Dombey and Son
by
Charles Dickens

Part 1 out of 21








Dombey and Son was contributed by:
Neil McLachlan, nmclachlan@delphi.com
and Ted Davis, 101515.3105@compuserve.com
on behalf of the Talking Newspaper of the UK (TNAUK).

Production:
A Kurzweil flatbed scanner and Xerox Discover software was used to
produce the raw text files, which were edited using the TSEJR ASCII
text editor, with a user lexicon specially developed for this purpose.
Words split at the end of lines have been re-united, maintaining
hyphenation where appropriate; except for the Prefaces, the text has
been reformatted to 70 columns.




Structure:
Contents
Chapters 1 to 62
Preface of 1848
Preface of 1867







Dombey and Son

by Charles Dickens





CONTENTS

1. Dombey and Son
2. In which Timely Provision is made for an Emergency that
will sometimes arise in the best-regulated Families
3. In which Mr Dombey, as a Man and a Father, is seen at the
Head of the Home-Department
4. In which some more First Appearances are made on the
Stage of these Adventures
5. Paul's Progress and Christening
6. Paul's Second Deprivation
7. A Bird's-eye Glimpse of Miss Tox's Dwelling-place; also
of the State of Miss Tox's Affections
8. Paul's further Progress, Growth, and Character
9. In which the Wooden Midshipman gets into Trouble
10. Containing the Sequel of the Midshipman's Disaster
11. Paul's Introduction to a New Scene
12. Paul's Education
13. Shipping Intelligence and Office Business
14. Paul grows more and more Old-fashioned, and goes Home
for the holidays
15. Amazing Artfulness of Captain Cuttle, and a new Pursuit
for Walter Gay
16. What the Waves were always saying
17. Captain Cuttle does a little Business for the Young people
18. Father and Daughter
19. Walter goes away
20. Mr Dombey goes upon a journey
21. New Faces
22. A Trifle of Management by Mr Carker the Manager
23. Florence solitary, and the Midshipman mysterious
24. The Study of a Loving Heart
25. Strange News of Uncle Sol
26. Shadows of the Past and Future
27. Deeper shadows
28. Alterations
29. The Opening of the Eyes of Mrs Chick
30. The Interval before the Marriage
31. The Wedding
32. The Wooden Midshipman goes to Pieces
33. Contrasts
34. Another Mother and Daughter
35. The Happy Pair
36. Housewarming
37. More Warnings than One
38. Miss Tox improves an Old Acquaintance
39. Further Adventures of Captain Edward Cuttle, Mariner
40. Domestic Relations
41. New Voices in the Waves
42. Confidential and Accidental
43. The Watches of the Night
44. A Separation
45. The Trusty Agent
46. Recognizant and Reflective
47. The Thunderbolt
48. The Flight of Florence
49. The Midshipman makes a Discovery
50. Mr Toots's Complaint
51. Mr Dombey and the World
52. Secret Intelligence
53. More Intelligence
54. The Fugitives
55. Rob the Grinder loses his Place
56. Several People delighted, and the Game Chicken disgusted
57. Another Wedding
58. After a Lapse
59. Retribution
60. Chiefly Matrimonial
61. Relenting
62. Final




CHAPTER 1.

Dombey and Son



Dombey sat in the corner of the darkened room in the great
arm-chair by the bedside, and Son lay tucked up warm in a little
basket bedstead, carefully disposed on a low settee immediately in
front of the fire and close to it, as if his constitution were
analogous to that of a muffin, and it was essential to toast him brown
while he was very new.

Dombey was about eight-and-forty years of age. Son about
eight-and-forty minutes. Dombey was rather bald, rather red, and
though a handsome well-made man, too stern and pompous in appearance,
to be prepossessing. Son was very bald, and very red, and though (of
course) an undeniably fine infant, somewhat crushed and spotty in his
general effect, as yet. On the brow of Dombey, Time and his brother
Care had set some marks, as on a tree that was to come down in good
time - remorseless twins they are for striding through their human
forests, notching as they go - while the countenance of Son was
crossed with a thousand little creases, which the same deceitful Time
would take delight in smoothing out and wearing away with the flat
part of his scythe, as a preparation of the surface for his deeper
operations.

Dombey, exulting in the long-looked-for event, jingled and jingled
the heavy gold watch-chain that depended from below his trim blue
coat, whereof the buttons sparkled phosphorescently in the feeble rays
of the distant fire. Son, with his little fists curled up and
clenched, seemed, in his feeble way, to be squaring at existence for
having come upon him so unexpectedly.

'The House will once again, Mrs Dombey,' said Mr Dombey, 'be not
only in name but in fact Dombey and Son;' and he added, in a tone of
luxurious satisfaction, with his eyes half-closed as if he were
reading the name in a device of flowers, and inhaling their fragrance
at the same time; 'Dom-bey and Son!'

The words had such a softening influence, that he appended a term
of endearment to Mrs Dombey's name (though not without some
hesitation, as being a man but little used to that form of address):
and said, 'Mrs Dombey, my - my dear.'

A transient flush of faint surprise overspread the sick lady's face
as she raised her eyes towards him.

'He will be christened Paul, my - Mrs Dombey - of course.'

She feebly echoed, 'Of course,' or rather expressed it by the
motion of her lips, and closed her eyes again.

