is better  resolution - any fragment  of
the merit of his unassisted, obscure, and forgotten reparation - would be to
diminish the comfort it will  be to him and me, when that time comes to each
of us, of which you spoke just now. I thank you better with these tears than
any words. Believe it, pray.
     The gentleman  was moved, and put the hand she held  out,  to his lips,
much as a tender father might  kiss the hand  of  a dutiful child.  But more
reverently.
     'If the day should ever  come,  said  Harriet, 'when he is restored, in
part, to the position he lost - '
     'Restored!' cried the gentleman, quickly. 'How  can  that be hoped for?
In whose  hands  does the power of any restoration lie? It  is no mistake of
mine, surely, to  suppose that his  having gained the priceless blessing  of
his life, is one cause of the animosity shown to him by his brother.'
     'You  touch upon a subject  that is never breathed between us; not even
between us,' said Harriet.
     'I beg your forgiveness,' said  the visitor. 'I should have known it. I
entreat you to forget that I have done so, inadvertently. And now, as I dare
urge no more - as I am not sure that I have a right to do so - though Heaven
knows, even that doubt may be habit,' said the  gentleman, rubbing his head,
as despondently as before, 'let me; though a stranger, yet  no stranger; ask
two favours.'
     'What are they?' she inquired.
     'The first, that if you should see cause to change your resolution, you
will suffer me to be as  your  right  hand.  My name shall  then  be at your
service; it is useless now, and always insignificant.'
     'Our choice  of  friends,' she answered,  smiling faintly,  'is  not so
great, that I need any time for consideration. I can promise that.'
     'The  second,  that  you  will allow me  sometimes,  say  every  Monday
morning, at nine o'clock -  habit  again - I must be businesslike,' said the
gentleman,  with a whimsical  inclination to quarrel  with  himself  on that
head,  'in  walking  past,  to see you at the door or window. I don't ask to
come in, as your brother will be gone out at that hour. I don't ask to speak
to you. I merely ask to  see, for  the satisfaction of my own mind, that you
are well, and without intrusion to remind you, by  the sight of me, that you
have  a friend -  an  elderly  friend, grey-haired already, and fast growing
greyer - whom you may ever command.'
     The cordial face looked up in his; confided in it; and promised.
     'I  understand,  as  before,'  said the gentleman,  rising,  'that  you
purpose not to  mention my  visit  to  John Carker, lest he should be at all
distressed by my acquaintance with  his history. I am glad of  it, for it is
out of  the  ordinary  course of  things,  and  -  habit  again!'  said  the
gentleman, checking himself impatiently, 'as if there were no  better course
than the ordinary course!'
     With that  he turned to go, and walking, bareheaded, to the  outside of
the  little  porch,  took  leave  of  her  with  such  a  happy  mixture  of
unconstrained respect  and  unaffected  interest, as no  breeding could have
taught,  no  truth  mistrusted,  and  nothing  but  a  pure and single heart
expressed.
     Many half-forgotten emotions were awakened in the sister's mind by this
visit.  It was  so very  long  since any  other  visitor had  crossed  their
threshold; it was so very long  since any voice of apathy had made sad music
in  her  ears;  that  the  stranger's figure remained present  to her, hours
afterwards,  when  she sat at the window,  plying her  needle; and his words
seemed newly spoken, again and again. He had touched the spring  that opened
her whole life; and if she lost him for a short space, it was only among the
many shapes of the one great recollection of which that life was made.
     Musing  and working by  turns; now constraining herself to be steady at
her needle  for  a  long  time  together,  and  now letting  her work  fall,
unregarded, on her lap,  and straying wheresoever  her busier  thoughts led,
Harriet  Carker found the hours  glide by  her, and  the  day steal on.  The
morning, which had been bright and clear, gradually became overcast; a sharp
wind  set in;  the rain fell  heavily;  and  a dark  mist drooping  over the
distant town, hid it from the view.
     She  often looked with  compassion, at such a time, upon the stragglers
who came  wandering into  London,  by  the great  highway hard by,  and who,
footsore and weary, and gazing fearfully at the huge town before them, as if
foreboding that their misery  there would be but as a drop  of  water in the
sea,  or as  a grain of  sea-sand on the shore, went shrinking  on, cowering
before the angry weather, and looking as if the very elements rejected them.
Day  after day, such travellers  crept past, but always, as she  thought, In
one direction - always  towards the town. Swallowed up in one phase or other
of  its  immensity,  towards which  they  seemed  impelled  by  a  desperate
fascination,  they never returned. Food for the hospitals, the  churchyards,
the prisons, the river, fever, madness, vice, and death, - they passed on to
the monster, roaring in the distance, and were lost.
     The  chill wind was howling, and the rain  was falling, and the day was
darkening moodily, when Harriet, raising her eyes from the work on which she
had long  since been  engaged with unremitting constancy,  saw one  of these
travellers approaching.
     A  woman.  A  solitary  woman  of  some  thirty  years  of  age;  tall;
well-formed; handsome; miserably dressed; the soil of many country  roads in
varied weather -  dust, chalk,  clay, gravel - clotted  on her grey cloak by
the streaming wet;  no bonnet on her head, nothing to defend  her rich black
hair from  the  rain,  but a torn handkerchief; with the fluttering  ends of
which, and with her hair, the wind blinded her  so that she often stopped to
push them back, and look upon the way she was going.
     She was in the  act of  doing  so,  when  Harriet observed her.  As her
hands, parting on her  sunburnt forehead, swept across  her face,  and threw
aside the  hindrances  that encroached  upon  it,  there was a  reckless and
regardless beauty in it:  a dauntless and depraved indifference to more than
weather: a carelessness of what was cast upon her  bare head  from Heaven or
earth: that, coupled  with  her misery and loneliness, touched  the heart of
her fellow-woman. She thought of all that was perverted  and  debased within
her, no  less  than without:  of  modest graces of  the mind,  hardened  and
steeled,  like  these  attractions of the person; of the  many  gifts of the
Creator flung  to the  winds like the  wild hair; of all  the beautiful ruin
upon which the storm was beating and the night was coming.
     Thinking  of  this, she did not turn away with a delicate indignation -
too many of  her own compassionate and tender sex too often do - but  pitied
her.
     Her fallen sister came on,  looking far  before  her, trying  with  her
eager  eyes  to pierce  the mist  in  which  the  city  was  enshrouded, and
glancing, now and  then,  from side  to  side,  with  the  bewildered -  and
uncertain aspect of a  stranger. Though her  tread was bold and  courageous,
she was fatigued, and after a moment of irresolution, - sat down upon a heap
of stones; seeking  no shelter from the rain,  but letting it rain on her as
it would.
     She was now opposite the house; raising her head after resting it for a
moment on both hands, her eyes met those of Harriet.
     In  a  moment, Harriet was at  the door; and the other, rising from her
seat at her beck, came slowly, and with no conciliatory look, towards her.
     'Why do you rest in the rain?' said Harriet, gently.
     'Because I have no other resting-place,' was the reply.
     'But  there are many places of shelter  near here.  This,' referring to
the little porch, 'is better than where you  were. You  are very welcome  to
rest here.'
     The  wanderer looked  at  her,  in doubt and surprise, but without  any
expression of thankfulness; and sitting down, and taking off one of her worn
shoes to beat out the fragments  of stone and dust  that were inside, showed
that her foot was cut and bleeding.
     Harriet uttering an expression of pity, the  traveller looked up with a
contemptuous and incredulous smile.
     'Why, what's a torn foot to  such  as me?' she said. 'And what's a torn
foot in such as me, to such as you?'
     'Come  in and wash it,' answered Harriet, mildly, 'and  let me give you
something to bind it up.'
     The woman caught her arm, and drawing it before her  own eyes, hid them
against it, and wept. Not  like a woman, but like a stern man surprised into
that  weakness;  with  a  violent heaving  of  her breast, and  struggle for
recovery, that showed how unusual the emotion was with her.
     She submitted  to  be  led  into  the house,  and,  evidently  more  in
gratitude than in any care for herself, washed  and bound the injured place.
Harriet then put before her fragments of her own frugal dinner, and when she
had eaten of them, though sparingly, besought  her, before resuming her road
(which  she showed her anxiety to do), to dry  her clothes before the  fire.
Again, more in  gratitude than  with any  evidence of  concern  in  her  own
behalf,  she sat down in front of it, and  unbinding the handkerchief  about
her  head, and  letting  her thick wet  hair fall down below her waist,  sat
drying it with the palms of her hands, and looking at the blaze.
     'I  daresay you  are  thinking,' she  said,  lifting her head suddenly,
'that I  used to be handsome,  once. I believe I was  - I  know I was - Look
here!' She  held  up  her hair roughly with both hands; seizing it as if she
would have torn  it  out; then,  threw  it  down again, and flung it back as
though it were a heap of serpents.
     'Are you a stranger in this place?' asked Harriet.
     'A  stranger!'  she returned, stopping  between  each  short reply, and
looking at the  fire.  'Yes. Ten or a dozen years a stranger.  I have had no
almanack where I have been. Ten or a dozen years. I  don't  know this  part.
It's much altered since I went away.'
     'Have you been far?'
     'Very far. Months upon months over the sea,  and far away even then.  I
have been where convicts go,' she added, looking full upon  her entertainer.
'I have been one myself.'
     'Heaven help you and forgive you!' was the gentle answer.
     'Ah! Heaven help me and forgive me!' she returned, nodding  her head at
the fire. 'If man would help some  of us a little more, God would forgive us
all the sooner perhaps.'
     But she was softened by the  earnest  manner,  and the cordial  face so
full of mildness and so free from judgment, of her, and said, less hardily:
     'We may be  about the same age, you and me. If  I am older,  it is  not
above a year or two. Oh think of that!'
     She opened her arms, as though the exhibition of her outward form would
show the moral wretch she was; and letting them drop at her sides, hung down
her head.
     'There is nothing we  may not hope to repair;  it is never  too late to
amend,' said Harriet. 'You are penitent
     'No,' she answered.  'I  am not! I can't  be. I am  no such  thing. Why
should  I  be penitent, and  all the world go free? They  talk to  me  of my
penitence. Who's penitent for the wrongs that have been done to me?'
     She rose up, bound her handkerchief about  her head, and turned to move
away.
     'Where are you going?' said Harriet.
     'Yonder,' she answered, pointing with her hand. 'To London.'
     'Have you any home to go to?'
     'I think I have a mother. She's as much a mother, as her  dwelling is a
home,' she answered with a bitter laugh.
     'Take this,' cried Harriet, putting money in her hand. 'Try to do well.
It is very little, but for one day it may keep you from harm.'
     'Are you married?' said the other, faintly, as she took it.
     'No. I live here with my brother. We have not much to spare, or I would
give you more.'
     'Will you let me kiss you?'
     Seeing no scorn or repugnance  in her  face, the  object of her charity
bent  over  her as she asked the question,  and pressed her lips against her
cheek. Once more she caught her  arm, and covered her eyes with it; and then
was gone.
     Gone into the deepening night,  and  howling  wind,  and pelting  rain;
urging her way on  towards the mist-enshrouded city where the blurred lights
gleamed; and with her black hair, and disordered head-gear, fluttering round
her reckless face.

        CHAPTER 34.
