no cause of complaint. Mr Carker,' said Mr  Dombey, who, after
the  emotion he had just seen, set great store by this means of reducing his
proud wife, and who was perhaps sufficiently willing to exhibit his power to
that  gentleman  in  a  new and triumphant  aspect, 'Mr  Carker  being in my
confidence, Mrs Dombey, may very well be in yours to such an extent. I hope,
Mrs  Dombey,'  he  continued,  after  a few  moments, during  which, in  his
increasing  haughtiness,  he had improved on his idea,  'I may not  find  it
necessary ever  to  entrust  Mr  Carker  with any message  of  objection  or
remonstrance  to  you;  but  as  it would  be derogatory to my  position and
reputation to be frequently holding trivial disputes with a lady upon whom I
have conferred  the  highest distinction that it is in my power to bestow, I
shall not scruple to avail myself of his services if I see occasion.'
     'And now,' he thought,  rising  in his moral magnificence, and rising a
stiffer  and  more  impenetrable  man  than  ever,  'she  knows  me  and  my
resolution.'
     The hand that had so  pressed the  bracelet was  laid heavily  upon her
breast, but she looked  at him  still, with an unaltered face, and said in a
low voice:
     'Wait! For God's sake! I must speak to you.'
     Why did  she not, and  what was the inward  struggle that  rendered her
incapable of doing so, for minutes, while, in the strong  constraint she put
upon  her face,  it was as fixed  as any  statue's  -  looking upon him with
neither yielding nor  unyielding, liking  nor  hatred,  pride  not humility:
nothing but a searching gaze?
     'Did I ever tempt  you to seek my hand? Did I  ever use any  art to win
you? Was  I  ever more conciliating to you when  you pursued me, than I have
been since our marriage? Was I ever other to you than I am?'
     'It is wholly  unnecessary, Madam,' said Mr Dombey, 'to enter upon such
discussions.'
     'Did you think I  loved you? Did you know I did not? Did you ever care,
Man! for my heart,  or propose to yourself to  win the worthless thing?  Was
there any poor pretence of any in our bargain? Upon your side, or on mine?'
     'These questions,'  said  Mr Dombey, 'are  all  wide  of  the  purpose,
Madam.'
     She  moved  between  him and the door to  prevent  his going  away, and
drawing her majestic figure to its height, looked steadily upon him still.
     'You answer each of them. You answer me before  I speak, I see. How can
you help it; you who know the miserable truth as well as I? Now, tell me. If
I  loved you to devotion, could I do more  than render up my  whole will and
being  to you,  as  you have just  demanded?  If my heart  were pure and all
untried, and you its idol, could you ask more; could you have more?'
     'Possibly not, Madam,' he returned coolly.
     'You know how  different I am. You  see me looking on you now,  and you
can read the warmth  of passion for you that is breathing in my face.' Not a
curl of  the proud lip, not a flash  of  the  dark eye, nothing but the same
intent and  searching look, accompanied  these  words. 'You  know my general
history. You have spoken of my mother. Do you think you can degrade, or bend
or break, me to submission and obedience?'
     Mr  Dombey  smiled, as he  might have smiled at an  inquiry whether  he
thought he could raise ten thousand pounds.
     'If there is anything unusual here,'  she said, with a slight motion of
her  hand  before her brow,  which  did not  for  a  moment  flinch from its
immovable and otherwise expressionless gaze, 'as  I know there  are  unusual
feelings  here,' raising  the hand she  pressed upon  her bosom, and heavily
returning it, 'consider that there is  no common  meaning in the appeal I am
going to make you. Yes, for I am  going;'  she said it as in prompt reply to
something in his face; 'to appeal to you.'
     Mr Dombey, with a slightly condescending bend of his  chin that rustled
and crackled his stiff cravat, sat down on a sofa that was near him, to hear
the appeal.
     'If you can believe that I am of  such a nature now,'  - he  fancied he
saw tears glistening in  her eyes, and he thought, complacently, that he had
forced them from her, though none fell on her cheek, and she regarded him as
steadily as  ever, -  'as would make  what  I now say  almost  incredible to
myself, said to any man  who had become my husband, but, above  all, said to
you, you may, perhaps,  attach  the greater weight to it. In the dark end to
which we are tending, and  may  come,  we shall not involve ourselves  alone
(that might not be much) but others.'
     Others! He knew at whom that word pointed, and frowned heavily.
     'I speak  to  you for the sake  of others. Also your  own sake; and for
mine. Since  our marriage, you have been arrogant to me;  and I have  repaid
you in  kind. You have shown to  me and  everyone  around us, every  day and
hour, that you think I am  graced and distinguished by  your alliance.  I do
not think  so,  and have shown that  too. It seems you do not understand, or
(so far as your power can  go) intend that each of  us shall take a separate
course; and you expect from me instead, a homage you will never have.'
     Although her face was still the  same, there  was emphatic confirmation
of this 'Never' in the very breath she drew.
     'I  feel  no  tenderness  towards you;  that  you  know. You would care
nothing for it, if I did or could. I know as well that you feel none towards
me. But we are linked together; and in the  knot that  ties us,  as  I  have
said, others are bound up. We must both die; we are  both connected with the
dead already, each by a little child. Let us forbear.'
     Mr Dombey took  a long respiration, as if  he  would have said, Oh! was
this all!
     'There is no wealth,' she went  on,  turning paler as she  watched him,
while her eyes grew yet more lustrous  in their earnestness, 'that could buy
these  words  of me, and the meaning that belongs to them. Once cast away as
idle breath, no wealth  or power  can bring them back. I mean  them; I  have
weighed them; and I will be true to what I undertake. If you will promise to
forbear on  your  part,  I will  promise to forbear on mine. We  are  a most
unhappy  pair, in whom, from different causes, every sentiment that  blesses
marriage, or justifies it, is rooted out; but in  the course of  time,  some
friendship, or some fitness for each other, may arise between us. I will try
to hope so, if you will make the endeavour too; and I will look forward to a
better and a happier use of age than I have made of youth or prime.
     Throughout she had spoken in  a low plain voice, that neither  rose nor
fell; ceasing, she  dropped  the hand with which she had enforced herself to
be  so passionless and  distinct, but  not  the  eyes  with which she had so
steadily observed him.
     'Madam,' said Mr Dombey,  with  his utmost dignity, 'I cannot entertain
any proposal of this extraordinary nature.
     She looked at him yet, without the least change.
     'I  cannot,'  said Mr Dombey, rising as he spoke, 'consent to temporise
or  treat with  you,  Mrs Dombey, upon  a subject  as to  which  you are  in
possession of my opinions  and  expectations. I  have stated  my  ultimatum,
Madam, and have only to request your very serious attention to it.'
     To see the face change to its old expression, deepened in intensity! To
see the eyes droop as from some mean and odious object! To see  the lighting
of the  haughty  brow!  To  see  scorn, anger, indignation,  and  abhorrence
starting into sight, and the pale  blank earnestness vanish like a  mist! He
could not choose but look, although he looked to his dismay.
     'Go, Sir!' she said, pointing with an imperious hand towards  the door.
'Our first and last confidence is at an end. Nothing can make us stranger to
each other than we are henceforth.'
     'I shall take my rightful  course, Madam,' said Mr Dombey, 'undeterred,
you may be sure, by any general declamation.'
     She turned  her back upon  him, and, without reply, sat down before her
glass.
     'I place my reliance on  your improved sense of  duty, and more correct
feeling, and better reflection, Madam,' said Mr Dombey.
     She  answered not one  word. He  saw no more expression of any  heed of
him, in the mirror,  than  if he had  been an unseen spider on the wall,  or
beetle on the floor, or rather, than if he had been  the  one or other, seen
and  crushed  when  she  last  turned from  him,  and  forgotten  among  the
ignominious and dead vermin of the ground.
     He looked back, as he  went out at the door, upon the well-lighted  and
luxurious room, the  beautiful and glittering objects  everywhere displayed,
the  shape of Edith  in its rich dress seated before her glass, and the face
of  Edith as  the  glass presented it to him;  and betook himself to his old
chamber of cogitation, carrying away with him a vivid picture in his mind of
all these  things,  and a rambling and unaccountable  speculation  (such  as
sometimes comes into a  man's head) how they would all look when he saw them
next.
     For the rest, Mr Dombey was very taciturn, and very dignified, and very
confident of carrying out his purpose; and remained so.
     He  did  not  design  accompanying  the  family  to  Brighton;  but  he
graciously  informed Cleopatra  at  breakfast, on the morning  of departure,
which arrived a day or two afterwards, that he might be expected down, soon.
There was no time  to be lost in getting Cleopatra to any place  recommended
as being salutary; for, indeed, she seemed upon the wane, and turning of the
earth, earthy.
     Without having undergone any  decided second attack of her malady,  the
old woman seemed to have crawled backward  in her  recovery  from the first.
She was more lean and shrunken,  more  uncertain in her imbecility, and made
stranger  confusions  in her mind  and  memory. Among other symptoms of this
last affliction, she fell into the habit of confounding the names of her two
sons-in-law, the living and the deceased;  and in general called  Mr Dombey,
either 'Grangeby,' or 'Domber,' or indifferently, both.
     But  she  was youthful,  very  youthful still; and  in her youthfulness
appeared at breakfast, before  going away, in a new bonnet made express, and
a travelling robe  that was embroidered  and braided like an old  baby's. It
was not easy to put her into a fly-away bonnet now, or to keep the bonnet in
its place on the back  of her poor nodding head, when it was got on. In this
instance, it had not only the extraneous effect of being always on one side,
but  of being  perpetually tapped  on the crown  by Flowers  the  maid,  who
attended in the background during breakfast to perform that duty.
     'Now, my dearest Grangeby,' said Mrs Skewton, 'you must posively prom,'
she cut some of her words  short, and cut out others altogether,  'come down
very soon.'
     'I said just now,  Madam,' returned  Mr Dombey, loudly and laboriously,
'that I am coming in a day or two.'
     'Bless you, Domber!'
     Here  the Major, who was come to take leave  of the ladies, and who was
staring  through  his  apoplectic  eyes  at  Mrs  Skewton's  face  with  the
disinterested composure of an immortal being, said:
     'Begad, Ma'am, you don't ask old Joe to come!'
     'Sterious  wretch, who's he?' lisped Cleopatra. But a tap on the bonnet
from Flowers seeming to jog her memory, she  added, 'Oh!  You mean yourself,
you naughty creature!'
     'Devilish queer,  Sir,' whispered  the Major to  Mr Dombey. 'Bad  case.
Never did wrap up  enough;'  the Major  being buttoned to the chin. 'Why who
should J. B. mean by Joe, but old Joe Bagstock - Joseph  - your slave - Joe,
Ma'am?  Here! Here's the  man! Here  are the Bagstock bellows, Ma'am!' cried
the Major, striking himself a sounding blow on the chest.
     'My  dearest  Edith -  Grangeby  -  it's most  trordinry  thing,'  said
Cleopatra, pettishly, 'that Major - '
     'Bagstock! J. B.!'  cried  the Major, seeing that she faltered for  his
name.
     'Well, it  don't  matter,' said Cleopatra. 'Edith,  my love, you know I
never could remember names - what was it? oh! - most trordinry thing that so
many people want to come down  to see me. I'm not going for long. I'm coming
back. Surely they can wait, till I come back!'
     Cleopatra looked all round the table as she said  it, and appeared very
uneasy.
     'I won't  have Vistors - really don't want visitors,' she said; 'little
repose - and all that sort of thing - is what I quire. No odious brutes must
proach me till I've shaken off this numbness;' and in a grisly resumption of
her coquettish ways, she made a  dab at the  Major with her fan, but overset
Mr Dombey's breakfast cup instead, which was in quite a different direction.