'His father's name, Mrs Dombey, and his grandfather's! I wish his
grandfather were alive this day! There is some inconvenience in the
necessity of writing Junior,' said Mr Dombey, making a fictitious
autograph on his knee; 'but it is merely of a private and personal
complexion. It doesn't enter into the correspondence of the House. Its
signature remains the same.' And again he said 'Dombey and Son, in
exactly the same tone as before.

Those three words conveyed the one idea of Mr Dombey's life. The
earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun and moon
were made to give them light. Rivers and seas were formed to float
their ships; rainbows gave them promise of fair weather; winds blew
for or against their enterprises; stars and planets circled in their
orbits, to preserve inviolate a system of which they were the centre.
Common abbreviations took new meanings in his eyes, and had sole
reference to them. A. D. had no concern with Anno Domini, but stood
for anno Dombei - and Son.

He had risen, as his father had before him, in the course of life
and death, from Son to Dombey, and for nearly twenty years had been
the sole representative of the Firm. Of those years he had been
married, ten - married, as some said, to a lady with no heart to give
him; whose happiness was in the past, and who was content to bind her
broken spirit to the dutiful and meek endurance of the present. Such
idle talk was little likely to reach the ears of Mr Dombey, whom it
nearly concerned; and probably no one in the world would have received
it with such utter incredulity as he, if it had reached him. Dombey
and Son had often dealt in hides, but never in hearts. They left that
fancy ware to boys and girls, and boarding-schools and books. Mr
Dombey would have reasoned: That a matrimonial alliance with himself
must, in the nature of things, be gratifying and honourable to any
woman of common sense. That the hope of giving birth to a new partner
in such a House, could not fail to awaken a glorious and stirring
ambition in the breast of the least ambitious of her sex. That Mrs
Dombey had entered on that social contract of matrimony: almost
necessarily part of a genteel and wealthy station, even without
reference to the perpetuation of family Firms: with her eyes fully
open to these advantages. That Mrs Dombey had had daily practical
knowledge of his position in society. That Mrs Dombey had always sat
at the head of his table, and done the honours of his house in a
remarkably lady-like and becoming manner. That Mrs Dombey must have
been happy. That she couldn't help it.

Or, at all events, with one drawback. Yes. That he would have
allowed. With only one; but that one certainly involving much. With
the drawback of hope deferred. That hope deferred, which, (as the
Scripture very correctly tells us, Mr Dombey would have added in a
patronising way; for his highest distinct idea even of Scripture, if
examined, would have been found to be; that as forming part of a
general whole, of which Dombey and Son formed another part, it was
therefore to be commended and upheld) maketh the heart sick. They had
been married ten years, and until this present day on which Mr Dombey
sat jingling and jingling his heavy gold watch-chain in the great
arm-chair by the side of the bed, had had no issue.

- To speak of; none worth mentioning. There had been a girl some
six years before, and the child, who had stolen into the chamber
unobserved, was now crouching timidly, in a corner whence she could
see her mother's face. But what was a girl to Dombey and Son! In the
capital of the House's name and dignity, such a child was merely a
piece of base coin that couldn't be invested - a bad Boy - nothing
more.

Mr Dombey's cup of satisfaction was so full at this moment,
however, that he felt he could afford a drop or two of its contents,
even to sprinkle on the dust in the by-path of his little daughter.

So he said, 'Florence, you may go and look at your pretty brother,
if you lIke, I daresay. Don't touch him!'

The child glanced keenly at the blue coat and stiff white cravat,
which, with a pair of creaking boots and a very loud ticking watch,
embodied her idea of a father; but her eyes returned to her mother's
face immediately, and she neither moved nor answered.

'Her insensibility is as proof against a brother as against every
thing else,' said Mr Dombey to himself He seemed so confirmed in a
previous opinion by the discovery, as to be quite glad of it'

Next moment, the lady had opened her eyes and seen the child; and
the child had run towards her; and, standing on tiptoe, the better to
hide her face in her embrace, had clung about her with a desperate
affection very much at variance with her years.

'Oh Lord bless me!' said Mr Dombey, rising testily. 'A very
illadvised and feverish proceeding this, I am sure. Please to ring
there for Miss Florence's nurse. Really the person should be more
care-'

'Wait! I - had better ask Doctor Peps if he'll have the goodness to
step upstairs again perhaps. I'll go down. I'll go down. I needn't beg
you,' he added, pausing for a moment at the settee before the fire,
'to take particular care of this young gentleman, Mrs - '

'Blockitt, Sir?' suggested the nurse, a simpering piece of faded
gentility, who did not presume to state her name as a fact, but merely
offered it as a mild suggestion.

'Of this young gentleman, Mrs Blockitt.'

'No, Sir, indeed. I remember when Miss Florence was born - '

'Ay, ay, ay,' said Mr Dombey, bending over the basket bedstead, and
slightly bending his brows at the same time. 'Miss Florence was all
very well, but this is another matter. This young gentleman has to
accomplish a destiny. A destiny, little fellow!' As he thus
apostrophised the infant he raised one of his hands to his lips, and
kissed it; then, seeming to fear that the action involved some
compromise of his dignity, went, awkwardly enough, away.

Doctor Parker Peps, one of the Court Physicians, and a man of
immense reputation for assisting at the increase of great families,
was walking up and down the drawing-room with his hands behind him, to
the unspeakable admiration of the family Surgeon, who had regularly
puffed the case for the last six weeks, among all his patients,
friends, and acquaintances, as one to which he was in hourly
expectation day and night of being summoned, in conjunction with
Doctor Parker Pep.

