Dombey and Son - 005

In spite of being thus adjured, and in spite also of some hauling on the part of Susan Nipper, tending towards the dislocation of her right shoulder, little Florence broke away, and kissed her new friend, affectionately.

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

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

‘Good-bye!’ returned the child. ‘God bless you! I shall come to see you again soon, and you’ll come to see me? Susan will let us. Won’t you, Susan?’

Spitfire seemed to be in the main a good-natured little body, although a disciple of that school of trainers of the young idea which holds that childhood, like money, must be shaken and rattled and jostled about a good deal to keep it bright. For, being thus appealed to with some endearing gestures and caresses, she folded her small arms and shook her head, and conveyed a relenting expression into her very-wide-open black eyes.

‘It ain’t right of you to ask it, Miss Floy, for you know I can’t refuse you, but Mrs Richards and me will see what can be done, if Mrs Richards likes, I may wish, you see, to take a voyage to Chaney, Mrs Richards, but       I mayn’t know how to leave the London Docks.’

Richards assented to the proposition.

‘This house ain’t so exactly ringing with merry-making,’ said Miss Nipper, ‘that one need be lonelier than one must be. Your Toxes and your Chickses may draw out my two front double teeth, Mrs Richards, but that’s no reason why I need offer ‘em the whole set.’

This proposition was also assented to by Richards, as an obvious one.

‘So I’m agreeable, I’m sure,’ said Susan Nipper, ‘to live friendly, Mrs Richards, while Master Paul continues a permanency, if the means can be planned out without going openly against orders, but goodness gracious Miss Floy, you haven’t got your things off yet, you naughty child, you haven’t, come along!’

With these words, Susan Nipper, in a transport of coercion, made a charge at her young ward, and swept her out of the room.

The child, in her grief and neglect, was so gentle, so quiet, and uncomplaining; was possessed of so much affection that no one seemed to care to have, and so much sorrowful intelligence that no one seemed to mind or think about the wounding of, that Polly’s heart was sore when she was left alone again. In the simple passage that had taken place between herself and the motherless little girl, her own motherly heart had been touched no less than the child’s; and she felt, as the child did, that there was something of confidence and interest between them from that moment.

Notwithstanding Mr Toodle’s great reliance on Polly, she was perhaps in point of artificial accomplishments very little his superior. She had been good-humouredly working and drudging for her life all her life, and was a sober steady-going person, with matter-of-fact ideas about the butcher and baker, and the division of pence into farthings. But she was a good plain sample of a nature that is ever, in the mass, better, truer, higher, nobler, quicker to feel, and much more constant to retain, all tenderness and pity, self-denial and devotion, than the nature of men. And, perhaps, unlearned as she was, she could have brought a dawning knowledge home to Mr Dombey at that early day, which would not then have struck him in the end like lightning.

But this is from the purpose. Polly only thought, at that time, of improving on her successful propitiation of Miss Nipper, and devising some means of having little Florence aide her, lawfully, and without rebellion. An opening happened to present itself that very night.

She had been rung down into the glass room as usual, and had walked about and about it a long time, with the baby in her arms, when, to her great surprise and dismay, Mr Dombey—whom she had seen at first leaning on his elbow at the table, and afterwards walking up and down the middle room, drawing, each time, a little nearer, she thought, to the open folding doors—came out, suddenly, and stopped before her.

‘Good evening, Richards.’

Just the same austere, stiff gentleman, as he had appeared to her on that first day. Such a hard-looking gentleman, that she involuntarily dropped her eyes and her curtsey at the same time.

‘How is Master Paul, Richards?’

‘Quite thriving, Sir, and well.’

‘He looks so,’ said Mr Dombey, glancing with great interest at the tiny face she uncovered for his observation, and yet affecting to be half careless of it. ‘They give you everything you want, I hope?’

‘Oh yes, thank you, Sir.’

She suddenly appended such an obvious hesitation to this reply, however, that Mr Dombey, who had turned away; stopped, and turned round again, inquiringly.

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

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

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

‘What would you have then?’ asked Mr Dombey.

‘Indeed Sir, I don’t exactly know,’ said Polly, ‘unless—’

‘Yes?’

‘I believe nothing is so good for making children lively and cheerful, Sir, as seeing other children playing about ‘em,’ observed Polly, taking courage.

‘I think I mentioned to you, Richards, when you came here,’ said Mr Dombey, with a frown, ‘that I wished you to see as little of your family as possible.’

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

‘I am glad of it,’ said Mr Dombey hastily. ‘You can continue your walk if you please.’

With that, he disappeared into his inner room; and Polly had the satisfaction of feeling that he had thoroughly misunderstood her object, and that she had fallen into disgrace without the least advancement of her purpose.

Next night, she found him walking about the conservatory when she came down. As she stopped at the door, checked by this unusual sight, and uncertain whether to advance or retreat, he called her in. His mind was too much set on Dombey and Son, it soon appeared, to admit of his having forgotten her suggestion.

‘If you really think that sort of society is good for the child,’ he said sharply, as if there had been no interval since she proposed it, ‘where’s Miss Florence?’

‘Nothing could be better than Miss Florence, Sir,’ said Polly eagerly, ‘but I understood from her maid that they were not to—’

Mr Dombey rang the bell, and walked till it was answered.

‘Tell them always to let Miss Florence be with Richards when she chooses, and go out with her, and so forth. Tell them to let the children be together, when Richards wishes it.’

The iron was now hot, and Richards striking on it boldly—it was a good cause and she bold in it, though instinctively afraid of Mr Dombey—requested that Miss Florence might be sent down then and there, to make friends with her little brother.

