VIII. Paul’s Further Progress, Growth and Character…

VIII. Paul’s Further Progress, Growth and Character

Beneath the watching and attentive eyes of Time—so far another Major—Paul’s slumbers gradually changed. More and more light broke in upon them; distincter and distincter dreams disturbed them; an accumulating crowd of objects and impressions swarmed about his rest; and so he passed from babyhood to childhood, and became a talking, walking, wondering Dombey.

On the downfall and banishment of Richards, the nursery may be said to have been put into commission: as a Public Department is sometimes, when no individual Atlas can be found to support it The Commissioners were, of course, Mrs Chick and Miss Tox: who devoted themselves to their duties with such astonishing ardour that Major Bagstock had every day some new reminder of his being forsaken, while Mr Chick, bereft of domestic supervision, cast himself upon the gay world, dined at clubs and coffee-houses, smelt of smoke on three different occasions, went to the play by himself, and in short, loosened (as Mrs Chick once told him) every social bond, and moral obligation.

Yet, in spite of his early promise, all this vigilance and care could not make little Paul a thriving boy. Naturally delicate, perhaps, he pined and wasted after the dismissal of his nurse, and, for a long time, seemed but to wait his opportunity of gliding through their hands, and seeking his lost mother. This dangerous ground in his steeple-chase towards manhood passed, he still found it very rough riding, and was grievously beset by all the obstacles in his course. Every tooth was a break-neck fence, and every pimple in the measles a stone wall to him. He was down in every fit of the hooping-cough, and rolled upon and crushed by a whole field of small diseases, that came trooping on each other’s heels to prevent his getting up again. Some bird of prey got into his throat instead of the thrush; and the very chickens turning ferocious—if they have anything to do with that infant malady to which they lend their name—worried him like tiger-cats.

The chill of Paul’s christening had struck home, perhaps to some sensitive part of his nature, which could not recover itself in the cold shade of his father; but he was an unfortunate child from that day. Mrs Wickam often said she never see a dear so put upon.

Mrs Wickam was a waiter’s wife—which would seem equivalent to being any other man’s widow—whose application for an engagement in Mr Dombey’s service had been favourably considered, on account of the apparent impossibility of her having any followers, or anyone to follow; and who, from within a day or two of Paul’s sharp weaning, had been engaged as his nurse. Mrs Wickam was a meek woman, of a fair complexion, with her eyebrows always elevated, and her head always drooping; who was always ready to pity herself, or to be pitied, or to pity anybody else; and who had a surprising natural gift of viewing all subjects in an utterly forlorn and pitiable light, and bringing dreadful precedents to bear upon them, and deriving the greatest consolation from the exercise of that talent.

It is hardly necessary to observe, that no touch of this quality ever reached the magnificent knowledge of Mr Dombey. It would have been remarkable, indeed, if any had; when no one in the house—not even Mrs Chick or Miss Tox—dared ever whisper to him that there had, on any one occasion, been the least reason for uneasiness in reference to little Paul. He had settled, within himself, that the child must necessarily pass through a certain routine of minor maladies, and that the sooner he did so the better. If he could have bought him off, or provided a substitute, as in the case of an unlucky drawing for the militia, he would have been glad to do so, on liberal terms. But as this was not feasible, he merely wondered, in his haughty manner, now and then, what Nature meant by it; and comforted himself with the reflection that there was another milestone passed upon the road, and that the great end of the journey lay so much the nearer. For the feeling uppermost in his mind, now and constantly intensifying, and increasing in it as Paul grew older, was impatience. Impatience for the time to come, when his visions of their united consequence and grandeur would be triumphantly realized.

Some philosophers tell us that selfishness is at the root of our best loves and affections. Mr Dombey’s young child was, from the beginning, so distinctly important to him as a part of his own greatness, or (which is the same thing) of the greatness of Dombey and Son, that there is no doubt his parental affection might have been easily traced, like many a goodly superstructure of fair fame, to a very low foundation. But he loved his son with all the love he had. If there were a warm place in his frosty heart, his son occupied it; if its very hard surface could receive the impression of any image, the image of that son was there; though not so much as an infant, or as a boy, but as a grown man—the “Son” of the Firm. Therefore he was impatient to advance into the future, and to hurry over the intervening passages of his history. Therefore he had little or no anxiety about them, in spite of his love; feeling as if the boy had a charmed life, and must become the man with whom he held such constant communication in his thoughts, and for whom he planned and projected, as for an existing reality, every day.