     Another Mother and Daughter

     In  an  ugly and dark  room, an  old  woman,  ugly and  dark  too,  sat
listening  to the  wind and  rain,  and crouching over a  meagre fire.  More
constant to the last-named occupation than  the first, she never changed her
attitude,  unless,  when  any  stray  drops of  rain  fell  hissing  on  the
smouldering embers,  to raise  her head  with an awakened  attention to  the
whistling  and  pattering outside, and gradually to let  it fall again lower
and  lower and lower as she sunk into a brooding state of  thought, in which
the noises of the night were as indistinctly regarded as  is  the monotonous
rolling of a sea by one who sits in contemplation on its shore.
     There was  no light  in  the room  save that which  the  fire afforded.
Glaring sullenly  from  time  to time  like  the eye of a  fierce beast half
asleep,  it  revealed  no objects  that  needed  to be  jealous of  a better
display. A heap of rags,  a  heap of  bones,  a wretched  bed,  two or three
mutilated chairs or  stools, the  black walls and  blacker ceiling, were all
its  winking brightness  shone upon. As the old woman,  with  a gigantic and
distorted image  of  herself thrown half upon the wall behind her, half upon
the roof above, sat bending over the few  loose bricks within  which  it was
pent,  on the damp hearth of the  chimney  - for there  was no  stove -  she
looked as if she were watching at some witch's altar for a favourable token;
and but that the movement of  her chattering jaws and trembling chin was too
frequent  and  too fast for  the slow flickering  of the fire, it would have
seemed an illusion wrought by the light, as it came and went, upon a face as
motionless as the form to which it belonged.
     If  Florence  could  have stood within  the  room and  looked  upon the
original of the shadow thrown upon the wall and roof as it cowered thus over
the  fire, a  glance might have  sufficed to recall  the figure of Good  Mrs
Brown;  notwithstanding that her childish  recollection of that terrible old
woman was as grotesque and exaggerated a  presentment of the truth, perhaps,
as the shadow on  the  wall. But Florence was not there to look on; and Good
Mrs Brown remained unrecognised, and sat staring at her fire, unobserved.
     Attracted by a louder sputtering than usual, as the rain  came  hissing
down  the  chimney in  a little  stream,  the  old  woman  raised  her head,
impatiently, to listen afresh. And this time  she did not drop it again; for
there was a hand upon the door, and a footstep in the room.
     'Who's that?' she said, looking over her shoulder.
     'One who brings you news, was the answer, in a woman's voice.
     'News? Where from?'
     'From abroad.'
     'From beyond seas?' cried the old woman, starting up.
     'Ay, from beyond seas.'
     The old woman raked  the fire together,  hurriedly, and going close  to
her visitor who had entered,  and shut  the door, and who now  stood in  the
middle  of the room, put her  hand upon  the drenched cloak,  and turned the
unresisting figure, so as  to have it in the full light of the fire. She did
not  find  what she  had  expected, whatever that might be; for she  let the
cloak go again, and uttered a querulous cry of disappointment and misery.
     'What is the matter?' asked her visitor.
     'Oho! Oho!'  cried the  old  woman,  turning her  face  upward, with  a
terrible howl.
     'What is the matter?' asked the visitor again.
     'It's not my  gal!'  cried  the  old  woman,  tossing up her  arms, and
clasping  her hands above her head.  'Where's my Alice? Where's my  handsome
daughter? They've been the death of her!'
     'They've  not been the death of her yet, if your name's  Marwood,' said
the visitor.
     'Have  you seen my gal, then?' cried the  old woman. 'Has she  wrote to
me?'
     'She said you couldn't read,' returned the other.
     'No more I can!' exclaimed the old woman, wringing her hands.
     'Have you no light here?' said the other, looking round the room.
     The old woman, mumbling and  shaking her head, and muttering to herself
about her handsome daughter, brought a candle from a cupboard in the corner,
and thrusting it into  the fire with a trembling hand, lighted  it with some
difficulty and  set it on the  table. Its dirty wick  burnt  dimly at first,
being choked in its own grease; and when the bleared  eyes and failing sight
of  the  old woman could distinguish anything by its  light, her visitor was
sitting with  her arms folded, her eyes turned downwards, and a handkerchief
she had worn upon her head lying on the table by her side.
     'She  sent to me by word of mouth then, my gal, Alice?' mumbled the old
woman, after waiting for some moments. 'What did she say?'
     'Look,' returned the visitor.
     The old woman repeated the word in a scared uncertain way; and, shading
her eyes, looked at  the speaker, round  the  room, and at the  speaker once
again.
     'Alice said look  again, mother;' and  the speaker fixed  her eyes upon
her.
     Again  the old woman looked  round  the  room, and  at her visitor, and
round the  room  once more. Hastily seizing the candle, and rising  from her
seat, she held it to  the visitor's face, uttered a loud  cry,  set down the
light, and fell upon her neck!
     'It's my gal! It's my Alice! It's my handsome daughter, living and come
back!'  screamed the  old woman, rocking herself to and fro upon the  breast
that coldly  suffered  her  embrace. 'It's my  gal!  It's  my Alice! It's my
handsome  daughter, living  and come back!' she  screamed again, dropping on
the floor before her, clasping her knees, laying her head against them,  and
still rocking herself to  and fro with every frantic demonstration of  which
her vitality was capable.
     'Yes,  mother,'  returned  Alice, stooping forward  for  a  moment  and
kissing her, but  endeavouring,  even in the act,  to disengage herself from
her embrace. 'I am here, at last. Let go, mother; let go. Get up, and sit in
your chair. What good does this do?'
     'She's come back harder than she went!' cried the mother, looking up in
her face, and still  holding to her knees. 'She don't care for me! after all
these years, and all the wretched life I've led!'
     'Why> mother!' said Alice, shaking her ragged  skirts to detach the old
woman from them: 'there are two sides to that. There have been  years for me
as  well as you,  and there has been wretchedness for me as well as you. Get
up, get up!'
     Her  mother rose, and cried, and wrung her hands, and stood at a little
distance gazing on her. Then she took the candle again, and going round her,
surveyed her from head to foot,  making a low moaning all the time. Then she
put the candle down,  resumed her chair, and beating her hands together to a
kind of weary tune, and rolling herself from side to side, continued moaning
and wailing to herself.
     Alice got up, took off her wet cloak, and laid it aside. That done, she
sat  down as  before, and with her arms  folded,  and her eyes gazing at the
fire,  remained  silently  listening  with a  contemptuous face to  her  old
mother's inarticulate complainings.
     'Did  you  expect to see me return as youthful as I went away, mother?'
she said  at length, turning her eyes upon the old woman.  'Did you think  a
foreign life,  like mine, was good for good looks? One would believe so,  to
hear you!'
     'It ain't that!' cried the mother. 'She knows it!'
     'What  is it  then?' returned  the daughter.  'It had best be something
that don't last, mother, or my way out is easier than my way in.
     'Hear that!' exclaimed the mother. 'After all these years she threatens
to desert me in the moment of her coming back again!'
     'I tell  you, mother, for the second time, there have been years for me
as  well as you,' said Alice. 'Come back harder? Of  course I have come back
harder. What else did you expect?'
     'Harder to me! To her own dear mother!' cried the old woman
     'I don't know  who  began to harden me, if my own dear mother  didn't,'
she  returned,  sitting  with  her  folded  arms,  and  knitted  brows,  and
compressed lips as if she  were bent  on  excluding, by force,  every softer
feeling from her breast. 'Listen, mother, to a word or two. If we understand
each other now, we shall not fall out any more, perhaps. I went away a girl,
and have come back a woman. I went away undutiful enough, and have come back
no better, you may swear. But have you been very dutiful to me?'
     'I!'  cried the old  woman.  'To  my  gal!  A mother dutiful to her own
child!'
     'It sounds  unnatural, don't it?' returned the daughter, looking coldly
on  her  with her stern,  regardless, hardy,  beautiful  face; 'but  I  have
thought of it sometimes,  in the course of  my lone  years, till I have  got
used to it.  I have  heard some  talk about duty first and  last; but it has
always been of  my duty to other people. I have wondered  now and then  - to
pass away the time - whether no one ever owed any duty to me.
     Her mother sat mowing, and mumbling, and shaking her head, but  whether
angrily or remorsefully,  or in  denial, or only in her  physical infirmity,
did not appear.
     'There was a  child called Alice  Marwood,' said  the daughter, with  a
laugh, and looking down at herself in terrible derision  of  herself, 'born,
among  poverty  and  neglect, and  nursed  in it. Nobody taught  her, nobody
stepped forward to help her, nobody cared for her.'
     'Nobody!'  echoed  the  mother,  pointing to  herself, and striking her
breast.
     'The only care she knew,' returned the daughter, 'was to be beaten, and
stinted, and abused sometimes; and she might have done  better without that.
She lived in homes  like this, and in  the streets, with a  crowd of  little
wretches like herself; and yet she brought good looks out of this childhood.
So  much the worse for  her. She had better have been  hunted and worried to
death for ugliness.'
     'Go on! go on!' exclaimed the mother.
     'I am going on,' returned the daughter. 'There  was a girl called Alice
Marwood. She was handsome.  She was taught too late,  and  taught all wrong.
She was too well cared  for, too well trained, too well helped  on, too much
looked after. You were very fond  of her  - you  were better off  then. What
came to that girl comes to  thousands every year.  It was only ruin, and she
was born to it.'
     'After  all  these years!' whined the  old woman. 'My  gal begins  with
this.'
     'She'll soon have  ended,'  said the daughter.  'There  was  a criminal
called Alice Marwood -  a girl still, but  deserted and an outcast.  And she
was tried, and she was sentenced. And  lord, how the gentlemen in the  Court
talked about it! and how grave the judge was on her  duty, and on her having
perverted  the  gifts of nature - as if he  didn't know better than  anybody
there,  that  they had been made curses to her!  - and how he preached about
the strong arm  of the  Law - so very strong to  save her, when she  was  an
innocent and helpless little wretch! -  and how solemn and religious it  all
was! I have thought of that, many times since, to be sure!'
     She  folded her arms tightly on her breast, and laughed in  a tone that
made the howl of the old woman musical.
     'So Alice Marwood  was transported, mother,' she pursued, 'and was sent
to  learn  her  duty,  where  there was  twenty  times  less duty, and  more
wickedness, and wrong, and infamy, than here. And Alice Marwood is come back
a woman. Such  a woman  as she  ought  to be, after all this. In good  time,
there will be more solemnity, and more fine  talk, and more strong arm, most
likely, and there will be an end of her; but the gentlemen needn't be afraid
of  being thrown  out of  work.  There's crowds of little  wretches, boy and
girl, growing up in any of the streets they live in, that'll keep them to it
till they've made their fortunes.'
     The old woman leaned her elbows on the table, and resting her face upon
her  two  hands,  made a  show  of being in great distress - or really  was,
perhaps.
     'There! I have  done, mother,' said the daughter, with a motion  of her
head, as if in dismissal of the  subject. 'I have said enough. Don't let you
and I talk of being dutiful, whatever we do. Your childhood was like mine, I
suppose. So much the worse for both of us. I don't want to blame you, or  to
defend myself; why should I? That's all over long ago. But I  am a  woman  -
not a girl, now - and you and I needn't make a show of our history, like the
gentlemen in the Court. We know all about it, well enough.'
     Lost and degraded as  she was, there  was a beauty in her, both of face
and form, which, even in  its  worst expression, could not but be recognised
as  such by anyone regarding her with the  least attention. As she  subsided
into silence, and her  face which had  been harshly  agitated, quieted down;
while  her dark eyes, fixed upon the fire, exchanged the reckless light that
had animated them, for one that was softened by something like sorrow; there
shone  through  all her wayworn misery and  fatigue,  a  ray of the departed
radiance of the fallen angel.'
