In which Mr. Dombey, as a Man and a Father, is seen at the Head
of the Home-Department
THE funeral of the deceased lady having been `performed' to the entire
satisfaction of the undertaker, as well as of the neighbourhood at large, which
is generally disposed to be captious on such a point, and is prone to take
offence at any omissions or short-comings in the ceremonies, the various members
of Mr. Dombey's household subsided into their several places in the domestic
system. That small world, like the great one out of doors, had the capacity of
easily forgetting its dead; and when the cook had said she was a quiet-tempered
lady, and the house-keeper had said it was the common lot, and the butler had
said who'd have thought it, and the housemaid had said she couldn't hardly
believe it, and the footman had said it seemed exactly like a dream, they had
quite worn the subject out, and began to think their mourning was wearing rusty
too.
On Richards, who was established up stairs in a state of honourable
captivity, the dawn of her new life seemed to break cold and grey. Mr. Dombey's
house was a large one, on the shady side of a tall, dark, dreadfully genteel
street in the region between Portland Place and Bryanstone Square. It was a
corner house, with great wide areas containing cellars frowned upon by barred
window, and leered at by crooked-eyed doors leading to dustbins. It was a house
of dismal state, with a circular back to it, containing a whole suit of
drawing-rooms looking upon a gravelled yard, where two gaunt trees, with
blackened trunks and branches, rattled rather than rustled, their leaves were so
smoke-dried. The summer sun was never on the street, but in the morning about
breakfast-time, when it came with the water-carts and the old-clothes men, and
the people with geraniums, and the umbrella-mender, and the man who trilled the
little bell of the Dutch clock as he went along. It was soon gone again to
return no more that day; and the bands of music and the straggling Punch's shows
going after it, left it a prey to the most dismal of organs, and white mice;
with now and then a porcupine, to vary the entertainments; until the butlers
whose families were dining out, began to stand at the house-doors in the
twilight, and the lamplighter made his nightly failure in attempting to brighten
up the street with gas.
It was as blank a house inside as outside. When the funeral was over, Mr.
Dombey ordered the furniture to be covered up--perhaps to preserve it for the
son with whom his plans were all associated--and the rooms to be ungarnished,
saving such as he retained for himself on the ground floor. Accordingly,
mysterious shapes were made of tables and chairs, heaped together in the middle
of rooms, and covered over with great winding-sheets. Bell-handles,
window-blinds, and looking-glasses, being papered up in journals, daily and
weekly, obtruded fragmentary accounts of deaths and dreadful murders. Every
chandelier or lustre, muffled in Holland, looked like a monstrous tear depending
from the ceiling's eye. Odours, as from vaults and damp places, came out of the
chimneys. The dead and buried lady was awful in a picture-frame of ghastly
bandages. Every gust of wind that rose, brought eddying round the corner from
the neighbouring mews, some fragments of the straw that had been strewn before
the house when she was ill, mildewed remains of which were still cleaving to the
neighbourhood; and these, being always drawn by some invisible attraction to the
threshold of the dirty house to let immediately opposite, addressed a dismal
eloquence to Mr. Dombey's windows.
The apartments which Mr. Dombey reserved for his own inhabiting, were
attainable from the hall, and consisted of a sitting-room; a library, which was
in fact a dressing-room, so that the smell of hot-pressed paper, vellum morocco,
and Russia leather, contended in it with the smell of divers pairs of boots; and
a kind of conservatory or little glass breakfast-room beyond, commanding a
prospect of the trees before mentioned, and, generally speaking, of a few
prowling cats. These three rooms opened upon one another. In the morning, when
Mr. Dombey was at his breakfast in one or other of the two first-mentioned of
them, as well as in the afternoon when he came home to dinner, a bell was rung
for Richards to repair to this glass chamber, and there walk to and fro with her
young charge. From the glimpses she caught of Mr. Dombey at these times, sitting
in the dark distance, looking out towards the infant from among the dark heavy
furniture--the house had been inhabited for years by his father, and in many of
its appointments was old-fashioned and grim--she began to entertain ideas of him
in his solitary state, as if he were a lone prisoner in a cell, or a strange
apparition that was not to be accosted or understood.