Thus Paul grew to be nearly five years old. He was a pretty little fellow; though there was something wan and wistful in his small face, that gave occasion to many significant shakes of Mrs Wickam’s head, and many long-drawn inspirations of Mrs Wickam’s breath. His temper gave abundant promise of being imperious in after-life; and he had as hopeful an apprehension of his own importance, and the rightful subservience of all other things and persons to it, as heart could desire. He was childish and sportive enough at times, and not of a sullen disposition; but he had a strange, old-fashioned, thoughtful way, at other times, of sitting brooding in his miniature arm-chair, when he looked (and talked) like one of those terrible little Beings in the Fairy tales, who, at a hundred and fifty or two hundred years of age, fantastically represent the children for whom they have been substituted. He would frequently be stricken with this precocious mood upstairs in the nursery; and would sometimes lapse into it suddenly, exclaiming that he was tired: even while playing with Florence, or driving Miss Tox in single harness. But at no time did he fall into it so surely, as when, his little chair being carried down into his father’s room, he sat there with him after dinner, by the fire. They were the strangest pair at such a time that ever firelight shone upon. Mr Dombey so erect and solemn, gazing at the glare; his little image, with an old, old face, peering into the red perspective with the fixed and rapt attention of a sage. Mr Dombey entertaining complicated worldly schemes and plans; the little image entertaining Heaven knows what wild fancies, half-formed thoughts, and wandering speculations. Mr Dombey stiff with starch and arrogance; the little image by inheritance, and in unconscious imitation. The two so very much alike, and yet so monstrously contrasted.

On one of these occasions, when they had both been perfectly quiet for a long time, and Mr Dombey only knew that the child was awake by occasionally glancing at his eye, where the bright fire was sparkling like a jewel, little Paul broke silence thus:

“Papa! what’s money?”

The abrupt question had such immediate reference to the subject of Mr Dombey’s thoughts, that Mr Dombey was quite disconcerted.

“What is money, Paul?” he answered. “Money?”

“Yes,” said the child, laying his hands upon the elbows of his little chair, and turning the old face up towards Mr Dombey’s; “what is money?”

Mr Dombey was in a difficulty. He would have liked to give him some explanation involving the terms circulating-medium, currency, depreciation of currency, paper, bullion, rates of exchange, value of precious metals in the market, and so forth; but looking down at the little chair, and seeing what a long way down it was, he answered: “Gold, and silver, and copper. Guineas, shillings, half-pence. You know what they are?”

“Oh yes, I know what they are,” said Paul. “I don’t mean that, Papa. I mean what’s money after all?”

Heaven and Earth, how old his face was as he turned it up again towards his father’s!

“What is money after all!” said Mr Dombey, backing his chair a little, that he might the better gaze in sheer amazement at the presumptuous atom that propounded such an inquiry.

“I mean, Papa, what can it do?” returned Paul, folding his arms (they were hardly long enough to fold), and looking at the fire, and up at him, and at the fire, and up at him again.

Mr Dombey drew his chair back to its former place, and patted him on the head. “You’ll know better by-and-by, my man,” he said. “Money, Paul, can do anything.” He took hold of the little hand, and beat it softly against one of his own, as he said so.

But Paul got his hand free as soon as he could; and rubbing it gently to and fro on the elbow of his chair, as if his wit were in the palm, and he were sharpening it—and looking at the fire again, as though the fire had been his adviser and prompter—repeated, after a short pause:

“Anything, Papa?”

“Yes. Anything—almost,” said Mr Dombey.

“Anything means everything, don’t it, Papa?” asked his son: not observing, or possibly not understanding, the qualification.

“It includes it: yes,” said Mr Dombey.

“Why didn’t money save me my Mama?” returned the child. “It isn’t cruel, is it?”

“Cruel!” said Mr Dombey, settling his neckcloth, and seeming to resent the idea. “No. A good thing can’t be cruel.”

“If it’s a good thing, and can do anything,” said the little fellow, thoughtfully, as he looked back at the fire, “I wonder why it didn’t save me my Mama.”

He didn’t ask the question of his father this time. Perhaps he had seen, with a child’s quickness, that it had already made his father uncomfortable. But he repeated the thought aloud, as if it were quite an old one to him, and had troubled him very much; and sat with his chin resting on his hand, still cogitating and looking for an explanation in the fire.

Mr Dombey having recovered from his surprise, not to say his alarm (for it was the very first occasion on which the child had ever broached the subject of his mother to him, though he had had him sitting by his side, in this same manner, evening after evening), expounded to him how that money, though a very potent spirit, never to be disparaged on any account whatever, could not keep people alive whose time was come to die; and how that we must all die, unfortunately, even in the City, though we were never so rich. But how that money caused us to be honoured, feared, respected, courted, and admired, and made us powerful and glorious in the eyes of all men; and how that it could, very often, even keep off death, for a long time together. How, for example, it had secured to his Mama the services of Mr Pilkins, by which he, Paul, had often profited himself; likewise of the great Doctor Parker Peps, whom he had never known. And how it could do all, that could be done. This, with more to the same purpose, Mr Dombey instilled into the mind of his son, who listened attentively, and seemed to understand the greater part of what was said to him.