     Then she called  for Withers, and charged him to see  particularly that
word was  left about some trivial alterations in her room, which must be all
made before she came back, and which must be set about immediately, as there
was  no  saying how  soon she might come  back;  for  she  had  a great many
engagements, and all sorts  of  people  to call upon. Withers received these
directions with  becoming  deference,  and  gave  his  guarantee  for  their
execution; but when he  withdrew a pace or two behind her, it appeared as if
he couldn't help  looking strangely at the Major, who  couldn't help looking
strangely at Mr Dombey,  who  couldn't help looking strangely at  Cleopatra,
who  couldn't help nodding her bonnet  over one eye, and  rattling her knife
and fork upon her plate in using them, as if she were playing castanets.
     Edith alone never  lifted her eyes to any  face at the table, and never
seemed  dismayed by anything  her mother  said  or did.  She listened to her
disjointed talk, or  at least,  turned her head towards her when  addressed;
replied in a few low  words when necessary;  and sometimes  stopped her when
she was rambling,  or brought her  thoughts back with a monosyllable, to the
point  from  which they  had strayed. The mother, however  unsteady in other
things, was  constant  in  this - that she was  always observant of her. She
would look at the beautiful face,  in its marble stillness and severity, now
with a kind of fearful admiration;  now in a giggling foolish effort to move
it to a smile; now with capricious tears and jealous shakings  of her  head,
as imagining herself neglected by  it; always with an attraction towards it,
that never fluctuated like her  other ideas, but had constant possession  of
her. From  Edith she would  sometimes  look  at Florence, and back again  at
Edith, in a manner that was wild enough; and sometimes she would try to look
elsewhere, as if  to escape  from  her daughter's  face; but back to  it she
seemed  forced to  come,  although it never  sought hers  unless  sought, or
troubled her with one single glance.
     The  best concluded, Mrs Skewton, affecting to  lean girlishly upon the
Major's arm, but heavily supported  on the  other side by Flowers the  maid,
and propped up behind  by  Withers  the page, was conducted to the carriage,
which was to take her, Florence, and Edith to Brighton.
     'And is Joseph absolutely  banished?' said the  Major, thrusting in his
purple face over the steps. 'Damme,  Ma'am, is  Cleopatra so hard-hearted as
to forbid her faithful Antony Bagstock to approach the presence?'
     'Go along!' said Cleopatra, 'I can't bear you. You shall see me when  I
come back, if you are very good.'
     'Tell  Joseph, he may live in  hope,  Ma'am,' said the Major; 'or he'll
die in despair.'
     Cleopatra shuddered, and leaned back. 'Edith, my dear,' she said. 'Tell
him - '
     'What?'
     'Such dreadful words,' said Cleopatra. 'He uses such dreadful words!'
     Edith  signed to him to retire, gave  the word to  go  on, and left the
objectionable Major to Mr Dombey. To whom he returned, whistling.
     'I'll tell you what, Sir,'  said the Major, with his hands behind  him,
and his legs very wide asunder, 'a  fair friend of ours has removed to Queer
Street.'
     'What do you mean, Major?' inquired Mr Dombey.
     'I mean to say,  Dombey,' returned the Major,  'that you'll  soon be an
orphan-in-law.'
     Mr Dombey appeared  to relish  this  waggish description of  himself so
very  little,  that  the  Major wound  up  with  the horse's  cough,  as  an
expression of gravity.
     'Damme, Sir,'  said the  Major, 'there is  no use in disguising a fact.
Joe is blunt, Sir. That's  his nature. If you take old Josh at all, you take
him  as you find  him; and a devilish rusty, old rasper, of a close-toothed,
J. B. file, you do find him. Dombey,' said the Major, 'your wife's mother is
on the move, Sir.'
     'I fear,' returned Mr Dombey, with  much philosophy, 'that  Mrs Skewton
is shaken.'
     'Shaken, Dombey!' said the Major. 'Smashed!'
     'Change, however,' pursued Mr Dombey, 'and attention, may do much yet.'
     'Don't  believe it, Sir,'  returned the  Major. 'Damme,  Sir, she never
wrapped up  enough.  If  a  man don't  wrap  up,' said the  Major, taking in
another button of his buff waistcoat, 'he has nothing to fall back upon. But
some people  will die. They will do it. Damme, they will. They're obstinate.
I tell you what, Dombey, it may not be ornamental; it may not be refined; it
may  be rough and tough; but a little of the  genuine  old English  Bagstock
stamina, Sir, would do all the good in the world to the human breed.'
     After imparting this precious piece of information,  the Major, who was
certainly true-blue, whatever other  endowments he may  have had or  wanted,
coming within the 'genuine old English' classification, which has never been
exactly ascertained, took his lobster-eyes and his apoplexy to the club, and
choked there all day.
     Cleopatra,  at one time fretful, at another  self-complacent, sometimes
awake, sometimes  asleep, and at  all  times juvenile, reached Brighton  the
same night, fell to pieces as usual, and was put away in bed; where a gloomy
fancy might have pictured a more  potent skeleton than the maid,  who should
have been  one, watching at  the rose-coloured curtains, which were  carried
down to shed their bloom upon her.
     It  was  settled  in  high council of medical authority that she should
take a carriage airing every  day, and that it was important  she should get
out every day, and walk if she could. Edith was ready to attend her - always
ready to attend her, with the same mechanical attention and immovable beauty
- and they drove out alone; for Edith had an uneasiness  in  the presence of
Florence, now that her mother  was  worse, and  told Florence, with  a kiss,
that she would rather they two went alone.
     Mrs Skewton,  on one particular day,  was in  the irresolute, exacting,
jealous temper that  had developed  itself on  her recovery from  her  first
attack. After sitting silent  in the carriage watching Edith for  some time,
she took her hand and kissed it passionately. The hand was neither given nor
withdrawn, but  simply  yielded to  her  raising of it, and  being released,
dropped  down again, almost as if it were insensible. At  this she  began to
whimper  and moan,  and say  what a  mother  she  had been, and how she  was
forgotten!  This she continued to do at capricious intervals, even when they
had alighted:  when she herself was halting  along with the joint support of
Withers  and a  stick,  and Edith was walking by her side, and the  carriage
slowly following at a little distance.
     It was a bleak, lowering,  windy day, and they were out  upon the Downs
with nothing but a bare sweep of land between them and the  sky. The mother,
with a querulous satisfaction  in the  monotony  of her complaint, was still
repeating it in  a  low  voice from time to time, and the  proud form of her
daughter moved  beside  her  slowly, when there came  advancing over  a dark
ridge before them, two other figures, which in the distance, were so like an
exaggerated imitation of their own, that Edith stopped.
     Almost as she stopped, the  two  figures stopped; and that one which to
Edith's thinking  was like a  distorted shadow of her  mother, spoke to  the
other, earnestly, and with  a  pointing  hand towards them. That  one seemed
inclined to  turn back, but the other, in which Edith recognised enough that
was like herself  to strike her with an unusual feeling, not quite free from
fear, came on; and then they came on together.
     The greater part  of this observation,  she  made while walking towards
them,  for her stoppage  had been momentary. Nearer observation  showed  her
that  they  were poorly  dressed, as wanderers about the country;  that  the
younger woman carried knitted work or some such goods for sale; and that the
old one toiled on empty-handed.
     And yet, however far  removed  she was in dress, in dignity, in beauty,
Edith could not but compare  the younger  woman with herself, still.  It may
have  been  that  she saw  upon her  face some traces which  she  knew  were
lingering  in her own soul, if  not  yet written  on that index; but, as the
woman  came  on,  returning  her gaze,  fixing  her shining  eyes upon  her,
undoubtedly presenting something of  her own air and stature,  and appearing
to reciprocate her own thoughts,  she felt a chill creep over her, as if the
day were darkening, and the wind were colder.
     They  had   now   come  up.   The  old  woman,  holding  out  her  hand
importunately, stopped to beg  of Mrs Skewton. The  younger one stopped too,
and she and Edith looked in one another's eyes.
     'What is it that you have to sell?' said Edith.
     'Only this,' returned the woman, holding out her wares, without looking
at them. 'I sold myself long ago.'
     'My  Lady, don't believe her,' croaked the old woman  to  Mrs  Skewton;
'don't believe what she says. She loves to talk like that. She's my handsome
and  undutiful daughter. She gives me nothing but  reproaches, my  Lady, for
all  I  have done for her. Look at her now, my  Lady, how she turns upon her
poor old mother with her looks.'
     As  Mrs Skewton drew  her purse out with a trembling hand,  and eagerly
fumbled for  some money,  which the  other old  woman greedily watched for -
their heads all  but  touching,  in  their  hurry  and  decrepitude -  Edith
interposed:
     'I have seen you,' addressing the old woman, 'before.'
     'Yes,  my Lady,' with  a curtsey. 'Down in  Warwickshire.  The  morning
among the trees.  When you wouldn't give me nothing.  But  the gentleman, he
give me something! Oh, bless him, bless him!' mumbled the old woman, holding
up her skinny hand, and grinning frightfully at her daughter.
     'It's  of  no  use attempting to  stay  me, Edith!'  said  Mrs Skewton,
angrily  anticipating an  objection from her. 'You know nothing about it.  I
won't  be  dissuaded.  I am  sure  this is  an excellent woman, and  a  good
mother.'
     'Yes,  my  Lady,  yes,'  chattered  the  old  woman,  holding  out  her
avaricious hand. 'Thankee, my Lady. Lord bless you, my  Lady. Sixpence more,
my pretty Lady, as a good mother yourself.'
     'And treated undutifully enough,  too, my good old creature, sometimes,
I assure  you,' said Mrs Skewton, whimpering. 'There! Shake  hands  with me.
You're a  very good old creature - full  of what's-his-name - and all  that.
You're all affection and et cetera, ain't you?'
     'Oh, yes, my Lady!'
     'Yes, I'm sure you are; and  so's that gentlemanly creature Grangeby. I
must really shake hands with you again. And now you  can go, you know; and I
hope,'  addressing the  daughter,  'that  you'll  show more  gratitude,  and
natural what's-its-name, and all the rest of it - but I never remember names
- for there never was  a better  mother than the good old creature's been to
you. Come, Edith!'
     As  the  ruin of Cleopatra tottered off whimpering, and wiping its eyes
with a  gingerly remembrance of  rouge in their neighbourhood, the old woman
hobbled another way, mumbling and counting her money. Not one word more, nor
one other gesture, had been exchanged between Edith and  the younger  woman,
but  neither  had  removed her eyes  from the other  for a  moment. They had
remained confronted until now, when Edith, as awakening from a dream, passed
slowly on.
     'You're a handsome woman,' muttered her shadow, looking after her; 'but
good looks won't save us. And you're a proud woman; but pride won't save us.
We had need to know each other when we meet again!'

        CHAPTER 41.
     New Voices in the Waves

     All is going on as it was wont. The waves are hoarse with repetition of
their mystery; the dust lies piled upon the shore;  the sea-birds  soar  and
hover; the winds and clouds go forth upon  their trackless flight; the white
arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away.

     With a tender melancholy pleasure, Florence finds herself again  on the
old ground  so sadly trodden, yet so happily, and thinks of him in the quiet
place, where  he and she have many  and many a time conversed together, with
the water  welling up  about his couch.  And now, as she sits pensive there,
she  hears in the wild low murmur of the  sea, his little story told  again,
his very words repeated; and finds  that all her life and hopes, and griefs,
since - in the solitary house, and in the pageant it has changed to - have a
portion in the burden of the marvellous song.
