Dombey and Son
her charms, and to have put on paralysis with her flannel gown,
collected the ashes of Cleopatra, and carried them away in the other,
ready for tomorrow’s revivification.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Alterations
So the day has come at length, Susan,” said Florence to the excellent
Nipper, “when we are going back to our quiet home!”
Susan drew in her breath with an amount of expression not easily
described, further relieving her feelings with a smart cough, answered,
“Very quiet indeed, Miss Floy, no doubt. Excessive so.”
“When I was a child,” said Florence, thoughtfully, and after musing for
some moments, “did you ever see that gentleman who has taken the
trouble to ride down here to speak to me, now three times—three times,
I think, Susan?”
“Three times, Miss,” returned the Nipper. “Once when you was out a
walking with them Sket—”
Florence gently looked at her, and Miss Nipper checked herself.
“With Sir Barnet and his lady, I mean to say, Miss, and the young
gentleman. And two evenings since then.”
“When I was a child, and when company used to come to visit Papa, did
you ever see that gentleman at home, Susan?” asked Florence.
“Well, Miss,” returned her maid, after considering, “I really couldn’t
say I ever did. When your poor dear Ma died, Miss Floy, I was very new
in the family, you see, and my element:” the Nipper bridled, as opining
that her merits had been always designedly extinguished by Mr Dombey:
“was the floor below the attics.”
“To be sure,” said Florence, still thoughtfully; “you are not likely to
have known who came to the house. I quite forgot.”
“Not, Miss, but what we talked about the family and visitors,” said
Susan, “and but what I heard much said, although the nurse before Mrs
Richards make unpleasant remarks when I was in company, and hint at
little Pitchers, but that could only be attributed, poor thing,”
observed Susan, with composed forbearance, “to habits of intoxication,
for which she was required to leave, and did.”
Florence, who was seated at her chamber window, with her face resting
on her hand, sat looking out, and hardly seemed to hear what Susan
said, she was so lost in thought.
“At all events, Miss,” said Susan, “I remember very well that this same
gentleman, Mr Carker, was almost, if not quite, as great a gentleman
with your Papa then, as he is now. It used to be said in the house
then, Miss, that he was at the head of all your Pa’s affairs in the
City, and managed the whole, and that your Pa minded him more than
anybody, which, begging your pardon, Miss Floy, he might easy do, for
he never minded anybody else. I knew that, Pitcher as I might have
been.”
Susan Nipper, with an injured remembrance of the nurse before Mrs
Richards, emphasised “Pitcher” strongly.
“And that Mr Carker has not fallen off, Miss,” she pursued, “but has
stood his ground, and kept his credit with your Pa, I know from what is
always said among our people by that Perch, whenever he comes to the
house; and though he’s the weakest weed in the world, Miss Floy, and no
one can have a moment’s patience with the man, he knows what goes on in
the City tolerable well, and says that your Pa does nothing without Mr
Carker, and leaves all to Mr Carker, and acts according to Mr Carker,
and has Mr Carker always at his elbow, and I do believe that he
believes (that washiest of Perches!) that after your Pa, the Emperor of
India is the child unborn to Mr Carker.”
Not a word of this was lost on Florence, who, with an awakened interest
in Susan’s speech, no longer gazed abstractedly on the prospect
without, but looked at her, and listened with attention.
“Yes, Susan,” she said, when that young lady had concluded. “He is in
Papa’s confidence, and is his friend, I am sure.”
Florence’s mind ran high on this theme, and had done for some days. Mr
Carker, in the two visits with which he had followed up his first one,
had assumed a confidence between himself and her—a right on his part to
be mysterious and stealthy, in telling her that the ship was still
unheard of—a kind of mildly restrained power and authority over
her—that made her wonder, and caused her great uneasiness. She had no
means of repelling it, or of freeing herself from the web he was
gradually winding about her; for that would have required some art and
knowledge of the world, opposed to such address as his; and Florence
had none. True, he had said no more to her than that there was no news
of the ship, and that he feared the worst; but how he came to know that
she was interested in the ship, and why he had the right to signify his
knowledge to her, so insidiously and darkly, troubled Florence very
much.
This conduct on the part of Mr Carker, and her habit of often
considering it with wonder and uneasiness, began to invest him with an
uncomfortable fascination in Florence’s thoughts. A more distinct
remembrance of his features, voice, and manner: which she sometimes
courted, as a means of reducing him to the level of a real personage,
capable of exerting no greater charm over her than another: did not
remove the vague impression. And yet he never frowned, or looked upon
her with an air of dislike or animosity, but was always smiling and
serene.
Again, Florence, in pursuit of her strong purpose with reference to her
father, and her steady resolution to believe that she was herself
unwittingly to blame for their so cold and distant relations, would
recall to mind that this gentleman was his confidential friend, and
would think, with an anxious heart, could her struggling tendency to
dislike and fear him be a part of that misfortune in her, which had
turned her father’s love adrift, and left her so alone? She dreaded
that it might be; sometimes believed it was: then she resolved that she
would try to conquer this wrong feeling; persuaded herself that she was
honoured and encouraged by the notice of her father’s friend; and hoped
that patient observation of him and trust in him would lead her
bleeding feet along that stony road which ended in her father’s heart.