“It can’t make me strong and quite well, either, Papa; can it?” asked Paul, after a short silence; rubbing his tiny hands.

“Why, you are strong and quite well,” returned Mr Dombey. “Are you not?”

Oh! the age of the face that was turned up again, with an expression, half of melancholy, half of slyness, on it!

“You are as strong and well as such little people usually are? Eh?” said Mr Dombey.

“Florence is older than I am, but I’m not as strong and well as Florence, “I know,” returned the child; “and I believe that when Florence was as little as me, she could play a great deal longer at a time without tiring herself. I am so tired sometimes,” said little Paul, warming his hands, and looking in between the bars of the grate, as if some ghostly puppet-show were performing there, “and my bones ache so (Wickam says it’s my bones), that I don’t know what to do.”

“Ay! But that’s at night,” said Mr Dombey, drawing his own chair closer to his son’s, and laying his hand gently on his back; “little people should be tired at night, for then they sleep well.”

“Oh, it’s not at night, Papa,” returned the child, “it’s in the day; and I lie down in Florence’s lap, and she sings to me. At night I dream about such cu-ri-ous things!”

And he went on, warming his hands again, and thinking about them, like an old man or a young goblin.

Mr Dombey was so astonished, and so uncomfortable, and so perfectly at a loss how to pursue the conversation, that he could only sit looking at his son by the light of the fire, with his hand resting on his back, as if it were detained there by some magnetic attraction. Once he advanced his other hand, and turned the contemplative face towards his own for a moment. But it sought the fire again as soon as he released it; and remained, addressed towards the flickering blaze, until the nurse appeared, to summon him to bed.

“I want Florence to come for me,” said Paul.

“Won’t you come with your poor Nurse Wickam, Master Paul?” inquired that attendant, with great pathos.

“No, I won’t,” replied Paul, composing himself in his arm-chair again, like the master of the house.

Invoking a blessing upon his innocence, Mrs Wickam withdrew, and presently Florence appeared in her stead. The child immediately started up with sudden readiness and animation, and raised towards his father in bidding him good-night, a countenance so much brighter, so much younger, and so much more child-like altogether, that Mr Dombey, while he felt greatly reassured by the change, was quite amazed at it.

After they had left the room together, he thought he heard a soft voice singing; and remembering that Paul had said his sister sung to him, he had the curiosity to open the door and listen, and look after them. She was toiling up the great, wide, vacant staircase, with him in her arms; his head was lying on her shoulder, one of his arms thrown negligently round her neck. So they went, toiling up; she singing all the way, and Paul sometimes crooning out a feeble accompaniment. Mr Dombey looked after them until they reached the top of the staircase—not without halting to rest by the way—and passed out of his sight; and then he still stood gazing upwards, until the dull rays of the moon, glimmering in a melancholy manner through the dim skylight, sent him back to his room.

Mrs Chick and Miss Tox were convoked in council at dinner next day; and when the cloth was removed, Mr Dombey opened the proceedings by requiring to be informed, without any gloss or reservation, whether there was anything the matter with Paul, and what Mr Pilkins said about him.

“For the child is hardly,” said Mr Dombey, “as stout as I could wish.”

“My dear Paul,” returned Mrs Chick, “with your usual happy discrimination, which I am weak enough to envy you, every time I am in your company; and so I think is Miss Tox.”

“Oh my dear!” said Miss Tox, softly, “how could it be otherwise? Presumptuous as it is to aspire to such a level; still, if the bird of night may—but I’ll not trouble Mr Dombey with the sentiment. It merely relates to the Bulbul.”

Mr Dombey bent his head in stately recognition of the Bulbuls as an old-established body.

“With your usual happy discrimination, my dear Paul,” resumed Mrs Chick, “you have hit the point at once. Our darling is altogether as stout as we could wish. The fact is, that his mind is too much for him. His soul is a great deal too large for his frame. I am sure the way in which that dear child talks!” said Mrs Chick, shaking her head; “no one would believe. His expressions, Lucretia, only yesterday upon the subject of Funerals!”

“I am afraid,” said Mr Dombey, interrupting her testily, “that some of those persons upstairs suggest improper subjects to the child. He was speaking to me last night about his—about his Bones,” said Mr Dombey, laying an irritated stress upon the word. “What on earth has anybody to do with the—with the—Bones of my son? He is not a living skeleton, I suppose.”

“Very far from it,” said Mrs Chick, with unspeakable expression.

“I hope so,” returned her brother. “Funerals again! who talks to the child of funerals? We are not undertakers, or mutes, or grave-diggers, I believe.”

“Very far from it,” interposed Mrs Chick, with the same profound expression as before.