     And gentle Mr  Toots,  who  wanders at  a distance,  looking  wistfully
towards the figure that he dotes upon, and has followed there, but cannot in
his delicacy disturb  at such a time, likewise hears  the requiem  of little
Dombey on  the waters,  rising and falling in  the lulls  of  their  eternal
madrigal  in  praise of Florence. Yes! and  he faintly understands, poor  Mr
Toots,  that  they  are saying something of a  time when he was sensible  of
being brighter and  not addle-brained; and the tears rising in his eyes when
he  fears  that he  is  dull and stupid now, and  good  for little but to be
laughed at, diminish  his satisfaction in their soothing reminder that he is
relieved from present responsibility to the Chicken, by  the absence of that
game  head  of poultry in the country,  training (at  Toots's cost) for  his
great mill with the Larkey Boy.
     But Mr Toots  takes courage,  when they whisper a kind thought to  him;
and  by  slow  degrees  and  with  many  indecisive  stoppages  on  the way,
approaches Florence. Stammering and  blushing,  Mr Toots  affects  amazement
when he comes near her, and says  (having  followed close on the carriage in
which  she travelled, every  inch of the way from London,  loving even to be
choked by the dust  of its wheels) that he never was so surprised in all his
life.
     'And  you've  brought  Diogenes,  too,  Miss Dombey!'  says  Mr  Toots,
thrilled through and through by the  touch  of  the small hand so pleasantly
and frankly given him.
     No doubt Diogenes is there, and no doubt Mr Toots has reason to observe
him,  for he  comes straightway at Mr Toots's legs, and tumbles over himself
in the desperation with which he makes at him, like a very dog of Montargis.
But he is checked by his sweet mistress.
     'Down, Di,  down. Don't you remember who first made us friends, Di? For
shame!'
     Oh! Well may Di lay his loving cheek against her hand, and run off, and
run back, and run round her, barking, and run headlong at anybody coming by,
to show  his  devotion.  Mr  Toots  would  run  headlong at anybody,  too. A
military gentleman goes past, and Mr Toots would like nothing better than to
run at him, full tilt.
     'Diogenes is quite in his native  air, isn't  he, Miss Dombey?' says Mr
Toots.
     Florence assents, with a grateful smile.
     'Miss Dombey,'  says Mr Toots, 'beg your  pardon, but if you would like
to walk to Blimber's, I - I'm going there.'
     Florence puts her arm in that of Mr Toots without a word, and they walk
away  together, with Diogenes going on  before. Mr Toots's legs  shake under
him;  and  though  he  is splendidly  dressed,  he  feels  misfits, and sees
wrinkles, in the masterpieces of  Burgess and Co., and wishes he had put  on
that brightest pair of boots.
     Doctor Blimber's house, outside, has as  scholastic and studious an air
as ever;  and  up there is the window  where she used to look for  the  pale
face, and where the pale  face brightened when  it saw her, and  the  wasted
little hand  waved kisses  as she passed. The door  is  opened  by  the same
weak-eyed  young man, whose  imbecility of  grin  at sight  of  Mr Toots  is
feebleness of character personified. They are shown into the Doctor's study,
where blind Homer and  Minerva give them  audience as of yore, to the  sober
ticking of the great clock in the hall; and where  the globes stand still in
their accustomed places, as if the world were stationary too, and nothing in
it ever perished in obedience to  the universal law, that, while it keeps it
on the roll, calls everything to earth.
     And here is Doctor  Blimber, with his  learned  legs; and  here is  Mrs
Blimber, with her sky-blue cap; and here Cornelia, with her sandy little row
of curls, and her bright spectacles,  still  working like  a sexton  in  the
graves  of  languages.  Here  is the table  upon which  he  sat  forlorn and
strange, the 'new boy' of the school; and hither comes the distant cooing of
the old boys, at their old lives in the old room on the old principle!
     'Toots,' says Doctor Blimber, 'I am very glad to see you, Toots.'
     Mr Toots chuckles in reply.
     'Also to see you, Toots, in such good company,' says Doctor Blimber.
     Mr  Toots, with a scarlet visage, explains that he has met  Miss Dombey
by  accident,  and that  Miss Dombey wishing,  like himself,  to see the old
place, they have come together.
     'You will like,' says Doctor Blimber, 'to step among our young friends,
Miss Dombey, no doubt. All fellow-students of yours, Toots, once. I think we
have no new  disciples in our little portico, my dear,' says  Doctor Blimber
to Cornelia, 'since Mr Toots left us.'
     'Except Bitherstone,' returns Cornelia.
     'Ay, truly,' says the Doctor. 'Bitherstone is new to Mr Toots.'
     New to Florence, too, almost;  for, in the schoolroom, Bitherstone - no
longer  Master Bitherstone of  Mrs  Pipchin's  -  shows  in  collars  and  a
neckcloth, and wears a watch. But Bitherstone, born beneath some Bengal star
of ill-omen,  is extremely inky; and his Lexicon  has got so  dropsical from
constant reference, that it won't shut, and yawns as  if it really could not
bear to be so bothered.  So  does Bitherstone its master, forced  at  Doctor
Blimber's highest  pressure;  but in the yawn of Bitherstone there is malice
and snarl, and he  has been heard to say that he wishes he  could catch 'old
Blimber' in India. He'd precious soon find himself carried up the country by
a few of his (Bitherstone's) Coolies,  and handed over to the Thugs; he  can
tell him that.
     Briggs is still grinding in the mill of  knowledge; and Tozer, too; and
Johnson,  too; and  all the rest; the older pupils being principally engaged
in forgetting, with prodigious labour, everything  they knew when they  were
younger. All are as polite and as pale as ever;  and  among them, Mr Feeder,
B.A., with  his bony hand and bristly head, is  still  hard at  it; with his
Herodotus stop on  just at present, and his other barrels  on a shelf behind
him.
     A mighty sensation is created, even among these grave young  gentlemen,
by a  visit from the emancipated Toots; who is regarded with a  kind of awe,
as  one who has passed the Rubicon,  and is pledged never to come  back, and
concerning the  cut  of  whose  clothes,  and  fashion of  whose  jewellery,
whispers go about, behind hands;  the bilious Bitherstone, who is not  of Mr
Toots's  time,  affecting  to despise the latter  to  the  smaller boys, and
saying he knows better, and that he should like to  see him coming that sort
of  thing in Bengal,  where his mother had got an emerald  belonging  to him
that was taken out of the footstool of a Rajah. Come now!
     Bewildering emotions  are awakened also by the sight of  Florence, with
whom every young gentleman  immediately falls  in  love, again;  except,  as
aforesaid,  the  bilious  Bitherstone,  who  declines  to  do   so,  out  of
contradiction. Black jealousies of Mr Toots arise, and Briggs is of  opinion
that he  ain't so very old after all.  But  this  disparaging insinuation is
speedily made nought by Mr Toots saying aloud to Mr  Feeder, B.A., 'How  are
you,  Feeder?'  and asking  him  to  come and  dine  with him to-day at  the
Bedford; in right of  which feats he might set up as Old  Parr, if he chose,
unquestioned.
     There is much shaking of hands,  and much bowing, and a great desire on
the  part of each young gentleman  to take  Toots down in Miss Dombey's good
graces;  and  then,  Mr  Toots having bestowed a  chuckle on  his  old desk,
Florence and  he withdraw with  Mrs Blimber and Cornelia; and Doctor Blimber
is heard to observe behind them as he comes out last,  and shuts  the  door,
'Gentlemen,  we will  now resume our studies,'  For  that and little else is
what the Doctor hears the sea say, or has heard it saying all his life.
     Florence then steals away and goes upstairs to the old bedroom with Mrs
Blimber and Cornelia; Mr  Toots, who feels that neither he  nor anybody else
is wanted there,  stands talking to the  Doctor at the study-door, or rather
hearing the Doctor talk to him, and wondering how he  ever thought the study
a  great  sanctuary, and the Doctor,  with his  round  turned  legs,  like a
clerical pianoforte, an awful man. Florence soon comes down and takes leave;
Mr Toots  takes leave; and Diogenes,  who  has been  worrying  the weak-eyed
young man pitilessly all the time, shoots out at the door, and barks  a glad
defiance down the cliff; while Melia,  and another  of  the  Doctor's female
domestics, looks out of an upper window, laughing 'at that there Toots,' and
saying of Miss Dombey, 'But really though, now - ain't she like her brother,
only prettier?'
     Mr Toots, who  saw  when Florence came down that there were tears  upon
her face, is desperately anxious and uneasy, and at  first fears that he did
wrong  in proposing the visit. But he is  soon relieved by her saying she is
very glad  to have been there  again, and  by  her  talking quite cheerfully
about it all, as  they walked on by the sea. What with the voices there, and
her sweet voice,  when they  come near Mr Dombey's house, and Mr  Toots must
leave her, he is so enslaved that he has not a scrap of free-will left; when
she gives him her hand at parting, he cannot let it go.
     'Miss Dombey, I beg your pardon,' says Mr Toots, in a sad fluster, 'but
if you would allow me to - to -
     The smiling and unconscious look of Florence brings him to a dead stop.
     'If you  would allow  me  to -  if you would not consider it a liberty,
Miss Dombey, if  I  was  to - without any  encouragement at all, if I was to
hope, you know,' says Mr Toots.
     Florence looks at him inquiringly.
     'Miss  Dombey,' says Mr  Toots, who feels that he is in  for it now, 'I
really am in  that state of adoration of you that  I don't know what  to  do
with myself. I am the most deplorable wretch. If it wasn't at the  corner of
the Square at  present, I should go down on my knees, and beg and entreat of
you, without any encouragement at all, just to let me hope  that I may - may
think it possible that you -
     'Oh, if  you please,  don't!'  cries  Florence,  for  the moment  quite
alarmed and  distressed.  'Oh,  pray don't, Mr Toots. Stop,  if  you please.
Don't say any more. As a kindness and a favour to me, don't.'
     Mr Toots is dreadfully abashed, and his mouth opens.
     'You have been so good to me,' says Florence, 'I am so grateful to you,
I have such reason  to like you for being a kind friend to me, and I do like
you  so  much;'  and  here  the  ingenuous  face smiles  upon him  with  the
pleasantest look of honesty in the world; 'that I am sure you are only going
to say good-bye!'
     'Certainly, Miss Dombey,' says Mr Toots, 'I - I - that's exactly what I
mean. It's of no consequence.'
     'Good-bye!' cries Florence.
     'Good-bye,  Miss Dombey!' stammers Mr Toots.  'I  hope you  won't think
anything about it. It's - it's of no consequence, thank you. It's not of the
least consequence in the world.'
     Poor Mr Toots goes  home to his hotel in a state of desperation,  locks
himself into his bedroom, flings himself upon his bed, and lies  there for a
long time; as if it were of the  greatest consequence,  nevertheless. But Mr
Feeder, B.A., is coming to dinner, which happens well for Mr Toots, or there
is no knowing when he might get  up again. Mr Toots is obliged to  get up to
receive him, and to give him hospitable entertainment.
     And the generous influence  of that social virtue, hospitality (to make
no mention of wine and good cheer), opens Mr Toots's heart, and warms him to
conversation. He does not tell Mr Feeder, B.A., what passed at the corner of
the Square; but  when Mr Feeder asks him 'When  it is to come off?' Mr Toots
replies, 'that there are certain  subjects' - which brings Mr Feeder down  a
peg or two immediately. Mr Toots adds, that he don't know what right Blimber
had  to notice his being in Miss Dombey's company, and that if he thought he
meant impudence  by it,  he'd have him out, Doctor  or  no  Doctor;  but  he
supposes its only his ignorance. Mr Feeder says he has no doubt of it.