Little Paul Dombey's foster-mother had led this life herself, and had carried
little Paul through it for some weeks; and had returned up stairs one day from a
melancholy saunter through the dreary rooms of state (she never went out without
Mrs. Chick, who called on fine mornings, usually accompanied by Miss Tox, to
take her and Baby for an airing--or in other words, to march them gravely up and
down the pavement; like a walking funeral); when, as she was sitting in her own
room, the door was slowly and quietly opened, and a dark-eyed little girl looked
in.
`It's Miss Florence come home from her aunt's, no doubt,' thought Richards,
who had never seen the child before. `Hope I see you well, Miss.'
`Is that my brother?' asked the child, pointing to the Baby.
`Yes, my pretty,' answered Richards. `Come and kiss him.'
But the child, instead of advancing, looked her earnestly in the face, and
said:
`What have you done with my Mama?'
`Lord bless the little creeter!' cried Richards, `what a sad question! I
done? Nothing, Miss.'
`What have they done with my Mama?' inquired the child.
`I never saw such a melting thing in all my life!' said Richards, who
naturally substituted for this child one of her own, inquiring for herself in
like circumstances. `Come nearer here, my dear Miss! Don't be afraid of me.'
`I am not afraid of you,' said the child, drawing nearer. `But I want to know
what they have done with my Mama.'
`My darling,' said Richards, `you wear that pretty black frock in remembrance
of your Mama.'
`I can remember my Mama,' returned the child, with tears springing to her
eyes, `in any frock.'
`But people put on black, to remember people when they're gone.'
`Where gone?' asked the child.
`Come and sit down by me,' said Richards, `and I'll tell you a story.'
With a quick perception that it was intended to relate to what she had asked,
little Florence laid aside the bonnet she had held in her hand until now, and
sat down on a stool at the Nurse's feet, looking up into her face.
`Once upon a time,' said Richards, `there was a lady--a very good lady, and
her little daughter dearly loved her.'
`A very good lady and her little daughter dearly loved her,' repeated the
child.
`Who, when Good thought it right that it should be so, was taken ill and
died.'
The child shuddered.
`Died, never to be seen again by any one on earth, and was buried in the
ground where the trees grow.'
`The cold ground?' said the child, shuddering again.
`No! The warm ground,' returned Polly, seizing her advantage, `where the ugly
little seeds turn into beautiful flowers, and into grass, and corn, and I don't
know what all besides. Where good people turn into bright angels, and fly away
to Heaven!'
The child, who had drooped her head, raised it again, and sat looking at her
intently.
`So; let me see,' said Polly, not a little flurried between this earnest
scrutiny, her desire to comfort the child, her sudden success, and her very
slight confidence in her own powers. `So, when this lady died, wherever they
took her, or wherever they put her, she went to GOD! and she prayed to Him, this
lady did,' said Polly, affecting herself beyond measure; being heartily in
earnest, `to teach her little daughter to be sure of that in her heart: and to
know that she was happy there and loved her still: and to hope and try--Oh, all
her life--to meet her there one day, never, never, never to part any more.'
`It was my Mama!' exclaimed the child, springing up, and clasping her round
the neck.
`And the child's heart,' said Polly, drawing her to her breast: `the little
daughter's heart was so full of the truth of this, that even when she heard it
from a strange nurse that couldn't tell it right, but was a poor mother herself
and that was all, she found a comfort in it--didn't feel so lonely--sobbed and
cried upon her bosom--took kindly to the baby lying in her lap--and--there,
there, there!' said Polly, smoothing the child's curls and dropping tears upon
them. `There, poor dear!'
`Oh well, Miss Floy! And won't your Pa be angry neither!' cried a quick voice
at the door, proceeding from a short, brown, womanly girl of fourteen, with a
little snub nose, and black eyes like jet beads. `When it was 'tickerlerly given
out that you wasn't to go and worrit the wet nurse.'
`She don't worry me,' was the surprised rejoinder of Polly. `I am very fond
of children.'
`Oh! but begging your pardon, Mrs. Richards, that don't matter, you know,'
returned the black-eyed girl, who was so desperately sharp and biting that she
seemed to make one's eyes water. `I may be very fond of pennywinkles, Mrs.
Richards, but it don't follow that I'm to have 'em for tea.'
`Well, it don't matter,' said Polly.
`Oh, thank'ee, Mrs. Richards, don't it!' returned the sharp girl.
