Dombey and Son

Florence resolved, at last, to speak to Walter. She believed she knew now what the cause of his estrangement was, and she thought it would be a relief to her full heart, and would set him more at ease, if she told him she had found it out, and quite submitted to it, and did not reproach him.

It was on a certain Sunday afternoon, that Florence took this resolution. The faithful Captain, in an amazing shirt-collar, was sitting by her, reading with his spectacles on, and she asked him where Walter was.

‘I think he’s down below, my lady lass,’ returned the Captain.

‘I should like to speak to him,’ said Florence, rising hurriedly as if to go downstairs.

‘I’ll rouse him up here, Beauty,’ said the Captain, ‘in a trice.’

Thereupon the Captain, with much alacrity, shouldered his book – for he made it a point of duty to read none but very large books on a Sunday, as having a more staid appearance: and had bargained, years ago, for a prodigious volume at a book-stall, five lines of which utterly confounded him at any time, insomuch that he had not yet ascertained of what subject it treated – and withdrew. Walter soon appeared.

‘Captain Cuttle tells me, Miss Dombey,’ he eagerly began on coming in – but stopped when he saw her face.

‘You are not so well to-day. You look distressed. You have been weeping.’

He spoke so kindly, and with such a fervent tremor in his voice, that the tears gushed into her eyes at the sound of his words.

‘Walter,’ said Florence, gently, ‘I am not quite well, and I have been weeping. I want to speak to you.’

He sat down opposite to her, looking at her beautiful and innocent face; and his own turned pale, and his lips trembled.

‘You said, upon the night when I knew that you were saved – and oh! dear Walter, what I felt that night, and what I hoped! – ’

He put his trembling hand upon the table between them, and sat looking at her.

‘ – that I was changed. I was surprised to hear you say so, but I understand, now, that I am. Don’t be angry with me, Walter. I was too much overjoyed to think of it, then.’

She seemed a child to him again. It was the ingenuous, confiding, loving child he saw and heard. Not the dear woman, at whose feet he would have laid the riches of the earth.

‘You remember the last time I saw you, Walter, before you went away?’

He put his hand into his breast, and took out a little purse.

‘I have always worn it round my neck! If I had gone down in the deep, it would have been with me at the bottom of the sea.’

‘And you will wear it still, Walter, for my old sake?’

‘Until I die!’

She laid her hand on his, as fearlessly and simply, as if not a day had intervened since she gave him the little token of remembrance.

‘I am glad of that. I shall be always glad to think so, Walter. Do you recollect that a thought of this change seemed to come into our minds at the same time that evening, when we were talking together?’

‘No!’ he answered, in a wondering tone.

‘Yes, Walter. I had been the means of injuring your hopes and prospects even then. I feared to think so, then, but I know it now. If you were able, then, in your generosity, to hide from me that you knew it too, you cannot do so now, although you try as generously as before. You do. I thank you for it, Walter, deeply, truly; but you cannot succeed. You have suffered too much in your own hardships, and in those of your dearest relation, quite to overlook the innocent cause of all the peril and affliction that has befallen you. You cannot quite forget me in that character, and we can be brother and sister no longer. But, dear Walter, do not think that I complain of you in this. I might have known it – ought to have known it – but forgot it in my joy. All I hope is that you may think of me less irksomely when this feeling is no more a secret one; and all I ask is, Walter, in the name of the poor child who was your sister once, that you will not struggle with yourself, and pain yourself, for my sake, now that I know all!’

Walter had looked upon her while she said this, with a face so full of wonder and amazement, that it had room for nothing else. Now he caught up the hand that touched his, so entreatingly, and held it between his own.

‘Oh, Miss Dombey,’ he said, ‘is it possible that while I have been suffering so much, in striving with my sense of what is due to you, and must be rendered to you, I have made you suffer what your words disclose to me? Never, never, before Heaven, have I thought of you but as the single, bright, pure, blessed recollection of my boyhood and my youth. Never have I from the first, and never shall I to the last, regard your part in my life, but as something sacred, never to be lightly thought of, never to be esteemed enough, never, until death, to be forgotten. Again to see you look, and hear you speak, as you did on that night when we parted, is happiness to me that there are no words to utter; and to be loved and trusted as your brother, is the next gift I could receive and prize!’

‘Walter,’ said Florence, looking at him earnestly, but with a changing face, ‘what is that which is due to me, and must be rendered to me, at the sacrifice of all this?’

‘Respect,’ said Walter, in a low tone. ‘Reverence.’