     Mr Feeder, however,  as an  intimate  friend, is not  excluded from the
subject. Mr Toots merely  requires that it should be mentioned mysteriously,
and  with feeling.  After  a  few  glasses  of  wine, he gives Miss Dombey's
health, observing, 'Feeder, you have no idea of the sentiments with which  I
propose that toast.' Mr Feeder replies, 'Oh, yes, I have, my dear Toots; and
greatly they redound to your honour, old boy.' Mr Feeder is then agitated by
friendship,  and shakes hands;  and says,  if ever Toots wants a brother, he
knows where to find him, either by post or parcel. Mr Feeder like-wise says,
that if he may advise, he would recommend Mr Toots to  learn the guitar, or,
at least the flute; for women like music, when you are paying your addresses
to 'em, and he has found the advantage of it himself.
     This brings Mr Feeder, B.A., to the confession that he has his eye upon
Cornelia Blimber.  He informs Mr Toots that he don't  object to  spectacles,
and that  if  the Doctor  were  to  do the  handsome thing  and give  up the
business, why, there they are - provided for. He says it's his  opinion that
when a man has made a handsome sum  by his business, he is bound to give  it
up; and that Cornelia would be an assistance  in it  which any  man might be
proud  of.  Mr  Toots  replies by  launching wildly out into  Miss  Dombey's
praises, and by insinuations that sometimes he thinks he should like to blow
his brains out. Mr Feeder strongly  urges  that  it would be a rash attempt,
and shows  him,  as  a  reconcilement  to  existence,  Cornelia's  portrait,
spectacles and all.
     Thus  these quiet spirits  pass the evening; and  when  it has  yielded
place  to night, Mr Toots walks home with Mr  Feeder, and parts  with him at
Doctor  Blimber's door. But  Mr Feeder  only goes up the  steps, and when Mr
Toots is gone, comes down again, to stroll  upon  the beach alone, and think
about his prospects. Mr  Feeder plainly hears the waves informing him, as he
loiters along, that Doctor Blimber will give up the business; and he feels a
soft romantic  pleasure in looking at the outside of the house, and thinking
that the Doctor will first paint it, and put it into thorough repair.
     Mr  Toots is likewise roaming up  and  down,  outside the  casket  that
contains  his  jewel;  and  in  a  deplorable  condition  of mind,  and  not
unsuspected  by the police, gazes  at a  window  where he sees a  light, and
which  he  has no  doubt  is Florence's.  But  it  is not, for  that  is Mrs
Skewton's room;  and while Florence,  sleeping  in  another  chamber, dreams
lovingly,  in the midst  of the old scenes, and their old  associations live
again, the figure which in grim reality is substituted for the patient boy's
on the same theatre,  once more to connect it  - but how differently! - with
decay  and  death, is  stretched there,  wakeful  and complaining. Ugly  and
haggard it lies upon its  bed of  unrest; and  by  it, in the terror  of her
unimpassioned loveliness - for it has terror in the sufferer's  failing eyes
- sits Edith. What do the waves say, in the stillness of the night, to them?
     'Edith, what is that stone arm raised to strike me? Don't you see it?'
     There is nothing, mother, but your fancy.'
     'But my fancy! Everything  is my  fancy. Look! Is it  possible that you
don't see it?'
     'Indeed, mother, there is nothing. Should I sit  unmoved, if there were
any such thing there?'
     'Unmoved?' looking wildly at her - 'it's gone now - and why are you  so
unmoved? That is not my fancy, Edith. It turns me cold to see you sitting at
my side.'
     'I am sorry, mother.'
     'Sorry! You seem always sorry. But it is not for me!'
     With that, she cries;  and tossing  her restless head from side to side
upon her pillow, runs on about neglect, and the mother she has been, and the
mother  the  good old creature was, whom they met,  and the cold  return the
daughters of such mothers make. In the midst  of her incoherence, she stops,
looks at her daughter, cries out that her wits are going, and hides her face
upon the bed.
     Edith, in compassion,  bends over her and speaks to her.  The sick  old
woman clutches her round the neck, and says, with a look of horror,
     'Edith! we are  going home soon;  going back. You mean  that I shall go
home again?'
     'Yes, mother, yes.'
     'And  what he said  - what's-his-name, I never could  remember names  -
Major - that dreadful word, when we came away -  it's not true? Edith!' with
a shriek and a stare, 'it's not that that is the matter with me.'
     Night  after night, the  lights burn in the window, and the figure lies
upon the bed, and Edith sits beside it, and  the restless  waves are calling
to them  both the whole night  long. Night after night, the waves are hoarse
with repetition of their  mystery;  the dust lies piled upon the  shore; the
sea-birds  soar  and  hover;  the  winds  and  clouds are on their trackless
flight; the white arms beckon, in the moonlight,  to the  invisible  country
far away.
     And still the sick old woman looks into the corner, where the stone arm
- part of a figure of some tomb, she says - is raised to strike her. At last
it  falls;  and then  a dumb old  woman lies upon the  the  bed,  and she is
crooked and shrunk up, and half of her is dead.
     Such is the figure, painted  and patched  for the sun to mock,  that is
drawn slowly through the crowd from day to day; looking, as it goes, for the
good old creature who was such a mother, and making mouths as it peers among
the  crowd in vain. Such  is the figure  that  is often wheeled  down to the
margin of the  sea,  and  stationed there; but  on which  no wind  can  blow
freshness, and for which the murmur of  the ocean has no soothing word.  She
lies  and listens to it by the hour;  but its speech  is dark and gloomy  to
her, and a dread is on her face, and when her eyes wander over the  expanse,
they see but a broad stretch of desolation between earth and heaven.
     Florence she seldom sees, and when she does, is angry with and mows at.
Edith is beside her  always, and  keeps  Florence away; and Florence, in her
bed at night,  trembles at the  thought of  death in such a shape, and often
wakes and listens, thinking it has come. No one attends on her but Edith. It
is better  that  few eyes  should see her; and her daughter watches alone by
the bedside.
     A shadow even on that shadowed face, a sharpening even of the sharpened
features,  and  a  thickening of the  veil before  the eyes into a pall that
shuts out the dim world, is come. Her wandering hands upon the coverlet join
feebly palm to palm, and  move towards her  daughter; and a  voice  not like
hers, not  like any voice that speaks our mortal  language  -  says,  'For I
nursed you!'
     Edith,  without a tear, kneels down  to bring  her voice  closer to the
sinking head, and answers:
     'Mother, can you hear me?'
     Staring wide, she tries to nod in answer.
     'Can you recollect the night before I married?'
     The head is motionless, but it expresses somehow that she does.
     'I  told you  then  that  I forgave  your part in it, and prayed God to
forgive my own. I told you that time past was at an end between us. I say so
now, again. Kiss me, mother.'
     Edith touches the white lips, and  for a moment all is still.  A moment
afterwards, her  mother,  with  her  girlish laugh, and  the skeleton of the
Cleopatra manner, rises in her bed.
     Draw  the  rose-coloured  curtains. There  is  something else  upon its
flight besides the wind and clouds. Draw the rose-coloured curtains close!

     Intelligence  of the event is sent to Mr Dombey in town, who waits upon
Cousin Feenix  (not yet able to  make up his  mind for Baden-Baden), who has
just received it too. A good-natured creature like Cousin Feenix is the very
man for a marriage  or a funeral, and his position in the family  renders it
right that he should be consulted.
     'Dombey,' said Cousin Feenix, 'upon my  soul, I am very much shocked to
see you  on such  a melancholy  occasion. My  poor aunt! She was  a devilish
lively woman.'
     Mr Dombey replies, 'Very much so.'
     'And   made   up,'  says  Cousin  Feenix,  'really   young,  you  know,
considering. I am sure, on the day of your marriage, I thought she  was good
for another twenty years. In point of fact, I said so to a man at Brooks's -
little Billy Joper - you know him, no doubt - man with a glass in his eye?'
     Mr Dombey bows  a negative. 'In reference to the obsequies,' he  hints,
'whether there is any suggestion - '
     'Well, upon  my life,'  says Cousin Feenix, stroking his chin, which he
has  just enough of hand below his wristbands  to do; 'I  really don't know.
There's  a  Mausoleum down at my place,  in the park, but I'm afraid it's in
bad  repair,  and, in point of fact, in  a devil of a state. But for being a
little out at elbows, I should have had it put to  rights; but I believe the
people come and make pic-nic parties there inside the iron railings.'
     Mr Dombey is clear that this won't do.
     'There's  an uncommon  good church in the village,' says Cousin Feenix,
thoughtfully; 'pure specimen of the Anglo-Norman style,  and  admirably well
sketched too by Lady  Jane Finchbury  - woman with tight stays - but they've
spoilt it with whitewash, I understand, and it's a long journey.
     'Perhaps Brighton itself,' Mr Dombey suggests.
     'Upon my honour, Dombey, I don't think we could do better,' says Cousin
Feenix. 'It's on the spot, you see, and a very cheerful place.'
     'And when,' hints Mr Dombey, 'would it be convenient?'
     'I shall make a point,' says Cousin Feenix, 'of pledging myself for any
day you  think best. I  shall have  great pleasure  (melancholy pleasure, of
course) in following my poor aunt to the confines of the - in point of fact,
to the grave,' says Cousin Feenix, failing in the other turn of speech.
     'Would Monday do for leaving town?' says Mr Dombey.
     'Monday would suit me to perfection,'  replies Cousin Feenix. Therefore
Mr Dombey arranges to  take Cousin Feenix down  on that  day, and  presently
takes  his  leave,  attended to the  stairs by Cousin Feenix, who  says,  at
parting, 'I'm really excessively sorry, Dombey, that you should have so much
trouble about it;' to which Mr Dombey answers, 'Not at all.'
     At the appointed time, Cousin Feenix and Mr Dombey meet, and go down to
Brighton, and representing, in their  two selves, all the other mourners for
the  deceased lady's loss, attend her remains to their place of rest. Cousin
Feenix, sitting in the mourning-coach, recognises innumerable  acquaintances
on the road, but takes no other notice of  them, in decorum,  than  checking
them off aloud, as they go by, for Mr Dombey's information, as 'Tom Johnson.
Man with cork leg, from White's. What, are you here, Tommy? Foley on a blood
mare. The Smalder girls' -  and so forth. At the ceremony  Cousin  Feenix is
depressed, observing,  that these are  the occasions to make a man think, in
point of fact,  that he is getting shaky; and his eyes are really moistened,
when it is over. But he soon recovers;  and so  do the rest of Mrs Skewton's
relatives and friends, of whom the Major continually tells the club that she
never did wrap up  enough; while the  young lady with  the  back, who has so
much trouble  with her  eyelids,  says, with a little scream, that  she must
have been enormously old, and that she died of all kinds of horrors, and you
mustn't mention it.
     So Edith's mother lies unmentioned of her dear friends, who are deaf to
the waves that are hoarse with repetition of their mystery, and blind to the
dust that is piled upon the shore, and to the white arms that are beckoning,
in the moonlight, to the  invisible country far away. But all goes on, as it
was wont,  upon  the  margin of  the unknown sea; and Edith  standing  there
alone,  and  listening to  its waves, has dank  weed cast up at her feet, to
strew her path in life withal.

        CHAPTER 42.
     Confidential and Accidental

     Attired no  more in  Captain Cuttle's sable slops and sou'-wester  hat,
but dressed in a substantial suit of brown livery,  which, while it affected
to be a  very  sober and demure livery indeed, was  really as self-satisfied
and confident a one as tailor  need desire  to  make,  Rob the Grinder, thus
transformed as  to his  outer man, and all regardless  within of the Captain
and the Midshipman, except when he devoted a few minutes of his leisure time
to  crowing  over those  inseparable  worthies,  and  recalling,  with  much
applauding music from that brazen instrument, his conscience, the triumphant
manner in which he  had disembarrassed himself of their company,  now served
his patron, Mr Carker. Inmate of  Mr  Carker's house,  and serving about his
person, Rob kept his round eyes on the white  teeth with fear and trembling,
and felt that he had need to open them wider than ever.
