintly conscious of Mr Dombey’s taking off his
hat, and bowing low. “I am delighted, Sir,” said the Major, “to have
this opportunity.”
The Major seemed in earnest, for he looked at all the three, and leered
in his ugliest manner.
“Mrs Skewton, Dombey,” said the Major, “makes havoc in the heart of old
Josh.”
Mr Dombey signified that he didn’t wonder at it.
“You perfidious goblin,” said the lady in the chair, “have done! How
long have you been here, bad man?”
“One day,” replied the Major.
“And can you be a day, or even a minute,” returned the lady, slightly
settling her false curls and false eyebrows with her fan, and showing
her false teeth, set off by her false complexion, “in the garden of
what’s-its-name.”
“Eden, I suppose, Mama,” interrupted the younger lady, scornfully.
“My dear Edith,” said the other, “I cannot help it. I never can
remember those frightful names—without having your whole Soul and Being
inspired by the sight of Nature; by the perfume,” said Mrs Skewton,
rustling a handkerchief that was faint and sickly with essences, “of
her artless breath, you creature!”
The discrepancy between Mrs Skewton’s fresh enthusiasm of words, and
forlornly faded manner, was hardly less observable than that between
her age, which was about seventy, and her dress, which would have been
youthful for twenty-seven. Her attitude in the wheeled chair (which she
never varied) was one in which she had been taken in a barouche, some
fifty years before, by a then fashionable artist who had appended to
his published sketch the name of Cleopatra: in consequence of a
discovery made by the critics of the time, that it bore an exact
resemblance to that Princess as she reclined on board her galley. Mrs
Skewton was a beauty then, and bucks threw wine-glasses over their
heads by dozens in her honour. The beauty and the barouche had both
passed away, but she still preserved the attitude, and for this reason
expressly, maintained the wheeled chair and the butting page: there
being nothing whatever, except the attitude, to prevent her from
walking.
“Mr Dombey is devoted to Nature, I trust?” said Mrs Skewton, settling
her diamond brooch. And by the way, she chiefly lived upon the
reputation of some diamonds, and her family connexions.
“My friend Dombey, Ma’am,” returned the Major, “may be devoted to her
in secret, but a man who is paramount in the greatest city in the
universe—”
“No one can be a stranger,” said Mrs Skewton, “to Mr Dombey’s immense
influence.”
As Mr Dombey acknowledged the compliment with a bend of his head, the
younger lady glancing at him, met his eyes.
“You reside here, Madam?” said Mr Dombey, addressing her.
“No, we have been to a great many places. To Harrogate and Scarborough,
and into Devonshire. We have been visiting, and resting here and there.
Mama likes change.”
“Edith of course does not,” said Mrs Skewton, with a ghastly archness.
“I have not found that there is any change in such places,” was the
answer, delivered with supreme indifference.
“They libel me. There is only one change, Mr Dombey,” observed Mrs
Skewton, with a mincing sigh, “for which I really care, and that I fear
I shall never be permitted to enjoy. People cannot spare one. But
seclusion and contemplation are my what-his-name—”
“If you mean Paradise, Mama, you had better say so, to render yourself
intelligible,” said the younger lady.
“My dearest Edith,” returned Mrs Skewton, “you know that I am wholly
dependent upon you for those odious names. I assure you, Mr Dombey,
Nature intended me for an Arcadian. I am thrown away in society. Cows
are my passion. What I have ever sighed for, has been to retreat to a
Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows—and china.”
This curious association of objects, suggesting a remembrance of the
celebrated bull who got by mistake into a crockery shop, was received
with perfect gravity by Mr Dombey, who intimated his opinion that
Nature was, no doubt, a very respectable institution.
“What I want,” drawled Mrs Skewton, pinching her shrivelled throat, “is
heart.” It was frightfully true in one sense, if not in that in which
she used the phrase. “What I want, is frankness, confidence, less
conventionality, and freer play of soul. We are so dreadfully
artificial.”
We were, indeed.
“In short,” said Mrs Skewton, “I want Nature everywhere. It would be so
extremely charming.”
“Nature is inviting us away now, Mama, if you are ready,” said the
younger lady, curling her handsome lip. At this hint, the wan page, who
had been surveying the party over the top of the chair, vanished behind
it, as if the ground had swallowed him up.
“Stop a moment, Withers!” said Mrs Skewton, as the chair began to move;
calling to the page with all the languid dignity with which she had
called in days of yore to a coachman with a wig, cauliflower nosegay,
and silk stockings. “Where are you staying, abomination?”
The Major was staying at the Royal Hotel, with his friend Dombey.
“You may come and see us any evening when you are good,” lisped Mrs
Skewton. “If Mr Dombey will honour us, we shall be happy. Withers, go
on!”
The Major again pressed to his blue lips the tips of the fingers that
were disposed on the ledge of the wheeled chair with careful
carelessness, after the Cleopatra model: and Mr Dombey bowed. The elder
lady honoured them both with a very gracious smile and a girlish wave
of her hand; the younger lady with the very slightest inclination of
her head that common courtesy allowed.
The last glimpse of the wrinkled face of the mother, with that patched
colour on it which the sun made infinitely more haggard and dismal than
any want of colour could have been, and of the proud beauty of the
daughter with her graceful figure and erect deportment, engendered such
an involuntary disposition on the part of both the Major and Mr Dombey
to look after them, that they both turned at the same moment. The Page,
nearly as much aslant as his own shadow, was toiling after the chair,
uphill, like a slow battering-ram; the top of Cleopatra’s bonnet was
fluttering in exactly the same corner to the inch as before; and the
Beauty, loitering by herself a little in advance, expressed in all her
elegant form, from head to foot, the same supreme disregard of
everything and everybody.
“I tell you what, Sir,” said the Major, as they resumed their walk
again. “If Joe Bagstock were a younger man, there’s not a woman in the
world whom he’d prefer for Mrs Bagstock to that woman. By George, Sir!”
said the Major, “she’s superb!”
“Do you mean the daughter?” inquired Mr Dombey.
“Is Joey B. a turnip, Dombey,” said the Major, “that he should mean the
mother?”
“You were complimentary to the mother,” returned Mr Dombey.
“An ancient flame, Sir,” chuckled Major Bagstock. “Devilish ancient. I
humour her.”
“She impresses me as being perfectly genteel,” said Mr Dombey.
“Genteel, Sir,” said the Major, stopping short, and staring in his
companion’s face. “The Honourable Mrs Skewton, Sir, is sister to the
late Lord Feenix, and aunt to the present Lord. The family are not
wealthy—they’re poor, indeed—and she lives upon a small jointure; but