'Well, Sir,' said Doctor Parker Peps in a round, deep, sonorous
voice, muffled for the occasion, like the knocker; 'do you find that
your dear lady is at all roused by your visit?'

'Stimulated as it were?' said the family practitioner faintly:
bowing at the same time to the Doctor, as much as to say, 'Excuse my
putting in a word, but this is a valuable connexion.'

Mr Dombey was quite discomfited by the question. He had thought so
little of the patient, that he was not in a condition to answer it. He
said that it would be a satisfaction to him, if Doctor Parker Peps
would walk upstairs again.

'Good! We must not disguise from you, Sir,' said Doctor Parker
Peps, 'that there is a want of power in Her Grace the Duchess - I beg
your pardon; I confound names; I should say, in your amiable lady.
That there is a certain degree of languor, and a general absence of
elasticity, which we would rather - not -

'See,' interposed the family practitioner with another inclination
of the head.

'Quite so,' said Doctor Parker Peps,' which we would rather not
see. It would appear that the system of Lady Cankaby - excuse me: I
should say of Mrs Dombey: I confuse the names of cases - '

'So very numerous,' murmured the family practitioner - 'can't be
expected I'm sure - quite wonderful if otherwise - Doctor Parker
Peps's West-End practice - '

'Thank you,' said the Doctor, 'quite so. It would appear, I was
observing, that the system of our patient has sustained a shock, from
which it can only hope to rally by a great and strong - '

'And vigorous,' murmured the family practitioner.

'Quite so,' assented the Doctor - 'and vigorous effort. Mr Pilkins
here, who from his position of medical adviser in this family - no one
better qualified to fill that position, I am sure.'

'Oh!' murmured the family practitioner. '"Praise from Sir Hubert
Stanley!"'

'You are good enough,' returned Doctor Parker Peps, 'to say so. Mr
Pilkins who, from his position, is best acquainted with the patient's
constitution in its normal state (an acquaintance very valuable to us
in forming our opinions in these occasions), is of opinion, with me,
that Nature must be called upon to make a vigorous effort in this
instance; and that if our interesting friend the Countess of Dombey -
I beg your pardon; Mrs Dombey - should not be - '

'Able,' said the family practitioner.

'To make,' said Doctor Parker Peps.

'That effort,' said the family practitioner.

'Successfully,' said they both together.

'Then,' added Doctor Parker Peps, alone and very gravely, a crisis
might arise, which we should both sincerely deplore.'

With that, they stood for a few seconds looking at the ground.
Then, on the motion - made in dumb show - of Doctor Parker Peps, they
went upstairs; the family practitioner opening the room door for that
distinguished professional, and following him out, with most
obsequious politeness.

To record of Mr Dombey that he was not in his way affected by this
intelligence, would be to do him an injustice. He was not a man of
whom it could properly be said that he was ever startled, or shocked;
but he certainly had a sense within him, that if his wife should
sicken and decay, he would be very sorry, and that he would find a
something gone from among his plate and furniture, and other household
possessions, which was well worth the having, and could not be lost
without sincere regret. Though it would be a cool,. business-like,
gentlemanly, self-possessed regret, no doubt.

His meditations on the subject were soon interrupted, first by the
rustling of garments on the staircase, and then by the sudden whisking
into the room of a lady rather past the middle age than otherwise but
dressed in a very juvenile manner, particularly as to the tightness of
her bodice, who, running up to him with a kind of screw in her face
and carriage, expressive of suppressed emotion, flung her arms around
his neck, and said, in a choking voice,

'My dear Paul! He's quite a Dombey!'

'Well, well!' returned her brother - for Mr Dombey was her brother
- 'I think he is like the family. Don't agitate yourself, Louisa.'

'It's very foolish of me,' said Louisa, sitting down, and taking
out her pocket~handkerchief, 'but he's - he's such a perfect Dombey!'

Mr Dombey coughed.

'It's so extraordinary,' said Louisa; smiling through her tears,
which indeed were not overpowering, 'as to be perfectly ridiculous. So
completely our family. I never saw anything like it in my life!'

'But what is this about Fanny, herself?' said Mr Dombey. 'How is
Fanny?'

'My dear Paul,' returned Louisa, 'it's nothing whatever. Take my
word, it's nothing whatever. There is exhaustion, certainly, but
nothing like what I underwent myself, either with George or Frederick.
An effort is necessary. That's all. If dear Fanny were a Dombey! - But
I daresay she'll make it; I have no doubt she'll make it. Knowing it
to be required of her, as a duty, of course she'll make it. My dear
Paul, it's very weak and silly of me, I know, to be so trembly and
shaky from head to foot; but I am so very queer that I must ask you
for a glass of wine and a morsel of that cake.'

Mr Dombey promptly supplied her with these refreshments from a tray
on the table.

'I shall not drink my love to you, Paul,' said Louisa: 'I shall
drink to the little Dombey. Good gracious me! - it's the most
astonishing thing I ever knew in all my days, he's such a perfect
Dombey.'

Quenching this expression of opinion in a short hysterical laugh
which terminated in tears, Louisa cast up her eyes, and emptied her
glass.

'I know it's very weak and silly of me,' she repeated, 'to be so
trembly and shaky from head to foot, and to allow my feelings so
completely to get the better of me, but I cannot help it. I thought I
should have fallen out of the staircase window as I came down from
seeing dear Fanny, and that tiddy ickle sing.' These last words
originated in a sudden vivid reminiscence of the baby.

