Dombey and Son
stares at objects without taking cognizance thereof. There is a general
redness in the faces of the ladies; in the face of Mrs Perch
particularly, who is joyous and beaming, and lifted so far above the
cares of life, that if she were asked just now to direct a wayfarer to
Ball’s Pond, where her own cares lodge, she would have some difficulty
in recalling the way. Mr Towlinson has proposed the happy pair; to
which the silver-headed butler has responded neatly, and with emotion;
for he half begins to think he is an old retainer of the family, and
that he is bound to be affected by these changes. The whole party, and
especially the ladies, are very frolicsome. Mr Dombey’s cook, who
generally takes the lead in society, has said, it is impossible to
settle down after this, and why not go, in a party, to the play?
Everybody (Mrs Perch included) has agreed to this; even the Native, who
is tigerish in his drink, and who alarms the ladies (Mrs Perch
particularly) by the rolling of his eyes. One of the very tall young
men has even proposed a ball after the play, and it presents itself to
no one (Mrs Perch included) in the light of an impossibility. Words
have arisen between the housemaid and Mr Towlinson; she, on the
authority of an old saw, asserting marriages to be made in Heaven: he,
affecting to trace the manufacture elsewhere; he, supposing that she
says so, because she thinks of being married her own self: she, saying,
Lord forbid, at any rate, that she should ever marry him. To calm these
flying taunts, the silver-headed butler rises to propose the health of
Mr Towlinson, whom to know is to esteem, and to esteem is to wish well
settled in life with the object of his choice, wherever (here the
silver-headed butler eyes the housemaid) she may be. Mr Towlinson
returns thanks in a speech replete with feeling, of which the
peroration turns on foreigners, regarding whom he says they may find
favour, sometimes, with weak and inconstant intellects that can be led
away by hair, but all he hopes, is, he may never hear of no foreigner
never boning nothing out of no travelling chariot. The eye of Mr
Towlinson is so severe and so expressive here, that the housemaid is
turning hysterical, when she and all the rest, roused by the
intelligence that the Bride is going away, hurry upstairs to witness
her departure.
The chariot is at the door; the Bride is descending to the hall, where
Mr Dombey waits for her. Florence is ready on the staircase to depart
too; and Miss Nipper, who has held a middle state between the parlour
and the kitchen, is prepared to accompany her. As Edith appears,
Florence hastens towards her, to bid her farewell.
Is Edith cold, that she should tremble! Is there anything unnatural or
unwholesome in the touch of Florence, that the beautiful form recedes
and contracts, as if it could not bear it! Is there so much hurry in
this going away, that Edith, with a wave of her hand, sweeps on, and is
gone!
Mrs Skewton, overpowered by her feelings as a mother, sinks on her sofa
in the Cleopatra attitude, when the clatter of the chariot wheels is
lost, and sheds several tears. The Major, coming with the rest of the
company from table, endeavours to comfort her; but she will not be
comforted on any terms, and so the Major takes his leave. Cousin Feenix
takes his leave, and Mr Carker takes his leave. The guests all go away.
Cleopatra, left alone, feels a little giddy from her strong emotion,
and falls asleep.
Giddiness prevails below stairs too. The very tall young man whose
excitement came on so soon, appears to have his head glued to the table
in the pantry, and cannot be detached from it. A violent revulsion has
taken place in the spirits of Mrs Perch, who is low on account of Mr
Perch, and tells cook that she fears he is not so much attached to his
home, as he used to be, when they were only nine in family. Mr
Towlinson has a singing in his ears and a large wheel going round and
round inside his head. The housemaid wishes it wasn’t wicked to wish
that one was dead.
There is a general delusion likewise, in these lower regions, on the
subject of time; everybody conceiving that it ought to be, at the
earliest, ten o’clock at night, whereas it is not yet three in the
afternoon. A shadowy idea of wickedness committed, haunts every
individual in the party; and each one secretly thinks the other a
companion in guilt, whom it would be agreeable to avoid. No man or
woman has the hardihood to hint at the projected visit to the play.
Anyone reviving the notion of the ball, would be scouted as a malignant
idiot.
Mrs Skewton sleeps upstairs, two hours afterwards, and naps are not yet
over in the kitchen. The hatchments in the dining-room look down on
crumbs, dirty plates, spillings of wine, half-thawed ice, stale
discoloured heel-taps, scraps of lobster, drumsticks of fowls, and
pensive jellies, gradually resolving themselves into a lukewarm gummy
soup. The marriage is, by this time, almost as denuded of its show and
garnish as the breakfast. Mr Dombey’s servants moralise so much about
it, and are so repentant over their early tea, at home, that by eight
o’clock or so, they settle down into confirmed seriousness; and Mr
Perch, arriving at that time from the City, fresh and jocular, with a
white waistcoat and a comic song, ready to spend the evening, and
prepared for any amount of dissipation, is amazed to find himself
coldly received, and Mrs Perch but poorly, and to have the pleasing
duty of escorting that lady home by the next omnibus.
