Dombey and Son
in a most terrible state of flurry all day long, and have a thousand
and one appointments with all sorts of trades-people!”
“They are of your making,” returned Edith, turning on her with a slight
contraction of her brow. “You and Mr Dombey can arrange between you.”
“Very true indeed, my love, and most considerate of you!” said
Cleopatra. “My darling Florence, you must really come and kiss me once
more, if you please, my dear!”
Singular coincidence, that these gushes of interest in Florence hurried
Cleopatra away from almost every dialogue in which Edith had a share,
however trifling! Florence had certainly never undergone so much
embracing, and perhaps had never been, unconsciously, so useful in her
life.
Mr Dombey was far from quarrelling, in his own breast, with the manner
of his beautiful betrothed. He had that good reason for sympathy with
haughtiness and coldness, which is found in a fellow-feeling. It
flattered him to think how these deferred to him, in Edith’s case, and
seemed to have no will apart from his. It flattered him to picture to
himself, this proud and stately woman doing the honours of his house,
and chilling his guests after his own manner. The dignity of Dombey and
Son would be heightened and maintained, indeed, in such hands.
So thought Mr Dombey, when he was left alone at the dining-table, and
mused upon his past and future fortunes: finding no uncongeniality in
an air of scant and gloomy state that pervaded the room, in colour a
dark brown, with black hatchments of pictures blotching the walls, and
twenty-four black chairs, with almost as many nails in them as so many
coffins, waiting like mutes, upon the threshold of the Turkey carpet;
and two exhausted negroes holding up two withered branches of
candelabra on the sideboard, and a musty smell prevailing as if the
ashes of ten thousand dinners were entombed in the sarcophagus below
it. The owner of the house lived much abroad; the air of England seldom
agreed long with a member of the Feenix family; and the room had
gradually put itself into deeper and still deeper mourning for him,
until it was become so funereal as to want nothing but a body in it to
be quite complete.
No bad representation of the body, for the nonce, in his unbending
form, if not in his attitude, Mr Dombey looked down into the cold
depths of the dead sea of mahogany on which the fruit dishes and
decanters lay at anchor: as if the subjects of his thoughts were rising
towards the surface one by one, and plunging down again. Edith was
there in all her majesty of brow and figure; and close to her came
Florence, with her timid head turned to him, as it had been, for an
instant, when she left the room; and Edith’s eyes upon her, and Edith’s
hand put out protectingly. A little figure in a low arm-chair came
springing next into the light, and looked upon him wonderingly, with
its bright eyes and its old-young face, gleaming as in the flickering
of an evening fire. Again came Florence close upon it, and absorbed his
whole attention. Whether as a fore-doomed difficulty and disappointment
to him; whether as a rival who had crossed him in his way, and might
again; whether as his child, of whom, in his successful wooing, he
could stoop to think as claiming, at such a time, to be no more
estranged; or whether as a hint to him that the mere appearance of
caring for his own blood should be maintained in his new relations; he
best knew. Indifferently well, perhaps, at best; for marriage company
and marriage altars, and ambitious scenes—still blotted here and there
with Florence—always Florence—turned up so fast, and so confusedly,
that he rose, and went upstairs to escape them.
It was quite late at night before candles were brought; for at present
they made Mrs Skewton’s head ache, she complained; and in the meantime
Florence and Mrs Skewton talked together (Cleopatra being very anxious
to keep her close to herself), or Florence touched the piano softly for
Mrs Skewton’s delight; to make no mention of a few occasions in the
course of the evening, when that affectionate lady was impelled to
solicit another kiss, and which always happened after Edith had said
anything. They were not many, however, for Edith sat apart by an open
window during the whole time (in spite of her mother’s fears that she
would take cold), and remained there until Mr Dombey took leave. He was
serenely gracious to Florence when he did so; and Florence went to bed
in a room within Edith’s, so happy and hopeful, that she thought of her
late self as if it were some other poor deserted girl who was to be
pitied for her sorrow; and in her pity, sobbed herself to sleep.
The week fled fast. There were drives to milliners, dressmakers,
jewellers, lawyers, florists, pastry-cooks; and Florence was always of
the party. Florence was to go to the wedding. Florence was to cast off
her mourning, and to wear a brilliant dress on the occasion. The
milliner’s intentions on the subject of this dress—the milliner was a
Frenchwoman, and greatly resembled Mrs Skewton—were so chaste and
elegant, that Mrs Skewton bespoke one like it for herself. The milliner
said it would become her to admiration, and that all the world would
take her for the young lady’s sister.
The week fled faster. Edith looked at nothing and cared for nothing.
Her rich dresses came home, and were tried on, and were loudly
commended by Mrs Skewton and the milliners, and were put away without a
word from her. Mrs Skewton made their plans for every day, and executed
them. Sometimes Edith sat in the carriage when they went to make
purchases; sometimes, when it was absolutely necessary, she went into
the shops. But Mrs Skewton conducted the whole business, whatever it
happened to be; and Edith looked on as uninterested and with as much
apparent indifference as if she had no concern in it. Florence might
perhaps have thought she was haughty and listless, but that she was
never so to her. So Florence quenched her wonder in her gratitude
whenever it broke out, and soon subdued it.