`Remembering, however, if you'll be so good, that Miss Floy's under my charge,
and Master Paul's under your'n.'
`But still we needn't quarrel,' said Polly.
`Oh no, Mrs. Richards,' rejoined Spitfire. `Not at all, I don't wish it, we
needn't stand upon that footing, Miss Floy being a permanency, Master Paul a
temporary.' Spitfire made use of none but comma pauses; shooting out whatever
she had to say in one sentence, and in one breath, if possible.
`Miss Florence has just come home, hasn't she?' asked Polly.
`Yes, Mrs. Richards, just come, and here, Miss Floy, before you've been in
the house a quarter of an hour, you go a smearing your wet face against the
expensive mourning that Mrs. Richards is a wearing for your Ma!' With this
remonstrance, young Spitfire, whose real name was Susan Nipper, detached the
child from her new friend by a wrench--as if she were a tooth. But she seemed to
do it, more in the excessively sharp exercise of her official functions, than
with any deliberate unkindness.
`She'll be quite happy, now she has come home again,' said Polly, nodding to
her with an encouraging smile upon her wholesome face, `and will be so pleased
to see her dear Papa to-night.'
`Lork, Mr. Richards!' cried Miss Nipper, taking up her words with a jerk.
`Don't. See her dear Papa indeed! I should like to see her do it!'
`Won't she then?' asked Polly.
`Lork, Mrs. Richards, no, her Pa's a deal too wrapped up in somebody else,
and before there was a somebody else to be wrapped up in she never was a
favourite, girls are thrown away in this house, Mrs. Richards, I assure you.'
The child looked quickly from one nurse to the other, as if she understood
and felt what was said.
`You surprise me!' cried Polly. `Hasn't Mr. Dombey seen her since--'
`No,' interrupted Susan Nipper. `Not once since, and he hadn't hardly set his
eyes upon her before that for months and months, and I don't think he'd have
known her for his own child if he had met her in the streets, or would know her
for his own child if he was to meet her in the streets to-morrow, Mrs. Richards,
as to me,' said Spitfire, with a giggle, `I doubt if he's aweer of my
existence.'
`Pretty dear!' said Richards; meaning, not Miss Nipper, but the little
Florence.
`Oh! there's a Tartar within a hundred miles of where we're now in
conversation, I can tell you, Mrs. Richards, present company always excepted
too,' said Susan Nipper; `wish you good morning, Mrs. Richards, now Miss Floy,
you come along with me, and don't go hanging back like a naughty wicked child
that judgments is no example to, don't.'
In spite of being thus adjured, and in spite also of some hauling on the part
of Susan Nipper, tending towards the dislocation of her right shoulder, little
Florence broke away, and kissed her new friend, affectionately.
`Good-bye!' said the child. `God bless you! I shall come to see you again
soon, and you'll come to see me? Susan will let us. Won't you, Susan?'
Spitfire seemed to be in the main a good-natured little body, although a
disciple of that school of trainers of the young idea which holds that
childhood, like money, must be shaken and rattled and jostled about a good deal
to keep it bright. For, being thus appealed to with some endearing gestures and
caresses, she folded her small arms and shook her head, and conveyed a relenting
expression into her very-wide-open black eyes.
`It ain't right of you to ask it, Miss Floy, for you know I can't refuse you,
but Mrs. Richards and me will see what can be done, if Mrs. Richards likes, I
may wish, you see, to take a voyage to Chaney, Mrs. Richards, but I mayn't know
how to leave the London Docks.'
Richards assented to the proposition.
`This house ain't so exactly ringing with merry-making,' said Miss Nipper,
`that one need be lonelier than one must be. Your Toxes and your Chickses may
draw out my two front double teeth, Mrs. Richards, but that's no reason why I
need offer 'em the whole set.'
This proposition was also assented to by Richards, as an obvious one.
`So I'm agreeable, I'm sure,' said Susan Nipper, `to live friendly, Mrs.
Richards, while Master Paul continues a permanency, if the means can be planned
out without going openly against orders, but goodness gracious ME, Miss Floy,
you haven't got your things off yet, you naughty child, you haven't, come
along!'
With these words, Susan Nipper, in a transport of coercion, made a charge at
her young ward, and swept her out of the room.
