In which Timely Provision is made for an Emergency that will
sometimes arise in the best-regulated Families
`I SHALL never cease to congratulate myself,' said Mrs. Chick, `on having
said, when I little thought what was in store for us,--really as if I was
inspired by something,--that I forgave poor dear Fanny everything. Whatever
happens, that must always be a comfort to me!'
Mrs. Chick made this impressive observation in the drawing-room, after having
descended thither from the inspection of the Mantua-Makers up stairs, who were
busy on the family mourning. She delivered it for the behoof of Mr. Chick, who
was a stout bald gentleman, with a very large face, and his hands continually in
his pockets, and who had a tendency in his nature to whistle and hum tunes,
which, sensible of the indecorum of such sounds in a house of grief, he was at
some pains to repress at present.
`Don't you over-exert yourself, Loo,' said Mr. Chick, `or you'll be laid up
with spasms, I see. Right tol loor rul! Bless my soul, I forgot! We're here one
day and gone the next!'
Mrs. Chick contented herself with a glance of reproof, and then proceeded
with the thread of her discourse.
`I am sure,' she said, `I hope this heart-rending occurrence will be a
warning to all of us, to accustom ourselves to rouse ourselves, and to make
efforts in time where they're required of us. There's a moral in everything, if
we would only avail ourselves of it. It will be our own faults if we lose sight
of this one.'
Mr. Chick invaded the grave silence which ensued on this remark with the
singularly inappropriate air of `A cobbler there was;' and checking himself, in
some confusion, observed, that it was undoubtedly our own faults if we didn't
improve such melancholy occasions as the present.
`Which might be better improved, I should think, Mr. C.,' retorted his
helpmate, after a short pause, `than by the introduction, either of the college
hornpipe, or the equally unmeaning and unfeeling remark of rump-te-iddity,
bow-wow-wow!'--which Mr. Chick had indeed indulged in under his breath, and
which Mrs. Chick repeated in a tone of withering scorn.
`Merely habit, my dear,' pleaded Mr. Chick.
`Nonsense! Habit!' returned his wife. `If you're a rational being, don't make
such ridiculous excuses. Habit! If I was to get a habit (as you call it) of
walking on the ceiling, like the flies, I should hear enough of it, I dare say.'
It appeared so probable that such a habit might be attended with some degree
of notoriety, that Mr. Chick didn't venture to dispute the position.
`How's the Baby, Loo?' asked Mr. Chick: to change the subject.
`What Baby do you mean?' answered Mrs. Chick. `I am sure the morning I have
had, with that dining-room down stairs one mass of babies, no one in their
senses would believe.'
`One mass of babies!' repeated Mr. Chick, staring with an alarmed expression
about him.
`It would have occurred to most men,' said Mrs. Chick, `that poor dear Fanny
being no more, it becomes necessary to provide a Nurse.'
`Oh! Ah!' said Mr. Chick. `Toor-rul--such is life, I mean. I hope you are
suited, my dear.'
`Indeed I am not,' said Mrs. Chick; `nor likely to be, so far as I can see.
Meanwhile, of course, the child is--'
`Going to the very Deuce,' said Mr. Chick, thoughtfully, `to be sure.'
Admonished, however, that he had committed himself, by the indignation
expressed in Mrs. Chick's countenance at the idea of a Dombey going there; and
thinking to atone for his misconduct by a bright suggestion, he added:
`Couldn't something temporary be done with a teapot?'
If he had meant to bring the subject prematurely to a close, he could not
have done it more effectually. After looking at him for some moments in silent
resignation, Mrs. Chick walked majestically to the window and peeped through the
blind, attracted by the sound of wheels. Mr. Chick, finding that his destiny
was, for the time, against him, said no more, and walked off. But it was not
always thus with Mr. Chick. He was often in the ascendant himself, and at those
times punished Louisa roundly. In their matrimonial bickerings they were, upon
the whole, a well- matched, fairly-balanced, give-and-take couple. It would have
been, generally speaking, very difficult to have betted on the winner. Often
when Mr. Chick seemed beaten, he would suddenly make a start, turn the tables,
clatter them about the ears of Mrs. Chick, and carry all before him. Being
liable himself to similar unlookedfor checks from Mrs. Chick, their little
contests usually possessed a character of uncertainty that was very animating.
