A Bird's-eye Glimpse of Miss Tox's Dwelling-place; also of the
State of Miss Tox's Affections
MISS TOX inhabited a dark little house that had been squeezed, at some remote
period of English History, into a fashionable neighbourhood at the west end of
the town, where it stood in the shad like a poor relation of the great street
round the corner, coldly looked down upon by mighty mansions. It was not exactly
in a court, and it was not exactly in a yard; but it was in the dullest of
No-Thoroughfares, rendered anxious and haggard by distant double knocks. The
name of this retirement, where grass grew between the chinks in the stone
pavement, was Princess's Place; and in Princess's Place was Princess's Chapel,
with a tinkling bell, where sometimes as many as five-and-twenty people attended
service on a Sunday. The Princess's Arms was also there, and much resorted to by
splendid footmen. A sedan chair was kept inside the railing before the
Princess's Arms, but it had never come out within the memory of man; and on fine
mornings, the top of every rail (there were eight-and-forty, as Miss Tox had
often counted) was decorated with a pewter-pot.
There was another private house besides Miss Tox's in Princess's Place: not
to mention an immense pair of gates, with an immense pair of lion-headed
knockers on them, which were never opened by any chance, and were supposed to
constitute a disused entrance to somebody's stables. Indeed, there was a smack
of stabling in the air of Princess's Place; and Miss Tox's bedroom (which was at
the back) commanded a vista of Mews, where hostlers, at whatever sort of work
engaged, were continually accompanying themselves with effervescent noises; and
where the most domestic and confidential garments of coachmen and their wives
and families, usually hung, like Macbeth's banners, on the outward walls.
At this other private house in Princess's Place, tenanted by a retired butler
who had married a housekeeper, apartments were let Furnished, to a single
gentleman: to wit, a wooden-featured, blue-faced Major, with his eyes starting
out of his head, in whom Miss Tox recognised, as she herself expressed it,
`something so truly military;' and between whom and herself, an occasional
interchange of newspapers and pamphlets, and such Platonic dalliance, was
effected through the medium of a dark servant of the Major's, who Miss Tox was
quite content to classify as a `native,' without connecting him with any
geographical idea whatever.
Perhaps there never was a smaller entry and staircase, than the entry and
staircase of Miss Tox's house. Perhaps, taken altogether, from top to bottom, it
was the most inconvenient little house in England, and the crookedest; but then,
Miss Tox said, what a situation! There was very little daylight to be got there
in the winter: no sun at the best of times: air was out of the question, and
traffic was walled out. Still Miss Tox said, think of the situation! So said the
blue-faced Major, whose eyes were starting out of his head: who gloried in
Princess's Place: and who delighted to turn the conversation at his club,
whenever he could, to something connected with some of the great people in the
great street round the corner, that he might have the satisfaction of saying
they were his neighbours.
The dingy tenement inhabited by Miss Tox was her own; having been devised and
bequeathed to her by the deceased owner of the fishy eye in the locket, of whom
a miniature portrait, with a powdered head and a pigtail, balanced the
kettleholder on opposite sides of the parlour fireplace. The greater part of the
furniture was of the powdered-head and pig-tail period: comprising a platewarmer,
always languishing and sprawling its four attenuated bow legs in somebody's way;
and an obsolete harpsichord, illuminated round the maker's name with a painted
garland of sweet peas.
Although Major Bagstock had arrived at what is called in polite literature,
the grand meridian of life, and was proceeding on his journey down-hill with
hardly any throat, and a very rigid pair of jaw-bones, and long-flapped
elephantine ears, and his eyes and complexion in the state of artificial
excitement already mentioned, he was mightily proud of awakening an interest in
Miss Tox, and tickled his vanity with the fiction that she was a splendid woman,
who had her eye on him. This he had several times hinted at the club: in
connexion with little jocularities, of which old Joe Bagstock, old Joey
Bagstock, old J. Bagstock, old Josh Bagstock, or so forth, was the perpetual
theme: it being, as it were, the Major's stronghold and donjon-keep of light
humour, to be on the most familiar terms with his own name.
`Joey B., Sir,' the Major would say, with a flourish of his walking-stick,
`is worth a dozen of you. If you had a few more of the Bagstock breed among you,
Sir, you'd be none the worse for it. Old Joe, Sir, needn't look far for a wife
even now, if he was on the look-out; but he's hard-hearted, Sir, is Joe--he's
tough, Sir, tough, and de-vilish sly!' After such a declaration wheezing sounds
would be heard; and the Major's blue would deepen into purple, while his eyes
strained and started convulsively.
Notwithstanding his very liberal laudation of himself, however, the Major was
selfish. It may be doubted whether there ever was a more entirely selfish person
at heart; or at stomach is perhaps a better expression, seeing that he was more
decidedly endowed with that latter organ than with the former. He had no idea of
being overlooked or slighted by anybody; least of all, had he the remotest
comprehension of being over-looked and slighted by Miss Tox.
And yet, Miss Tox, as it appeared, forgot him--gradually forgot him. She
began to forget him soon after her discovery of the Toodle family. She continued
to forget him up to the time of the christening. She went on forgetting him with
compound interest after that. Something or somebody had superseded him as a
source of interest.
`Good morning, Ma'am,' said the Major, meeting Miss Tox in Princess's Place,
some weeks after the changes chronicled in the last chapter.
`Good morning, Sir,' said Miss Tox; very coldly.
`Joe Bagstock, Ma'am,' observed the Major, with his usual gallantry, `has not
had the happiness of bowing to you at your window, for a considerable period.