     He could not  have quaked more, through  his  whole  being,  before the
teeth, though  he  had come into the service of some powerful enchanter, and
they had  been  his strongest spells.  The  boy  had a  sense of  power  and
authority  in  this patron of  his that engrossed  his  whole attention  and
exacted his  most  implicit submission  and obedience.  He hardly considered
himself safe in thinking about him when he was  absent, lest he  should feel
himself  immediately taken by the throat  again, as  on the morning when  he
first became bound to him, and should see every one of the teeth finding him
out, and taxing him with every fancy of his mind. Face to face with him, Rob
had no more doubt that Mr Carker read his secret thoughts, or that  he could
read them by the least exertion of his  will if he were so inclined, than he
had that Mr  Carker  saw him when he looked  at him.  The  ascendancy was so
complete, and held him in  such enthralment, that, hardly daring to think at
all, but with his  mind  filled with a constantly dilating impression of his
patron's irresistible command  over him, and  power of doing  anything  with
him, he  would  stand  watching his pleasure, and trying to  anticipate  his
orders, in a state of mental suspension, as to all other things.
     Rob  had not informed  himself perhaps - in  his then  state of mind it
would have been an act of no common temerity to inquire - whether he yielded
so  completely  to  this  influence  in  any  part, because he  had floating
suspicions  of his patron's being  a master of certain treacherous  arts  in
which he  had  himself  been a poor  scholar  at  the  Grinders' School. But
certainly Rob  admired him, as  well as feared  him. Mr Carker, perhaps, was
better acquainted with the sources of his power, which lost  nothing by  his
management of it.
     On  the  very  night  when he left the Captain's  service,  Rob,  after
disposing of  his pigeons, and even making  a  bad bargain in his hurry, had
gone straight down to Mr Carker's house, and hotly  presented himself before
his new master with a glowing face that seemed to expect commendation.
     'What, scapegrace!' said  Mr Carker, glancing at  his bundle  'Have you
left your situation and come to me?'
     'Oh if you please, Sir,' faltered Rob, 'you said, you know, when I come
here last - '
     'I said,' returned Mr Carker, 'what did I say?'
     'If you please, Sir, you didn't say nothing at all, Sir,' returned Rob,
warned by the manner of this inquiry, and very much disconcerted.
     His patron looked at  him with  a wide display of gums, and shaking his
forefinger, observed:
     'You'll come  to an evil  end, my vagabond friend,  I foresee.  There's
ruin in store for you.
     'Oh if you please,  don't,  Sir!' cried Rob,  with  his legs  trembling
under him.  ' I'm sure, Sir, I only want  to work for you, Sir,  and to wait
upon you, Sir, and to do faithful whatever I'm bid, Sir.'
     'You had  better do  faithfully  whatever you are  bid,'  returned  his
patron, 'if you have anything to do with me.'
     'Yes, I know that, Sir,' pleaded the submissive Rob; 'I'm sure of that,
SIr. If you'll only be so good as try me, Sir! And if ever  you find me out,
Sir, doing anything against your wishes, I give you leave to kill me.'
     'You  dog!'  said Mr Carker, leaning back in his chair, and smiling  at
him serenely. 'That's nothing to what I'd do to you, if you tried to deceive
me.'
     'Yes, Sir,' replied the abject  Grinder, 'I'm  sure you would  be  down
upon me dreadful, Sir. I wouldn't attempt for to go and do it, Sir, not if I
was bribed with golden guineas.'
     Thoroughly checked in his expectations of commendation, the crestfallen
Grinder stood looking at his patron, and vainly endeavouring not  to look at
him, with  the  uneasiness  which a  cur will  often  manifest in  a similar
situation.
     'So you have left your old service, and come here to ask me to take you
into mine, eh?' said Mr Carker.
     'Yes, if you please, Sir,' returned Rob, who, in doing so, had acted on
his patron's own instructions,  but dared  not justify himself  by the least
insinuation to that effect.
     'Well!' said Mr Carker. 'You know me, boy?'
     'Please, Sir, yes, Sir,' returned Rob, tumbling with his hat, and still
fixed by Mr Carker's eye, and fruitlessly endeavouring to unfix himself.
     Mr Carker nodded. 'Take care, then!'
     Rob expressed in  a number of  short  bows his lively understanding  of
this caution, and was bowing  himself back to the door,  greatly relieved by
the prospect of getting on the outside of it, when his patron stopped him.
     'Halloa!' he cried, calling him roughly back.  'You  have  been -  shut
that door.'
     Rob obeyed as if his life had depended on his alacrity.
     'You have been used to eaves-dropping. Do you know what that means?'
     'Listening, Sir?' Rob hazarded, after some embarrassed reflection.
     His patron nodded. 'And watching, and so forth.'
     'I wouldn't do such a thing here, Sir,' answered Rob; 'upon my word and
honour, I wouldn't, Sir, I wish I may die if I would, Sir, for anything that
could be promised  to me. I  should consider  it is as much as all the world
was worth, to offer to do such a thing, unless I was ordered, Sir.'
     'You  had  better  not'  You  have  been  used,  too, to  babbling  and
tattling,' said  his patron with perfect coolness.  'Beware of that here, or
you're a lost rascal,' and he smiled again, and again cautioned him with his
forefinger.
     The Grinder's breath came short and thick with consternation.  He tried
to protest the purity of his intentions, but could only stare at the smiling
gentleman in a stupor of submission, with which the smiling gentleman seemed
well enough  satisfied, for  he  ordered him downstairs, after observing him
for some moments in silence, and gave him to understand that he was retained
in his employment. This was the manner of Rob the Grinder's engagement by Mr
Carker, and his awe-stricken devotion to that gentleman had strengthened and
increased, if possible, with every minute of his service.
     It was a service of some months'  duration, when early one morning, Rob
opened the  garden gate to  Mr Dombey,  who was  come to breakfast  with his
master, by appointment. At the same moment his master himself came, hurrying
forth  to receive the distinguished guest, and give him welcome with all his
teeth.
     'I never thought,' said Carker, when he had assisted him to alight from
his horse, 'to see you here, I'm  sure. This  is  an extraordinary day in my
calendar. No  occasion  is very  special  to  a  man like  you,  who may  do
anything; but to a man like me, the case is widely different.
     'You have a tasteful place here, Carker,' said Mr Dombey, condescending
to stop upon the lawn, to look about him.
     'You can afford to say so,' returned Carker. 'Thank you.'
     'Indeed,' said Mr Dombey, in his lofty patronage, 'anyone might say so.
As  far as it goes, it is a  very commodious and well-arranged place - quite
elegant.'
     'As  far  as  it  goes,  truly,'  returned  Carker,  with  an  air   of
disparagement' 'It wants that qualification. Well! we have said enough about
it;  and though you  can afford to  praise it, I thank you nonetheless. Will
you walk in?'
     Mr  Dombey,  entering  the house, noticed,  as he had reason to do, the
complete arrangement of the rooms, and the numerous contrivances for comfort
and effect that abounded  there.  Mr Carker, in his ostentation of humility,
received this notice with a  deferential  smile, and said he understood  its
delicate  meaning, and  appreciated  it, but in  truth the cottage was  good
enough for one in  his position  - better,  perhaps, than such a man  should
occupy, poor as it was.
     'But perhaps to you, who are so far removed, it really does look better
than it is,' he said, with his false mouth distended to its fullest stretch.
'Just as monarchs imagine attractions in the lives of beggars.'
     He directed a sharp glance and a sharp smile at  Mr Dombey as he spoke,
and  a  sharper  glance, and  a sharper smile yet, when  Mr  Dombey, drawing
himself up before the fire, in the attitude so often copied by his second in
command,  looked round at  the pictures on the walls. Cursorily as his  cold
eye  wandered over them, Carker's keen glance accompanied his, and kept pace
with  his, marking exactly where  it went,  and what it saw. As it rested on
one  picture in  particular, Carker hardly seemed to  breathe, his  sidelong
scrutiny was so cat-like and vigilant, but the eye of his great chief passed
from  that, as from the others, and appeared no more impressed by it than by
the rest.
     Carker looked at it -  it  was the picture that resembled Edith - as if
it were a living thing; and with a wicked, silent laugh upon  his face, that
seemed in  part addressed to it, though it was all derisive of the great man
standing  so unconscious beside him. Breakfast  was soon set upon the table;
and, inviting Mr Dombey  to a chair which had its back towards this picture,
he took his own seat opposite to it as usual.
     Mr Dombey was  even graver than  it was his  custom to  be,  and  quite
silent. The parrot,  swinging  in the gilded  hoop  within  her  gaudy cage,
attempted in  vain to attract notice,  for  Carker was too observant  of his
visitor to  heed  her;  and  the visitor, abstracted  in meditation,  looked
fixedly, not to say sullenly, over  his stiff neckcloth, without raising his
eyes from  the table-cloth.  As  to  Rob, who  was in  attendance,  all  his
faculties and energies were so locked up in observation of his  master, that
he scarcely ventured to give shelter to the thought that the visitor was the
great gentleman  before  whom  he had been  carried as a  certificate of the
family health, in  his childhood, and to whom he  had been indebted  for his
leather smalls.
     'Allow me,' said Carker suddenly, 'to ask how Mrs Dombey is?'
     He  leaned forward obsequiously, as he made the inquiry,  with his chin
resting on his hand; and at  the same time  his eyes went up to the picture,
as if he said to it, 'Now, see, how I will lead him on!'
     Mr Dombey reddened as he answered:
     'Mrs Dombey is quite well.  You remind me, Carker, of some conversation
that I wish to have with you.'
     'Robin, you  can leave us,' said his master,  at whose mild tones Robin
started and disappeared, with his eyes fixed on his patron to the last. 'You
don't remember that boy, of course?' he added, when the enmeshed Grinder was
gone.
     'No,' said Mr Dombey, with magnificent indifference.
     'Not  likely  that  a man like  you would. Hardly  possible,'  murmured
Carker. 'But he is  one of that  family from whom you  took a nurse. Perhaps
you may remember having generously charged yourself with his education?'
     'Is it that boy?' said Mr Dombey, with a frown. 'He does little  credit
to his education, I believe.'
     'Why,  he is a young rip, I am afraid,' returned Carker,  with a shrug.
'He bears  that character.  But  the truth  is, I took him  into my  service
because,  being able  to get no  other employment, he  conceived  (had  been
taught at home, I daresay) that he had some sort of claim upon you, and  was
constantly  trying to  dog your heels  with his petition.  And  although  my
defined and recognised  connexion with your affairs is merely  of a business
character, still I have that spontaneous interest in everything belonging to
you, that - '
     He stopped again, as if to  discover whether he had led  Mr Dombey  far
enough yet. And again, with  his chin resting  on his hand, he leered at the
picture.
     'Carker,' said Mr Dombey, 'I am sensible that you do not limit your - '
     'Service,' suggested his smiling entertainer.
     'No; I prefer to  say  your regard,' observed Mr Dombey; very sensible,
as he said so, that he was paying him a handsome and flattering  compliment,
'to our mere business relations. Your consideration for my feelings,  hopes,
and disappointments, in the little instance you have just now mentioned,  is
an example in point. I I am obliged to you, Carker.'
     Mr Carker bent his head slowly, and very softly rubbed his hands, as if
he were  afraid  by any  action  to  disturb  the  current  of  Mr  Dombey's
confidence.