They were succeeded by a gentle tap at the door.

'Mrs Chick,' said a very bland female voice outside, 'how are you
now, my dear friend?'

'My dear Paul,' said Louisa in a low voice, as she rose from her
seat, 'it's Miss Tox. The kindest creature! I never could have got
here without her! Miss Tox, my brother Mr Dombey. Paul, my dear, my
very particular friend Miss Tox.'

The lady thus specially presented, was a long lean figure, wearing
such a faded air that she seemed not to have been made in what
linen-drapers call 'fast colours' originally, and to have, by little
and little, washed out. But for this she might have been described as
the very pink of general propitiation and politeness. From a long
habit of listening admiringly to everything that was said in her
presence, and looking at the speakers as if she were mentally engaged
in taking off impressions of their images upon her soul, never to part
with the same but with life, her head had quite settled on one side.
Her hands had contracted a spasmodic habit of raising themselves of
their own accord as in involuntary admiration. Her eyes were liable to
a similar affection. She had the softest voice that ever was heard;
and her nose, stupendously aquiline, had a little knob in the very
centre or key-stone of the bridge, whence it tended downwards towards
her face, as in an invincible determination never to turn up at
anything.

Miss Tox's dress, though perfectly genteel and good, had a certain
character of angularity and scantiness. She was accustomed to wear odd
weedy little flowers in her bonnets and caps. Strange grasses were
sometimes perceived in her hair; and it was observed by the curious,
of all her collars, frills, tuckers, wristbands, and other gossamer
articles - indeed of everything she wore which had two ends to it
intended to unite - that the two ends were never on good terms, and
wouldn't quite meet without a struggle. She had furry articles for
winter wear, as tippets, boas, and muffs, which stood up on end in
rampant manner, and were not at all sleek. She was much given to the
carrying about of small bags with snaps to them, that went off like
little pistols when they were shut up; and when full-dressed, she wore
round her neck the barrenest of lockets, representing a fishy old eye,
with no approach to speculation in it. These and other appearances of
a similar nature, had served to propagate the opinion, that Miss Tox
was a lady of what is called a limited independence, which she turned
to the best account. Possibly her mincing gait encouraged the belief,
and suggested that her clipping a step of ordinary compass into two or
three, originated in her habit of making the most of everything.

'I am sure,' said Miss Tox, with a prodigious curtsey, 'that to
have the honour of being presented to Mr Dombey is a distinction which
I have long sought, but very little expected at the present moment. My
dear Mrs Chick - may I say Louisa!'

Mrs Chick took Miss Tox's hand in hers, rested the foot of her
wine-glass upon it, repressed a tear, and said in a low voice, 'God
bless you!'

'My dear Louisa then,' said Miss Tox, 'my sweet friend, how are you
now?'

'Better,' Mrs Chick returned. 'Take some wine. You have been almost
as anxious as I have been, and must want it, I am sure.'

Mr Dombey of course officiated, and also refilled his sister's
glass, which she (looking another way, and unconscious of his
intention) held straight and steady the while, and then regarded with
great astonishment, saying, 'My dear Paul, what have you been doing!'

'Miss Tox, Paul,' pursued Mrs Chick, still retaining her hand,
'knowing how much I have been interested in the anticipation of the
event of to-day, and how trembly and shaky I have been from head to
foot in expectation of it, has been working at a little gift for
Fanny, which I promised to present. Miss Tox is ingenuity itself.'

'My dear Louisa,' said Miss Tox. 'Don't say so.

'It is only a pincushion for the toilette table, Paul,' resumed his
sister; 'one of those trifles which are insignificant to your sex in
general, as it's very natural they should be - we have no business to
expect they should be otherwise - but to which we attach some
interest.

'Miss Tox is very good,' said Mr Dombey.

'And I do say, and will say, and must say,' pursued his sister,
pressing the foot of the wine-glass on Miss Tox's hand, at each of the
three clauses, 'that Miss Tox has very prettily adapted the sentiment
to the occasion. I call "Welcome little Dombey" Poetry, myself!'

'Is that the device?' inquired her brother.

'That is the device,' returned Louisa.

'But do me the justice to remember, my dear Louisa,' said Miss
Toxin a tone of low and earnest entreaty, 'that nothing but the - I
have some difficulty in expressing myself - the dubiousness of the
result would have induced me to take so great a liberty: "Welcome,
Master Dombey," would have been much more congenial to my feelings, as
I am sure you know. But the uncertainty attendant on angelic
strangers, will, I hope, excuse what must otherwise appear an
unwarrantable familiarity.' Miss Tox made a graceful bend as she
spoke, in favour of Mr Dombey, which that gentleman graciously
acknowledged. Even the sort of recognition of Dombey and Son, conveyed
in the foregoing conversation, was so palatable to him, that his
sister, Mrs Chick - though he affected to consider her a weak
good-natured person - had perhaps more influence over him than anybody
else.

'My dear Paul,' that lady broke out afresh, after silently
contemplating his features for a few moments, 'I don't know whether to
laugh or cry when I look at you, I declare, you do so remind me of
that dear baby upstairs.'

'Well!' said Mrs Chick, with a sweet smile, 'after this, I forgive
Fanny everything!'