Miss Tox had arrived on the wheels just now alluded to, and came running into
the room in a breathless condition.
`My dear Louisa,' said Miss Tox, `is the vacancy still unsupplied?'
`You good soul, yes,' said Mrs. Chick.
`Then, my dear Louisa,' returned Miss Tox, `I hope and believe--but in one
moment, my dear, I'll introduce the party.'
Running down stairs again as fast as she had run up, Miss Tox got the party
out of the hackney-coach, and soon returned with it under convoy.
It then appeared that she had used the word, not in its legal or business
acceptation, when it merely expresses an individual, but as a noun of multitude,
or signifying many: for Miss Tox escorted a plump rosy-cheeked wholesome
apple-faced young woman, with an infant in her arms; a younger woman not so
plump, but apple-faced also, who led a plump and apple-faced child in each hand;
another plump and also apple-faced boy who walked by himself; and finally, a
plump and apple-faced man, who carried in his arms another plump and apple-faced
boy, whom he stood down on the floor, and admonished, in a husky whisper, to `kitch
hold of his brother Johnny.'
`My dear Louisa,' said Miss Tox, `knowing your great anxiety, and wishing to
relieve it, I posted off myself to the Queen Charlotte's Royal Married Females,
which you had forgot, and put the question, Was there anybody there that they
thought would suit? No, they said there was not. When they gave me that answer,
I do assure you, my dear, I was almost driven to despair on your account. But it
did so happen, that one of the Royal Married Females, hearing the inquiry,
reminded the matron of another who had gone to her own home, and who, she said,
would in all likelihood be most satisfactory. The moment I heard this, and had
it corroborated by the matron--excellent references and unimpeachable
character--I got the address, my dear, and posted off again.'
`Like the dear good Tox, you are!' said Louisa.
`Not at all,' returned Miss Tox. `Don't say so. Arriving at the house (the
cleanest place, my dear! You might eat your dinner off the floor), I found the
whole family sitting at table; and feeling that no account of them could be half
so comfortable to you and Mr. Dombey as the sight of them all together, I
brought them all away. This gentleman,' said Miss Tox, pointing out the
apple-faced man, `is the father. Will you have the goodness to come a little
forward, Sir?'
The apple-faced man having sheepishly complied with this request, stood
chuckling and grinning in a front row.
`This is his wife, of course,' said Miss Tox, singling out the young woman
with the baby. `How do you do, Polly?'
`I'm pretty well, I thank you, Ma'am,' said Polly.
By way of bringing her out dexterously, Miss Tox had made the inquiry as in
condescension to an old acquaintance whom she hadn't seen for a fortnight or so.
`I, m glad to hear it,' said Miss Tox. `The other young woman is her
unmarried sister who lives with them, and would take care of her children. Her
name's Jemima. How do you do, Jemima?'
`I'm pretty well, I thank you, Ma'am,' returned Jemima.
`I'm very glad indeed to hear it,' said Miss Tox. `I hope you'll keep so.
Five children. Youngest six weeks. The fine little boy with the blister on his
nose is the eldest. The blister, I believe,' said Miss Tox, looking round upon
the family, `is not constitutional, but accidental?'
The apple-faced man was understood to growl, `Flat iron.'
`I beg your pardon, Sir,' said Miss Tox, `did you?--'
`Flat iron,' he repeated.
`Oh yes,' said Miss Tox. `Yes! quite true. I forgot. The little creature, in
his mother's absence, smelt a warm flat iron. You're quite right, Sir. You were
going to have the goodness to inform me, when we arrived at the door that you
were by trade, a--'
`Stoker,' said the man.
`A choker!' said Miss Tox, quite aghast.
`Stoker,' said the man. `Stream ingine.'
`Oh-h! Yes!' returned Miss Tox, looking thoughtfully at him, and seeming
still to have but a very imperfect understanding of his meaning.
`And how do you like it, Sir?'