     Her mother, after watching her for some time without speaking, ventured
to steal  her withered hand a little  nearer to her  across  the  table; and
finding that  she  permitted this,  to touch her face,  and smooth her hair.
With  the feeling, as it seemed, that the old woman was at least sincere  in
this show of interest, Alice made no movement to check her; so, advancing by
degrees, she bound up her daughter's hair afresh, took off her wet shoes, if
they deserved the name, spread something dry upon her shoulders, and hovered
humbly  about her, muttering to herself, as  she recognised her old features
and expression more and more.
     'You are very poor, mother, I see,' said Alice, looking round, when she
had sat thus for some time.
     'Bitter poor, my deary,' replied the old woman.
     She  admired  her  daughter,  and  was   afraid  of  her.  Perhaps  her
admiration, such  as it  was, had originated  long ago, when she first found
anything  that was beautiful appearing  in the midst of the squalid fight of
her  existence. Perhaps  her  fear was  referable,  in  some  sort,  to  the
retrospect  she had so  lately heard.  Be  this  as  it  might,  she  stood,
submissively and deferentially, before her child, and inclined her  head, as
if in a pitiful entreaty to be spared any further reproach.
     'How have you lived?'
     'By begging, my deary.
     'And pilfering, mother?'
     'Sometimes, Ally  - in a very  small  way. I am old and  timid.  I have
taken trifles from children now  and then, my deary, but not  often.  I have
tramped about the country, pet, and I know what I know. I have watched.'
     'Watched?' returned the daughter, looking at her.
     'I  have  hung about  a family, my deary,'  said the  mother, even more
humbly and submissively than before.
     'What family?'
     'Hush, darling. Don't be angry  with me. I did it for the love of  you.
In  memory of my poor gal beyond seas.'  She put out her hand deprecatingly,
and drawing it back again, laid it on her lips.
     'Years ago, my deary,' she  pursued, glancing timidly  at the attentive
and stem face opposed to her, 'I came across his little child, by chance.'
     'Whose child?'
     'Not  his, Alice deary; don't look at  me like that; not his. How could
it be his? You know he has none.'
     'Whose then?' returned the daughter. 'You said his.'
     'Hush, Ally;  you  frighten me, deary. Mr Dombey's -  only Mr Dombey's.
Since then, darling, I have seen them often. I have seen him.'
     In uttering this last word, the old  woman  shrunk and  recoiled, as if
with  sudden  fear  that  her daughter  would  strike  her. But  though  the
daughter's face was fixed upon her, and expressed the most vehement passion,
she  remained  still:  except that she clenched her arms tighter and tighter
within  each other, on her bosom, as if to restrain them by that  means from
doing an injury to herself, or someone  else, in the blind fury of the wrath
that suddenly possessed her.
     'Little he thought who I was!' said the old woman, shaking her clenched
hand.
     'And little he cared!' muttered her daughter, between her teeth.
     'But there we were, said the  old woman, 'face to face. I spoke to him,
and he spoke to me. I sat and watched him as he went away down a long  grove
of trees: and at every step he took, I cursed him soul and body.'
     'He will thrive in spite of that,' returned the daughter disdainfully.
     'Ay, he is thriving,' said the mother.
     She held her peace; for the  face and form before her were  unshaped by
rage. It seemed as if the bosom would  burst  with  the emotions that strove
within it. The  effort that  constrained  and held it  pent up, was  no less
formidable  than  the  rage  itself:  no  less  bespeaking  the  violent and
dangerous  character  of  the woman who made it.  But  it succeeded, and she
asked, after a silence:
     'Is he married?'
     'No, deary,' said the mother.
     'Going to be?'
     'Not that I  know of, deary.  But his master and friend is married. Oh,
we may give him joy! We may  give 'em all joy!' cried the old woman, hugging
herself with her lean arms  in  her  exultation. 'Nothing but joy to us will
come of that marriage. Mind met'
     The daughter looked at her for an explanation.
     'But  you are wet and tired; hungry and  thirsty,' said  the old woman,
hobbling to  the cupboard; 'and  there's  little  here, and little' - diving
down into her pocket, and jingling a few half- pence on the table -  'little
here. Have you any money, Alice, deary?'
     The covetous, sharp, eager face, with which she 'asked the question and
looked  on, as her daughter took out of her bosom the little gift she had so
lately received, told almost as much of the history of this parent and child
as the child herself had told in words.
     'Is that all?' said the mother.
     'I have no more. I should not have this, but for charity.'
     'But for charity, eh, deary?' said the old woman, bending greedily over
the  table to look  at the money,  which  she appeared  distrustful  of  her
daughter's still retaining in her  hand, and gazing on. 'Humph! six  and six
is twelve, and six eighteen -  so - we must make the most of it. I'll go buy
something to eat and drink.'
     With greater alacrity than  might  have been  expected  in  one of  her
appearance - for  age and misery seemed to have made her as decrepit as ugly
- she began  to occupy her trembling hands in  tying an  old  bonnet on  her
head, and folding a torn  shawl about herself: still eyeing the money in her
daughter's hand, with the same sharp desire.
     'What  joy  is to  come to  us of this  marriage,  mother?'  asked  the
daughter. 'You have not told me that.'
     'The joy,' she replied, attiring herself, with fumbling fingers, 'of no
love at all, and much pride  and  hate, my deary. The  joy  of confusion and
strife among 'em, proud as they are, and of danger - danger, Alice!'
     'What danger?'
     'I  have  seen  what I  have seen. I  know  what I  know!' chuckled the
mother. 'Let some look to it. Let  some be upon their guard. My gal may keep
good company yet!'
     Then, seeing that in the wondering  earnestness with which her daughter
regarded her, her hand  involuntarily  closed upon the money,  the old woman
made  more  speed  to  secure  it,  and  hurriedly added,  'but I'll  go buy
something; I'll go buy something.'
     As  she  stood  with her hand stretched out before  her  daughter,  her
daughter, glancing again at  the money, put  it  to her lips  before parting
with it.
     'What, Ally! Do you kiss it?' chuckled the old woman. 'That's like me -
I often do. Oh, it's so good  to us!' squeezing her own tarnished  halfpence
up to  her bag of a throat, 'so  good to us in everything but not coming  in
heaps!'
     'I kiss it, mother,' said the daughter,  'or I did then -  I don't know
that I ever did before - for the giver's sake.'
     'The  giver, eh, deary?'  retorted the  old woman,  whose  dimmed  eyes
glistened  as she took it. 'Ay! I'll kiss it for the giver's sake, too, when
the giver can make it go  farther. But I'll go spend it, deary. I'll be back
directly.'
     'You  seem to say you know  a  great deal, mother,'  said the daughter,
following her to the door with her eyes. 'You have grown  very wise since we
parted.'
     'Know!'  croaked the old woman, coming back a step or two, 'I know more
than you  think I know more than  he thinks, deary, as I'll tell you  by and
bye. I know all'
     The daughter smiled incredulously.
     'I know of his brother, Alice,' said the old woman,  stretching out her
neck with a leer of malice absolutely frightful, 'who might  have been where
you have  been - for  stealing money -  and who lives  with his sister, over
yonder, by the north road out of London.'
     'Where?'
     'By the north road out of London, deary. You shall see the house if you
like. It  ain't much to boast of, genteel as his own is. No, no, no,'  cried
the old woman, shaking her head and laughing; for her  daughter had  started
up, 'not now; it's too  far off; it's by the milestone, where the stones are
heaped; - to-morrow, deary, if it's fine,  and you are  in  the humour.  But
I'll go spend - '
     'Stop!'  and  the daughter  flung  herself  upon her, with  her  former
passion raging like a fire.  'The  sister is a fair-faced Devil,  with brown
hair?'
     The old woman, amazed and terrified, nodded her head.
     'I see  the  shadow  of him in her face!  It's a red house standing  by
itself. Before the door there is a small green porch.'
     Again the old woman nodded.
     'In which I sat to-day! Give me back the money.'
     'Alice! Deary!'
     'Give me back the money, or you'll be hurt.'
     She  forced it  from  the old  woman's  hand  as she spoke, and utterly
indifferent to  her complainings and  entreaties, threw on the garments  she
had taken off, and hurried out, with headlong speed.
     The mother followed, limping after her as she  could, and expostulating
with  no more effect upon her than upon the wind and rain  and darkness that
encompassed them. Obdurate and fierce in her own purpose, and indifferent to
all besides, the daughter defied the weather and the distance, as if she had
known  no travel  or  fatigue, and  made for  the  house where she  had been
relieved. After some quarter of an hour's walking, the old  woman, spent and
out of breath, ventured to hold by her skirts; but she ventured no more, and
they travelled on in silence through the wet  and gloom. If  the mother  now
and  then uttered a  word of  complaint,  she stifled  it  lest her daughter
should break away from her and leave her behind; and the daughter was dumb.
     It was within  an  hour or so of midnight, when  they  left the regular
streets  behind them, and entered on the deeper gloom of that neutral ground
where  the  house  was situated. The  town lay in the  distance,  lurid  and
lowering; the bleak wind howled over the open  space; all around was  black,
wild, desolate.
     'This is a fit place for me!' said the daughter, stopping to look back.
'I thought so, when I was here before, to-day.'
     'Alice, my deary,' cried the mother, pulling  her  gently by the skirt.
'Alice!'
     'What now, mother?'
     'Don't give  the money back, my darling; please  don't. We can't afford
it. We  want  supper, deary.  Money is money, whoever gives it. Say what you
will, but keep the money.'
     'See there!' was all the daughter's answer. 'That is the house I  mean.
Is that it?'
     The old  woman nodded in the affirmative; and  a few more paces brought
them to the threshold. There was the  light of  fire and candle  in the room
where  Alice had sat to dry her clothes; and on her  knocking  at  the door,
John Carker appeared from that room.
     He was surprised to see such visitors at such an  hour, and asked Alice
what she wanted.
     'I want your sister,' she said. 'The woman who gave me money to-day.'
     At the sound of her raised voice, Harriet came out.
     'Oh!' said Alice. 'You are here! Do you remember me?'
     'Yes,' she answered, wondering.
     The  face that had humbled  itself  before  her, looked on her now with
such invincible  hatred  and defiance; and the  hand that had gently touched
her arm,  was  clenched  with such  a show  of evil purpose, as if  it would
gladly strangle her; that she drew close to her brother for protection.
     'That I  could speak with you, and not know you! That I could come near
you, and  not feel what blood was running in your  veins, by the tingling of
my own!' said Alice, with a menacing gesture.
     'What do you mean? What have I done?'
     'Done!'  returned the other.  'You  have sat me by your fire;  you have
given me food and money; you have bestowed your compassion on me! You! whose
name I spit upon!'
     The old woman, with a malevolence  that made her uglIness  quite awful,
shook her withered  hand at  the brother and sister in  confirmation of  her
daughter, but  plucked her by the skirts  again, nevertheless, imploring her
to keep the money.
     'If I dropped a tear upon your hand, may it wither it up!  If I spoke a
gentle word  in  your hearing, may it deafen  you! If I touched you with  my
lips, may the  touch be poison  to you! A curse  upon this roof that gave me
shelter! Sorrow and shame upon your head! Ruin upon all belonging to you!'
     As she said  the words, she threw  the money down upon the  ground, and
spurned it with her foot.
     'I  tread it  in the  dust: I wouldn't  take  it  if it paved my way to
Heaven! I would the bleeding  foot  that brought  me here to-day, had rotted
off, before it led me to your house!'