It was a declaration in a Christian spirit, and Mrs Chick felt that
it did her good. Not that she had anything particular to forgive in
her sister-in-law, nor indeed anything at all, except her having
married her brother - in itself a species of audacity - and her
having, in the course of events, given birth to a girl instead of a
boy: which, as Mrs Chick had frequently observed, was not quite what
she had expected of her, and was not a pleasant return for all the
attention and distinction she had met with.

Mr Dombey being hastily summoned out of the room at this moment,
the two ladies were left alone together. Miss Tox immediately became
spasmodic.

'I knew you would admire my brother. I told you so beforehand, my
dear,' said Louisa. Miss Tox's hands and eyes expressed how much. 'And
as to his property, my dear!'

'Ah!' said Miss Tox, with deep feeling. 'Im-mense!'

'But his deportment, my dear Louisa!' said Miss Tox. 'His presence!
His dignity! No portrait that I have ever seen of anyone has been half
so replete with those qualities. Something so stately, you know: so
uncompromising: so very wide across the chest: so upright! A pecuniary
Duke of York, my love, and nothing short of it!' said Miss Tox.
'That's what I should designate him.'

'Why, my dear Paul!' exclaimed his sister, as he returned, 'you
look quite pale! There's nothing the matter?'

'I am sorry to say, Louisa, that they tell me that Fanny - '

'Now, my dear Paul,' returned his sister rising, 'don't believe it.
Do not allow yourself to receive a turn unnecessarily. Remember of
what importance you are to society, and do not allow yourself to be
worried by what is so very inconsiderately told you by people who
ought to know better. Really I'm surprised at them.'

'I hope I know, Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, stiffly, 'how to bear
myself before the world.'

'Nobody better, my dear Paul. Nobody half so well. They would be
ignorant and base indeed who doubted it.'

'Ignorant and base indeed!' echoed Miss Tox softly.

'But,' pursued Louisa, 'if you have any reliance on my experience,
Paul, you may rest assured that there is nothing wanting but an effort
on Fanny's part. And that effort,' she continued, taking off her
bonnet, and adjusting her cap and gloves, in a business-like manner,
'she must be encouraged, and really, if necessary, urged to make. Now,
my dear Paul, come upstairs with me.'

Mr Dombey, who, besides being generally influenced by his sister
for the reason already mentioned, had really faith in her as an
experienced and bustling matron, acquiesced; and followed her, at
once, to the sick chamber.

The lady lay upon her bed as he had left her, clasping her little
daughter to her breast. The child clung close about her, with the same
intensity as before, and never raised her head, or moved her soft
cheek from her mother's face, or looked on those who stood around, or
spoke, or moved, or shed a tear.

'Restless without the little girl,' the Doctor whispered Mr Dombey.
'We found it best to have her in again.'

'Can nothing be done?' asked Mr Dombey.

The Doctor shook his head. 'We can do no more.'

The windows stood open, and the twilight was gathering without.

The scent of the restoratives that had been tried was pungent in
the room, but had no fragrance in the dull and languid air the lady
breathed.

There was such a solemn stillness round the bed; and the two
medical attendants seemed to look on the impassive form with so much
compassion and so little hope, that Mrs Chick was for the moment
diverted from her purpose. But presently summoning courage, and what
she called presence of mind, she sat down by the bedside, and said in
the low precise tone of one who endeavours to awaken a sleeper:

'Fanny! Fanny!'

There was no sound in answer but the loud ticking of Mr Dombey's
watch and Doctor Parker Peps's watch, which seemed in the silence to
be running a race.

'Fanny, my dear,' said Mrs Chick, with assumed lightness, 'here's
Mr Dombey come to see you. Won't you speak to him? They want to lay
your little boy - the baby, Fanny, you know; you have hardly seen him
yet, I think - in bed; but they can't till you rouse yourself a
little. Don't you think it's time you roused yourself a little? Eh?'

She bent her ear to the bed, and listened: at the same time looking
round at the bystanders, and holding up her finger.

'Eh?' she repeated, 'what was it you said, Fanny? I didn't hear
you.'

No word or sound in answer. Mr Dombey's watch and Dr Parker Peps's
watch seemed to be racing faster.

'Now, really, Fanny my dear,' said the sister-in-law, altering her
position, and speaking less confidently, and more earnestly, in spite
of herself, 'I shall have to be quite cross with you, if you don't
rouse yourself. It's necessary for you to make an effort, and perhaps
a very great and painful effort which you are not disposed to make;
but this is a world of effort you know, Fanny, and we must never
yield, when so much depends upon us. Come! Try! I must really scold
you if you don't!'

The race in the ensuing pause was fierce and furious. The watches
seemed to jostle, and to trip each other up.

'Fanny!' said Louisa, glancing round, with a gathering alarm. 'Only
look at me. Only open your eyes to show me that you hear and
understand me; will you? Good Heaven, gentlemen, what is to be done!'

The two medical attendants exchanged a look across the bed; and the
Physician, stooping down, whispered in the child's ear. Not having
understood the purport of his whisper, the little creature turned her
perfectly colourless face and deep dark eyes towards him; but without
loosening her hold in the least

The whisper was repeated.

'Mama!' said the child.

The little voice, familiar and dearly loved, awakened some show of
consciousness, even at that ebb. For a moment, the closed eye lids
trembled, and the nostril quivered, and the faintest shadow of a smile
was seen.

'Mama!' cried the child sobbing aloud. 'Oh dear Mama! oh dear
Mama!'