`Which, Mum?' said the man.
`That,' replied Miss Tox. `Your trade.'
`Oh! Pretty well, Mum. The ashes sometimes gets in here;' touching his chest:
`and makes a man speak gruff, as at the present time. But it is ashes, Mum, not
crustiness.'
Miss Tox seemed to be so little enlightened by this reply, as to find a
difficulty in pursuing the subject. But Mrs. Chick relieved her, by entering
into a close private examination of Polly, her children, her marriage
certificate, testimonials, and so forth. Polly coming out unscathed from this
ordeal, Mrs. Chick withdrew with her report to her brother's room, and as an
emphatic comment on it, and corroboration of it, carried the two rosiest little
Toodles with her, Toodle being the family name of the apple-faced family.
Mr. Dombey had remained in his own apartment since the death of his wife,
absorbed in visions of the youth, education, and destination of his baby son.
Something lay at the bottom of his cool heart, colder and heavier than its
ordinary load; but it was more a sense of the child's loss than his own,
awakening within him an almost angry sorrow. That the life and progress on which
he built such hopes, should be endangered in the outset by so mean a want; that
Dombey and Son should be tottering for a nurse, was a sore humiliation. And yet
in his pride and jealousy, he viewed with so much bitterness the thought of
being dependent for the very first step towards the accomplishment of his soul's
desire, on a hired serving-woman who would be to the child, for the time, all
that even his alliance could have made his own wife, that in every new rejection
of a candidate he felt a secret pleasure. The time had now come, however, when
he could no longer be divided between these two sets of feelings. The less so,
as there seemed to be no flaw in the title of Polly Toodle after his sister had
set it forth, with many commendations on the indefatigable friendship of Miss
Tox.
`These children look healthy,' said Mr. Dombey. `But to think of their some
day claiming a sort of relationship to Paul!Take them away, Louisa! Let me see
this woman and her husband.'
Mrs. Chick bore off the tender pair of Toodles, and presently returned with
that tougher couple whose presence her brother had commanded.
`My good woman,' said Mr. Dombey, turning round in his easy chair, as one
piece, and not as a man with limbs and joints, `I understand you are poor, and
wish to earn money by nursing the little boy, my son, who has been so
prematurely deprived of what can never be replaced. I have no objection to your
adding to the comforts of your family by that means. So far as I can tell, you
seem to be a deserving object. But I must impose one or two conditions on you,
before you enter my house in that capacity. while you are here, I must stipulate
that you are always known as--say as Richards--an ordinary name, and convenient.
Have you any objection to be known as Richards? You had better consult your
husband.'
As the husband did nothing but chuckle and grin, and continually draw his
right hand across his mouth, moistening the palm, Mrs. Toodle, after nudging him
twice or thrice in vain, dropped a curtsey and replied `that perhaps if she was
to be called out of her name, it would be considered in the wages.'
`Oh, of course,' said Mr. Dombey. `I desire to make it a question of wages,
altogether. Now, Richards, if you nurse my bereaved child, I wish you to
remember this always. You will receive a liberal stipend in return for the
discharge of certain duties, in the performance of which, I wish you to see as
little of your family as possible. When those duties cease to be required and
rendered, and the stipend ceases to be paid, there is an end of all relations
between us. Do you understand me?'
Mrs. Toodle seemed doubtful about it; and as to Toodle himself, he had
evidently no doubt whatever, that he was all abroad.
`You have children of your own,' said Mr. Dombey. `It is not at all in this
bargain that you need become attached to my child, or that my child need become
attached to you. I don't expect or desire anything of the kind. Quite the
reverse. When you go away from here, you will have concluded what is a mere
matter of bargain and sale, hiring and letting: and will stay away. The child
will cease to remember you; and you will cease, if you please, to remember the
child.'
Mrs. Toodle, with a little more colour in her cheeks than she had had before,
said `she hoped she knew her place.'
`I hope you do, Richards,' said Mr. Dombey. `I have no doubt you know it very
well. Indeed it is so plain and obvious that it could hardly be otherwise.
Louisa, my dear, arrange with Richards about money, and let her have it when and
how she pleases. Mr. what's-your name, a word with you, if you please!'