Thus, with no one to advise her—for she could advise with no one
without seeming to complain against him—gentle Florence tossed on an
uneasy sea of doubt and hope; and Mr Carker, like a scaly monster of
the deep, swam down below, and kept his shining eye upon her.
Florence had a new reason in all this for wishing to be at home again.
Her lonely life was better suited to her course of timid hope and
doubt; and she feared sometimes, that in her absence she might miss
some hopeful chance of testifying her affection for her father. Heaven
knows, she might have set her mind at rest, poor child! on this last
point; but her slighted love was fluttering within her, and, even in
her sleep, it flew away in dreams, and nestled, like a wandering bird
come home, upon her father’s neck.
Of Walter she thought often. Ah! how often, when the night was gloomy,
and the wind was blowing round the house! But hope was strong in her
breast. It is so difficult for the young and ardent, even with such
experience as hers, to imagine youth and ardour quenched like a weak
flame, and the bright day of life merging into night, at noon, that
hope was strong yet. Her tears fell frequently for Walter’s sufferings;
but rarely for his supposed death, and never long.
She had written to the old Instrument-maker, but had received no answer
to her note: which indeed required none. Thus matters stood with
Florence on the morning when she was going home, gladly, to her old
secluded life.
Doctor and Mrs Blimber, accompanied (much against his will) by their
valued charge, Master Barnet, were already gone back to Brighton, where
that young gentleman and his fellow-pilgrims to Parnassus were then, no
doubt, in the continual resumption of their studies. The holiday time
was past and over; most of the juvenile guests at the villa had taken
their departure; and Florence’s long visit was come to an end.
There was one guest, however, albeit not resident within the house, who
had been very constant in his attentions to the family, and who still
remained devoted to them. This was Mr Toots, who after renewing, some
weeks ago, the acquaintance he had had the happiness of forming with
Skettles Junior, on the night when he burst the Blimberian bonds and
soared into freedom with his ring on, called regularly every other day,
and left a perfect pack of cards at the hall-door; so many indeed, that
the ceremony was quite a deal on the part of Mr Toots, and a hand at
whist on the part of the servant.
Mr Toots, likewise, with the bold and happy idea of preventing the
family from forgetting him (but there is reason to suppose that this
expedient originated in the teeming brain of the Chicken), had
established a six-oared cutter, manned by aquatic friends of the
Chicken’s and steered by that illustrious character in person, who wore
a bright red fireman’s coat for the purpose, and concealed the
perpetual black eye with which he was afflicted, beneath a green shade.
Previous to the institution of this equipage, Mr Toots sounded the
Chicken on a hypothetical case, as, supposing the Chicken to be
enamoured of a young lady named Mary, and to have conceived the
intention of starting a boat of his own, what would he call that boat?
The Chicken replied, with divers strong asseverations, that he would
either christen it Poll or The Chicken’s Delight. Improving on this
idea, Mr Toots, after deep study and the exercise of much invention,
resolved to call his boat The Toots’s Joy, as a delicate compliment to
Florence, of which no man knowing the parties, could possibly miss the
appreciation.
Stretched on a crimson cushion in his gallant bark, with his shoes in
the air, Mr Toots, in the exercise of his project, had come up the
river, day after day, and week after week, and had flitted to and fro,
near Sir Barnet’s garden, and had caused his crew to cut across and
across the river at sharp angles, for his better exhibition to any
lookers-out from Sir Barnet’s windows, and had had such evolutions
performed by the Toots’s Joy as had filled all the neighbouring part of
the water-side with astonishment. But whenever he saw anyone in Sir
Barnet’s garden on the brink of the river, Mr Toots always feigned to
be passing there, by a combination of coincidences of the most singular
and unlikely description.
“How are you, Toots?” Sir Barnet would say, waving his hand from the
lawn, while the artful Chicken steered close in shore.
“How de do, Sir Barnet?” Mr Toots would answer, “What a surprising
thing that I should see you here!”
Mr Toots, in his sagacity, always said this, as if, instead of that
being Sir Barnet’s house, it were some deserted edifice on the banks of
the Nile, or Ganges.
“I never was so surprised!” Mr Toots would exclaim.—“Is Miss Dombey
there?”
Whereupon Florence would appear, perhaps.
“Oh, Diogenes is quite well, Miss Dombey,” Toots would cry. “I called
to ask this morning.”
“Thank you very much!” the pleasant voice of Florence would reply.
“Won’t you come ashore, Toots?” Sir Barnet would say then. “Come!
you’re in no hurry. Come and see us.”
“Oh, it’s of no consequence, thank you!” Mr Toots would blushingly
rejoin. “I thought Miss Dombey might like to know, that’s all.
Good-bye!” And poor Mr Toots, who was dying to accept the invitation,
but hadn’t the courage to do it, signed to the Chicken, with an aching
heart, and away went the Joy, cleaving the water like an arrow.
The Joy was lying in a state of extraordinary splendour, at the garden
steps, on the morning of Florence’s departure. When she went downstairs
to take leave, after her talk with Susan, she found Mr Toots awaiting
her in the drawing-room.
“Oh, how de do, Miss Dombey?” said the stricken Toots, always