The Doctor gently brushed the scattered ringlets of the child,
aside from the face and mouth of the mother. Alas how calm they lay
there; how little breath there was to stir them!

Thus, clinging fast to that slight spar within her arms, the mother
drifted out upon the dark and unknown sea that rolls round all the
world.



CHAPTER 2.

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 upstairs, 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 daresay.

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.

'Bow-wow-wow!' repeated Mrs Chick with an emphasis of blighting
contempt on the last syllable. 'More like a professional singer with
the hydrophobia, than a man in your station of life!'

'How's the Baby, Loo?' asked Mr Chick: to change the subject.

'What Baby do you mean?' answered Mrs Chick.

'The poor bereaved little baby,' said Mr Chick. 'I don't know of
any other, my dear.'

'You don't know of any other,'retorted Mrs Chick. 'More shame for
you, I was going to say.

Mr Chick looked astonished.

'I am sure the morning I have had, with that dining-room
downstairs, 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, - those words of mine will always be a balm
and comfort to me,' here she dried her eyes; 'it becomes necessary to
provide a Nurse.'

'Oh! Ah!' said Mr Chick. 'Toor-ru! - 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, and in the meantime the poor child seems likely to be starved
to death. Paul is so very particular - naturally so, of course, having
set his whole heart on this one boy - and there are so many objections
to everybody that offers, that I don't see, myself, the least chance
of an arrangement. Meanwhile, of course, the child is - '

'Going to the Devil,' 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 said she trusted he hadn't
said it in aggravation, because that would do very little honour to
his heart. She trusted he hadn't said it seriously, because that would
do very little honour to his head. As in any case, he couldn't,
however sanguine his disposition, hope to offer a remark that would be
a greater outrage on human nature in general, we would beg to leave
the discussion at that point.

Mrs Chick then 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 unlooked for 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 downstairs 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. 'Steam 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 my God, to
think of their some day claiming a sort of relationship to Paul!'

' But what relationship is there!' Louisa began -

'Is there!' echoed Mr Dombey, who had not intended his sister to
participate in the thought he had unconsciously expressed. 'Is there,
did you say, Louisa!'

'Can there be, I mean - '

'Why none,' said Mr Dombey, sternly. 'The whole world knows that, I
presume. Grief has not made me idiotic, Louisa. 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.'

'Well?' said Mr Dombey, after a pretty long pause. 'What does your
husband say to your being called Richards?'

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 showerbaths.

'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.'

'But I ask you if you heard it. You did, I suppose, and understood
it?' pursued Mr Dombey.

'I heerd it,' said Toodle, 'but I don't know as I understood it
rightly Sir, 'account of being no scholar, and the words being - ask
your pardon - rayther high. But Polly heerd it. 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 he added in one of his hoarse whispers, 'We means to bring up
little Biler to that line,' Mr Dombey inquired haughtily who little
Biler was.

'The eldest on 'em, Sir,' said Toodle, with a smile. 'It ain't a
common name. Sermuchser that when he was took to church the gen'lm'n
said, it wam't a chris'en one, and he couldn't give it. But we always
calls him Biler just the same. For we don't mean no harm. Not we.

'Do you mean to say, Man,' inquired Mr Dombey; looking at him with
marked displeasure, 'that you have called a child after a boiler?'

'No, no, Sir,' returned Toodle, with a tender consideration for his
mistake. 'I should hope not! No, Sir. Arter a BILER Sir. The
Steamingine was a'most as good as a godfather to him, and so we called
him Biler, don't you see!'

As the last straw breaks the laden camel's back, this piece of
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.

It would be harsh, and perhaps not altogether true, to say of him
that he felt these rubs and gratings against his pride more keenly
than he had felt his wife's death: but certainly they impressed that
event upon him with new force, and communicated to it added weight and
bitterness. It was a rude shock to his sense of property in his child,
that these people - the mere dust of the earth, as he thought them -
should be necessary to him; and it was natural that in proportion as
he felt disturbed by it, he should deplore the occurrence which had
made them so. For all his starched, impenetrable dignity and
composure, he wiped blinding tears from his eyes as he paced up and
down his room; 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?

But it was idle speculating thus. It couldn't happen. In a moment
afterwards he determined that it could, but that such women were
constantly observed, and had no opportunity given them for the
accomplishment of such a design, even when they were so wicked as to
entertain it. In another moment, he was remembering how few such cases
seemed to have ever happened. In another moment he was wondering
whether they ever happened and were not found out.

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. Thence
he passed to the contemplation of the future glories of Dombey and
Son, and dismissed the memory of his wife, for the time being, with a
tributary sigh or two.

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; and Miss Tox, busying herself in dispensing 'tastes' to the
younger branches, bred them up to their father's business with such
surprising expedition, that she made chokers of four of them in a
quarter of a minute.

'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
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 goodbye 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 coming to her spouse at last, could not make up
her mind to part from him, until he gently disengaged himself, at the
close of the following allegorical piece of consolation:

'Polly, old 'ooman, whatever you do, my darling, hold up your head
and fight low. That's the only rule as I know on, that'll carry anyone
through life. You always have held up your head and fought low, Polly.
Do it now, or Bricks is no longer so. God bless you, Polly! Me and
J'mima will do your duty by you; and with relating to your'n, hold up
your head and fight low, Polly, and you can't go wrong!'

Fortified by this golden secret, Folly 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
upstairs 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.



CHAPTER 3.