She feigned to be dandling the child as the servant retired on this errand, but she thought that she saw Mr Dombey’s colour changed; that the expression of his face quite altered; that he turned, hurriedly, as if to gainsay what he had said, or she had said, or both, and was only deterred by very shame.

And she was right. The last time he had seen his slighted child, there had been that in the sad embrace between her and her dying mother, which was at once a revelation and a reproach to him. Let him be absorbed as he would in the Son on whom he built such high hopes, he could not forget that closing scene. He could not forget that he had had no part in it. That, at the bottom of its clear depths of tenderness and truth lay those two figures clasped in each other’s arms, while he stood on the bank above them, looking down a mere spectator—not a sharer with them—quite shut out.

Unable to exclude these things from his remembrance, or to keep his mind free from such imperfect shapes of the meaning with which they were fraught, as were able to make themselves visible to him through the mist of his pride, his previous feeling of indifference towards little Florence changed into an uneasiness of an extraordinary kind. Young as she was, and possessing in any eyes but his (and perhaps in his too) even more than the usual amount of childish simplicity and confidence, he almost felt as if she watched and distrusted him. As if she held the clue to something secret in his breast, of the nature of which he was hardly informed himself. As if she had an innate knowledge of one jarring and discordant string within him, and her very breath could sound it.

His feeling about the child had been negative from her birth. He had never conceived an aversion to her: it had not been worth his while or in his humour. She had never been a positively disagreeable object to him. But now he was ill at ease about her. She troubled his peace. He would have preferred to put her idea aside altogether, if he had known how. Perhaps—who shall decide on such mysteries!—he was afraid that he might come to hate her.

When little Florence timidly presented herself, Mr Dombey stopped in his pacing up and down and looked towards her. Had he looked with greater interest and with a father’s eye, he might have read in her keen glance the impulses and fears that made her waver; the passionate desire to run clinging to him, crying, as she hid her face in his embrace, ‘Oh father, try to love me! there’s no one else!’ the dread of a repulse; the fear of being too bold, and of offending him; the pitiable need in which she stood of some assurance and encouragement; and how her overcharged young heart was wandering to find some natural resting-place, for its sorrow and affection.

But he saw nothing of this. He saw her pause irresolutely at the door and look towards him; and he saw no more.

‘Come in,’ he said, ‘come in: what is the child afraid of?’

She came in; and after glancing round her for a moment with an uncertain air, stood pressing her small hands hard together, close within the door.

‘Come here, Florence,’ said her father, coldly. ‘Do you know who I am?’

‘Yes, Papa.’

‘Have you nothing to say to me?’

The tears that stood in her eyes as she raised them quickly to his face, were frozen by the expression it wore. She looked down again, and put out her trembling hand.

Mr Dombey took it loosely in his own, and stood looking down upon her for a moment, as if he knew as little as the child, what to say or do.

‘There! Be a good girl,’ he said, patting her on the head, and regarding her as it were by stealth with a disturbed and doubtful look. ‘Go to Richards! Go!’

His little daughter hesitated for another instant as though she would have clung about him still, or had some lingering hope that he might raise her in his arms and kiss her. She looked up in his face once more. He thought how like her expression was then, to what it had been when she looked round at the Doctor—that night—and instinctively dropped her hand and turned away.

It was not difficult to perceive that Florence was at a great disadvantage in her father’s presence. It was not only a constraint upon the child’s mind, but even upon the natural grace and freedom of her actions. As she sported and played about her baby brother that night, her manner was seldom so winning and so pretty as it naturally was, and sometimes when in his pacing to and fro, he came near her (she had, perhaps, for the moment, forgotten him) it changed upon the instant and became forced and embarrassed.

Still, Polly persevered with all the better heart for seeing this; and, judging of Mr Dombey by herself, had great confidence in the mute appeal of poor little Florence’s mourning dress. ‘It’s hard indeed,’ thought Polly, ‘if he takes only to one little motherless child, when he has another, and that a girl, before his eyes.’

So, Polly kept her before his eyes, as long as she could, and managed so well with little Paul, as to make it very plain that he was all the livelier for his sister’s company. When it was time to withdraw upstairs again, she would have sent Florence into the inner room to say good-night to her father, but the child was timid and drew back; and when she urged her again, said, spreading her hands before her eyes, as if to shut out her own unworthiness, ‘Oh no, no! He don’t want me. He don’t want me!’

The little altercation between them had attracted the notice of Mr Dombey, who inquired from the table where he was sitting at his wine, what the matter was.

‘Miss Florence was afraid of interrupting, Sir, if she came in to say good-night,’ said Richards.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ returned Mr Dombey. ‘You can let her come and go without regarding me.’

The child shrunk as she listened—and was gone, before her humble friend looked round again.

However, Polly triumphed not a little in the success of her well-intentioned scheme, and in the address with which she had brought it to bear: whereof she made a full disclosure to Spitfire when she was once more safely entrenched upstairs. Miss Nipper received that proof of her confidence, as well as the prospect of their free association for the future, rather coldly, and was anything but enthusiastic in her demonstrations of joy.

‘I thought you would have been pleased,’ said Polly.

‘Oh yes, Mrs Richards, I’m very well pleased, thank you,’ returned Susan, who had suddenly become so very upright that she seemed to have put an additional bone in her stays.

‘You don’t show it,’ said Polly.

‘Oh! Being only a permanency I couldn’t be expected to show it like a temporary,’ said Susan Nipper. ‘Temporaries carries it all before ‘em here, I find, but though there’s a excellent party-wall between this house and the next, I mayn’t exactly like to go to it, Mrs Richards, notwithstanding!’

CHAPTER 4. In which some more First Appearances are made on the Stage of these Adventures

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

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

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