     Harriet, pale and trembling, restrained  her brother, and  suffered her
to go on uninterrupted.
     'It was well that  I should be pitied and forgiven by you, or anyone of
your  name, in the first hour  of my return! It was well that you should act
the kind good lady to me! I'll thank  you when I die; I'll pray for you, and
all your race, you may be sure!'
     With a fierce  action  of her hand, as if she sprinkled  hatred  on the
ground, and with it  devoted those who were  standing there to  destruction,
she looked up once at the black sky, and strode out into the wild night.
     The mother, who had plucked at her skirts again and  again in vain, and
had eyed  the money  lying on the  threshold  with an  absorbing  greed that
seemed to concentrate her faculties upon it, would have prowled about, until
the  house  was  dark,  and  then  groped  in  the  mire on  the  chance  of
repossessing  herself of  it. But the daughter drew her away,  and  they set
forth, straight, on their return to their dwelling; the old woman whimpering
and bemoaning  their loss upon  the road, and fretfully bewailing, as openly
as she dared, the undutiful conduct of her handsome girl in depriving her of
a supper, on the very first night of their reunion.
     Supperless to bed she  went,  saving for a  few  coarse  fragments; and
those she sat  mumbling and  munching  over a scrap of fire,  long after her
undutiful daughter lay asleep.
     Were this  miserable mother,  and  this  miserable daughter,  only  the
reduction  to  their  lowest  grade,  of  certain   social  vices  sometimes
prevailing higher up? In this round world of many circles within circles, do
we make a weary journey from the high grade to the low, to find at last that
they lie close together, that the two extremes touch, and that our journey's
end is  but our starting-place? Allowing for  great difference  of stuff and
texture, was the pattern of this woof repeated among gentle blood at all?
     Say,  Edith Dombey!  And Cleopatra, best of mothers,  let us  have your
testimony!

        CHAPTER 35.
     The Happy Pair

     The dark blot on  the street is gone. Mr  Dombey's  mansion, if it be a
gap among the other houses any longer, is only  so because it is not  to  be
vied  with in its brightness, and haughtily casts them off.  The  saying is,
that home is home,  be it never so homely.  If it hold good  in the opposite
contingency, and home is home be it never so stately, what  an altar  to the
Household Gods is raised up here!
     Lights are sparkling in the windows this evening, and the ruddy glow of
fires is warm and  bright upon the hangings and soft carpets, and the dinner
waits  to  be served, and the dinner-table is handsomely  set forth,  though
only for four persons, and the side board is cumbrous with  plate. It is the
first  time that the  house has been  arranged for occupation since its late
changes, and the happy pair are looked for every minute.
     Only  second to the wedding morning, in the interest and expectation it
engenders among the household, is this evening of the coming home. Mrs Perch
is in  the kitchen taking tea; and  has made the  tour of the establishment,
and  priced  the  silks  and  damasks  by  the  yard,  and  exhausted  every
interjection in the dictionary  and out  of it expressive of admiration  and
wonder.  The  upholsterer's  foreman,   who  has  left   his  hat,  with   a
pocket-handkerchief in it, both smelling strongly  of varnish, under a chair
in the hall, lurks about  the  house,  gazing  upwards at the  cornices, and
downward  at  the  carpets,  and  occasionally,  in  a  silent  transport of
enjoyment, taking  a  rule  out  of  his pocket, and skirmishingly measuring
expensive objects,  with  unutterable feelings. Cook is in high spirits, and
says  give her a place where  there's plenty  of  company (as she'll bet you
sixpence  there will  be now), for  she is  of a lively disposition, and she
always was from a child,  and she  don't mind who knows it;  which sentiment
elicits from  the  breast  of Mrs Perch a  responsive murmur of  support and
approbation. All the housemaid hopes is, happiness for 'em - but marriage is
a lottery,  and  the more  she  thinks  about it,  the more  she  feels  the
independence and the  safety of a single life. Mr Towlinson is saturnine and
grim'  and says that's his  opinion too, and give  him War besides, and down
with  the French - for this young  man has  a general impression  that every
foreigner is a Frenchman, and must be by the laws of nature.
     At each  new sound of wheels,  they all stop> whatever they are saying,
and listen; and more  than once there is  a general starting up and a cry of
'Here they are!'  But here they are not  yet; and Cook  begins to mourn over
the  dinner, which has  been put back  twice, and  the upholsterer's foreman
still goes lurking about the rooms, undisturbed in his blissful reverie!
     Florence is ready  to receive her father and  her new  Mama Whether the
emotions that are throbbing in her  breast originate In pleasure or in pain,
she hardly knows. But the fluttering heart sends added colour to her cheeks,
and  brightness to her  eyes; and they  say  downstairs, drawing their heads
together  -  for they  always speak  softly  when they speak  of  her  - how
beautiful Miss Florence looks to-night, and what a sweet young  lady she has
grown,  poor dear!  A pause  succeeds; and then Cook, feeling, as president,
that  her sentiments are waited for, wonders whether -  and there stops. The
housemaid  wonders too,  and so  does  Mrs  Perch, who has  the happy social
faculty of always  wondering when other people wonder, without  being at all
particular   what  she  wonders  at.  Mr  Towlinson,  who  now  descries  an
opportunity  of bringing down  the  spirits of the ladies to his  own level,
says wait and see; he wishes some people were well out of this. Cook leads a
sigh then, and  a murmur of 'Ah, it's a  strange  world,  it is indeed!' and
when it  has  gone  round the  table, adds persuasively,  'but Miss Florence
can't  well be  the worse for  any  change, Tom.' Mr Towlinson's  rejoinder,
pregnant  with  frightful meaning,  is 'Oh, can't  she though!' and sensible
that  a  mere man can  scarcely be more prophetic,  or improve upon that, he
holds his peace.
     Mrs Skewton, prepared to greet her darling daughter and dear son-in-law
with open arms, is appropriately attired for that purpose in a very youthful
costume,  with short  sleeves.  At  present,  however, her ripe  charms  are
blooming in the  shade of  her own  apartments,  whence she had not  emerged
since she took possession  of them a few  hours  ago,  and where she is fast
growing fretful,  on account of  the postponement  of  dinner. The maid  who
ought to be a skeleton, but  is in truth a  buxom damsel,  is,  on the other
hand,  In a most amiable state: considering her quarterly stipend much safer
than  heretofore, and  foreseeing  a great  improvement  in  her  board  and
lodging.
     Where are  the  happy  pair, for whom this brave  home  is waiting?  Do
steam, tide,  wind,  and horses,  all abate their speed,  to linger  on such
happiness? Does the swarm  of  loves and  graces hovering about them  retard
their progress  by  its numbers? Are there so  many  flowers in their  happy
path,  that they can scarcely move along, without entanglement  in thornless
roses, and sweetest briar?
     They are  here at last! The noise of wheels is heard, grows louder, and
a carriage  drives up to  the door!  A  thundering knock from  the obnoxious
foreigner anticipates the rush of Mr Towlinson  and party to open it; and Mr
Dombey and his bride alight, and walk in arm in arm.
     'My  sweetest  Edith!'  cries  an agitated voice upon  the stairs.  'My
dearest Dombey!'  and the short  sleeves  wreath themselves  about the happy
couple in turn, and embrace them.
     Florence had come down to the hall too, but did  not advance: reserving
her  timid  welcome until these nearer and dearer transports should subside.
But the eyes of Edith sought her out, upon the threshold; and dismissing her
sensitive parent with a slight kiss on the cheek, she hurried on to Florence
and embraced her.
     'How do you do, Florence?' said Mr Dombey, putting out his hand.
     As Florence, trembling, raised it to her lips, she met  his glance. The
look was cold and distant enough, but it stirred her heart to think that she
observed in it something more of interest than  he had ever shown before. It
even expressed a kind of faint surprise, and not a disagreeable surprise, at
sight  of  her. She  dared not raise her eyes to his any  more; but she felt
that he looked  at her once again, and not less favourably. Oh what a thrill
of  joy  shot through her, awakened by  even  this intangible  and  baseless
confirmation of her hope  that she would learn to  win him, through  her new
and beautiful Mama!
     'You will not be long dressing, Mrs Dombey, I presume?' said Mr Dombey.
     'I shall be ready immediately.'
     'Let them send up dinner in a quarter of an hour.'
     With  that Mr Dombey stalked away  to  his own  dressing-room,  and Mrs
Dombey  went upstairs to  hers.  Mrs  Skewton  and Florence  repaired to the
drawing-room, where that excellent mother considered it incumbent on her  to
shed a  few irrepressible  tears,  supposed  to  be forced from  her by  her
daughter's felicity; and  which she was still drying, very gingerly, with  a
laced corner of her pocket-handkerchief, when her son-in-law appeared.
     'And how, my  dearest  Dombey, did  you  find  that  delightfullest  of
cities, Paris?' she asked, subduing her emotion.
     'It was cold,' returned Mr Dombey.
     'Gay as ever,' said Mrs Skewton, 'of course.
     'Not particularly. I thought it dull,' said Mr Dombey.
     'Fie, my dearest Dombey!' archly; 'dull!'
     'It  made  that impression upon me, Madam,' said Mr Dombey,  with grave
politeness. 'I  believe Mrs Dombey  found it dull too. She mentioned once or
twice that she thought it so.'
     'Why, you  naughty  girl!' cried  Mrs Skewton, rallying her dear child,
who  now  entered,  'what dreadfully heretical  things have you  been saying
about Paris?'
     Edith raised her eyebrows  with  an air  of weariness; and passing  the
folding-doors which were thrown open to display the suite of rooms in  their
new  and handsome garniture, and barely glancing at them  as she passed, sat
down by Florence.
     'My dear Dombey,'  said Mrs Skewton,  'how charmingly these people have
carried  out every  idea that we hinted. They have  made a perfect palace of
the house, positively.'
     'It is  handsome,' said Mr  Dombey,  looking round. 'I directed that no
expense should  be spared;  and  all that  money could do,  has been done, I
believe.'
     'And what can it not do, dear Dombey?' observed Cleopatra.
     'It is powerful, Madam,' said Mr Dombey.
     He looked in his solemn way towards his wife, but not a word said she.
     'I  hope, Mrs Dombey,' addressing her after  a moment's  silence,  with
especial distinctness; 'that these alterations meet with your approval?'
     'They are  as  handsome as  they  can be,' she  returned, with  haughty
carelessness. 'They should be so, of' course. And I suppose they are.'
     An expression  of  scorn was  habitual to the  proud  face, and  seemed
inseparable from it; but the contempt  with  which it received any appeal to
admiration, respect, or consideration on the ground of his riches, no matter
how slight  or  ordinary in  itself, was  a  new  and different  expression,
unequalled  in  intensity by any other of which  it was  capable. Whether Mr
Dombey, wrapped in his own greatness, was at all aware of this, or no, there
had not been  wanting opportunities already for his  complete enlightenment;
and at that moment it might have been effected by the one glance of the dark
eye  that  lighted on him, after  it had rapidly and scornfully surveyed the
theme of his self-glorification. He might  have read in that one glance that
nothing that  his wealth  could do,  though  it were increased  ten thousand
fold, could win him for its own sake, one look of softened recognition  from
the  defiant woman,  linked to him, but arrayed with  her whole soul against
him.  He  might have  read in that one glance that even  for its sordid  and
mercenary  influence  upon herself,  she spurned  it,  while she claimed its
utmost  power  as  her  right,  her  bargain -  as the  base  and  worthless
recompense for which she had become his wife. He might have read in it that,
ever baring her own  head for the lightning of her own contempt and pride to
strike, the most innocent allusion to the power  of his riches degraded  her
anew, sunk her deeper  in  her  own respect,  and made  the blight and waste
within her more complete.