Night closes in. Florence, having rambled through the handsome house,
from room to room, seeks her own chamber, where the care of Edith has
surrounded her with luxuries and comforts; and divesting herself of her
handsome dress, puts on her old simple mourning for dear Paul, and sits
down to read, with Diogenes winking and blinking on the ground beside
her. But Florence cannot read tonight. The house seems strange and new,
and there are loud echoes in it. There is a shadow on her heart: she
knows not why or what: but it is heavy. Florence shuts her book, and
gruff Diogenes, who takes that for a signal, puts his paws upon her
lap, and rubs his ears against her caressing hands. But Florence cannot
see him plainly, in a little time, for there is a mist between her eyes
and him, and her dead brother and dead mother shine in it like angels.
Walter, too, poor wandering shipwrecked boy, oh, where is he?
The Major don’t know; that’s for certain; and don’t care. The Major,
having choked and slumbered, all the afternoon, has taken a late dinner
at his club, and now sits over his pint of wine, driving a modest young
man, with a fresh-coloured face, at the next table (who would give a
handsome sum to be able to rise and go away, but cannot do it) to the
verge of madness, by anecdotes of Bagstock, Sir, at Dombey’s wedding,
and Old Joe’s devilish gentle manly friend, Lord Feenix. While Cousin
Feenix, who ought to be at Long’s, and in bed, finds himself, instead,
at a gaming-table, where his wilful legs have taken him, perhaps, in
his own despite.
Night, like a giant, fills the church, from pavement to roof, and holds
dominion through the silent hours. Pale dawn again comes peeping
through the windows: and, giving place to day, sees night withdraw into
the vaults, and follows it, and drives it out, and hides among the
dead. The timid mice again cower close together, when the great door
clashes, and Mr Sownds and Mrs Miff treading the circle of their daily
lives, unbroken as a marriage ring, come in. Again, the cocked hat and
the mortified bonnet stand in the background at the marriage hour; and
again this man taketh this woman, and this woman taketh this man, on
the solemn terms:
“To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for
richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish,
until death do them part.”
The very words that Mr Carker rides into town repeating, with his mouth
stretched to the utmost, as he picks his dainty way.
CHAPTER XXXII.
The Wooden Midshipman goes to Pieces
Honest Captain Cuttle, as the weeks flew over him in his fortified
retreat, by no means abated any of his prudent provisions against
surprise, because of the non-appearance of the enemy. The Captain
argued that his present security was too profound and wonderful to
endure much longer; he knew that when the wind stood in a fair quarter,
the weathercock was seldom nailed there; and he was too well acquainted
with the determined and dauntless character of Mrs MacStinger, to doubt
that that heroic woman had devoted herself to the task of his discovery
and capture. Trembling beneath the weight of these reasons, Captain
Cuttle lived a very close and retired life; seldom stirring abroad
until after dark; venturing even then only into the obscurest streets;
never going forth at all on Sundays; and both within and without the
walls of his retreat, avoiding bonnets, as if they were worn by raging
lions.
The Captain never dreamed that in the event of his being pounced upon
by Mrs MacStinger, in his walks, it would be possible to offer
resistance. He felt that it could not be done. He saw himself, in his
mind’s eye, put meekly in a hackney-coach, and carried off to his old
lodgings. He foresaw that, once immured there, he was a lost man: his
hat gone; Mrs MacStinger watchful of him day and night; reproaches
heaped upon his head, before the infant family; himself the guilty
object of suspicion and distrust; an ogre in the children’s eyes, and
in their mother’s a detected traitor.
A violent perspiration, and a lowness of spirits, always came over the
Captain as this gloomy picture presented itself to his imagination. It
generally did so previous to his stealing out of doors at night for air
and exercise. Sensible of the risk he ran, the Captain took leave of
Rob, at those times, with the solemnity which became a man who might
never return: exhorting him, in the event of his (the Captain’s) being
lost sight of, for a time, to tread in the paths of virtue, and keep
the brazen instruments well polished.
But not to throw away a chance; and to secure to himself a means, in
case of the worst, of holding communication with the external world;
Captain Cuttle soon conceived the happy idea of teaching Rob the
Grinder some secret signal, by which that adherent might make his
presence and fidelity known to his commander, in the hour of adversity.
After much cogitation, the Captain decided in favour of instructing him
to whistle the marine melody, “Oh cheerily, cheerily!” and Rob the
Grinder attaining a point as near perfection in that accomplishment as
a landsman could hope to reach, the Captain impressed these mysterious
instructions on his mind:
“Now, my lad, stand by! If ever I’m took—”
“Took, Captain!” interposed Rob, with his round eyes wide open.
“Ah!” said Captain Cuttle darkly, “if ever I goes away, meaning to come
back to supper, and don’t come within hail again, twenty-four hours
arter my loss, go you to Brig Place and whistle that “ere tune near my
old moorings—not as if you was a meaning of it, you understand, but as
if you’d drifted there, promiscuous. If I answer in that tune, you
sheer off, my lad, and come back four-and-twenty hours arterwards; if I
answer in another tune, do you stand off and on, and wait till I throw
out further signals. Do you understand them orders, now?”
“What am I to stand off and on of, Captain?” inquired Rob. “The
horse-road?”
“Here’s a smart lad for you!” cried the Captain eyeing him sternly, “as
don’t know his own native alphabet! Go away a bit and come back again
alternate—d’ye understand that?”
“Yes, Captain,” said Rob.
“Very good my lad, then,” said the Captain, relenting. “Do it!”