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 upstairs 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 windows, 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 suite 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 smoked-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 lamp-lighter 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. Mr Dombey came to be, in the course of a few
days, invested in his own person, to her simple thinking, with all the
mystery and gloom of his house. As she walked up and down the glass
room, or sat hushing the baby there - which she very often did for
hours together, when the dusk was closing in, too - she would
sometimes try to pierce the gloom beyond, and make out how he was
looking and what he was doing. Sensible that she was plainly to be
seen by him' however, she never dared to pry in that direction but
very furtively and for a moment at a time. Consequently she made out
nothing, and Mr Dombey in his den remained a very shade.

Little Paul Dombey's foster-mother had led this life herself, and
had carried little Paul through it for some weeks; and had returned
upstairs 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, with
exactly the same look and manner.

'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.'

Her heart swelled so as she stood before the woman, looking into
her eyes, that she was fain to press her little hand upon her breast
and hold it there. Yet there was a purpose in the child that prevented
both her slender figure and her searching gaze from faltering.

'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 God thought it right that it should be so, was taken ill
and died.'

The child shuddered.

'Died, never to be seen again by anyone 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 dropped 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, Mrs 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 Folly. '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.

'Oh dear! after it was given out so 'tickerlerly, that Mrs Richards
wasn't to be made free with!' exclaimed Susan. 'Very well, Miss Floy!'

'God bless the sweet thing!' said Richards, 'Good-bye, dear!'

'Good-bye!' returned 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 able, 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 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.

Notwithstanding Mr Toodle's great reliance on Polly, she was
perhaps in point of artificial accomplishments very little his
superior. She had been good-humouredly working and drudging for her
life all her life, and was a sober steady-going person, with
matter-of-fact ideas about the butcher and baker, and the division of
pence into farthings. 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 aide 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 - whom she had seen at first
leaning on his elbow at the table, and afterwards walking up and down
the middle room, drawing, each time, a little nearer, she thought, to
the open folding doors - 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.

'If you please, Sir, the child is very much disposed to take notice
of things,' said Richards, with another curtsey, 'and - upstairs is a
little dull for him, perhaps, Sir.'

'I begged them to take you out for airings, constantly,' said Mr
Dombey. 'Very well! You shall go out oftener. You're quite right to
mention it.'

'I beg your pardon, Sir,' faltered Polly, 'but we go out quite
plenty Sir, thank you.'

'What would you have then?' asked Mr Dombey.

'Indeed Sir, I don't exactly know,' said Polly, 'unless - '

'Yes?'

'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.'

'Oh dear yes, Sir, I wasn't so much as thinking of that.'

'I am glad of it,' said Mr Dombey hastily. '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. His
mind was too much set on Dombey and Son, it soon appeared, to admit of
his having forgotten her suggestion.

'If you really think that sort of society is good for 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 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 bold in it, though instinctively afraid of Mr
Dombey - requested that Miss Florence might be sent down then and
there, to make friends with her 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 feeling of indifference towards
little Florence changed into an uneasiness of an extraordinary kind.
Young as she was, and possessing in any eyes but his (and perhaps in
his too) even more than the usual amount of childish simplicity and
confidence, 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. As she sported and played about her baby brother that
night, her manner was seldom so winning and so pretty as it naturally
was, and sometimes when in his pacing to and fro, he came near her
(she had, perhaps, for the moment, forgotten him) it changed upon the
instant and became forced and embarrassed.

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 upstairs 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 entrenched upstairs. 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!'



CHAPTER 4.

In which some more First Appearances are made on the Stage of these
Adventures



Though the offices of Dombey and Son were within the liberties of
the City of London, and within hearing of Bow Bells, when their
clashing voices were not drowned by the uproar in the streets, yet
were there hints of adventurous and romantic story to be observed in
some of the adjacent objects. Gog and Magog held their state within
ten minutes' walk; the Royal Exchange was close at hand; the Bank of
England, with its vaults of gold and silver 'down among the dead men'
underground, was their magnificent neighbour. Just round the corner
stood the rich East India House, teeming with suggestions of precious
stuffs and stones, tigers, elephants, howdahs, hookahs, umbrellas,
palm trees, palanquins, and gorgeous princes of a brown complexion
sitting on carpets, with their slippers very much turned up at the
toes. Anywhere in the immediate vicinity there might be seen pictures
of ships speeding away full sail to all parts of the world; outfitting
warehouses ready to pack off anybody anywhere, fully equipped in half
an hour; and little timber midshipmen in obsolete naval uniforms,
eternally employed outside the shop doors of nautical
Instrument-makers in taking observations of the hackney carriages.

Sole master and proprietor of one of these effigies - of that which
might be called, familiar!y, the woodenest - of that which thrust
itself out above the pavement, right leg foremost, with a suavity the
least endurable, and had the shoe buckles and flapped waistcoat the
least reconcileable to human reason, and bore at its right eye the
most offensively disproportionate piece of machinery - sole master and
proprietor of that Midshipman, and proud of him too, an elderly
gentleman in a Welsh wig had paid house-rent, taxes, rates, and dues,
for more years than many a full-grown midshipman of flesh and blood
has numbered in his life; and midshipmen who have attained a pretty
green old age, have not been wanting in the English Navy.