Joe has been hardly used, ma'am. His sun has been behind a cloud.'
Miss Tox inclined her head; but very coldly indeed.
`Joe's luminary has been out of town, Ma'am, perhaps,' inquired the Major.
`I? out of town? oh no, I have not been out of town,' said Miss Tox. `I have
been much engaged lately. My time is nearly all devoted to some very intimate
friends. I am afraid I have none to spare, even now. Good morning, Sir!'
As Miss Tox, with her most fascinating step and carriage, disappeared from
Princess's Place, the Major stood looking after her with a bluer face than ever:
muttering and growling some not at all complimentary remarks.
`Why, damme, Sir,' said the Major, rolling his lobster eyes round and round
Princess's Place, and apostrophizing its fragrant air, `six months ago, the
woman loved the ground Joe Bagstock walked on. What's the meaning of it?'
The Major decided, after some consideration, that it meant man-traps; that it
meant plotting and snaring; that Miss Tox was digging pitfalls. `But you won't
catch Joe, Ma'am,' said the Major. `He's tough, Ma'am, tough, is J. B. Tough,
and de-vilish sly!' over which reflection he chuckled for the rest of the day.
But still, when that day and many other days were gone and past, it seemed
that Miss Tox took no heed whatever of the Major, and thought nothing at all
about him. She had been wont, once upon a time, to look out at one of her little
dark windows by accident, and blushingly return the Major's greeting; but now,
she never gave the Major a chance, and cared nothing at all whether he looked
over the way or not. Other changes had come to pass too. The Major, standing in
the shade of his own apartment, could make out that an air of greater smartness
had recently come over Miss Tox's house; that a new cage with gilded wires had
been provided for the ancient little canary bird; that divers ornaments, cut out
of coloured card-boards and paper, seemed to decorate the chimney-piece and
tables; that a plant or two had suddenly sprung up in the windows; that Miss Tox
occasionally practised on the harpsichord, whose garland of sweet peas was
always displayed ostentatiously, crowned with the Copenhagen and Bird Waltzes in
a Music Book of Miss Tox's own copying.
Over and above all this, Miss Tox had long been dressed with uncommon care
and elegance in slight mourning. But this helped the Major out of his
difficulty; and he determined within himself that she had come into a small
legacy, and grown proud.
It was on the very next day after he had eased his mind by arriving at this
decision, that the Major, sitting at his breakfast, saw an apparition so
tremendous and wonderful in Miss Tox's little drawing-room, that he remained for
some time rooted to his chair; then, rushing into the next room, returned with a
double-barrelled opera-glass, through which he surveyed it intently for some
minutes.
`It's a Baby, Sir,' said the Major, shutting up the glass again, `for fifty
thousand pounds!'
The Major couldn't forget it. He could do nothing but whistle, and stare to
that extent, that his eyes compared with what they now became, had been in
former times quite cavernous and sunken. Day after day, two, three, four times a
week, this Baby reappeared. The Major continued to stare and whistle. To all
other intents and purposes he was alone in Princess's Place. Miss Tox has ceased
to mind what he did. He might have been black as well as blue, and it would have
been of no consequence to her.
The perseverance with which she walked out of Princess's Place to fetch this
baby and its nurse, and walked back with them, and walked home with them again,
and continually mounted guard over them; and the perseverance with which she
nursed it herself, and fed it, and played with it, and froze its young blood
with airs upon the harpsichord; was extraordinary. At about this same period,
too, she was seized with a passion for looking at a certain bracelet; also with
a passion for looking at the moon, of which she would take long observations
from her chamber window. But whatever she looked at; sun, moon, stars, or
bracelet; she looked no more at the Major. And the Major whistled, and stared,
and wondered, and dodged about his room, and could make nothing of it.
`You'll quite win my brother Paul's heart, and that's the truth, my dear,'
said Mrs. Chick, one day.
Miss Tox turned pale.
`He grows more like Paul every day,' said Mrs. Chick.
Miss Tox returned no other reply than by taking the little Paul in her arms,
and making his cockade perfectly flat and limp with her caresses.
`His mother, my dear,' said Miss Tox, `whose acquaintance I was to have made
through you, does he at all resemble her?'
`Not at all,' returned Louisa.
`She was--she was pretty, I believe?' faltered Miss Tox.
`Why, poor dear Fanny was interesting,' said Mrs. Chick, after some judicial
consideration. `Certainly interesting. She had not that air of commanding
superiority which one would somehow expect, almost as a matter of course, to
find in my brother's wife; nor had she that strength and vigour of mind which
such a man requires.'
Miss Tox heaved a deep sigh.
`But she was pleasing:' said Mrs. Chick: `extremely so. And she meant!--oh,
dear, how well poor Fanny meant!'
`You Angel!' cried Miss Tox to little Paul. `You picture of you own Papa!'
If the Major could have known how many hopes and ventures, what a multitude
of plans and speculations, rested on that baby head; and could have seen them
hovering, in all their heterogeneous confusion and disorder, round the puckered
cap of the unconscious little Paul; he might have stared indeed. Then would he
have recognised, among the crowd, some few ambitious motes and beams belonging
to Miss Tox; then would he perhaps have understood the nature of that lady's
faltering investment in the Dombey Firm.
If the child himself could have awakened in the night, and seen, gathered
about his cradle-curtains, faint reflections of the dreams that other people had
of him, they might have scared him, with good reason. But he slumbered on, alike
unconscious of the kind intentions of Miss Tox, the wonder of the Major, the
early sorrows of his sister, and the stern visions of his father; and innocent
that any spot of earth contained a Dombey or a Son.
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