Dombey and Son
showed him every gum of which it stood possessed.
“You are very kind,” said Carker, “I shall be delighted to know them.
Speaking of daughters, I have seen Miss Dombey.”
There was a sudden rush of blood to Mr Dombey’s face.
“I took the liberty of waiting on her,” said Carker, “to inquire if she
could charge me with any little commission. I am not so fortunate as to
be the bearer of any but her—but her dear love.”
Wolf’s face that it was then, with even the hot tongue revealing itself
through the stretched mouth, as the eyes encountered Mr Dombey’s!
“What business intelligence is there?” inquired the latter gentleman,
after a silence, during which Mr Carker had produced some memoranda and
other papers.
“There is very little,” returned Carker. “Upon the whole we have not
had our usual good fortune of late, but that is of little moment to
you. At Lloyd’s, they give up the Son and Heir for lost. Well, she was
insured, from her keel to her masthead.”
“Carker,” said Mr Dombey, taking a chair near him, “I cannot say that
young man, Gay, ever impressed me favourably—”
“Nor me,” interposed the Manager.
“—But I wish,” said Mr Dombey, without heeding the interruption, “he
had never gone on board that ship. I wish he had never been sent out.
“It is a pity you didn’t say so, in good time, is it not?” retorted
Carker, coolly. “However, I think it’s all for the best. I really,
think it’s all for the best. Did I mention that there was something
like a little confidence between Miss Dombey and myself?”
“No,” said Mr Dombey, sternly.
“I have no doubt,” returned Mr Carker, after an impressive pause, “that
wherever Gay is, he is much better where he is, than at home here. If I
were, or could be, in your place, I should be satisfied of that. I am
quite satisfied of it myself. Miss Dombey is confiding and
young—perhaps hardly proud enough, for your daughter—if she have a
fault. Not that that is much though, I am sure. Will you check these
balances with me?”
Mr Dombey leaned back in his chair, instead of bending over the papers
that were laid before him, and looked the Manager steadily in the face.
The Manager, with his eyelids slightly raised, affected to be glancing
at his figures, and to await the leisure of his principal. He showed
that he affected this, as if from great delicacy, and with a design to
spare Mr Dombey’s feelings; and the latter, as he looked at him, was
cognizant of his intended consideration, and felt that but for it, this
confidential Carker would have said a great deal more, which he, Mr
Dombey, was too proud to ask for. It was his way in business, often.
Little by little, Mr Dombey’s gaze relaxed, and his attention became
diverted to the papers before him; but while busy with the occupation
they afforded him, he frequently stopped, and looked at Mr Carker
again. Whenever he did so, Mr Carker was demonstrative, as before, in
his delicacy, and impressed it on his great chief more and more.
While they were thus engaged; and under the skilful culture of the
Manager, angry thoughts in reference to poor Florence brooded and bred
in Mr Dombey’s breast, usurping the place of the cold dislike that
generally reigned there; Major Bagstock, much admired by the old ladies
of Leamington, and followed by the Native, carrying the usual amount of
light baggage, straddled along the shady side of the way, to make a
morning call on Mrs Skewton. It being midday when the Major reached the
bower of Cleopatra, he had the good fortune to find his Princess on her
usual sofa, languishing over a cup of coffee, with the room so darkened
and shaded for her more luxurious repose, that Withers, who was in
attendance on her, loomed like a phantom page.
“What insupportable creature is this, coming in?” said Mrs Skewton, “I
cannot hear it. Go away, whoever you are!”
“You have not the heart to banish J. B., Ma’am!” said the Major halting
midway, to remonstrate, with his cane over his shoulder.
“Oh it’s you, is it? On second thoughts, you may enter,” observed
Cleopatra.
The Major entered accordingly, and advancing to the sofa pressed her
charming hand to his lips.
“Sit down,” said Cleopatra, listlessly waving her fan, “a long way off.
Don’t come too near me, for I am frightfully faint and sensitive this
morning, and you smell of the Sun. You are absolutely tropical.”
“By George, Ma’am,” said the Major, “the time has been when Joseph
Bagstock has been grilled and blistered by the Sun; then time was, when
he was forced, Ma’am, into such full blow, by high hothouse heat in the
West Indies, that he was known as the Flower. A man never heard of
Bagstock, Ma’am, in those days; he heard of the Flower—the Flower of
Ours. The Flower may have faded, more or less, Ma’am,” observed the
Major, dropping into a much nearer chair than had been indicated by his
cruel Divinity, “but it is a tough plant yet, and constant as the
evergreen.”
Here the Major, under cover of the dark room, shut up one eye, rolled
his head like a Harlequin, and, in his great self-satisfaction, perhaps
went nearer to the confines of apoplexy than he had ever gone before.
“Where is Mrs Granger?” inquired Cleopatra of her page.
Withers believed she was in her own room.
“Very well,” said Mrs Skewton. “Go away, and shut the door. I am
engaged.”
As Withers disappeared, Mrs Skewton turned her head languidly towards
the Major, without otherwise moving, and asked him how his friend was.
“Dombey, Ma’am,” returned the Major, with a facetious gurgling in his
throat, “is as well as a man in his condition can be. His condition is
a desperate one, Ma’am. He is touched, is Dombey! Touched!” cried the
Major. “He is bayonetted through the body.”