     But dinner was announced, and Mr Dombey led  down Cleopatra; Edith  and
his  daughter following. Sweeping  past the gold and silver demonstration on
the sideboard as if it were  heaped-up dirt, and deigning to bestow  no look
upon  the elegancies around her, she  took her  place  at his board for  the
first time, and sat, like a statue, at the feast.
     Mr Dombey, being a good deal in the statue way himself, was well enough
pleased  to  see  his  handsome  wife  immovable  and  proud  and  cold. Her
deportment being always elegant and graceful, this as  a  general  behaviour
was   agreeable  and  congenial  to  him.  Presiding,  therefore,  with  his
accustomed dignity, and not at all reflecting on  his wife by any warmth  or
hilarity of his own, he performed his share of the honours of the table with
a cool  satisfaction;  and  the  installation dinner,  though  not  regarded
downstairs as  a great success, or  very  promising beginning,  passed  oil,
above, in a sufficiently polite, genteel, and frosty manner.
     Soon after tea' Mrs Skewton, who affected to be quite overcome and worn
Out by her emotions of  happiness, arising in the contemplation of  her dear
child  united  to the man of her heart, but who, there is reason to suppose,
found  this  family  party  somewhat  dull,  as  she  yawned  for  one  hour
continually behind her fan, retired to bed. Edith,  also, silently  withdrew
and  came  back'  no more. Thus,  it  happened that  Florence, who had  been
upstairs  to  have  some  conversation  with  Diogenes,   returning  to  the
drawing-room with her little work-basket, found no one there but her father,
who was walking to and fro, in dreary magnificence.
     'I  beg your pardon.  Shall I go away,  Papa?' said  Florence  faintly,
hesitating at the door.
     'No,' returned Mr Dombey, looking round over his shoulder; you can come
and go here, Florence, as you please. This is not my private room.
     Florence entered, and sat down at a distant little table with her work:
finding herself for the first time  in her life -  for the  very  first time
within her memory from her infancy to  that hour - alone with her father, as
his companion. She, his natural companion, his only child, who in her lonely
life  and grief had  known  the suffering  of a breaking heart; who,  in her
rejected  love,  had  never breathed his name  to God at night,  but with  a
tearful blessing, heavier  on him than a curse; who had prayed to die young,
so she might only die in his arms; who had, all through, repaid the agony of
slight  and  coldness, and  dislike,  with patient unexacting love, excusing
him, and pleading for him, like his better angel!
     She  trembled,  and  her eyes were  dim. His figure  seemed  to grow in
height  and bulk before her as he paced the room: now it was all blurred and
indistinct; now clear  again, and  plain; and  now she  seemed to think that
this  had happened,  just the  same, a multitude  of years ago.  She yearned
towards him, and yet shrunk from his approach. Unnatural emotion in a child,
innocent  of wrong! Unnatural the hand that  had directed  the sharp plough,
which furrowed up her gentle nature for the sowing of its seeds!
     Bent upon not distressing  or offending  him  by her distress, Florence
controlled  herself, and  sat quietly at  her work.  After  a few more turns
across and across the  room, he  left off pacing it; and  withdrawing into a
shadowy corner at some distance, where there  was an easy chair, covered his
head with a handkerchief, and composed himself to sleep.
     It  was enough for Florence to sit there watching him; turning her eyes
towards his  chair from time to time;  watching him with  her thoughts, when
her face  was intent upon  her  work; and sorrowfully glad to think that  he
could sleep, while she was there, and  that he was not  made restless by her
strange and long-forbidden presence.
     What would have been her thoughts if she had known that he was steadily
regarding her; that the veil upon his face, by accident or by design, was so
adjusted  that his sight was free, and that itnever  wandered from  her face
face  an  instant  That when  she looked towards  him'  In the obscure  dark
corner,  her  speaking eyes,  more earnest  and pathetic  in their voiceless
speech than all the orators of all the world, and impeaching him more nearly
in their mute address, met his, and did not know  it! That when she bent her
head again over her work, he  drew his breath more easily, but with the same
attention looked  upon her still - upon her white brow and her falling hair,
and busy hands; and once attracted, seemed to have no power to turn his eyes
away!
     And what were his thoughts meanwhile? With what emotions did he prolong
the  attentive  gaze covertly directed on his unknown  daughter?  Was  there
reproach to him in the quiet figure and the mild  eyes? Had he begun  to her
disregarded claims  and did they  touch him  home at last, and waken  him to
some sense of his cruel injustice?
     There are yielding moments in  the lives of the  sternest  and harshest
men, though such men  often  keep their secret well. The sight ofher in  her
beauty, almost changed into  a woman without his knowledge, may  have struck
out  some such  moments even In his life of pride. Some passing thought that
he had had a happy home within  his reach-had had a household spirit bending
at has feet - had  overlooked  it in his  stiffnecked sullen arrogance,  and
wandered  away  and lost  himself,  may  have engendered  them.  Some simple
eloquence distinctly heard,  though only uttered in  her  eyes,  unconscious
that he  read them'  as'By the death-beds I have  tended, by the childhood I
have suffered, by our meeting in this dreary house at midnight,  by the  cry
wrung from me in the anguish of my heart, oh, father, turn  to me and seek a
refuge in my love before it is too late!' may have arrested them. Meaner and
lower thoughts,  as that his dead boy was now superseded by new ties, and he
could  forgive  the having  been  supplanted  in  his  affection,  may  have
occasioned them.  The  mere association of  her as an ornament, with all the
ornament and pomp about him, may have been sufficient. But as he  looked, he
softened to her, more and  more.  As he looked, she  became blended with the
child he had  loved, and he could hardly separate the  two. As he looked, he
saw her  for an instant by a clearer and a brighter light, not bending  over
that child's pillow as his rival - monstrous thought  - but as the spirit of
his home,  and  in the  action tending himself no less, as he sat once  more
with his  bowed-down  head upon his  hand at the  foot of the little bed. He
felt inclined  to  speak to her,  and call her to him. The words  'Florence,
come here!' were rising  to his lips - but slowly and with  difficulty, they
were so  very strange - when they were  checked and stifled by a footstep on
the stair.
     It was his wife's. She had exchanged her dinner dress for a loose robe,
and unbound her hair, which fell freely about her neck. But this was not the
change in her that startled him.
     'Florence, dear,' she said, 'I have been looking for you everywhere.'
     As she sat  down  by the  side of  Florence, she stooped and kissed her
hand.  He hardly knew his wife. She was  so changed. It  was not merely that
her smile was  new to him - though that  he had  never seen; but her manner,
the tone of her voice, the  light of her eyes, the interest, and confidence,
and winning wish to please, expressed in all-this was not Edith.
     'Softly, dear Mama. Papa is asleep.'
     It  was  Edith now. She looked towards the corner where he  was, and he
knew that face and manner very well.
     'I scarcely thought you could be here, Florence.'
     Again, how altered and how softened, in an instant!
     'I left here early,' pursued Edith, 'purposely to sit upstairs and talk
with you. But, going  to  your room, I  found my bird was  flown, and I have
been waiting there ever since, expecting its return.
     If  it had been  a  bird, indeed, she could  not  have  taken  it  more
tenderly and gently to her breast, than she did Florence.
     'Come, dear!'
     'Papa will not expect to find me, I suppose, when  he wakes,' hesitated
Florence.
     'Do you think he will, Florence?' said Edith, looking full upon her.
     Florence drooped her  head, and rose, and  put up her work-basket Edith
drew her hand through her arm,  and they went out of the room like  sisters.
Her very step  was different and new to him' Mr Dombey  thought, as his eyes
followed her to the door.
     He sat in his shadowy corner so long, that the church clocks struck the
hour three  times  before he  moved  that night. All that while his face was
still  intent upon the  spot where  Florence had been seated. The room  grew
darker,  as the candles waned  and  went out; but a darkness gathered on his
face, exceeding any that the night could cast, and rested there.
     Florence  and  Edith, seated  before the fire in the remote room  where
little Paul had died, talked together for a long time. Diogenes,  who was of
the  party,  had  at  first objected to the admission of Edith, and, even In
deference to  his  mistress's wish,  had only  permitted  it under  growling
protest. But, emerging  by little and  little from the ante-room, whither he
had retired in  dudgeon,  he soon appeared to comprehend, that with the most
amiable intentions he had made one of those mistakes which will occasionally
arise in the best-regulated dogs' minds; as a friendly apology for which  he
stuck himself up on end between the two, in a very hot place in front of the
fire,  and  sat panting at  it, with his  tongue  out,  and a  most imbecile
expression of countenance, listening to the conversation.
     It turned, at first, on Florence's books and favourite pursuits, and on
the manner  in which she had  beguiled  the interval since the marriage. The
last theme opened up to her a subject which lay very near her heart, and she
said, with the tears starting to her eyes:
     'Oh, Mama! I have had a great sorrow since that day.'
     'You a great sorrow, Florence!'
     'Yes. Poor Walter is drowned.'
     Florence spread her hands before her face, and wept with all her heart.
Many as were the secret  tears which Walter's fate had cost her, they flowed
yet, when she thought or spoke of him.
     'But tell me,  dear,' said Edith, soothing her. 'Who was  Walter?  What
was he to you?'
     'He  was my brother,  Mama. After dear Paul died, we said  we  would be
brother and sister. I had known  him a long  time - from a  little child. He
knew Paul, who  liked him very  much; Paul said, almost  at  the last, "Take
care of Walter, dear Papa! I was fond of him!" Walter had been brought in to
see him, and was there then - in this room.
     'And did he take care of Walter?' inquired Edith, sternly.
     'Papa? He  appointed  him  to go abroad. He was drowned in shipwreck on
his voyage,' said Florence, sobbing.
     'Does he know that he is dead?' asked Edith.
     'I  cannot tell,  Mama. I  have no  means of knowing. Dear Mama!' cried
Florence, clinging to  her as for help, and hiding her  face upon her bosom,
'I know that you have seen - '
     'Stay!  Stop, Florence.' Edith turned so  pale, and spoke so earnestly,
that Florence did not need her restraining hand upon her lips. 'Tell me  all
about Walter first; let me understand this history all through.'
     Florence related  it, and everything  belonging to it, even down to the
friendship of  Mr  Toots,  of whom  she could hardly speak  in her  distress
without a tearful smile, although she  was deeply grateful to him.  When she
had concluded her  account,  to the whole of which Edith, holding  her hand,
listened with close attention, and when a silence had succeeded, Edith said:
     'What is it that you know I have seen, Florence?'
     'That I am not,' said Florence, with the same mute appeal, and the same
quick concealment of her face  as before, 'that  I am not a favourite child,
Mama. I never have been.  I have  never  known how to be.  I have missed the
way, and  had no  one  to  show it to me.  Oh,  let me learn from you how to
become dearer to Papa Teach me! you,  who can so well!'  and clinging closer
to  her,  with  some  broken  fervent  words of  gratitude  and  endearment,
Florence, relieved  of her sad secret, wept long, but not as painfully as of
yore, within the encircling arms of her new mother.
     Pale even to her lips, and  with a face that strove for composure until
its proud beauty  was as fixed as death, Edith  looked down upon the weeping
girl, and once kissed  her.  Then gradually disengaging herself, and putting
Florence away, she said,  stately, and  quiet  as a marble  image, and in  a
voice that deepened as she spoke, but had no other token of emotion in it:
     'Florence, you do not know me! Heaven forbid that you should learn from
me!'
