Dombey and Son
the drawing-room with her little work-basket, found no one there but
her father, who was walking to and fro, in dreary magnificence.
“I beg your pardon. Shall I go away, Papa?” said Florence faintly,
hesitating at the door.
“No,” returned Mr Dombey, looking round over his shoulder; “you can
come and go here, Florence, as you please. This is not my private
room.”
Florence entered, and sat down at a distant little table with her work:
finding herself for the first time in her life—for the very first time
within her memory from her infancy to that hour—alone with her father,
as his companion. She, his natural companion, his only child, who in
her lonely life and grief had known the suffering of a breaking heart;
who, in her rejected love, had never breathed his name to God at night,
but with a tearful blessing, heavier on him than a curse; who had
prayed to die young, so she might only die in his arms; who had, all
through, repaid the agony of slight and coldness, and dislike, with
patient unexacting love, excusing him, and pleading for him, like his
better angel!
She trembled, and her eyes were dim. His figure seemed to grow in
height and bulk before her as he paced the room: now it was all blurred
and indistinct; now clear again, and plain; and now she seemed to think
that this had happened, just the same, a multitude of years ago. She
yearned towards him, and yet shrunk from his approach. Unnatural
emotion in a child, innocent of wrong! Unnatural the hand that had
directed the sharp plough, which furrowed up her gentle nature for the
sowing of its seeds!
Bent upon not distressing or offending him by her distress, Florence
controlled herself, and sat quietly at her work. After a few more turns
across and across the room, he left off pacing it; and withdrawing into
a shadowy corner at some distance, where there was an easy chair,
covered his head with a handkerchief, and composed himself to sleep.
It was enough for Florence to sit there watching him; turning her eyes
towards his chair from time to time; watching him with her thoughts,
when her face was intent upon her work; and sorrowfully glad to think
that he _could_ sleep, while she was there, and that he was not made
restless by her strange and long-forbidden presence.
What would have been her thoughts if she had known that he was steadily
regarding her; that the veil upon his face, by accident or by design,
was so adjusted that his sight was free, and that it never wandered
from her face an instant. That when she looked towards him, in the
obscure dark corner, her speaking eyes, more earnest and pathetic in
their voiceless speech than all the orators of all the world, and
impeaching him more nearly in their mute address, met his, and did not
know it! That when she bent her head again over her work, he drew his
breath more easily, but with the same attention looked upon her
still—upon her white brow and her falling hair, and busy hands; and
once attracted, seemed to have no power to turn his eyes away!
And what were his thoughts meanwhile? With what emotions did he prolong
the attentive gaze covertly directed on his unknown daughter? Was there
reproach to him in the quiet figure and the mild eyes? Had he begun to
feel her disregarded claims and did they touch him home at last, and
waken him to some sense of his cruel injustice?
There are yielding moments in the lives of the sternest and harshest
men, though such men often keep their secret well. The sight of her in
her beauty, almost changed into a woman without his knowledge, may have
struck out some such moments even in his life of pride. Some passing
thought that he had had a happy home within his reach—had had a
household spirit bending at his feet—had overlooked it in his
stiffnecked sullen arrogance, and wandered away and lost himself, may
have engendered them. Some simple eloquence distinctly heard, though
only uttered in her eyes, unconscious that he read them as “By the
death-beds I have tended, by the childhood I have suffered, by our
meeting in this dreary house at midnight, by the cry wrung from me in
the anguish of my heart, oh, father, turn to me and seek a refuge in my
love before it is too late!” may have arrested them. Meaner and lower
thoughts, as that his dead boy was now superseded by new ties, and he
could forgive the having been supplanted in his affection, may have
occasioned them. The mere association of her as an ornament, with all
the ornament and pomp about him, may have been sufficient. But as he
looked, he softened to her, more and more. As he looked, she became
blended with the child he had loved, and he could hardly separate the
two. As he looked, he saw her for an instant by a clearer and a
brighter light, not bending over that child’s pillow as his
rival—monstrous thought—but as the spirit of his home, and in the
action tending himself no less, as he sat once more with his bowed-down
head upon his hand at the foot of the little bed. He felt inclined to
speak to her, and call her to him. The words “Florence, come here!”
were rising to his lips—but slowly and with difficulty, they were so
very strange—when they were checked and stifled by a footstep on the
stair.
It was his wife’s. She had exchanged her dinner dress for a loose robe,
and unbound her hair, which fell freely about her neck. But this was
not the change in her that startled him.
“Florence, dear,” she said, “I have been looking for you everywhere.”
As she sat down by the side of Florence, she stooped and kissed her
hand. He hardly knew his wife. She was so changed. It was not merely
that her smile was new to him—though that he had never seen; but her
manner, the tone of her voice, the light of her eyes, the interest, and
confidence, and winning wish to please, expressed in all-this was not
Edith.
“Softly, dear Mama. Papa is asleep.”
It was Edith now. She looked towards the corner where he was, and he
knew that face and manner very well.