Thus arrested on the threshold as he was following his wife out of the room,
Toodle returned and confronted Mr. Dombey alone. He was a strong, loose,
round-shouldered, shuffling, shaggy fellow, on whom his clothes sat negligently:
with a good deal of hair and whisker, deepened in its natural tint, perhaps by
smoke and coal-dust: hard knotty hands: and a square forehead, as coarse in
grain as the bark of an oak. A thorough contrast in all respects to Mr. Dombey,
who was one of those close-shaved close-cut moneyed gentlemen who are glossy and
crisp like new bank-notes, and who seem to be artificially braced and tightened
as by the stimulating action of golden shower-baths.
`You have a son, I believe?' said Mr. Dombey.
`Four on 'em, Sir. Four hims and a her. All alive!'
`Why, it's as much as you can afford to keep them!' said Mr. Dombey.
`I couldn't hardly afford but one thing in the world less, Sir.'
`What is that?'
`To lose 'em, Sir.'
`Can you read?' asked Mr. Dombey.
`Why, not partick'ler, Sir.'
`Write?'
`With chalk, Sir?'
`With anything?'
`I could make shift to chalk a little bit, I think, if I was put to it,' said
Toodle after some reflection.
`And yet,' said Mr. Dombey, `you are two or three and thirty, I suppose?'
`Thereabouts, I suppose, Sir,' answered Toodle, after more reflection.
`Then why don't you learn?' asked Mr. Dombey.
`So I'm a going to, Sir. One of my little boys is a going to learn me, when
he's old enough, and been to school himself.'
`Well,' said Mr. Dombey, after looking at him attentively, and with no great
favour, as he stood gazing round the room (principally round the ceiling) and
still drawing his hand across and across his mouth. `You heard what I said to
your wife just now?'
`Polly heerd it,' said Toodle, jerking his hat over his shoulder in the
direction of the door, with an air of perfect confidence in his better half.
`It's all right.'
`As you appear to leave everything to her,' said Mr. Dombey, frustrated in
his intention of impressing his views still more distinctly on the husband, as
the stronger character, `I suppose it is of no use my saying anything to you.'
`Not a bit,' said Toodle. `Polly heerd it. She's awake, Sir.'
`I won't detain you any longer then,' returned Mr. Dombey disappointed.
`Where have you worked all your life?'
`Mostly underground, Sir, 'till I got married. I come to the level then. I'm
a going on one of these here railroads when they comes into full play.'
As the last straw breaks the laden camel's back, this piece of underground
information crushed the sinking spirits of Mr. Dombey. He motioned his child's
foster-father to the door, who departed by no means unwillingly: and then
turning the key, paced up and down the room in solitary wretchedness. For all
his starched, impenetrable dignity and composure, he wiped blinding tears from
his eyes as he did so; and often said, with an emotion of which he would not,
for the world, have had a witness, `Poor little fellow!'
It may have been characteristic of Mr. Dombey's pride, that he pitied himself
through the child. Not poor me. Not poor widower, confiding by constraint in the
wife of an ignorant Hind who has been working `mostly underground' all his life,
and yet at whose door Death had never knocked, and at whose poor table four sons
daily sit--but poor little fellow!
Those words being on his lips, it occurred to him--and it is an instance of
the strong attraction with which his hopes and fears and all his thoughts were
tending to one centre--that a great temptation was being placed in this woman's
way. Her infant was a boy too. Now, would it be possible for her to change them?
Though he was soon satisfied that he had dismissed the idea as romantic and
unlikely--though possible, there was no denying--he could not help pursuing it
so far as to entertain within himself a picture of what his condition would be,
if he should discover such an imposture when he was grown old. Whether a man so
situated, would be able to pluck away the result of so many years of usage,
confidence, and belief, from the impostor, and endow a stranger with it?
As his unusual emotion subsided, these misgivings gradually melted away,
though so much of their shadow remained behind, that he was constant in his
resolution to look closely after Richards himself, without appearing to do so.