The colour dawned in her face, and she timidly and thoughtfully withdrew her hand; still looking at him with unabated earnestness.

‘I have not a brother’s right,’ said Walter. ‘I have not a brother’s claim. I left a child. I find a woman.’

The colour overspread her face. She made a gesture as if of entreaty that he would say no more, and her face dropped upon her hands.

They were both silent for a time; she weeping.

‘I owe it to a heart so trusting, pure, and good,’ said Walter, ‘even to tear myself from it, though I rend my own. How dare I say it is my sister’s!’

She was weeping still.

‘If you had been happy; surrounded as you should be by loving and admiring friends, and by all that makes the station you were born to enviable,’ said Walter; ‘and if you had called me brother, then, in your affectionate remembrance of the past, I could have answered to the name from my distant place, with no inward assurance that I wronged your spotless truth by doing so. But here – and now!’

‘Oh thank you, thank you, Walter! Forgive my having wronged you so much. I had no one to advise me. I am quite alone.’

‘Florence!’ said Walter, passionately. ‘I am hurried on to say, what I thought, but a few moments ago, nothing could have forced from my lips. If I had been prosperous; if I had any means or hope of being one day able to restore you to a station near your own; I would have told you that there was one name you might bestow upon – me – a right above all others, to protect and cherish you – that I was worthy of in nothing but the love and honour that I bore you, and in my whole heart being yours. I would have told you that it was the only claim that you could give me to defend and guard you, which I dare accept and dare assert; but that if I had that right, I would regard it as a trust so precious and so priceless, that the undivided truth and fervour of my life would poorly acknowledge its worth.’

The head was still bent down, the tears still falling, and the bosom swelling with its sobs.

‘Dear Florence! Dearest Florence! whom I called so in my thoughts before I could consider how presumptuous and wild it was. One last time let me call you by your own dear name, and touch this gentle hand in token of your sisterly forgetfulness of what I have said.’

She raised her head, and spoke to him with such a solemn sweetness in her eyes; with such a calm, bright, placid smile shining on him through her tears; with such a low, soft tremble in her frame and voice; that the innermost chords of his heart were touched, and his sight was dim as he listened.

‘No, Walter, I cannot forget it. I would not forget it, for the world. Are you – are you very poor?’

‘I am but a wanderer,’ said Walter, ‘making voyages to live, across the sea. That is my calling now.’

‘Are you soon going away again, Walter?’

‘Very soon.’

She sat looking at him for a moment; then timidly put her trembling hand in his.

‘If you will take me for your wife, Walter, I will love you dearly. If you will let me go with you, Walter, I will go to the world’s end without fear. I can give up nothing for you – I have nothing to resign, and no one to forsake; but all my love and life shall be devoted to you, and with my last breath I will breathe your name to God if I have sense and memory left.’

He caught her to his heart, and laid her cheek against his own, and now, no more repulsed, no more forlorn, she wept indeed, upon the breast of her dear lover.

Blessed Sunday Bells, ringing so tranquilly in their entranced and happy ears! Blessed Sunday peace and quiet, harmonising with the calmness in their souls, and making holy air around them! Blessed twilight stealing on, and shading her so soothingly and gravely, as she falls asleep, like a hushed child, upon the bosom she has clung to!

Oh load of love and trustfulness that lies to lightly there! Ay, look down on the closed eyes, Walter, with a proudly tender gaze; for in all the wide wide world they seek but thee now – only thee!

The Captain remained in the little parlour until it was quite dark. He took the chair on which Walter had been sitting, and looked up at the skylight, until the day, by little and little, faded away, and the stars peeped down. He lighted a candle, lighted a pipe, smoked it out, and wondered what on earth was going on upstairs, and why they didn’t call him to tea.

Florence came to his side while he was in the height of his wonderment.

‘Ay! lady lass!’ cried the Captain. ‘Why, you and Wal’r have had a long spell o’ talk, my beauty.’

Florence put her little hand round one of the great buttons of his coat, and said, looking down into his face:

‘Dear Captain, I want to tell you something, if you please.

The Captain raised his head pretty smartly, to hear what it was. Catching by this means a more distinct view of Florence, he pushed back his chair, and himself with it, as far as they could go.

‘What! Heart’s Delight!’ cried the Captain, suddenly elated, ‘Is it that?’

‘Yes!’ said Florence, eagerly.

‘Wal’r! Husband! THAT?’ roared the Captain, tossing up his glazed hat into the skylight.