     'Not learn from you?' repeated Florence, in surprise.
     'That I should teach you how to love, or be loved, Heaven forbid!' said
Edith. 'If you could teach me, that were better; but it is too late. You are
dear to me, Florence. I did not think that anything could ever be so dear to
me, as you are in this little time.'
     She saw that Florence would  have spoken here, so checked her  with her
hand, and went on.
     'I will be your true friend always. I will cherish you, as much, if not
as well as anyone in this world could. You may trust in me - I know it and I
say it, dear, - with the whole confidence even of your pure heart. There are
hosts of  women  whom he might  have married, better and truer in  all other
respects than I  am, Florence; but there is not one who could come here, his
wife, whose heart could beat with greater truth to you than mine does.'
     'I know it, dear Mama!' cried Florence. 'From that first most happy day
I have known it.'
     'Most happy day!' Edith seemed  to repeat the  words involuntarily, and
went on. 'Though the  merit is not mine, for I thought little of you until I
saw  you, let  the undeserved  reward be mine in your trust and love. And in
this - in this, Florence; on the first night of my taking up  my abode here;
I am  led on as it is best I should  be, to  say it for  the  first and last
time.'
     Florence, without knowing why, felt almost  afraid to hear her proceed,
but kept her eyes riveted on the beautiful face so fixed upon her own.
     'Never  seek to  find in me,'  said Edith,  laying  her  hand upon  her
breast, 'what is not here. Never if you can help it, Florence, fall off from
me because it is not here. Little by little you will know me better, and the
time will come when you will know  me, as I know myself. Then, be as lenient
to me as you can, and do not turn to bitterness the only sweet remembrance I
shall have.
     The  tears  that  were visible in her  eyes as  she  kept them fixed on
Florence, showed that the composed face was but as a  handsome mask; but she
preserved it, and continued:
     'I have seen what you  say,  and know  how true it is. But believe me -
you  will  soon,  if you  cannot now - there is  no  one on this  earth less
qualified to  set it right or help you, Florence, than I. Never ask me  why,
or speak to me about  it or of my husband, more. There should be, so  far, a
division, and a silence between us two, like the grave itself.'
     She sat  for some time  silent;  Florence scarcely venturing to breathe
meanwhile,  as dim  and imperfect shadows  of  the truth,  and all its daily
consequences, chased  each  other  through  her  terrified, yet  incredulous
imagination. Almost as soon as  she had ceased to speak, Edith's face  began
to subside from its set composure to that quieter and more relenting aspect,
which it usually wore when she and Florence  were alone together. She shaded
it, after this  change,  with  her hands;  and  when she arose, and with  an
affectionate  embrace  bade Florence  good-night,  went quickly, and without
looking round.
     But when Florence was in bed, and the room was dark except for the glow
of the  fire,  Edith returned, and saying that she could not sleep, and that
her dressing-room was lonely, drew a  chair upon the hearth, and watched the
embers  as they died  away.  Florence  watched them too  from her bed, until
they, and the noble figure  before  them, crowned with its flowing hair, and
in its  thoughtful  eyes  reflecting  back their light,  became confused and
indistinct, and finally were lost in slumber.
     In her sleep, however,  Florence could not lose an undefined impression
of  what had so recently passed. It  formed the subject of her  dreams,  and
haunted her; now in one shape, now in another; but always oppressively;  and
with a sense of fear.  She dreamed of seeking her father in wildernesses, of
following  his  track up  fearful  heights, and  down into  deep  mines  and
caverns;  of  being  charged  with  something  that would  release him  from
extraordinary  suffering - she knew not what, or why -  yet never being able
to attain the  goal and set  him free. Then she saw him dead, upon that very
bed, and  in that very room, and knew that  he  had  never loved her to  the
last, and fell upon his  cold breast, passionately weeping. Then  a prospect
opened, and a river flowed,  and a plaintive voice  she knew,  cried, 'It is
running on, Floy! It has never stopped! You are moving with it!' And she saw
him at a distance stretching out his  arms towards her, while a figure  such
as Walter's used  to be,  stood near him, awfully serene and still. In every
vision, Edith came  and went, sometimes to her joy, sometimes to her sorrow,
until  they were  alone upon the brink of a dark  grave, and  Edith pointing
down, she looked and saw - what! - another Edith lying at the bottom.
     In  the terror of this dream, she  cried out and awoke, she thought.  A
soft  voice  seemed to  whisper in her ear, 'Florence, dear  Florence, it is
nothing but a dream!' and stretching out her arms,  she returned  the caress
of  her new Mama,  who then went out at the door  in the light  of  the grey
morning.  In a  moment, Florence  sat  up  wondering whether this had really
taken  place  or  not;  but she was only  certain  that it  was grey morning
indeed, and  that the blackened ashes  of the  fire were  on the hearth, and
that she was alone.
     So passed the night on which the happy pair came home.

        CHAPTER 36.
     Housewarming

     Many succeeding  days  passed in  like manner; except that  there  were
numerous  visits received and paid, and that Mrs Skewton held little  levees
in her own apartments, at which Major Bagstock was a frequent attendant, and
that Florence encountered  no second  look from her father, although she saw
him every day.  Nor had she  much communication in  words with her new Mama,
who was imperious and proud  to all the house  but her - Florence  could not
but  observe that - and who, although she always sent for her or went to her
when  she  came home from visiting,  and would  always go into  her room  at
night,  before retiring to  rest,  however late the  hour, and never lost an
opportunity of being with her, was often her silent and thoughtful companion
for a long time together.
     Florence, who had hoped for  so much from this marriage, could not help
sometimes comparing  the  bright  house  with the faded dreary place out  of
which it had arisen, and wondering when, in any shape, it would begin  to be
a home;  for that it was no home then, for anyone, though everything went on
luxuriously and  regularly, she had always a secret misgiving. Many an  hour
of  sorrowful reflection by day and night, and many a tear of blighted hope,
Florence bestowed upon the assurance her new Mama had given her so strongly,
that there was no one on  the earth more powerless than herself to teach her
how to win her father's heart. And  soon Florence began to think -  resolved
to think would be the  truer  phrase  -  that as  no one knew  so well,  how
hopeless of being subdued or  changed  her  father's coldness to her was, so
she  had  given  her  this  warning,  and  forbidden  the  subject  in  very
compassion.  Unselfish  here, as  in  her  every  act  and  fancy,  Florence
preferred  to bear the pain  of this  new wound, rather  than  encourage any
faint foreshadowings of the truth as it concerned her father; tender of him,
even in her wandering thoughts. As for his home, she hoped it would become a
better one, when its state of novelty and transition should be over; and for
herself, thought little and lamented less.
     If none of the new family  were particularly at home in private, it was
resolved that  Mrs  Dombey  at least should  be  at home in public,  without
delay. A series of entertainments in celebration of  the late  nuptials, and
in  cultivation  of society, were  arranged,  chiefly by Mr  Dombey  and Mrs
Skewton; and it  was settled that the festive proceedings should commence by
Mrs  Dombey's  being  at home upon  a certain  evening, and by  Mr  and  Mrs
Dombey's requesting the honour  of the  company of a great many  incongruous
people to dinner on the same day.
     Accordingly, Mr Dombey produced a list of sundry  eastern  magnates who
were to be bidden  to this feast on his behalf; to which Mrs Skewton, acting
for her dearest child, who was  haughtily careless on the subject, subjoined
a western list, comprising Cousin  Feenix,  not yet returned to Baden-Baden,
greatly to the detriment of his  personal estate; and  a variety of moths of
various degrees and ages, who had,  at  various  times,  fluttered round the
light  of her fair daughter, or herself, without any lasting injury to their
wings.  Florence was  enrolled as a member of the dinner-party,  by  Edith's
command - elicited by  a  moment's  doubt and hesitation on the  part of Mrs
Skewton; and Florence, with a wondering  heart, and with a quick instinctive
sense of everything that grated  on her father in the least, took her silent
share in the proceedings of the day.
     The proceedings  commenced  by Mr Dombey,  in a cravat of extraordinary
height and stiffness, walking  restlessly about  the  drawing-room until the
hour appointed for dinner; punctual to which, an  East India  Director,'  of
immense wealth, in a waistcoat apparently constructed in serviceable deal by
some plain  carpenter, but  really  engendered  in  the  tailor's  art,  and
composed of  the  material called  nankeen,  arrived and was  received by Mr
Dombey alone. The next stage of  the proceedings was Mr Dombey's sending his
compliments to Mrs Dombey, with  a correct statement  of the  time;  and the
next, the East India Director's falling prostrate, in a conversational point
of view,  and as  Mr Dombey was not the man to pick  him up, staring at  the
fire until rescue appeared in the shape of  Mrs Skewton;  whom the director,
as  a  pleasant start in  life for the evening,  mistook for Mrs Dombey, and
greeted with enthusiasm.
     The next arrival was  a  Bank Director, reputed to  be able to  buy  up
anything -  human  Nature generally, if  he  should  take it in his  head to
influence  the  money market in that  direction -  but who was a wonderfully
modest-spoken man, almost boastfully so, and mentioned his 'little place' at
Kingston-upon-Thames, and its just being barely equal to giving Dombey a bed
and a chop, if he would come and visit it. Ladies, he said, it was not for a
man who lived in his quiet  way to take upon himself to invite  - but if Mrs
Skewton and  her daughter, Mrs Dombey, should  ever find themselves in  that
direction,  and  would do  him the honour  to  look  at  a  little  bit of a
shrubbery they would find there, and a poor little  flower-bed or so,  and a
humble apology for a pinery, and two or three little  attempts  of that sort
without  any pretension, they would distinguish him very much.  Carrying out
his character, this gentleman was very plainly dressed, in a wisp of cambric
for a neckcloth, big shoes, a coat that was too loose for him, and a pair of
trousers that were too spare; and  mention  being made of  the Opera by  Mrs
Skewton, he  said he very seldom went there, for  he couldn't afford  it. It
seemed greatly to delight and exhilarate him to say so: and he beamed on his
audience  afterwards,  with  his   hands  in  his  pockets,   and  excessive
satisfaction twinkling in his eyes.
     Now Mrs  Dombey appeared,  beautiful  and proud, and  as disdainful and
defiant of them all as if the bridal wreath upon her head had been a garland
of  steel spikes  put on  to force  concession from her which she  would die
sooner than yield. With her  was  Florence.  When they entered together, the
shadow  of  the  night  of the  return  again darkened Mr Dombey's face. But
unobserved;  for  Florence did not  venture to  raise her  eyes  to his, and
Edith's indifference was too supreme to take the least heed of him.
     The  arrivals  quickly became numerous.  More  directors,  chairmen  of
public  companies, elderly  ladies carrying  burdens on their heads for full
dress, Cousin Feenix, Major Bagstock, friends  of Mrs Skewton, with the same
bright  bloom  on  their  complexion, and  very  precious necklaces on  very
withered necks. Among  these, a young  lady of sixty-five, remarkably coolly
dressed as to  her back and shoulders, who spoke  with an engaging lisp, and
whose eyelids wouldn't keep up well, without a great deal of trouble on  her
part, and whose  manners had  that  indefinable  charm  which  so frequently
attaches to the  giddiness of youth. As the greater part of Mr Dombey's list
were disposed to be taciturn, and the greater part of Mrs Dombey's list were
disposed  to  be  talkative,  and  there  was  no sympathy between them, Mrs
Dombey's list, by magnetic  agreement, entered into a bond  of union against
Mr Dombey's  list, who, wandering about the  rooms in  a desolate manner, or
seeking refuge in corners,  entangled themselves with company coming in, and
became  barricaded behind sofas, and had doors  opened smartly from  without
against their heads, and underwent every sort of discomfiture.