The child, in her grief and neglect, was so gentle, so quiet, and
uncomplaining; was possessed of so much affection that no one seemed to care to
have, and so much sorrowful intelligence that no one seemed to mind or think
about the wounding of; that Polly's heart was sore when she was left alone
again. In the simple passage that had taken place between herself and the
motherless little girl, her own motherly heart had been touched no less than the
child's; and she felt, as the child did, that there was something of confidence
and interest between them from that moment.
Nothwithstanding Mr. Toodle's great reliance on Polly, she was perhaps in
point of artificial accomplishments very little his superior. But she was a good
plain sample of a nature that is ever, in the mass, better, truer, higher,
nobler, quicker to feel, and much more constant to retain, all tenderness and
pity, self-denial and devotion, than the nature of men. And, perhaps, unlearned
as she was, she could have brought a dawning knowledge home to Mr. Dombey at
that early day, which would not then have struck him in the end like lightning.
But this is from the purpose. Polly only thought, at that time, of improving
on her successful propitiation of Miss Nipper, and devising some means of having
little Florence beside her, lawfully, and without rebellion. An opening happened
to present itself that very night.
She had been rung down into the glass room as usual, and had walked about and
about it a long time, with the baby in her arms, when, to her great surprise and
dismay, Mr. Dombey came out, suddenly, and stopped before her.
`Good evening, Richards.'
Just the same austere, stiff gentleman, as he had appeared to her on that
first day. Such a hard-looking gentleman, that she involuntarily dropped her
eyes and her curtsey at the same time.
`How is Master Paul, Richards?'
`Quite thriving, Sir, and well.'
`He looks so,' said Mr. Dombey, glancing with great interest at the tiny face
she uncovered for his observation, and yet affecting to be half careless of it.
`They give you everything you want, I hope?'
`Oh yes, thank you, Sir.'
She suddenly appended such an obvious hesitation to this reply, however, that
Mr. Dombey, who had turned away, stopped, and turned round again, inquiringly.
`I believe nothing is so good for making children lively and cheerful, Sir,
as seeing other children playing about 'em,' observed Polly, taking courage.
`I think I mentioned to you, Richards, when you came here,' said Mr. Dombey,
with a frown, `that I wished you to see as little of your family as possible.
You can continue your walk if you please.'
With that, he disappeared into his inner room; and Polly had the satisfaction
of feeling that he had thoroughly misunderstood her object, and that she had
fallen into disgrace without the least advancement of her purpose.
Next night, she found him walking about the conservatory when she came down.
As she stopped at the door, checked by this unusual sight, and uncertain whether
to advance or retreat, he called her in.
`If you really think that sort of society is good the child,' he said
sharply, as if there had been no interval since she proposed it, `where's Miss
Florence?'
`Nothing could be better than Miss Florence, Sir,' said Polly eagerly, `but I
understood from her little maid that they were not to--'
Mr. Dombey rang the bell, and walked till it was answered.
`Tell them always to let Miss Florence be with Richards when she chooses, and
go out with her, and so forth. Tell them to let the children be together, when
Richards wishes it.'
The iron was now hot, and Richards striking on it boldly--it was a good cause
and she was bold in it, though instinctively afraid of Mr.Dombey--requested that
Miss Florence might be sent down then and there, to make friends with here
little brother.
She feigned to be dandling the child as the servant retired on this errand,
but she thought that she saw Mr. Dombey's colour changed; that the expression of
his face quite altered; that he turned, hurriedly, as if to gainsay what he had
said, or she had said, or both, and was only deterred by very shame.
And she was right. The last time he had seen his slighted child, there had
been that in the sad embrace between her and her dying mother, which was at once
a revelation and a reproach to him. Let him be absorbed as he would in the Son
on whom he built such high hopes, he could not forget that closing scene. He
could not forget that he had had no part in it. That, at the bottom of its clear
depths of tenderness and truth, lay those two figures clasped in each other's
arms, while he stood on the bank above them, looking down a mere spectator--not
a sharer with them--quite shut out.
Unable to exclude these things from his remembrance, or to keep his mind free
from such imperfect shapes of the meaning with which they were fraught, as were
able to make themselves visible to him through the mist of his pride, his
previous feelings of indifference towards little Florence changed into an
uneasiness of an extraordinary kind. He almost felt as if she watched and
distrusted him. As if she held the clue to something secret in his breast, of
the nature of which he was hardly informed himself. As if she had an innate
knowledge of one jarring and discordant string within him, and her very breath
could sound it.