‘Yes!’ cried Florence, laughing and crying together.

The Captain immediately hugged her; and then, picking up the glazed hat and putting it on, drew her arm through his, and conducted her upstairs again; where he felt that the great joke of his life was now to be made.

‘What, Wal’r my lad!’ said the Captain, looking in at the door, with his face like an amiable warming-pan. ‘So there ain’t NO other character, ain’t there?’

He had like to have suffocated himself with this pleasantry, which he repeated at least forty times during tea; polishing his radiant face with the sleeve of his coat, and dabbing his head all over with his pocket-handkerchief, in the intervals. But he was not without a graver source of enjoyment to fall back upon, when so disposed, for he was repeatedly heard to say in an undertone, as he looked with ineffable delight at Walter and Florence:

‘Ed’ard Cuttle, my lad, you never shaped a better course in your life, than when you made that there little property over, jintly!’

CHAPTER 51. Mr Dombey and the World

What is the proud man doing, while the days go by? Does he ever think of his daughter, or wonder where she is gone? Does he suppose she has come home, and is leading her old life in the weary house? No one can answer for him. He has never uttered her name, since. His household dread him too much to approach a subject on which he is resolutely dumb; and the only person who dares question him, he silences immediately.

‘My dear Paul!’ murmurs his sister, sidling into the room, on the day of Florence’s departure, ‘your wife! that upstart woman! Is it possible that what I hear confusedly, is true, and that this is her return for your unparalleled devotion to her; extending, I am sure, even to the sacrifice of your own relations, to her caprices and haughtiness? My poor brother!’

With this speech feelingly reminiscent of her not having been asked to dinner on the day of the first party, Mrs Chick makes great use of her pocket-handkerchief, and falls on Mr Dombey’s neck. But Mr Dombey frigidly lifts her off, and hands her to a chair.

‘I thank you, Louisa,’ he says, ‘for this mark of your affection; but desire that our conversation may refer to any other subject. When I bewail my fate, Louisa, or express myself as being in want of consolation, you can offer it, if you will have the goodness.’

‘My dear Paul,’ rejoins his sister, with her handkerchief to her face, and shaking her head, ‘I know your great spirit, and will say no more upon a theme so painful and revolting;’ on the heads of which two adjectives, Mrs Chick visits scathing indignation; ‘but pray let me ask you – though I dread to hear something that will shock and distress me – that unfortunate child Florence – ’

‘Louisa!’ says her brother, sternly, ‘silence! Not another word of this!’

Mrs Chick can only shake her head, and use her handkerchief, and moan over degenerate Dombeys, who are no Dombeys. But whether Florence has been inculpated in the flight of Edith, or has followed her, or has done too much, or too little, or anything, or nothing, she has not the least idea.

He goes on, without deviation, keeping his thoughts and feelings close within his own breast, and imparting them to no one. He makes no search for his daughter. He may think that she is with his sister, or that she is under his own roof. He may think of her constantly, or he may never think about her. It is all one for any sign he makes.

But this is sure; he does not think that he has lost her. He has no suspicion of the truth. He has lived too long shut up in his towering supremacy, seeing her, a patient gentle creature, in the path below it, to have any fear of that. Shaken as he is by his disgrace, he is not yet humbled to the level earth. The root is broad and deep, and in the course of years its fibres have spread out and gathered nourishment from everything around it. The tree is struck, but not down.

Though he hide the world within him from the world without – which he believes has but one purpose for the time, and that, to watch him eagerly wherever he goes – he cannot hide those rebel traces of it, which escape in hollow eyes and cheeks, a haggard forehead, and a moody, brooding air. Impenetrable as before, he is still an altered man; and, proud as ever, he is humbled, or those marks would not be there.

The world. What the world thinks of him, how it looks at him, what it sees in him, and what it says – this is the haunting demon of his mind. It is everywhere where he is; and, worse than that, it is everywhere where he is not. It comes out with him among his servants, and yet he leaves it whispering behind; he sees it pointing after him in the street; it is waiting for him in his counting-house; it leers over the shoulders of rich men among the merchants; it goes beckoning and babbling among the crowd; it always anticipates him, in every place; and is always busiest, he knows, when he has gone away. When he is shut up in his room at night, it is in his house, outside it, audible in footsteps on the pavement, visible in print upon the table, steaming to and fro on railroads and in ships; restless and busy everywhere, with nothing else but him.