     When dinner  was announced,  Mr Dombey  took  down an old  lady like  a
crimson velvet pincushion  stuffed with  bank notes, who might have been the
identical old  lady of Threadneedle  Street, she was  so rich, and looked so
unaccommodating; Cousin  Feenix took  down  Mrs Dombey; Major Bagstock  took
down  Mrs Skewton; the  young  thing  with the shoulders was bestowed, as an
extinguisher,  upon the East India Director; and  the remaining  ladies were
left on view in the drawing-room by the remaining gentlemen, until a forlorn
hope volunteered to conduct them  downstairs, and those  brave spirits  with
their captives blocked up the dining-room door,  shutting out seven mild men
in the stony-hearted hall.  When all  the rest were got in and  were seated,
one  of  these  mild  men still  appeared,  in  smiling  confusion,  totally
destitute and unprovided for, and, escorted by the butler, made the complete
circuit of the table twice before his chair could be found, which it finally
was,  on Mrs Dombey's left  hand; after which the mild man never held up his
head again.
     Now,  the spacious  dining-room,  with  the  company  seated round  the
glittering table, busy with their  glittering  spoons, and knives and forks,
and plates, might have been taken for a grown-up exposition of Tom Tiddler's
ground, where  children  pick up gold  and  silver.'  Mr Dombey, as Tiddler,
looked  his character to admiration; and the long plateau of precious  metal
frosted,  separating  him  from  Mrs Dombey, whereon  frosted Cupids offered
scentless flowers to each of them, was allegorical to see.
     Cousin Feenix was in  great  force, and looked astonishingly young. But
he was sometimes  thoughtless  in his good humour - his memory  occasionally
wandering  like  his  legs  - and  on  this occasion  caused the  company to
shudder. It happened thus. The young lady with the back, who regarded Cousin
Feenix with sentiments of tenderness, had entrapped the East India  Director
into leading her to the chair next him; in return for which good office, she
immediately abandoned the Director, who, being shaded on the other side by a
gloomy black velvet hat surmounting a bony and speechless female with a fan,
yielded to a depression  of spirits and withdrew into himself. Cousin Feenix
and the young lady were very lively and humorous, and the young lady laughed
so  much  at  something Cousin  Feenix  related  to her, that Major Bagstock
begged  leave to  inquire  on  behalf  of  Mrs Skewton  (they  were  sitting
opposite,  a little lower down), whether that might not be considered public
property.
     'Why, upon  my  life,' said Cousin Feenix,  'there's nothing  in it; it
really is not worth repeating: in point of  fact, it's merely an anecdote of
Jack  Adams.  I dare say my friend  Dombey;' for  the general attention  was
concentrated  on Cousin Feenix;  'may remember Jack Adams,  Jack Adams,  not
Joe;  that was his brother. Jack - little Jack - man with a cast in his eye,
and slight impediment in his speech - man who sat for somebody's borough. We
used to call him in my parliamentary time W. P. Adams, in consequence of his
being  Warming  Pan for a young fellow who  was in  his minority. Perhaps my
friend Dombey may have known the man?'
     Mr Dombey, who was as likely  to  have known Guy Fawkes, replied in the
negative.   But  one  of  the  seven  mild   men  unexpectedly  leaped  into
distinction, by saying  he had known him, and adding - 'always wore  Hessian
boots!'
     'Exactly,' said Cousin Feenix, bending forward to see the mild man, and
smile encouragement at him down the table. 'That was Jack. Joe wore - '
     'Tops!' cried the mild man, rising in public estimation every Instant.
     'Of course,' said Cousin Feenix, 'you were intimate with em?'
     'I knew them both,' said the mild man.  With whom Mr Dombey immediately
took wine.
     'Devilish  good  fellow,  Jack!'  said  Cousin  Feenix,  again  bending
forward, and smiling.
     'Excellent,' returned the mild man, becoming bold on his  success. 'One
of the best fellows I ever knew.'
     'No doubt you have heard the story?' said Cousin Feenix.
     'I  shall know,' replied the bold mild  man,  'when I  have heard  your
Ludship tell it.' With that, he leaned back in  his chair  and smiled at the
ceiling, as knowing it by heart, and being already tickled.
     'In  point  of  fact, it's nothing of a  story in itself,' said  Cousin
Feenix, addressing the table with a smile, and a gay shake of his head, 'and
not worth a word of preface. But it's illustrative of the neatness of Jack's
humour. The fact  is,  that  Jack  was invited down to a marriage - which  I
think took place in Berkshire?'
     'Shropshire,' said the bold mild man, finding himself appealed to.
     'Was it? Well! In point  of fact it might have been in any shire,' said
Cousin  Feenix.  'So  my  friend  being  invited down  to this  marriage  in
Anyshire,' with a pleasant sense of the readiness of this joke,  'goes. Just
as some of us, having had the honour  of being invited to the marriage of my
lovely and accomplished relative with my friend Dombey, didn't require to be
asked twice,  and were devilish  glad  to be  present  on so interesting  an
occasion. - Goes - Jack goes. Now, this marriage  was, in point of fact, the
marriage of  an uncommonly fine  girl with a man for whom  she didn't care a
button, but whom she accepted on account of his property, which was immense.
When Jack returned to town,  after the nuptials,  a man he knew, meeting him
in  the lobby  of  the  House  of  Commons, says,  "Well, Jack, how  are the
ill-matched  couple?" "Ill-matched," says Jack "Not at all. It's a perfectly
and equal  transaction. She is  regularly bought, and you may take your oath
he is as regularly sold!"'
     In his full  enjoyment of this culminating  point  of  his  story,  the
shudder, which had gone all  round the table like an  electric spark, struck
Cousin Feenix, and he  stopped. Not a smile occasioned  by  the only general
topic of conversation broached that day, appeared  on any  face. A  profound
silence ensued; and  the wretched mild man, who  had been as innocent of any
real foreknowledge of  the story  as  the  child unborn,  had  the exquisite
misery  of reading in every eye  that he was regarded as  the prime mover of
the mischief.
     Mr Dombey's face was  not a changeful  one, and being cast in its mould
of  state that day, showed little other apprehension  of the story,  if any,
than that which he expressed when he said solemnly, amidst the silence, that
it was 'Very  good.' There was a rapid  glance from  Edith towards Florence,
but otherwise she remained, externally, impassive and unconscious.
     Through the various stages of rich meats and wines, continual  gold and
silver, dainties of earth, air,  fire, and water, heaped-up fruits, and that
unnecessary article in Mr Dombey's  banquets - ice-  the dinner  slowly made
its way: the later stages being achieved to the sonorous  music of incessant
double  knocks, announcing the arrival  of  visitors,  whose  portion of the
feast was limited to the smell thereof. When Mrs Dombey rose, it was a sight
to see  her lord, with stiff throat and erect head, hold the door  open  for
the withdrawal  of the  ladies; and  to see how she swept past  him with his
daughter on her arm.
     Mr  Dombey was  a  grave sight, behind the  decanters,  in  a state  of
dignity; and the East India Director was a forlorn sight near the unoccupied
end  of the table, in a  state of solitude;  and the  Major  was  a military
sight, relating stories of the Duke of York  to  six of the seven  mild  men
(the ambitious one was utterly quenched); and the Bank  Director was a lowly
sight, making a plan of his little attempt at a pinery, with dessert-knives,
for a group  of  admirers; and Cousin Feenix  was a thoughtful sight, as  he
smoothed his long wristbands and  stealthily adjusted his wig. But all these
sights  were of short duration, being  speedily broken up by coffee, and the
desertion of the room.
     There  was  a  throng  in the  state-rooms  upstairs, increasing  every
minute; but still Mr Dombey's  list of visitors appeared to have some native
impossibility of amalgamation with Mrs Dombey's list, and no one  could have
doubted which was which. The  single exception  to this rule perhaps  was Mr
Carker, who now smiled among the company, and who, as he stood in the circle
that was gathered about Mrs Dombey -  watchful  of her, of them,  his chief,
Cleopatra and the Major,  Florence, and everything around - appeared at ease
with  both divisions of  guests, and  not marked as exclusively belonging to
either.
     Florence had a  dread of  him, which made  his presence in  the room  a
nightmare to her.  She could  not avoid the recollection of it, for her eyes
were  drawn  towards him every now and then, by an attraction of dislike and
distrust that  she could not resist.  Yet  her thoughts were busy with other
things;  for  as  she  sat apart  - not unadmired  or  unsought, but  in the
gentleness of her quiet spirit - she felt how little part  her father had in
what was  going on, and saw, with pain, how ill at ease he seemed to be, and
how little regarded  he was as  he  lingered about  near the door, for those
visitors whom he wished to  distinguish with  particular attention, and took
them  up  to  introduce  them to  his  wife, who  received them  with  proud
coldness, but showed  no interest or  wish to please, and never,  after  the
bare ceremony of reception, in consultation  of his wishes, or in welcome of
his friends, opened her lips. It  was not the less  perplexing or painful to
Florence,  that she who acted  thus, treated  her so  kindly  and  with such
loving consideration, that it almost seemed an ungrateful return on her part
even to know of what was passing before her eyes.
     Happy Florence would have been, might  she  have  ventured to  bear her
father company, by  so much as a look;  and  happy  Florence was, in  little
suspecting the main cause of  his  uneasiness. But afraid of seeming to know
that he was placed at any did advantage, lest he should be resentful of that
knowledge; and divided between her  impulse towards  him,  and her  grateful
affection for  Edith; she scarcely dared to  raise  her eyes towards either.
Anxious  and unhappy  for them both, the  thought stole on her  through  the
crowd, that it might have been better for them if this noise  of tongues and
tread of feet had never come there, - if the old dulness and decay had never
been replaced by novelty and  splendour,  - if the neglected child had found
no friend in Edith, but had lived her solitary life, unpitied and forgotten.
     Mrs Chick had  some such thoughts  too, but  they  were  not so quietly
developed in  her  mind. This good  matron  had  been outraged in the  first
instance  by  not  receiving an invitation  to  dinner. That blow  partially
recovered, she had  gone to a vast expense  to make such a figure before Mrs
Dombey  at  home,  as  should dazzle  the  senses  of  that lady,  and  heap
mortification, mountains high, on the head of Mrs Skewton.
     'But I am made,' said  Mrs Chick to Mr Chick, 'of no more account  than
Florence! Who takes the smallest notice of me? No one!'
     'No one, my dear,' assented Mr Chick, who was seated by the side of Mrs
Chick against  the wall, and  could console  himself, even  there, by softly
whistling.
     'Does it at  all appear  as if I was wanted here?' exclaimed Mrs Chick,
with flashing eyes.
     'No, my dear, I don't think it does,' said Mr Chic
     'Paul's mad!' said Mrs Chic
     Mr Chick whistled.
     'Unless you are  a monster, which I sometimes think you are,'  said Mrs
Chick with candour, 'don't sit there humming tunes. How anyone with the most
distant feelings of a man, can see that  mother-in-law of Paul's, dressed as
she  is,  going  on like  that, with  Major Bagstock,  for whom, among other
precious things, we are indebted to your Lucretia Tox
     'My Lucretia Tox, my dear!' said Mr Chick, astounded.