     'Your allusion to  it is opportune,'  said  Mr Dombey,  after  a little
hesitation; 'for it prepares the  way to what I was beginning to say to you,
and  reminds me that that  involves no absolutely new relations between  us,
although it  may involve  more personal  confidence on my  part than  I have
hitherto - '
     'Distinguished  me  with,' suggested Carker, bending his head again: 'I
will not say to you how honoured  I  am; for a man  like you well knows  how
much honour he has in his power to bestow at pleasure.'
     'Mrs  Dombey and myself,' said  Mr Dombey, passing this compliment with
august self-denial, 'are not quite agreed upon some points. We do not appear
to understand each other yet' Mrs Dombey has something to learn.'
     'Mrs Dombey  is distinguished  by  many  rare attractions; and has been
accustomed, no doubt, to  receive  much adulation,'  said the smooth,  sleek
watcher of his slightest look and tone. 'But where there is affection, duty,
and respect,  any  little  mistakes engendered by such causes  are soon  set
right.'
     Mr  Dombey's  thoughts  instinctively flew  back to  the face that  had
looked  at him  in  his wife's  dressing-room  when  an imperious  hand  was
stretched  towards  the  door;  and  remembering  the affection,  duty,  and
respect, expressed  in it, he felt the blood  rush to his own face quite  as
plainly as the watchful eyes upon him saw it there.
     'Mrs  Dombey  and myself,' he went  on to  say,  'had some  discussion,
before Mrs Skewton's death, upon  the causes of my dissatisfaction; of which
you will have  formed a general understanding from having been  a witness of
what passed between Mrs Dombey  and myself on  the evening when you  were at
our - at my house.'
     'When  I so much  regretted being present,'  said the  smiling  Carker.
'Proud as a man in my position nay must be  of your familiar notice - though
I give you no credit for it;  you may do anything you  please without losing
caste - and honoured as I was by an early presentation to Mrs Dombey, before
she was made eminent by bearing your name, I almost regretted that  night, I
assure you, that I had been the object of such especial good fortune'
     That any man could, under any possible circumstances, regret  the being
distinguished  by his condescension  and patronage,  was a  moral phenomenon
which  Mr Dombey  could  not  comprehend.  He  therefore  responded, with  a
considerable accession of dignity. 'Indeed! And why, Carker?'
     'I fear,' returned the confidential agent, 'that Mrs Dombey, never very
much  disposed to  regard me with  favourable interest  - one in my position
could not expect that, from a lady naturally proud,  and whose pride becomes
her so well -  may not easily forgive my innocent part in that conversation.
Your displeasure  is no light matter, you must remember;  and  to be visited
with it before a third party -
     'Carker,' said Mr Dombey, arrogantly; 'I  presume that I am  the  first
consideration?'
     'Oh!  Can  there  be  a  doubt about it?' replied  the other, with  the
impatience of a man admitting a notorious and incontrovertible fact'
     'Mrs  Dombey  becomes a  secondary  consideration, when we are  both in
question, I imagine,' said Mr Dombey. 'Is that so?'
     'Is it so?'  returned Carker. 'Do you know better than anyone, that you
have no need to ask?'
     'Then  I  hope,  Carker,' said Mr  Dombey,  'that  your regret  in  the
acquisition of  Mrs  Dombey's displeasure,  may be almost counterbalanced by
your satisfaction in retaining my confidence and good opinion.'
     'I  have the misfortune,  I  find,' returned  Carker, 'to have incurred
that displeasure. Mrs Dombey has expressed it to you?'
     'Mrs Dombey has  expressed  various opinions,'  said  Mr  Dombey,  with
majestic  coldness  and indifference, 'in  which  I do not  participate, and
which  I  am not  inclined to discuss,  or to  recall.  I made  Mr's  Dombey
acquainted, some time since, as I have already told you, with certain points
of domestic deference and submission on which I felt it necessary to insist.
I  failed  to  convince Mrs  Dombey of  the  expediency of  her  immediately
altering  her conduct in  those respects, with  a view to her own peace  and
welfare, and  my dignity; and I informed Mrs Dombey that if I should find it
necessary to object or remonstrate again, I should express my opinion to her
through yourself, my confidential agent.'
     Blended with the look that Carker bent upon him, was a devilish look at
the picture over his head, that struck upon it like a flash of lightning.
     'Now, Carker,' said Mr Dombey, 'I do not hesitate  to say to you that I
will carry my point. I am not to be trifled with. Mrs Dombey must understand
that my will is law, and  that  I cannot allow of one exception to the whole
rule of my life. You will have the goodness to undertake this charge, which,
coming from  me, is not unacceptable to you, I hope, whatever regret you may
politely  profess  - for  which I am obliged to you on behalf of Mrs Dombey;
and you  will have the goodness, I am persuaded, to discharge  it as exactly
as any other commission.'
     'You know,' said Mr Carker, 'that you have only to command me.
     'I know,' said Mr Dombey, with a majestic indication of assent, 'that I
have only to command you. It is necessary that I should proceed in this. Mrs
Dombey is a lady undoubtedly highly qualified, in many respects, to -
     'To do credit even to your  choice,'  suggested  Carker, with a yawning
show of teeth.
     'Yes;  if  you please to adopt that form of words,' said  Mr Dombey, in
his tone of state;  'and  at present I do not conceive that Mrs Dombey  does
that  credit to  it, to  which  it is  entitled.  There  is  a  principle of
opposition in Mrs Dombey that must be eradicated; that must be overcome: Mrs
Dombey does not  appear to understand,' said Mr Dombey, forcibly, 'that  the
idea of opposition to Me is monstrous and absurd.'
     'We, in  the  City, know you better,' replied Carker, with a smile from
ear to ear.
     'You know me better,' said Mr Dombey. 'I hope so.  Though, indeed, I am
bound to do Mrs Dombey the  justice of saying, however  inconsistent  it may
seem  with her  subsequent  conduct  (which remains  unchanged), that on  my
expressing  my disapprobation and determination to her, with some  severity,
on the occasion  to which I have referred, my admonition appeared to produce
a  very powerful effect.'  Mr Dombey  delivered himself  of those words with
most  portentous stateliness. 'I wish you  to have  the  goodness,  then, to
inform  Mrs  Dombey,  Carker,  from  me,  that  I  must  recall  our  former
conversation  to her remembrance, in some  surprise that it has not  yet had
its  effect.  That  I  must insist  upon  her regulating  her conduct by the
injunctions laid upon her in that conversation. That I am not satisfied with
her conduct.  That  I am greatly dissatisfied with it. And  that I  shall be
under the very disagreeable necessity of making  you the bearer  of yet more
unwelcome and explicit communications, if she has not the good sense and the
proper feeling to adapt herself  to my wishes, as the first Mrs  Dombey did,
and, I believe I may add, as any other lady in her place would.'
     'The first Mrs Dombey lived very happily,' said Carker.
     'The  first  Mrs Dombey  had great  good sense,'  said Mr Dombey,  in a
gentlemanly toleration of the dead, 'and very correct feeling.'
     'Is Miss Dombey like her mother, do you think?' said Carker.
     Swiftly  and darkly, Mr  Dombey's  face changed. His confidential agent
eyed it keenly.
     'I  have approached a painful  subject,'  he said, in a soft  regretful
tone of voice, irreconcilable with his eager eye. 'Pray forgive me. I forget
these chains of association in the interest I have. Pray forgive me.'
     But for  all he said,  his eager eye scanned Mr Dombey's downcast  face
none the less closely;  and then  it shot a  strange triumphant look  at the
picture,  as appealing  to  it to bear witness how he  led him on again, and
what was coming.
     Carker,' said  Mr  Dombey, looking here  and there upon  the table, and
saying in a somewhat altered  and more hurried voice, and  with a paler lip,
'there is no occasion  for apology. You mistake. The association is with the
matter in hand, and not with  any  recollection,  as you suppose.  I  do not
approve of Mrs Dombey's behaviour towards my daughter.'
     'Pardon me,' said Mr Carker, 'I don't quite understand.'
     'Understand then,' returned Mr Dombey, 'that you may  make that  - that
you will  make  that, if you please -  matter of direct objection from me to
Mrs  Dombey. You will please  to tell  her  that her show of devotion for my
daughter is disagreeable to me. It is likely to be noticed. It is  likely to
induce people  to contrast Mrs Dombey in her  relation towards my  daughter,
with Mrs Dombey in her relation towards myself.  You will have the  goodness
to let Mrs Dombey know,  plainly, that I object to it; and that I expect her
to defer, immediately, to my objection. Mrs Dombey may be in earnest, or she
may be pursuing a whim, or she may be opposing me; but I object to it in any
case,  and in  every  case. If Mrs  Dombey  is in earnest,  so much the less
reluctant should she be to desist; for she will not serve my daughter by any
such display.  If my wife  has any superfluous gentleness, and duty over and
above her proper submission  to me,  she may  bestow them where she pleases,
perhaps;  but  I will have submission first!  -  Carker,'  said  Mr  Dombey,
checking the unusual  emotion with which he had  spoken,  and falling into a
tone more like that in which he was accustomed to assert his greatness, 'you
will have the goodness not to omit or slur this point,  but to consider it a
very important part of your instructions.'
     Mr  Carker bowed  his  head,  and  rising from  the table, and standing
thoughtfully  before the fire, with his hand to his smooth chin, looked down
at Mr Dombey with the evil slyness of some  monkish  carving, half human and
half  brute;  or like  a  leering  face  on an old water-spout.  Mr  Dombey,
recovering his composure by  degrees, or cooling his emotion in his sense of
having taken a high position, sat gradually stiffening again, and looking at
the parrot as she swung to and fro, in her great wedding ring.
     'I beg your pardon,'  said Carker, after  a silence, suddenly  resuming
his chair,  and drawing it opposite to Mr Dombey's, 'but  let me understand.
Mrs Dombey is aware of the probability of your making me the organ  of  your
displeasure?'
     'Yes,' replied Mr Dombey. 'I have said so.'
     'Yes,' rejoined Carker, quickly; 'but why?'
     'Why!' Mr Dombey repeated,  not  without  hesitation. 'Because  I  told
her.'
     'Ay,' replied Carker. 'But why did you tell her? You see,' he continued
with a smile,  and  softly laying his  velvet hand, as a cat might have laid
its sheathed claws,  on Mr Dombey's arm;  'if I perfectly understand what is
in  your mind,  I  am so much  more  likely to  be  useful, and  to have the
happiness of being effectually employed. I think I do understand. I have not
the honour of Mrs Dombey's good opinion. In my position, I have no reason to
expect it; but I take the fact to be, that I have not got it?'
     'Possibly not,' said Mr Dombey.
     'Consequently,' pursued  Carker, 'your making the communications to Mrs
Dombey through me, is sure to be particularly unpalatable to that lady?'
     'It  appears to me,' said Mr Dombey, with haughty reserve, and yet with
some  embarrassment, 'that  Mrs Dombey's views upon the subject form no part
of it as it presents itself to you and me, Carker. But it may be so.'
     'And - pardon me -  do I  misconceive you,' said Carker,  'when I think
you descry in this, a  likely  means  of humbling Mrs Dombey's pride - I use
the word as expressive  of  a quality which,  kept within due bounds, adorns
and graces a lady so distinguished for her beauty and accomplishments - and,
not to say of punishing her,  but of reducing her  to  the submission you so
naturally and justly require?'
     'I am not accustomed, Carker, as you know,'  said Mr  Dombey, 'to  give
such close reasons for any course of  conduct I think proper to adopt, but I
will gainsay nothing of this. If you have  any  objection to found  upon it,
that is indeed another thing, and the mere statement that you  have one will
be sufficient. But  I have not supposed,  I  confess, that any confidence  I
could entrust to you, would be likely to degrade you - '
     'Oh! I degraded!' exclaimed Carker. 'In your service!'