It is not a phantom of his imagination. It is as active in other people’s minds as in his. Witness Cousin Feenix, who comes from Baden-Baden, purposely to talk to him. Witness Major Bagstock, who accompanies Cousin Feenix on that friendly mission.

Mr Dombey receives them with his usual dignity, and stands erect, in his old attitude, before the fire. He feels that the world is looking at him out of their eyes. That it is in the stare of the pictures. That Mr Pitt, upon the bookcase, represents it. That there are eyes in its own map, hanging on the wall.

‘An unusually cold spring,’ says Mr Dombey – to deceive the world.

‘Damme, Sir,’ says the Major, in the warmth of friendship, ‘Joseph Bagstock is a bad hand at a counterfeit. If you want to hold your friends off, Dombey, and to give them the cold shoulder, J. B. is not the man for your purpose. Joe is rough and tough, Sir; blunt, Sir, blunt, is Joe. His Royal Highness the late Duke of York did me the honour to say, deservedly or undeservedly – never mind that – “If there is a man in the service on whom I can depend for coming to the point, that man is Joe – Joe Bagstock.”’

Mr Dombey intimates his acquiescence.

‘Now, Dombey,’ says the Major, ‘I am a man of the world. Our friend Feenix – if I may presume to – ’

‘Honoured, I am sure,’ says Cousin Feenix.

‘ – is,’ proceeds the Major, with a wag of his head, ‘also a man of the world. Dombey, you are a man of the world. Now, when three men of the world meet together, and are friends – as I believe – ’ again appealing to Cousin Feenix.

‘I am sure,’ says Cousin Feenix, ‘most friendly.’

‘ – and are friends,’ resumes the Major, ‘Old Joe’s opinion is (I may be wrong), that the opinion of the world on any particular subject, is very easily got at.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ says Cousin Feenix. ‘In point of fact, it’s quite a self-evident sort of thing. I am extremely anxious, Major, that my friend Dombey should hear me express my very great astonishment and regret, that my lovely and accomplished relative, who was possessed of every qualification to make a man happy, should have so far forgotten what was due to – in point of fact, to the world – as to commit herself in such a very extraordinary manner. I have been in a devilish state of depression ever since; and said indeed to Long Saxby last night – man of six foot ten, with whom my friend Dombey is probably acquainted – that it had upset me in a confounded way, and made me bilious. It induces a man to reflect, this kind of fatal catastrophe,’ says Cousin Feenix, ‘that events do occur in quite a providential manner; for if my Aunt had been living at the time, I think the effect upon a devilish lively woman like herself, would have been prostration, and that she would have fallen, in point of fact, a victim.’

‘Now, Dombey! – ’ says the Major, resuming his discourse with great energy.

‘I beg your pardon,’ interposes Cousin Feenix. ‘Allow me another word. My friend Dombey will permit me to say, that if any circumstance could have added to the most infernal state of pain in which I find myself on this occasion, it would be the natural amazement of the world at my lovely and accomplished relative (as I must still beg leave to call her) being supposed to have so committed herself with a person – man with white teeth, in point of fact – of very inferior station to her husband. But while I must, rather peremptorily, request my friend Dombey not to criminate my lovely and accomplished relative until her criminality is perfectly established, I beg to assure my friend Dombey that the family I represent, and which is now almost extinct (devilish sad reflection for a man), will interpose no obstacle in his way, and will be happy to assent to any honourable course of proceeding, with a view to the future, that he may point out. I trust my friend Dombey will give me credit for the intentions by which I am animated in this very melancholy affair, and – a – in point of fact, I am not aware that I need trouble my friend Dombey with any further observations.’

Mr Dombey bows, without raising his eyes, and is silent.

‘Now, Dombey,’ says the Major, ‘our friend Feenix having, with an amount of eloquence that Old Joe B. has never heard surpassed – no, by the Lord, Sir! never!’ – says the Major, very blue, indeed, and grasping his cane in the middle – ‘stated the case as regards the lady, I shall presume upon our friendship, Dombey, to offer a word on another aspect of it. Sir,’ says the Major, with the horse’s cough, ‘the world in these things has opinions, which must be satisfied.’

‘I know it,’ rejoins Mr Dombey.

‘Of course you know it, Dombey,’ says the Major, ‘Damme, Sir, I know you know it. A man of your calibre is not likely to be ignorant of it.’

‘I hope not,’ replies Mr Dombey.