“I scarcely thought you could be here, Florence.”
Again, how altered and how softened, in an instant!
“I left here early,” pursued Edith, “purposely to sit upstairs and talk
with you. But, going to your room, I found my bird was flown, and I
have been waiting there ever since, expecting its return.
If it had been a bird, indeed, she could not have taken it more
tenderly and gently to her breast, than she did Florence.
“Come, dear!”
“Papa will not expect to find me, I suppose, when he wakes,” hesitated
Florence.
“Do you think he will, Florence?” said Edith, looking full upon her.
Florence drooped her head, and rose, and put up her work-basket. Edith
drew her hand through her arm, and they went out of the room like
sisters. Her very step was different and new to him, Mr Dombey thought,
as his eyes followed her to the door.
He sat in his shadowy corner so long, that the church clocks struck the
hour three times before he moved that night. All that while his face
was still intent upon the spot where Florence had been seated. The room
grew darker, as the candles waned and went out; but a darkness gathered
on his face, exceeding any that the night could cast, and rested there.
Florence and Edith, seated before the fire in the remote room where
little Paul had died, talked together for a long time. Diogenes, who
was of the party, had at first objected to the admission of Edith, and,
even in deference to his mistress’s wish, had only permitted it under
growling protest. But, emerging by little and little from the
ante-room, whither he had retired in dudgeon, he soon appeared to
comprehend, that with the most amiable intentions he had made one of
those mistakes which will occasionally arise in the best-regulated
dogs’ minds; as a friendly apology for which he stuck himself up on end
between the two, in a very hot place in front of the fire, and sat
panting at it, with his tongue out, and a most imbecile expression of
countenance, listening to the conversation.
It turned, at first, on Florence’s books and favourite pursuits, and on
the manner in which she had beguiled the interval since the marriage.
The last theme opened up to her a subject which lay very near her
heart, and she said, with the tears starting to her eyes:
“Oh, Mama! I have had a great sorrow since that day.”
“You a great sorrow, Florence!”
“Yes. Poor Walter is drowned.”
Florence spread her hands before her face, and wept with all her heart.
Many as were the secret tears which Walter’s fate had cost her, they
flowed yet, when she thought or spoke of him.
“But tell me, dear,” said Edith, soothing her. “Who was Walter? What
was he to you?”
“He was my brother, Mama. After dear Paul died, we said we would be
brother and sister. I had known him a long time—from a little child. He
knew Paul, who liked him very much; Paul said, almost at the last,
‘Take care of Walter, dear Papa! I was fond of him!’ Walter had been
brought in to see him, and was there then—in this room.”
“And did he take care of Walter?” inquired Edith, sternly.
“Papa? He appointed him to go abroad. He was drowned in shipwreck on
his voyage,” said Florence, sobbing.
“Does he know that he is dead?” asked Edith.
“I cannot tell, Mama. I have no means of knowing. Dear Mama!” cried
Florence, clinging to her as for help, and hiding her face upon her
bosom, “I know that you have seen—”
“Stay! Stop, Florence.” Edith turned so pale, and spoke so earnestly,
that Florence did not need her restraining hand upon her lips. “Tell me
all about Walter first; let me understand this history all through.”
Florence related it, and everything belonging to it, even down to the
friendship of Mr Toots, of whom she could hardly speak in her distress
without a tearful smile, although she was deeply grateful to him. When
she had concluded her account, to the whole of which Edith, holding her
hand, listened with close attention, and when a silence had succeeded,
Edith said:
“What is it that you know I have seen, Florence?”
“That I am not,” said Florence, with the same mute appeal, and the same
quick concealment of her face as before, “that I am not a favourite
child, Mama. I never have been. I have never known how to be. I have
missed the way, and had no one to show it to me. Oh, let me learn from
you how to become dearer to Papa Teach me! you, who can so well!” and
clinging closer to her, with some broken fervent words of gratitude and
endearment, Florence, relieved of her sad secret, wept long, but not as
painfully as of yore, within the encircling arms of her new mother.
Pale even to her lips, and with a face that strove for composure until
its proud beauty was as fixed as death, Edith looked down upon the
weeping girl, and once kissed her. Then gradually disengaging herself,
and putting Florence away, she said, stately, and quiet as a marble
image, and in a voice that deepened as she spoke, but had no other
token of emotion in it:
“Florence, you do not know me! Heaven forbid that you should learn from
me!”
“Not learn from you?” repeated Florence, in surprise.
“That I should teach you how to love, or be loved, Heaven forbid!” said
Edith. “If you could teach me, that were better; but it is too late.
You are dear to me, Florence. I did not think that anything could ever
be so dear to me, as you are in this little time.”
She saw that Florence would have spoken here, so checked her with her
hand, and went on.
“I will be your true friend always. I will cherish you, as much, if not
as well as anyone in this world could. You may trust in me—I know it
and I say it, dear,—with the whole confidence even of your pure heart.
There are hosts of women whom he might have married, better and truer
in all other respects than I am, Florence; but there is not one who