     'Yes,' retorted Mrs Chick, with great severity, 'your Lucretia Tox -  I
say how anybody can see that mother-in-law of Paul's, and  that haughty wife
of Paul's, and these indecent  old  frights with  their backs and shoulders,
and in short  this at  home generally, and hum - ' on which  word  Mrs Chick
laid  a scornful emphasis that  made Mr Chick start, 'is, I thank Heaven,  a
mystery to me!
     Mr Chick screwed his mouth  into a form irreconcilable with humming  or
whistling, and looked very contemplative.
     'But  I  hope I  know what is due to myself,'  said Mrs Chick, swelling
with  indignation, 'though Paul  has forgotten  what is due to me. I  am not
going to sit here, a member of this family, to be taken no  notice of. I  am
not the dirt under Mrs Dombey's feet, yet -  not quite yet,' said Mrs Chick,
as if she expected to become so, about the day after to-morrow. 'And I shall
go. I will not  say  (whatever I may think) that this affair has been got up
solely to degrade and insult me. I shall merely go. I shall not be missed!'
     Mrs Chick rose  erect  with  these words, and took the arm of Mr Chick,
who escorted her from the room,  after half  an hour's  shady sojourn there.
And it is  due  to  her penetration to  observe  that she  certainly was not
missed at all.
     But she was not the only indignant guest; for  Mr  Dombey's list (still
constantly in  difficulties) were, as  a  body, indignant  with Mrs Dombey's
list, for looking at them through eyeglasses, and audibly  wondering who all
those people were; while Mrs Dombey's list complained  of weariness, and the
young thing with the shoulders, deprived of the attentions of that gay youth
Cousin Feenix (who went away from  the dinner-table), confidentially alleged
to thirty or forty friends that  she was bored to death.  All the old ladies
with the burdens on  their heads, had  greater  or  less  cause of complaint
against Mr Dombey; and the Directors and Chairmen coincided in thinking that
if  Dombey must marry,  he had better have married somebody  nearer his  own
age, not  quite  so handsome,  and a little better  off. The general opinion
among this class of gentlemen was, that it was a weak thing in  Dombey,  and
he'd live  to repent it. Hardly  anybody there, except the mild men, stayed,
or went away, without considering himself or herself neglected and aggrieved
by Mr Dombey  or Mrs  Dombey; and the speechless female in the black  velvet
hat  was  found to have been stricken  mute, because the lady in the crimson
velvet had been handed down before her. The nature even of  the mild men got
corrupted, either from their curdling it with too much lemonade, or from the
general  inoculation  that  prevailed; and  they made sarcastic jokes to one
another, and  whispered  disparagement  on  stairs  and  in  bye-places. The
general  dissatisfaction  and  discomfort  so   diffused  itself,  that  the
assembled footmen in the hall were as well acquainted with it as the company
above. Nay,  the very linkmen outside got hold of it, and compared the party
to  a  funeral out of mourning, with  none of the company remembered  in the
will. At  last,  the  guests were all  gone, and the  linkmen too;  and  the
street, crowded so long  with  carriages, was clear; and  the  dying  lights
showed no one in  the rooms,  but Mr  Dombey and Mr Carker, who were talking
together apart, and Mrs  Dombey and  her  mother:  the former  seated  on an
ottoman;  the  latter  reclining  in  the Cleopatra attitude,  awaiting  the
arrival of her maid. Mr Dombey having finished his  communication to Carker,
the latter advanced obsequiously to take leave.
     'I trust,' he said, 'that the fatigues of this delightful evening  will
not inconvenience Mrs Dombey to-morrow.'
     'Mrs Dombey,'  said  Mr Dombey,  advancing,  'has  sufficiently  spared
herself fatigue, to  relieve you from any anxiety  of that kind. I regret to
say, Mrs Dombey, that I could have wished you had fatigued yourself a little
more on this occasion.
     She looked at him  with a supercilious glance, that it seemed not worth
her while to protract, and turned away her eyes without speaking.
     'I am  sorry, Madam,' said Mr Dombey, 'that you should not have thought
it your duty -
     She looked at him again.
     'Your  duty, Madam,' pursued  Mr Dombey,  'to have  received my friends
with a little more  deference. Some of  those whom you  have been pleased to
slight  to-night in a very marked manner,  Mrs Dombey,  confer a distinction
upon you, I must tell you, in any visit they pay you.
     'Do you know that there is someone  here?' she returned, now looking at
him steadily.
     'No! Carker! I beg that you do not. I insist that you do not,' cried Mr
Dombey,  stopping  that noiseless gentleman in his  withdrawal.  'Mr Carker,
Madam,  as  you know, possesses my confidence. He is  as well acquainted  as
myself  with the  subject on  which I speak. I beg  to  tell you,  for  your
information, Mrs Dombey, that I consider these wealthy and important persons
confer a distinction upon me:' and Mr Dombey drew himself up, as  having now
rendered them of the highest possible importance.
     'I  ask you,'  she  repeated,  bending her disdainful, steady gaze upon
him, 'do you know that there is someone here, Sir?'
     'I must entreat,' said Mr Carker, stepping forward, 'I must beg, I must
demand, to be released. Slight and unimportant as this difference is - '
     Mrs Skewton,  who had been intent upon her daughter's face, took him up
here.
     'My sweetest Edith,'  she said,  'and my dearest Dombey; our  excellent
friend Mr Carker, for so I am sure I ought to mention him - '
     Mr Carker murmured, 'Too much honour.'
     ' - has used the very words that were in my mind, and that I have  been
dying,   these   ages,  for  an  opportunity  of  introducing.   Slight  and
unimportant! My sweetest Edith, and  my dearest Dombey, do  we not know that
any difference between you two - No, Flowers; not now.
     Flowers was  the maid, who, finding gentlemen  present,  retreated with
precipitation.
     'That  any difference between you two,' resumed Mrs Skewton,  'with the
Heart  you possess in common, and  the excessively charming bond  of feeling
that there  is between you, must be slight and unimportant? What words could
better define the fact? None.  Therefore  I  am  glad  to  take this  slight
occasion - this trifling occasion, that is  so replete with Nature, and your
individual characters, and all that - so truly calculated to bring the tears
into a  parent's eyes -  to say that I attach no importance to  them  in the
least, except as developing these minor elements of  Soul; and that,  unlike
most Mamas-in-law  (that  odious phrase, dear  Dombey!)  as they  have  been
represented  to  me to exist in  this I  fear too artificial  world, I never
shall attempt to interpose between you,  at  such a time, and never can much
regret, after all, such little flashes of the torch of What's-his-name - not
Cupid, but the other delightful creature.
     There  was a sharpness in the good mother's glance at both her children
as she spoke, that may have been expressive  of a direct and well-considered
purpose hidden between these  rambling words. That  purpose, providently  to
detach herself in the beginning from  all the clankings of their chain  that
were to come, and to shelter herself with the fiction of her innocent belief
in their mutual affection, and their adaptation to each other.
     'I have pointed out to Mrs Dombey,' said Mr Dombey, in his most stately
manner, 'that in  her conduct thus  early in our  married life,  to which  I
object, and which, I  request,  may  be  corrected. Carker,' with  a  nod of
dismissal, 'good-night to you!'
     Mr Carker bowed to the imperious form of the Bride, whose sparkling eye
was  fixed  upon her husband; and stopping  at Cleopatra's couch  on his way
out,  raised  to his lips the hand she graciously extended to him, in  lowly
and admiring homage.
     If his handsome  wife had reproached him, or even changed  countenance,
or broken the silence in which she remained, by one word, now that they were
alone (for Cleopatra made  off with  all speed), Mr Dombey would  have  been
equal  to  some  assertion  of  his  case  against  her.  But  the  intense,
unutterable, withering  scorn,  with which,  after  looking  upon  him,  she
dropped her  eyes, as if he were too worthless and indifferent to  her to be
challenged with a syllable - the ineffable  disdain and haughtiness in which
she sat  before  him  - the cold inflexible  resolve  with  which  her every
feature seemed to bear him down, and put him  by - these, he had no resource
against; and he left her, with her whole overbearing beauty concentrated  on
despising him.
     Was he coward enough to watch her, an  hour afterwards, on the old well
staircase, where he had once seen Florence in the moonlight, toiling up with
Paul? Or  was he in  the dark  by  accident, when, looking  up, he  saw  her
coming, with a light, from the room where Florence lay, and marked again the
face so changed, which he could not subdue?
     But  it could  never alter as his own  did. It never,  in its uttermost
pride  and passion,  knew  the shadow  that had  fallen on his,  in the dark
corner, on  the night of the return; and often  since; and which deepened on
it now, as he looked up.

        CHAPTER 37.
     More Warnings than One

     Florence,  Edith,  and  Mrs  Skewton  were together next day,  and  the
carriage  was  waiting at the door to  take  them out. For Cleopatra had her
galley  again now,  and  Withers, no  longer  the-wan,  stood upright  in  a
pigeon-breasted jacket and military trousers, behind her wheel-less chair at
dinner-time and  butted no  more.  The  hair of  Withers  was  radiant  with
pomatum,  in  these days  of down, and he  wore kid gloves  and smelt of the
water of Cologne.
     They were assembled in Cleopatra's room The Serpent of old Nile (not to
mention her  disrespectfully) was reposing on her sofa,  sipping her morning
chocolate  at  three  o'clock  in the afternoon, and  Flowers  the Maid  was
fastening on her youthful cuffs and frills, and performing a kind of private
coronation  ceremony  on  her,  with  a  peach-coloured velvet  bonnet;  the
artificial roses in which nodded to uncommon advantage, as the palsy trifled
with them, like a breeze.
     'I  think I  am  a  little  nervous this  morning,  Flowers,' said  Mrs
Skewton. 'My hand quite shakes.'
     'You were  the life of the party last night, Ma'am, you know,' returned
Flowers, ' and you suffer for it, to-day, you see.'
     Edith, who had  beckoned Florence  to the window, and was looking  out,
with her back turned on the toilet of her esteemed mother, suddenly withdrew
from it, as if it had lightened.
     'My darling  child,' cried Cleopatra, languidly, 'you are  not nervous?
Don't tell me,  my dear  Edith,  that you,  so  enviably self-possessed, are
beginning to be  a martyr too,  like your unfortunately constituted  mother!
Withers, someone at the door.'
     'Card, Ma'am,' said Withers, taking it towards Mrs Dombey.
     'I am going out,' she said without looking at it.
     'My dear love,' drawled Mrs Skewton, 'how very odd to send that message
without seeing the  name! Bring  it  here, Withers. Dear  me,  my  love;  Mr
Carker, too! That very sensible person!'
     'I am going out,' repeated Edith, in so imperious  a tone that Withers,
going to the door, imperiously informed the  servant  who was  waiting, 'Mrs
Dombey is going out. Get along with you,' and shut it on him.'
     But  the  servant came back  after  a  short absence, and whispered  to
Withers again,  who once more, and not  very  willingly,  presented  himself
before Mrs Dombey.
     'If you please, Ma'am, Mr Carker sends  his respectful compliments, and
begs you would spare him one minute, if you could - for business, Ma'am,  if
you please.'
     'Really, my  love,'  said  Mrs Skewton in  her mildest manner;  for her
daughter's  face was threatening; 'if you would allow me to  offer a word, I
should recommend - '
     'Show him this way,' said Edith. As Withers disappeared to execute  the
command,  she  added,  frowning  on  her  mother,  'As