‘Dombey!’ says the Major, ‘you will guess the rest. I speak out – prematurely, perhaps – because the Bagstock breed have always spoke out. Little, Sir, have they ever got by doing it; but it’s in the Bagstock blood. A shot is to be taken at this man. You have J. B. at your elbow. He claims the name of friend. God bless you!’

‘Major,’ returns Mr Dombey, ‘I am obliged. I shall put myself in your hands when the time comes. The time not being come, I have forborne to speak to you.’

‘Where is the fellow, Dombey?’ inquires the Major, after gasping and looking at him, for a minute.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Any intelligence of him?’ asks the Major.

‘Yes.’

‘Dombey, I am rejoiced to hear it,’ says the Major. ‘I congratulate you.’

‘You will excuse – even you, Major,’ replies Mr Dombey, ‘my entering into any further detail at present. The intelligence is of a singular kind, and singularly obtained. It may turn out to be valueless; it may turn out to be true; I cannot say at present. My explanation must stop here.’

Although this is but a dry reply to the Major’s purple enthusiasm, the Major receives it graciously, and is delighted to think that the world has such a fair prospect of soon receiving its due. Cousin Feenix is then presented with his meed of acknowledgment by the husband of his lovely and accomplished relative, and Cousin Feenix and Major Bagstock retire, leaving that husband to the world again, and to ponder at leisure on their representation of its state of mind concerning his affairs, and on its just and reasonable expectations.

But who sits in the housekeeper’s room, shedding tears, and talking to Mrs Pipchin in a low tone, with uplifted hands? It is a lady with her face concealed in a very close black bonnet, which appears not to belong to her. It is Miss Tox, who has borrowed this disguise from her servant, and comes from Princess’s Place, thus secretly, to revive her old acquaintance with Mrs Pipchin, in order to get certain information of the state of Mr Dombey.

‘How does he bear it, my dear creature?’ asks Miss Tox.

‘Well,’ says Mrs Pipchin, in her snappish way, ‘he’s pretty much as usual.’

‘Externally,’ suggests Miss Tox ‘But what he feels within!’

Mrs Pipchin’s hard grey eye looks doubtful as she answers, in three distinct jerks, ‘Ah! Perhaps. I suppose so.’

‘To tell you my mind, Lucretia,’ says Mrs Pipchin; she still calls Miss Tox Lucretia, on account of having made her first experiments in the child-quelling line of business on that lady, when an unfortunate and weazen little girl of tender years; ‘to tell you my mind, Lucretia, I think it’s a good riddance. I don’t want any of your brazen faces here, myself!’

‘Brazen indeed! Well may you say brazen, Mrs Pipchin!’ returned Miss Tox. ‘To leave him! Such a noble figure of a man!’ And here Miss Tox is overcome.

‘I don’t know about noble, I’m sure,’ observes Mrs Pipchin; irascibly rubbing her nose. ‘But I know this – that when people meet with trials, they must bear ‘em. Hoity, toity! I have had enough to bear myself, in my time! What a fuss there is! She’s gone, and well got rid of. Nobody wants her back, I should think!’

This hint of the Peruvian Mines, causes Miss Tox to rise to go away; when Mrs Pipchin rings the bell for Towlinson to show her out, Mr Towlinson, not having seen Miss Tox for ages, grins, and hopes she’s well; observing that he didn’t know her at first, in that bonnet.

‘Pretty well, Towlinson, I thank you,’ says Miss Tox. ‘I beg you’ll have the goodness, when you happen to see me here, not to mention it. My visits are merely to Mrs Pipchin.’

‘Very good, Miss,’ says Towlinson.

‘Shocking circumstances occur, Towlinson,’ says Miss Tox.

‘Very much so indeed, Miss,’ rejoins Towlinson.

‘I hope, Towlinson,’ says Miss Tox, who, in her instruction of the Toodle family, has acquired an admonitorial tone, and a habit of improving passing occasions, ‘that what has happened here, will be a warning to you, Towlinson.’

‘Thank you, Miss, I’m sure,’ says Towlinson.

He appears to be falling into a consideration of the manner in which this warning ought to operate in his particular case, when the vinegary Mrs Pipchin, suddenly stirring him up with a ‘What are you doing? Why don’t you show the lady to the door?’ he ushers Miss Tox forth. As she passes Mr Dombey’s room, she shrinks into the inmost depths of the black bonnet, and walks, on tip-toe; and there is not another atom in the world which haunts him so, that feels such sorrow and solicitude about him, as Miss Tox takes out under the black bonnet into the street, and tries to carry home shadowed it from the newly-lighted lamps.