     'or to place you,' pursued Mr Dombey, 'in a false position.'
     'I  in  a  false  position!' exclaimed  Carker. 'I  shall  be  proud  -
delighted - to execute your trust. I could have wished, I own, to have given
the lady at whose feet  I would lay my humble duty and devotion - for is she
not your wife! - no new cause of dislike; but a wish from you is, of course,
paramount to every other consideration on earth. Besides, when Mrs Dombey is
converted from  these little errors of judgment, incidental, I would presume
to say, to the novelty of her situation, I shall hope that she will perceive
in the slight part I  take, only a grain - my  removed  and different sphere
gives room for  little  more - of the  respect for you, and sacrifice of all
considerations  to you,  of which it will  be her  pleasure and privilege to
garner up a great store every day.'
     Mr  Dombey seemed,  at  the  moment,  again to see  her  with her  hand
stretched out towards the door, and again to hear through the mild speech of
his  confidential agent an echo of the words,  'Nothing can make us stranger
to  each other than we are henceforth!' But he shook  off the fancy, and did
not shake in his resolution, and said, 'Certainly, no doubt.'
     'There is nothing more,' quoth Carker, drawing his chair  back  to  its
old place -  for they had taken little breakfast as yet-  and pausing for an
answer before he sat down.
     'Nothing,'  said  Mr  Dombey,  'but  this. You will be  good  enough to
observe, Carker, that no message  to Mrs Dombey with which you are or may be
charged, admits of reply. You will be good enough to bring me no reply.  Mrs
Dombey is informed that it does not become me to temporise or treat upon any
matter that is at issue between us, and that what I say is final.'
     Mr Carker signIfied his understanding  of  these  credentials, and they
fell to breakfast with what  appetite  they might. The Grinder  also, in due
time  reappeared,  keeping  his  eyes upon  his  master without  a  moment's
respite, and passing the  time in  a reverie of worshipful tenor.  Breakfast
concluded, Mr Dombey's  horse  was ordered out again, and Mr Carker mounting
his own, they rode off for the City together.
     Mr Carker was in  capital spirits,  and talked much. Mr Dombey received
his conversation with  the  sovereign air of a man  who had  a  right  to be
talked to, and occasionally condescended to throw in a few words to carry on
the conversation. So they rode on characteristically  enough. But Mr Dombey,
in his dignity,  rode with  very long stirrups, and a very  loose  rein, and
very rarely deigned to look down to see where his horse went. In consequence
of which  it happened  that  Mr Dombey's horse, while going at a round trot,
stumbled on  some loose stones, threw him, rolled  over him, and lashing out
with his iron-shod feet, in his struggles to get up, kicked him.
     Mr Carker, quick of eye,  steady of  hand,  and  a good  horseman,  was
afoot, and  had the struggling  animal upon his legs and by the bridle, in a
moment.  Otherwise  that morning's confidence would have  been  Mr  Dombey's
last. Yet even with the flush and hurry of this action red upon him, he bent
over  his prostrate  chief with every  tooth  disclosed, and  muttered as he
stooped down, 'I have given good cause  of offence to Mrs Dombey now, if she
knew it!'
     Mr Dombey being insensible,  and bleeding from the  head and  face, was
carried  by  certain menders of  the road,  under Carker's direction, to the
nearest public-house, which was not far  off, and where he was soon attended
by divers surgeons,  who arrived in quick succession from all parts, and who
seemed  to come by  some mysterious instinct, as vultures are said to gather
about a camel who  dies in the desert. After being at some pains to  restore
him to consciousness,  these  gentlemen  examined into  the  nature  of  his
injuries.
     One surgeon who lived hard by was strong for a compound fracture of the
leg, which  was the landlord's opinion also; but two surgeons who lived at a
distance, and  were only in that neighbourhood  by  accident,  combated this
opinion so  disinterestedly, that it was  decided at last  that the patient,
though severely cut and bruised, had broken no bones but a lesser rib or so,
and might be  carefully  taken home before night. His injuries being dressed
and bandaged, which was  a long operation, and he at length left  to repose,
Mr Carker mounted  his horse again, and rode  away to carry the intelligence
home.
     Crafty and cruel as his face was at the best of times, though it was  a
sufficiently fair face as to form and  regularity of  feature, it was at its
worst when he set forth on this errand; animated by the craft and cruelty of
thoughts within him, suggestions of remote possibility rather than of design
or plot, that made him  ride as if he hunted men  and women. Drawing rein at
length, and slackening in his speed, as he came into the  more public roads,
he checked his  white-legged horse  into picking his way along as usual, and
hid himself beneath his sleek, hushed, crouched manner, and his ivory smile,
as he best could.
     He rode direct  to Mr Dombey's house,  alighted at the door, and begged
to see Mrs Dombey on an affair of importance. The servant who showed  him to
Mr Dombey's own room, soon returned to say that it was not Mrs Dombey's hour
for receiving visitors, and that he begged pardon for  not having  mentioned
it before.
     Mr Carker, who was quite prepared for  a cold  reception, wrote upon  a
card that he must take the liberty of pressing for an interview, and that he
would not be so bold as to do so,  for the second time (this he underlined),
if  he  were  not  equally sure  of  the occasion  being sufficient  for his
justification.  After  a trifling  delay, Mrs Dombey's  maid  appeared,  and
conducted him to  a morning room  upstairs, where  Edith and  Florence  were
together.
     He had never thought Edith half so beautiful before. Much as he admired
the  graces  of  her face and form, and  freshly  as  they dwelt  within his
sensual remembrance, he had never thought her half so beautiful.
     Her glance fell  haughtily  upon  him in the doorway; but  he looked at
Florence - though only in the  act of bending his head, as he came in - with
some irrepressible  expression  of  the new power  he  held; and it was  his
triumph to see the glance  droop and falter, and to see that Edith half rose
up to receive him.
     He  was very sorry,  he was  deeply grieved;  he couldn't say with what
unwillingness  he came to prepare  her for the intelligence of a very slight
accident. He entreated Mrs Dombey to  compose  herself. Upon his sacred word
of honour, there was no cause of alarm. But Mr Dombey -
     Florence uttered a  sudden cry.  He did not  look at her, but at Edith.
Edith composed and reassured her. She uttered no cry of distress. No, no.
     Mr  Dombey had met  with an accident in riding. His horse had  slipped,
and he had been thrown.
     Florence wildly exclaimed that he was badly hurt; that he was killed!
     No. Upon  his  honour,  Mr  Dombey, though  stunned at first, was  soon
recovered, and though certainly hurt was in no  kind of danger. If this were
not the truth, he, the distressed intruder, never could have had the courage
to present himself before Mrs Dombey. It  was the truth  indeed, he solemnly
assured her.
     All this he said as  if he were answering  Edith, and not Florence, and
with his eyes and his smile fastened on Edith.
     He  then went on to tell her where Mr Dombey was lying, and  to request
that a carriage might be placed at his disposal to bring him home.
     'Mama,' faltered Florence in tears, 'if I might venture to go!'
     Mr Carker, having his eyes on Edith when he heard these words, gave her
a  secret  look  and slightly shook  his head.  He saw how she  battled with
herself before  she answered  him with her handsome eyes, but he wrested the
answer from  her  - he  showed her that  he would have  it, or that he would
speak and cut Florence  to the  heart  -  and she gave  it to him. As he had
looked at the picture in  the morning, so  he looked at her afterwards, when
she turned her eyes away.
     'I  am directed to  request,'  he said, 'that the new housekeeper - Mrs
Pipchin, I think, is the name - '
     Nothing escaped him. He saw in an instant, that she  was another slight
of Mr Dombey's on his wife.
     ' -  may be informed that Mr Dombey  wishes to have his bed prepared in
his  own apartments downstairs,  as he prefers those rooms  to any other.  I
shall return to Mr Dombey almost  immediately. That every possible attention
has been paid to his  comfort, and that he  is the  object of every possible
solicitude,  I need not assure  you,  Madam.  Let me  again say, there is no
cause for the least alarm. Even you may be quite at ease, believe me.'
     He bowed  himself  out,  with  his  extremest  show  of  deference  and
conciliation; and having returned to  Mr  Dombey's room,  and there arranged
for a carriage being  sent after him  to the City,  mounted his horse again,
and rode slowly thither. He was very thoughtful  as he went along,  and very
thoughtful there, and very thoughtful in the carriage on his way back to the
place where  Mr Dombey  had  been left.  It  was  only when sitting by  that
gentleman's  couch  that he was  quite  himself  again, and conscious of his
teeth.
     About the time of twilight,  Mr Dombey, grievously afflicted with aches
and pains, was helped into his carriage, and propped with cloaks and pillows
on one side of it,  while his  confidential agent  bore him company upon the
other. As he  was not to be shaken, they moved at  little more  than  a foot
pace;  and hence it  was quite dark  when he was brought home. Mrs  Pipchin,
bitter   and  grim,  and  not  oblivious  of  the  Peruvian  mines,  as  the
establishment in general had good reason to know, received  him at the door,
and  freshened  the  domestics  with  several  little  sprinklings  of wordy
vinegar,  while they  assisted  in conveying  him  to  his  room. Mr  Carker
remained in attendance until he was safe in bed, and then, as he declined to
receive any  female visitor, but the  excellent Ogress who presided over his
household,  waited  on Mrs Dombey  once more,  with his report on her lord's
condition.
     He again found  Edith alone with Florence,  and he again addressed  the
whole  of  his  soothing speech to  Edith, as  if  she were  a  prey to  the
liveliest  and  most  affectionate  anxieties.  So earnest  he  was  in  his
respectful sympathy,  that  on  taking leave,  he  ventured -  with one more
glance towards Florence at  the moment - to take her hand, and  bending over
it, to touch it with his lips.
     Edith did not withdraw the hand, nor did  she strike his fair face with
it, despite the flush upon her cheek, the bright light in her eyes,  and the
dilation of  her whole form. But when she  was  alone in her  own room,  she
struck it on the marble chimney-shelf, so that, at one blow, it was bruised,
and bled; and held it from her, near the shining fire, as if she could  have
thrust it in and burned it'
     Far  into the  night she sat  alone, by the sinking blaze, in dark  and
threatening beauty, watching the murky  shadows looming on the  wall,  as if
her thoughts were tangible, and cast  them there. Whatever shapes of outrage
and  affront,  and  black  foreshadowings  of   things  that  might  happen,
flickered,  indistinct  and  giant-like, before  her,  one  resented  figure
marshalled them against her. And that figure was her husband.

        CHAPTER 43.
     The Watches of the Night

     Florence, long  since awakened  from her dream, mournfully observed the
estrangement  between her father and Edith,  and saw it widen more and more,
and  knew that  there was greater  bitterness between  them  every day. Each
day's added  knowledge deepened the shade  upon her love and hope, roused up
the old sorrow  that had slumbered for  a  little  time, and  made  it  even
heavier to bear than it had been before.
     It had been hard - how hard  may none but Florence ever know! - to have
the natural affection of a  true and earnest  nature  turned to  agony;  and
slight, or stern repulse, substituted for the tenderest  protection and  the
dearest  care. It had been hard to feel in her deep heart what she had felt,
and never know the happiness of one touch of response. But it was much  more
hard to be compelled  to doubt  either  her father or Edith, so affectionate
and dear to her, and  to think of her love for each  of them, by turns, with
fear, distrust, and wonder.