The week fled faster. It had nearly winged its flight away. The last
night of the week, the night before the marriage, was come. In the dark
room—for Mrs Skewton’s head was no better yet, though she expected to
recover permanently to-morrow—were that lady, Edith, and Mr Dombey.
Edith was at her open window looking out into the street; Mr Dombey and
Cleopatra were talking softly on the sofa. It was growing late; and
Florence, being fatigued, had gone to bed.
“My dear Dombey,” said Cleopatra, “you will leave me Florence
to-morrow, when you deprive me of my sweetest Edith.”
Mr Dombey said he would, with pleasure.
“To have her about me, here, while you are both at Paris, and to think
at her age, I am assisting in the formation of her mind, my dear
Dombey,” said Cleopatra, “will be a perfect balm to me in the extremely
shattered state to which I shall be reduced.”
Edith turned her head suddenly. Her listless manner was exchanged, in a
moment, to one of burning interest, and, unseen in the darkness, she
attended closely to their conversation.
Mr Dombey would be delighted to leave Florence in such admirable
guardianship.
“My dear Dombey,” returned Cleopatra, “a thousand thanks for your good
opinion. I feared you were going, with malice aforethought, as the
dreadful lawyers say—those horrid prosers!—to condemn me to utter
solitude.”
“Why do me so great an injustice, my dear madam?” said Mr Dombey.
“Because my charming Florence tells me so positively she must go home
tomorrow, returned Cleopatra, that I began to be afraid, my dearest
Dombey, you were quite a Bashaw.”
“I assure you, madam!” said Mr Dombey, “I have laid no commands on
Florence; and if I had, there are no commands like your wish.”
“My dear Dombey,” replied Cleopatra, what a courtier you are! Though
I’ll not say so, either; for courtiers have no heart, and yours
pervades your farming life and character. And are you really going so
early, my dear Dombey!”
Oh, indeed! it was late, and Mr Dombey feared he must.
“Is this a fact, or is it all a dream!” lisped Cleopatra. “Can I
believe, my dearest Dombey, that you are coming back tomorrow morning
to deprive me of my sweet companion; my own Edith!”
Mr Dombey, who was accustomed to take things literally, reminded Mrs
Skewton that they were to meet first at the church.
“The pang,” said Mrs Skewton, “of consigning a child, even to you, my
dear Dombey, is one of the most excruciating imaginable, and combined
with a naturally delicate constitution, and the extreme stupidity of
the pastry-cook who has undertaken the breakfast, is almost too much
for my poor strength. But I shall rally, my dear Dombey, in the
morning; do not fear for me, or be uneasy on my account. Heaven bless
you! My dearest Edith!” she cried archly. “Somebody is going, pet.”
Edith, who had turned her head again towards the window, and whose
interest in their conversation had ceased, rose up in her place, but
made no advance towards him, and said nothing. Mr Dombey, with a lofty
gallantry adapted to his dignity and the occasion, betook his creaking
boots towards her, put her hand to his lips, said, “Tomorrow morning I
shall have the happiness of claiming this hand as Mrs Dombey’s,” and
bowed himself solemnly out.
Mrs Skewton rang for candles as soon as the house-door had closed upon
him. With the candles appeared her maid, with the juvenile dress that
was to delude the world to-morrow. The dress had savage retribution in
it, as such dresses ever have, and made her infinitely older and more
hideous than her greasy flannel gown. But Mrs Skewton tried it on with
mincing satisfaction; smirked at her cadaverous self in the glass, as
she thought of its killing effect upon the Major; and suffering her
maid to take it off again, and to prepare her for repose, tumbled into
ruins like a house of painted cards.
All this time, Edith remained at the dark window looking out into the
street. When she and her mother were at last left alone, she moved from
it for the first time that evening, and came opposite to her. The
yawning, shaking, peevish figure of the mother, with her eyes raised to
confront the proud erect form of the daughter, whose glance of fire was
bent downward upon her, had a conscious air upon it, that no levity or
temper could conceal.
“I am tired to death,” said she. “You can’t be trusted for a moment.
You are worse than a child. Child! No child would be half so obstinate
and undutiful.”
“Listen to me, mother,” returned Edith, passing these words by with a
scorn that would not descend to trifle with them. “You must remain
alone here until I return.”
“Must remain alone here, Edith, until you return!” repeated her mother.
“Or in that name upon which I shall call to-morrow to witness what I
do, so falsely: and so shamefully, I swear I will refuse the hand of
this man in the church. If I do not, may I fall dead upon the
pavement!”
The mother answered with a look of quick alarm, in no degree diminished
by the look she met.
“It is enough,” said Edith, steadily, “that we are what we are. I will
have no youth and truth dragged down to my level. I will have no
guileless nature undermined, corrupted, and perverted, to amuse the
leisure of a world of mothers. You know my meaning. Florence must go
home.”
“You are an idiot, Edith,” cried her angry mother. “Do you expect there
can ever be peace for you in that house, till she is married, and
away?”
“Ask me, or ask yourself, if I ever expect peace in that house,” said
her daughter, “and you know the answer.”
“And am I to be told tonight, after all my pains and labour, and when
you are going, through me, to be rendered independent,” her mother