Cleopatra cast a sharp look at the Major, that contrasted forcibly with
the affected drawl in which she presently said:
“Major Bagstock, although I know but little of the world,—nor can I
really regret my experience, for I fear it is a false place, full of
withering conventionalities: where Nature is but little regarded, and
where the music of the heart, and the gushing of the soul, and all that
sort of thing, which is so truly poetical, is seldom heard,—I cannot
misunderstand your meaning. There is an allusion to Edith—to my
extremely dear child,” said Mrs Skewton, tracing the outline of her
eyebrows with her forefinger, “in your words, to which the tenderest of
chords vibrates excessively.”
“Bluntness, Ma’am,” returned the Major, “has ever been the
characteristic of the Bagstock breed. You are right. Joe admits it.”
“And that allusion,” pursued Cleopatra, “would involve one of the
most—if not positively the most—touching, and thrilling, and sacred
emotions of which our sadly-fallen nature is susceptible, I conceive.”
The Major laid his hand upon his lips, and wafted a kiss to Cleopatra,
as if to identify the emotion in question.
“I feel that I am weak. I feel that I am wanting in that energy, which
should sustain a Mama: not to say a parent: on such a subject,” said
Mrs Skewton, trimming her lips with the laced edge of her
pocket-handkerchief; “but I can hardly approach a topic so excessively
momentous to my dearest Edith without a feeling of faintness.
Nevertheless, bad man, as you have boldly remarked upon it, and as it
has occasioned me great anguish:” Mrs Skewton touched her left side
with her fan: “I will not shrink from my duty.”
The Major, under cover of the dimness, swelled, and swelled, and rolled
his purple face about, and winked his lobster eye, until he fell into a
fit of wheezing, which obliged him to rise and take a turn or two about
the room, before his fair friend could proceed.
“Mr Dombey,” said Mrs Skewton, when she at length resumed, “was
obliging enough, now many weeks ago, to do us the honour of visiting us
here; in company, my dear Major, with yourself. I acknowledge—let me be
open—that it is my failing to be the creature of impulse, and to wear
my heart as it were, outside. I know my failing full well. My enemy
cannot know it better. But I am not penitent; I would rather not be
frozen by the heartless world, and am content to bear this imputation
justly.”
Mrs Skewton arranged her tucker, pinched her wiry throat to give it a
soft surface, and went on, with great complacency.
“It gave me (my dearest Edith too, I am sure) infinite pleasure to
receive Mr Dombey. As a friend of yours, my dear Major, we were
naturally disposed to be prepossessed in his favour; and I fancied that
I observed an amount of Heart in Mr Dombey, that was excessively
refreshing.”
“There is devilish little heart in Dombey now, Ma’am,” said the Major.
“Wretched man!” cried Mrs Skewton, looking at him languidly, “pray be
silent.”
“J. B. is dumb, Ma’am,” said the Major.
“Mr Dombey,” pursued Cleopatra, smoothing the rosy hue upon her cheeks,
“accordingly repeated his visit; and possibly finding some attraction
in the simplicity and primitiveness of our tastes—for there is always a
charm in nature—it is so very sweet—became one of our little circle
every evening. Little did I think of the awful responsibility into
which I plunged when I encouraged Mr Dombey—to”—
“To beat up these quarters, Ma’am,” suggested Major Bagstock.
“Coarse person!” said Mrs Skewton, “you anticipate my meaning, though
in odious language.”
Here Mrs Skewton rested her elbow on the little table at her side, and
suffering her wrist to droop in what she considered a graceful and
becoming manner, dangled her fan to and fro, and lazily admired her
hand while speaking.
“The agony I have endured,” she said mincingly, “as the truth has by
degrees dawned upon me, has been too exceedingly terrific to dilate
upon. My whole existence is bound up in my sweetest Edith; and to see
her change from day to day—my beautiful pet, who has positively
garnered up her heart since the death of that most delightful creature,
Granger—is the most affecting thing in the world.”
Mrs Skewton’s world was not a very trying one, if one might judge of it
by the influence of its most affecting circumstance upon her; but this
by the way.
“Edith,” simpered Mrs Skewton, “who is the perfect pearl of my life, is
said to resemble me. I believe we are alike.”
“There is one man in the world who never will admit that anyone
resembles you, Ma’am,” said the Major; “and that man’s name is Old Joe
Bagstock.”
Cleopatra made as if she would brain the flatterer with her fan, but
relenting, smiled upon him and proceeded:
“If my charming girl inherits any advantages from me, wicked one!”: the
Major was the wicked one: “she inherits also my foolish nature. She has
great force of character—mine has been said to be immense, though I
don’t believe it—but once moved, she is susceptible and sensitive to
the last extent. What are my feelings when I see her pining! They
destroy me.
The Major advancing his double chin, and pursing up his blue lips into
a soothing expression, affected the profoundest sympathy.
“The confidence,” said Mrs Skewton, “that has subsisted between us—the
free development of soul, and openness of sentiment—is touching to
think of. We have been more like sisters than Mama and child.”
“J. B.“s own sentiment,” observed the Major, “expressed by J. B. fifty
thousand times!”
“Do not interrupt, rude man!” said Cleopatra. “What are my feelings,
then, when I find that there is one subject avoided by us! That there
is a what’s-his-name—a gulf—opened between us. That my own artless
Edith is changed to me! They are of the most poignant description, of
course.”
The Major left his chair, and took one nearer to the little table.
“From day to day I see this, my dear Major,” proceeded Mrs Skewton.
“From day to day I feel this. From hour to hour I reproach myself for