Dombey and Son
almost shrieked in her passion, while her palsied head shook like a
leaf, “that there is corruption and contagion in me, and that I am not
fit company for a girl! What are you, pray? What are you?”
“I have put the question to myself,” said Edith, ashy pale, and
pointing to the window, “more than once when I have been sitting there,
and something in the faded likeness of my sex has wandered past
outside; and God knows I have met with my reply. Oh mother, mother, if
you had but left me to my natural heart when I too was a girl—a younger
girl than Florence—how different I might have been!”
Sensible that any show of anger was useless here, her mother restrained
herself, and fell a whimpering, and bewailed that she had lived too
long, and that her only child had cast her off, and that duty towards
parents was forgotten in these evil days, and that she had heard
unnatural taunts, and cared for life no longer.
“If one is to go on living through continual scenes like this,” she
whined, “I am sure it would be much better for me to think of some
means of putting an end to my existence. Oh! The idea of your being my
daughter, Edith, and addressing me in such a strain!”
“Between us, mother,” returned Edith, mournfully, “the time for mutual
reproaches is past.”
“Then why do you revive it?” whimpered her mother. “You know that you
are lacerating me in the cruellest manner. You know how sensitive I am
to unkindness. At such a moment, too, when I have so much to think of,
and am naturally anxious to appear to the best advantage! I wonder at
you, Edith. To make your mother a fright upon your wedding-day!”
Edith bent the same fixed look upon her, as she sobbed and rubbed her
eyes; and said in the same low steady voice, which had neither risen
nor fallen since she first addressed her, “I have said that Florence
must go home.”
“Let her go!” cried the afflicted and affrighted parent, hastily. “I am
sure I am willing she should go. What is the girl to me?”
“She is so much to me, that rather than communicate, or suffer to be
communicated to her, one grain of the evil that is in my breast,
mother, I would renounce you, as I would (if you gave me cause)
renounce him in the church to-morrow,” replied Edith. “Leave her alone.
She shall not, while I can interpose, be tampered with and tainted by
the lessons I have learned. This is no hard condition on this bitter
night.”
“If you had proposed it in a filial manner, Edith,” whined her mother,
“perhaps not; very likely not. But such extremely cutting words—”
“They are past and at an end between us now,” said Edith. “Take your
own way, mother; share as you please in what you have gained; spend,
enjoy, make much of it; and be as happy as you will. The object of our
lives is won. Henceforth let us wear it silently. My lips are closed
upon the past from this hour. I forgive you your part in to-morrow’s
wickedness. May God forgive my own!”
Without a tremor in her voice, or frame, and passing onward with a foot
that set itself upon the neck of every soft emotion, she bade her
mother good-night, and repaired to her own room.
But not to rest; for there was no rest in the tumult of her agitation
when alone to and fro, and to and fro, and to and fro again, five
hundred times, among the splendid preparations for her adornment on the
morrow; with her dark hair shaken down, her dark eyes flashing with a
raging light, her broad white bosom red with the cruel grasp of the
relentless hand with which she spurned it from her, pacing up and down
with an averted head, as if she would avoid the sight of her own fair
person, and divorce herself from its companionship. Thus, in the dead
time of the night before her bridal, Edith Granger wrestled with her
unquiet spirit, tearless, friendless, silent, proud, and uncomplaining.
At length it happened that she touched the open door which led into the
room where Florence lay.
She started, stopped, and looked in.
A light was burning there, and showed her Florence in her bloom of
innocence and beauty, fast asleep. Edith held her breath, and felt
herself drawn on towards her.
Drawn nearer, nearer, nearer yet; at last, drawn so near, that stooping
down, she pressed her lips to the gentle hand that lay outside the bed,
and put it softly to her neck. Its touch was like the prophet’s rod of
old upon the rock. Her tears sprung forth beneath it, as she sunk upon
her knees, and laid her aching head and streaming hair upon the pillow
by its side.
Thus Edith Granger passed the night before her bridal. Thus the sun
found her on her bridal morning.
CHAPTER XXXI.
The Wedding
Dawn with its passionless blank face, steals shivering to the church
beneath which lies the dust of little Paul and his mother, and looks in
at the windows. It is cold and dark. Night crouches yet, upon the
pavement, and broods, sombre and heavy, in nooks and corners of the
building. The steeple-clock, perched up above the houses, emerging from
beneath another of the countless ripples in the tide of time that
regularly roll and break on the eternal shore, is greyly visible, like
a stone beacon, recording how the sea flows on; but within doors, dawn,
at first, can only peep at night, and see that it is there.
Hovering feebly round the church, and looking in, dawn moans and weeps
for its short reign, and its tears trickle on the window-glass, and the
trees against the church-wall bow their heads, and wring their many
hands in sympathy. Night, growing pale before it, gradually fades out
of the church, but lingers in the vaults below, and sits upon the
coffins. And now comes bright day, burnishing the steeple-clock, and
reddening the spire, and drying up the tears of dawn, and stifling its
complaining; and the dawn, following the night, and chasing it from its
last refuge, shrinks into the vaults itself and hides, with a
frightened face, among the dead, until night returns, refreshed, to
drive it out.