     Yet Florence now began to do so; and the doing of it was a task imposed
upon her by the very purity of her soul, as one she  could not fly from. She
saw her father  cold and obdurate to  Edith,  as  to  her; hard, inflexible,
unyielding. Could it be, she asked herself with starting tears, that her own
dear mother had been made unhappy by such treatment, and had  pined away and
died?  Then she would think how proud and stately Edith was to  everyone but
her, with  what disdain she  treated him, how distantly  she kept apart from
him, and what she had said on the night when they came home; and  quickly it
would come on Florence, almost as a crime, that she loved one who was set in
opposition to her father, and that her father knowing of  it, must think  of
her in his solitary room as the unnatural child who  added this wrong to the
old fault, so much wept for, of never having won his fatherly affection from
her birth. The next kind word from Edith,  the next kind glance, would shake
these thoughts again, and make them seem like black ingratitude; for who but
she had cheered the drooping heart of  Florence, so lonely and  so hurt, and
been  its best of  comforters! Thus, with her gentle nature yearning to them
both, feeling for the misery of both, and whispering  doubts of her own duty
to both, Florence in her wider and expanded love,  and by the side of Edith,
endured  more than  when  she  had  hoarded up  her undivided secret  in the
mournful house, and her beautiful Mama had never dawned upon it.
     One exquisite unhappiness that would have far outweighed this, Florence
was spared.  She never had the least suspicion  that Edith by her tenderness
for her  widened the separation from her  father,  or gave him new cause  of
dislike. If  Florence had conceived the possIbility of such an effect  being
wrought  by such a cause, what grief she would have felt, what sacrifice she
would have  tried to  make, poor loving  girl,  how fast and sure her  quiet
passage might have been beneath it to the presence of that higher Father who
does not reject his children's love, or spurn their tried and broken hearts,
Heaven knows! But it was otherwise, and that was well.
     No  word  was  ever  spoken  between Florence  and Edith now, on  these
subjects. Edith  had said there  ought  to be between them,  in that wise, a
division  and  a silence like  the grave  itself: and Florence felt  she was
right'
     In this state of  affairs her  father was brought  home, suffering  and
disabled; and  gloomily  retired to his own rooms, where he  was  tended  by
servants, not approached  by Edith,  and had no  friend or companion  but Mr
Carker, who withdrew near midnight.
     'And nice company  he  is, Miss Floy,'  said Susan Nipper. 'Oh,  he's a
precious piece of goods! If ever he wants a character don't let him  come to
me whatever he does, that's all I tell him.'
     'Dear Susan,' urged Florence, 'don't!'
     'Oh, it's very  well  to  say "don't" Miss Floy,' returned  the Nipper,
much exasperated; 'but raly begging  your pardon we're coming to such passes
that it turns all the  blood in  a person's body into pins and needles, with
their  pints all ways.  Don't  mistake me, Miss Floy,  I don't mean  nothing
again your ma-in-law who has always treated me as  a lady should though  she
is rather  high  I must  say not that I  have any  right  to object  to that
particular,  but when we come to  Mrs Pipchinses and having them put over us
and keeping guard  at  your Pa's door like crocodiles (only make us thankful
that they lay no eggs!) we are a growing too outrageous!'
     'Papa thinks well of Mrs Pipchin, Susan,' returned Florence, 'and has a
right to choose his housekeeper, you know. Pray don't!'
     'Well Miss Floy,' returned the Nipper, 'when you say don't, I  never do
I  hope but  Mrs  Pipchin acts like  early  gooseberries upon  me Miss,  and
nothing less.'
     Susan  was  unusually  emphatic  and destitute of  punctuation  in  her
discourse  on this night, which was the night of  Mr  Dombey's being brought
home, because, having been sent downstairs by Florence to inquire after him,
she had been obliged to deliver her message to her mortal enemy Mrs Pipchin;
who, without carrying it in to  Mr Dombey, had taken upon herself  to return
what Miss  Nipper  called a huffish answer, on her own responsibility. This,
Susan  Nipper  construed  into presumption  on the  part of  that  exemplary
sufferer by  the Peruvian mines, and a deed of disparagement upon  her young
lady,  that  was  not  to be forgiven;  and so  far her  emphatic  state was
special.  But she had been in a condition of greatly increased suspicion and
distrust, ever since the marriage; for,  like most persons of her quality of
mind, who  form  a strong  and sincere attachment to  one in  the  different
station which  Florence occupied, Susan was  very  jealous, and her jealousy
naturally attached to Edith, who divided  her  old empire, and  came between
them. Proud  and  glad as Susan Nipper  truly was, that  her  young mistress
should be advanced towards her proper place in the scene of her old neglect,
and that  she should  have her father's handsome wife for  her companion and
protectress,  she  could not relinquish any  part of her own dominion to the
handsome  wife, without a grudge  and a vague feeling of ill-will, for which
she  did  not  fail  to  find  a disinterested  justification  in  her sharp
perception of  the  pride  and  passion  of  the lady's character.  From the
background  to  which  she  had  necessarily  retired  somewhat,  since  the
marriage, Miss Nipper looked  on, therefore, at domestic affairs in general,
with  a  resolute  conviction that no good would come of  Mrs Dombey: always
being  very  careful to  publish  on all  possible occasions,  that  she had
nothing to say against her.
     'Susan,' said  Florence, who was sitting thoughtfully at her table, 'it
is very late. I shall want nothing more to-night.'
     'Ah, Miss Floy!' returned the Nipper, 'I'm sure I  often wish for  them
old  times when  I sat  up with you  hours later than this  and  fell asleep
through being  tired out  when  you  was as  broad awake as spectacles,  but
you've ma's-in-law to come and  sit with you now Miss Floy and I'm  thankful
for it I'm sure. I've not a word to say against 'em.'
     'I shall not forget who was my old companion when  I  had none, Susan,'
returned  Florence, gently, 'never!'  And looking up, she put  her arm round
the neck of her humble friend, drew her face down to  hers, and  bidding her
good-night,  kissed  it;  which so  mollified Miss Nipper,  that  she fell a
sobbing.
     'Now my dear Miss Floy, said Susan, 'let me go downstairs again and see
how  your Pa is, I know you're wretched  about him, do let  me go downstairs
again and knock at his door my own self.'
     'No,' said Florence, 'go to bed. We shall hear  more in the  morning. I
will inquire myself in the morning. Mama has been down, I daresay;' Florence
blushed, for she had no such hope; 'or is there now, perhaps. Good-night!'
     Susan was  too much softened to express  her  private  opinion  on  the
probability of Mrs Dombey's being in attendance on her husband, and silently
withdrew. Florence left alone, soon hid her head upon her  hands  as she had
often done in  other days, and did not restrain the tears from coursing down
her face. The misery of this domestic discord and unhappiness; the  withered
hope she cherished now,  if hope it could  be called, of ever being taken to
her father's  heart;  her doubts and fears between the two;  the yearning of
her innocent breast to both; the heavy disappointment and regret of such  an
end as this, to  what had  been a vision of bright hope and  promise to her;
all crowded on  her mind and made her tears  flow fast.  Her mother and  her
brother  dead,  her father  unmoved towards her,  Edith opposed to  him  and
casting him away,  but loving her,  and loved by her,  it seemed as  if  her
affection  could  never prosper, rest where it would. That weak thought  was
soon hushed,  but  the thoughts  in which  it  had arisen were  too true and
strong to be dismissed with it; and they made the night desolate.
     Among such  reflections there rose up, as there  had  risen up all day,
the  image of her  father,  wounded and in  pain,  alone  in  his own  room,
untended by those who should  be nearest to him, and passing the tardy hours
in lonely suffering. A frightened thought which made her start and clasp her
hands  - though  it was not a new one  in her mind - that he might  die, and
never  see her  or  pronounce  her  name, thrilled her whole  frame. In  her
agitation she thought, and trembled while she thought, of once more stealing
downstairs, and venturing to his door.
     She listened at her  own. The house was  quiet, and all the lights were
out. It was  a  long, long  time,  she thought, since  she used  to make her
nightly pilgrimages  to his  door! It was  a long, long  time, she tried  to
think, since she had entered  his room at midnight, and he had led  her back
to the stair-foot!
     With  the same  child's heart  within  her,  as of old: even  with  the
child's  sweet  timid eyes and clustering hair: Florence, as  strange to her
father in  her  early maiden bloom, as in her nursery  time, crept  down the
staircase listening  as she  went, and  drew near to his room.  No  one  was
stirring in the house. The door was partly open to admit air; and all was so
still  within, that  she could hear the  burning of  the fire, and count the
ticking of the clock that stood upon the chimney-piece.
     She looked in.  In that room, the  housekeeper wrapped in a blanket was
fast asleep in an easy chair  before the fire. The doors between  it and the
next were partly closed, and a screen was drawn before them; but there was a
light there, and it shone upon the cornice of his bed. All was so very still
that she  could  hear from  his breathing that he  was asleep. This gave her
courage to pass round the screen, and look into his chamber.
     It was as great a start to come  upon his sleeping face as  if she  had
not  expected to  see it. Florence stood arrested on the spot, and if he had
awakened then, must have remained there.
     There was a cut  upon his forehead, and they had been wetting his hair,
which lay bedabbled  and entangled  on the pillow. One of his arms,  resting
outside  the  bed,  was bandaged up, and he was  very white. But it  was not
this, that after the first quick glance, and first assurance of his sleeping
quietly, held Florence rooted to the ground. It was something very different
from this, and more than this, that made him look so solemn in her eye
     She had never seen his face in all her life, but there had been upon it
- or she  fancied so  - some disturbing  consciousness of her. She had never
seen his face in all her life, but hope had sunk  within her, and her  timid
glance had dropped before its stern,  unloving, and repelling  harshness. As
she looked upon it now, she saw it, for the  first time, free from the cloud
that  had darkened  her childhood. Calm,  tranquil night was reigning in its
stead. He might  have gone  to sleep,  for anything she saw  there, blessing
her.
     Awake, unkind father! Awake, now,  sullen man! The time is flitting by;
the hour is coming with an angry tread. Awake!
     There was no change upon his face; and as she watched  it, awfully, its
motionless reponse recalled  the  faces that  were gone.  So they looked, so
would  he;  so she, his weeping child, who should say when! so all the world
of love and hatred and indifference around them! When that time should come,
it  would not be  the heavier to him, for this that she was going to do; and
it might fall something lighter upon her.
     She stole close to the bed,  and drawing  in her breath, bent down, and
softly kissed him on the face, and laid her own for one  brief moment by its
side, and put the  arm, with  which she dared not touch him, round about him
on the pillow.
     Awake, doomed man, while she is near! The time is flitting by; the hour
is coming with an angry tread; its foot is in the house. Awake!
     In her  mind, she prayed to God to bless her father, and to  soften him
towards her, if it might be so; and if not, to forgive him if he was  wrong,
and pardon her the prayer which almost seemed  impiety. And  doing  so,  and
looking back at him with blinded eyes, and stealing timidly away, passed out
of his room, and crossed the other, and was gone.
     He may sleep on now. He may sleep on while he may. But let him look for
that slight  figure when he wakes, and  find  it near him  when the  hour is
come!
     Sad and grieving  was the heart of Florence, as she crept upstairs. The
quiet house had grown  more  dismal  since  she came down. The sleep she had
been looking on, in the dead of night, had the solemnity to her of death and
life in  one. The secrecy  and  silence of her own proceeding made the night
secret, silent, and oppressive.  She felt unwilling, almost unable, to go on
to her  own chamber; and turnIng into the  drawing-rooms, where  the clouded
moon was shining through the blinds, looked out into the empty streets.
     The wind was blowing  drearily. The lamps looked  pale, and shook as if
they were cold. There was a distant glimmer of something that  was not quite
darkness,  rather  than of  light,  in  the  sky;  and foreboding  night was
shivering  and restless, as the dying are who make a troubled  end. Florence
remembered how, as a watcher, by a sick-bed, she