Being now in an easier frame of mind, he regarded the woman's station as rather
an advantageous circumstance than otherwise, by placing, in itself, a broad
distance between her and the child, and rendering their separation easy and
natural.
Meanwhile terms were ratified and agreed upon between Mrs. Chick and
Richards, with the assistance of Miss Tox; and Richards being with much ceremony
invested with the Dombey baby, as if it were an Order, resigned her own, with
many tears and kisses, to Jemima. Glasses of wine were then produced, to sustain
the drooping spirits of the family.
`You'll take a glass yourself, Sir, won't you?' said Miss Tox, as Toodle
appeared.
`Thankee, Mum,' said Toodle, `since you are suppressing.'
`And you're very glad to leave your dear good wife in such a comfortable
home, ain't you, Sir?' said Miss Tox, nodding and winking at him stealthily.
`No, Mum,' said Toodle. `Here's wishing of her back agin.'
Polly cried more than ever at this. So Mrs. Chick, who had her matronly
apprehensions that this indulgence in grief might be prejudicial to the little
Dombey (`acid, indeed,' she whispered Miss Tox), hastened to the rescue.
`Your little child will thrive charmingly with your sister Jemima, Richards,'
said Mrs. Chick; `and you have only to make an effort--this is a world of
effort, you know, Richards--to be very happy indeed. You have been already
measured for your mourning, haven't you, Richards?'
`Ye--es, Ma'am,' sobbed Polly.
`And it'll fit beautifully. I know,' said Mrs. Chick, `for the same young
person has made me many dresses. The very best materials, too!'
`Lor, you'll be so smart,' said Miss Tox, `that your husband won't know you;
will you, Sir?'
`I should know her,' said Toodle, gruffly, `anyhows and anywheres.'
Toodle was evidently not to be bought over.
`As to living, Richards, you know,' pursued Mrs. Chick, `why the very best of
everything will be at your disposal. You will order your little dinner every
day; and anything you take a fancy to, I'm sure will be as readily provided as
if you were a Lady.'
`Yes, to be sure!' said Miss Tox, keeping up the ball with great sympathy.
`And as to porter!--quite unlimited, will it not, Louisa?'
`Oh, certainly!' returned Mrs. Chick in the same tone. `With a little
abstinence, you know, my dear, in point of vegetables.'
`And pickles, perhaps,' suggested Miss Tox.
`With such exceptions,' said Louisa, `she'll consult her choice entirely, and
be under no restraint at all, my love.'
`And then, of course, you know,' said Miss Tox, `however fond she is of her
own dear little child--and I'm sure, Louisa, you don't blame her for being fond
of it?'
`Oh no!' cried Mrs. Chick, benignantly.
`Still,' resumed Miss Tox, `she naturally must be interested in her young
charge, and must consider it a privilege to see a little cherub closely
connected with the superior classes, gradually unfolding itself from day to day
at one common fountain. Is it not so, Louisa?'
`Most undoubtedly!' said Mrs. Chick. `You see, my love, she's already quite
contented and comfortable, and means to say good-bye to her sister Jemima and
her little pets, and her good honest husband, with a light heart and a smile;
don't she, my dear!'
`Oh yes!' cried Miss Tox. `To be sure she does!'
Notwithstanding which, however, poor Polly embraced them all round in great
distress, and finally ran away to avoid any more particular leave-taking between
herself and the children. But the stratagem hardly succeeded as well as it
deserved; for the smallest boy but one divining her intent, immediately began
swarming up stairs after her--if that word of doubtful etymology be
admissible--on his arms and legs; while the eldest (known in the family by the
name of Biler, in remembrance of the steam engine) beat a demoniacal tattoo with
his boots, expressive of grief; in which he was joined by the rest of the
family.
A quantity of oranges and halfpence thrust indiscriminately on each young
Toodle, checked the first violence of their regret, and the family were speedily
transported to their own home, by means of the hackney-coach kept in waiting for
that purpose. The children, under the guardianship of Jemima, blocked up the
window, and dropped out oranges and halfpence all the way along. Mr. Toodle
himself preferred to ride behind among the spikes, as being the mode of
conveyance to which he was best accustomed.
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