And now, the mice, who have been busier with the prayer-books than
their proper owners, and with the hassocks, more worn by their little
teeth than by human knees, hide their bright eyes in their holes, and
gather close together in affright at the resounding clashing of the
church-door. For the beadle, that man of power, comes early this
morning with the sexton; and Mrs Miff, the wheezy little pew-opener—a
mighty dry old lady, sparely dressed, with not an inch of fulness
anywhere about her—is also here, and has been waiting at the
church-gate half-an-hour, as her place is, for the beadle.
A vinegary face has Mrs Miff, and a mortified bonnet, and eke a thirsty
soul for sixpences and shillings. Beckoning to stray people to come
into pews, has given Mrs Miff an air of mystery; and there is
reservation in the eye of Mrs Miff, as always knowing of a softer seat,
but having her suspicions of the fee. There is no such fact as Mr Miff,
nor has there been, these twenty years, and Mrs Miff would rather not
allude to him. He held some bad opinions, it would seem, about free
seats; and though Mrs Miff hopes he may be gone upwards, she couldn’t
positively undertake to say so.
Busy is Mrs Miff this morning at the church-door, beating and dusting
the altar-cloth, the carpet, and the cushions; and much has Mrs Miff to
say, about the wedding they are going to have. Mrs Miff is told, that
the new furniture and alterations in the house cost full five thousand
pound if they cost a penny; and Mrs Miff has heard, upon the best
authority, that the lady hasn’t got a sixpence wherewithal to bless
herself. Mrs Miff remembers, like wise, as if it had happened
yesterday, the first wife’s funeral, and then the christening, and then
the other funeral; and Mrs Miff says, by-the-by she’ll soap-and-water
that “ere tablet presently, against the company arrive. Mr Sownds the
Beadle, who is sitting in the sun upon the church steps all this time
(and seldom does anything else, except, in cold weather, sitting by the
fire), approves of Mrs Miff’s discourse, and asks if Mrs Miff has heard
it said, that the lady is uncommon handsome? The information Mrs Miff
has received, being of this nature, Mr Sownds the Beadle, who, though
orthodox and corpulent, is still an admirer of female beauty, observes,
with unction, yes, he hears she is a spanker—an expression that seems
somewhat forcible to Mrs Miff, or would, from any lips but those of Mr
Sownds the Beadle.
In Mr Dombey’s house, at this same time, there is great stir and
bustle, more especially among the women: not one of whom has had a wink
of sleep since four o’clock, and all of whom were fully dressed before
six. Mr Towlinson is an object of greater consideration than usual to
the housemaid, and the cook says at breakfast time that one wedding
makes many, which the housemaid can’t believe, and don’t think true at
all. Mr Towlinson reserves his sentiments on this question; being
rendered something gloomy by the engagement of a foreigner with
whiskers (Mr Towlinson is whiskerless himself), who has been hired to
accompany the happy pair to Paris, and who is busy packing the new
chariot. In respect of this personage, Mr Towlinson admits, presently,
that he never knew of any good that ever come of foreigners; and being
charged by the ladies with prejudice, says, look at Bonaparte who was
at the head of ’em, and see what he was always up to! Which the
housemaid says is very true.
The pastry-cook is hard at work in the funereal room in Brook Street,
and the very tall young men are busy looking on. One of the very tall
young men already smells of sherry, and his eyes have a tendency to
become fixed in his head, and to stare at objects without seeing them.
The very tall young man is conscious of this failing in himself; and
informs his comrade that it’s his “exciseman.” The very tall young man
would say excitement, but his speech is hazy.
The men who play the bells have got scent of the marriage; and the
marrow-bones and cleavers too; and a brass band too. The first, are
practising in a back settlement near Battlebridge; the second, put
themselves in communication, through their chief, with Mr Towlinson, to
whom they offer terms to be bought off; and the third, in the person of
an artful trombone, lurks and dodges round the corner, waiting for some
traitor tradesman to reveal the place and hour of breakfast, for a
bribe. Expectation and excitement extend further yet, and take a wider
range. From Balls Pond, Mr Perch brings Mrs Perch to spend the day with
Mr Dombey’s servants, and accompany them, surreptitiously, to see the
wedding. In Mr Toots’s lodgings, Mr Toots attires himself as if he were
at least the Bridegroom; determined to behold the spectacle in
splendour from a secret corner of the gallery, and thither to convey
the Chicken: for it is Mr Toots’s desperate intent to point out
Florence to the Chicken, then and there, and openly to say, “Now,
Chicken, I will not deceive you any longer; the friend I have sometimes
mentioned to you is myself; Miss Dombey is the object of my passion;
what are your opinions, Chicken, in this state of things, and what, on
the spot, do you advise? The so-much-to-be-astonished Chicken, in the
meanwhile, dips his beak into a tankard of strong beer, in Mr Toots’s
kitchen, and pecks up two pounds of beefsteaks. In Princess’s Place,
Miss Tox is up and doing; for she too, though in sore distress, is
resolved to put a shilling in the hands of Mrs Miff, and see the
ceremony which has a cruel fascination for her, from some lonely
corner. The quarters of the wooden Midshipman are all alive; for
Captain Cuttle, in his ankle-jacks and with a huge shirt-collar, is
seated at his breakfast, listening to Rob the Grinder as he reads the
marriage service to him beforehand, under orders, to the end that the