The stock-in-trade of this old gentleman comprised chronometers,
barometers, telescopes, compasses, charts, maps, sextants, quadrants,
and specimens of every kind of instrument used in the working of a
ship's course, or the keeping of a ship's reckoning, or the
prosecuting of a ship's discoveries. Objects in brass and glass were
in his drawers and on his shelves, which none but the initiated could
have found the top of, or guessed the use of, or having once examined,
could have ever got back again into their mahogany nests without
assistance. Everything was jammed into the tightest cases, fitted into
the narrowest corners, fenced up behind the most impertinent cushions,
and screwed into the acutest angles, to prevent its philosophical
composure from being disturbed by the rolling of the sea. Such
extraordinary precautions were taken in every instance to save room,
and keep the thing compact; and so much practical navigation was
fitted, and cushioned, and screwed into every box (whether the box was
a mere slab, as some were, or something between a cocked hat and a
star-fish, as others were, and those quite mild and modest boxes as
compared with others); that the shop itself, partaking of the general
infection, seemed almost to become a snug, sea-going, ship-shape
concern, wanting only good sea-room, in the event of an unexpected
launch, to work its way securely to any desert island in the world.

Many minor incidents in the household life of the Ships'

Instrument-maker who was proud of his little Midshipman, assisted
and bore out this fancy. His acquaintance lying chiefly among
ship-chandlers and so forth, he had always plenty of the veritable
ships' biscuit on his table. It was familiar with dried meats and
tongues, possessing an extraordinary flavour of rope yarn. Pickles
were produced upon it, in great wholesale jars, with 'dealer in all
kinds of Ships' Provisions' on the label; spirits were set forth in
case bottles with no throats. Old prints of ships with alphabetical
references to their various mysteries, hung in frames upon the walls;
the Tartar Frigate under weigh, was on the plates; outlandish shells,
seaweeds, and mosses, decorated the chimney-piece; the little
wainscotted back parlour was lighted by a sky-light, like a cabin.

Here he lived too, in skipper-like state, all alone with his nephew
Walter: a boy of fourteen who looked quite enough like a midshipman,
to carry out the prevailing idea. But there it ended, for Solomon
Gills himself (more generally called old Sol) was far from having a
maritime appearance. To say nothing of his Welsh wig, which was as
plain and stubborn a Welsh wig as ever was worn, and in which he
looked like anything but a Rover, he was a slow, quiet-spoken,
thoughtful old fellow, with eyes as red as if they had been small suns
looking at you through a fog; and a newly-awakened manner, such as he
might have acquired by having stared for three or four days
successively through every optical instrument in his shop, and
suddenly came back to the world again, to find it green. The only
change ever known in his outward man, was from a complete suit of
coffee-colour cut very square, and ornamented with glaring buttons, to
the same suit of coffee-colour minus the inexpressibles, which were
then of a pale nankeen. He wore a very precise shirt-frill, and
carried a pair of first-rate spectacles on his forehead, and a
tremendous chronometer in his fob, rather than doubt which precious
possession, he would have believed in a conspiracy against it on part
of all the clocks and watches in the City, and even of the very Sun
itself. Such as he was, such he had been in the shop and parlour
behind the little Midshipman, for years upon years; going regularly
aloft to bed every night in a howling garret remote from the lodgers,
where, when gentlemen of England who lived below at ease had little or
no idea of the state of the weather, it often blew great guns.

It is half-past five o'clock, and an autumn afternoon, when the
reader and Solomon Gills become acquainted. Solomon Gills is in the
act of seeing what time it is by the unimpeachable chronometer. The
usual daily clearance has been making in the City for an hour or more;
and the human tide is still rolling westward. 'The streets have
thinned,' as Mr Gills says, 'very much.' It threatens to be wet
to-night. All the weatherglasses in the shop are in low spirits, and
the rain already shines upon the cocked hat of the wooden Midshipman.

'Where's Walter, I wonder!' said Solomon Gills, after he had
carefully put up the chronometer again. 'Here's dinner been ready,
half an hour, and no Walter!'

Turning round upon his stool behind the counter, Mr Gills looked
out among the instruments in the window, to see if his nephew might be
crossing the road. No. He was not among the bobbing umbrellas, and he
certainly was not the newspaper boy in the oilskin cap who was slowly
working his way along the piece of brass outside, writing his name
over Mr Gills's name with his forefinger.

'If I didn't know he was too fond of me to make a run of it, and go
and enter himself aboard ship against my wishes, I should begin to be
fidgetty,' said Mr Gills, tapping two or three weather-glasses with
his knuckles. 'I really should. All in the Downs, eh! Lots of
moisture! Well! it's wanted.'

I believe,' said Mr Gills, blowing the dust off the glass top of a
compass-case, 'that you don't point more direct and due to the back
parlour than the boy's inclination does after all. And the parlour
couldn't bear straighter either. Due north. Not the twentieth part of
a point either way.'

'Halloa, Uncle Sol!'

'Halloa, my boy!' cried the Instrument-maker, turning briskly
round. 'What! you are here, are you?'

A cheerful looking, merry boy, fresh with running home in the rain;
fair-faced, bright-eyed, and curly-haired.

'Well, Uncle, how have you got on without me all day? Is dinner
ready? I'm so hungry.'

'As to getting on,' said Solomon good-naturedly, 'it would be odd
if I couldn't get on without a young dog like you a great deal better
than with you. As to dinner being ready, it's been ready this half
hour and waiting for you. As to being hungry, I am!'

'Come along then, Uncle!' cried the boy. 'Hurrah for the admiral!'


 


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