His feeling about the child had been negative from her birth. He had never
conceived an aversion to her: it had not been worth his while or in his humour.
She had never been a positively disagreeable object to him. But now he was ill
at ease about her. She troubled his peace. He would have preferred to put her
idea aside altogether, if he had known how. Perhaps--who shall decide on such
mysteries!--he was afraid that he might come to hate her.
When little Florence timidly presented herself, Mr. Dombey stopped in his
pacing up and down and looked towards her. Had he looked with greater interest
and with a father's eye, he might have read in her keen glance the impulses and
fears that made her waver; the passionate desire to run clinging to him, crying,
as she hid her face in his embrace, `Oh father, try to love me! there's no one
else!' the dread of a repulse; the fear of being too bold, and of offending him;
the pitiable need in which she stood of some assurance and encouragement; and
how her overcharged young heart was wandering to find some natural
resting-place, for its sorrow and affection.
But he saw nothing of this. He saw her pause irresolutely at the door and
look towards him; and he saw no more.
`Come in,' he said, `come in: what is the child afraid of?'
She came in; and after glancing round her for a moment with an uncertain air,
stood pressing her small hands hard together, close within the door.
`Come here, Florence,' said her father, coldly. `Do you know who I am?'
`Yes, Papa.'
`Have you nothing to say to me?'
The tears that stood in her eyes as she raised them quickly to his face, were
frozen by the expression it wore. She looked down again, and put out her
trembling hand.
Mr. Dombey took it loosely in his own, and stood looking down upon her for a
moment, as if he knew as little as the child, what to say or do.
`There! Be a good girl,' he said, patting her on the head, and regarding her
as it were by stealth with a disturbed and doubtful look. `Go to Richards! Go!'
His little daughter hesitated for another instant as though she would have
clung about him still, or had some lingering hope that he might raise her in his
arms and kiss her. She looked up in his face once more. He thought how like her
expression was then, to what it had been when she looked round at the
Doctor--that night--and instinctively dropped her hand and turned away.
It was not difficult to perceive that Florence was at a great disadvantage in
her father's presence. It was not only a constraint upon the child's mind, but
even upon the natural grace and freedom of her actions. Still Polly persevered
with all the better heart for seeing this; and, judging of Mr. Dombey by
herself, had great confidence in the mute appeal of poor little Florence's
mourning dress. `It's hard indeed,' thought Polly, `if he takes only to one
little motherless child, when he has another, and that a girl, before his eyes.'
So, Polly kept her before his eyes, as long as she could, and managed so well
with little Paul, as to make it very plain that he was all the livelier for his
sister's company. When it was time to withdraw up stairs again, she would have
sent Florence into the inner room to say good-night to her father, but the child
was timid and drew back: and when she urged her again, said, spreading her hands
before her eyes, as if to shut out her own unworthiness, `Oh no, no! He don't
want me. He don't want me!'
The little altercation between them had attracted the notice of Mr. Dombey,
who inquired from the table where he was sitting at his wine, what the matter
was.
`Miss Florence was afraid of interrupting, Sir, if she came in to say
good-night,' said Richards.
`It doesn't matter,' returned Mr. Dombey. `You can let her come and go
without regarding me.'
The child shrunk as she listened--and was gone before her humble friend
looked round again.
However, Polly triumphed not a little in the success of her well-intentioned
scheme, and in the address with which she had brought it to bear: whereof she
made a full disclosure to Spitfire when she was once more safely intrenched up
stairs. Miss Nipper received that proof of her confidence, as well as the
prospect of their free association for the future, rather coldly, and was
anything but enthusiastic in her demonstrations of joy.
`I thought you would have been pleased,' said Polly.
`Oh yes, Mrs. Richards, I'm very well pleased, thank you,' returned Susan,
who had suddenly become so very upright that she seemed to have put an
additional bone in her stays.
`You don't show it,' said Polly.
`Oh! Being only a permanency I couldn't be expected to show it like a
temporary,' said Susan Nipper. `Temporaries carries it all before 'em here, I
find, but though there's a excellent party-wall between this house and the next,
I mayn't exactly like to go to it, Mrs. Richards, notwithstanding!'
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