“Then who puts such things into his head?” said Mr Dombey. “Really I was quite dismayed and shocked last night. Who puts such things into his head, Louisa?”

“My dear Paul,” said Mrs Chick, after a moment’s silence, “it is of no use inquiring. I do not think, I will tell you candidly that Wickam is a person of very cheerful spirit, or what one would call a—”

“A daughter of Momus,” Miss Tox softly suggested.

“Exactly so,” said Mrs Chick; “but she is exceedingly attentive and useful, and not at all presumptuous; indeed I never saw a more biddable woman. I would say that for her, if I was put upon my trial before a Court of Justice.”

“Well! you are not put upon your trial before a Court of Justice, at present, Louisa,” returned Mr Dombey, chafing, “and therefore it don’t matter.”

“My dear Paul,” said Mrs Chick, in a warning voice, “I must be spoken to kindly, or there is an end of me,” at the same time a premonitory redness developed itself in Mrs Chick’s eyelids which was an invariable sign of rain, unless the weather changed directly.

“I was inquiring, Louisa,” observed Mr Dombey, in an altered voice, and after a decent interval, “about Paul’s health and actual state.”

“If the dear child,” said Mrs Chick, in the tone of one who was summing up what had been previously quite agreed upon, instead of saying it all for the first time, “is a little weakened by that last attack, and is not in quite such vigorous health as we could wish; and if he has some temporary weakness in his system, and does occasionally seem about to lose, for the moment, the use of his—”

Mrs Chick was afraid to say limbs, after Mr Dombey’s recent objection to bones, and therefore waited for a suggestion from Miss Tox, who, true to her office, hazarded “members.”

“Members!” repeated Mr Dombey.

“I think the medical gentleman mentioned legs this morning, my dear Louisa, did he not?” said Miss Tox.

“Why, of course he did, my love,” retorted Mrs Chick, mildly reproachful. “How can you ask me? You heard him. I say, if our dear Paul should lose, for the moment, the use of his legs, these are casualties common to many children at his time of life, and not to be prevented by any care or caution. The sooner you understand that, Paul, and admit that, the better. If you have any doubt as to the amount of care, and caution, and affection, and self-sacrifice, that has been bestowed upon little Paul, I should wish to refer the question to your medical attendant, or to any of your dependants in this house. Call Towlinson,” said Mrs Chick, “I believe he has no prejudice in our favour; quite the contrary. I should wish to hear what accusation Towlinson can make!”

“Surely you must know, Louisa,” observed Mr Dombey, “that I don’t question your natural devotion to, and regard for, the future head of my house.”

“I am glad to hear it, Paul,” said Mrs Chick; “but really you are very odd, and sometimes talk very strangely, though without meaning it, I know. If your dear boy’s soul is too much for his body, Paul, you should remember whose fault that is—who he takes after, I mean—and make the best of it. He’s as like his Papa as he can be. People have noticed it in the streets. The very beadle, I am informed, observed it, so long ago as at his christening. He’s a very respectable man, with children of his own. He ought to know.”

“Mr Pilkins saw Paul this morning, I believe?” said Mr Dombey.

“Yes, he did,” returned his sister. “Miss Tox and myself were present. Miss Tox and myself are always present. We make a point of it. Mr Pilkins has seen him for some days past, and a very clever man I believe him to be. He says it is nothing to speak of; which I can confirm, if that is any consolation; but he recommended, today, sea-air. Very wisely, Paul, I feel convinced.”

“Sea-air,” repeated Mr Dombey, looking at his sister.

“There is nothing to be made uneasy by, in that,” said Mrs Chick. “My George and Frederick were both ordered sea-air, when they were about his age; and I have been ordered it myself a great many times. I quite agree with you, Paul, that perhaps topics may be incautiously mentioned upstairs before him, which it would be as well for his little mind not to expatiate upon; but I really don’t see how that is to be helped, in the case of a child of his quickness. If he were a common child, there would be nothing in it. I must say I think, with Miss Tox, that a short absence from this house, the air of Brighton, and the bodily and mental training of so judicious a person as Mrs Pipchin for instance—”

“Who is Mrs Pipchin, Louisa?” asked Mr Dombey; aghast at this familiar introduction of a name he had never heard before.

“Mrs Pipchin, my dear Paul,” returned his sister, “is an elderly lady—Miss Tox knows her whole history—who has for some time devoted all the energies of her mind, with the greatest success, to the study and treatment of infancy, and who has been extremely well connected. Her husband broke his heart in—how did you say her husband broke his heart, my dear? I forget the precise circumstances.

“In pumping water out of the Peruvian Mines,” replied Miss Tox.

“Not being a Pumper himself, of course,” said Mrs Chick, glancing at her brother; and it really did seem necessary to offer the explanation, for Miss Tox had spoken of him as if he had died at the handle; “but having invested money in the speculation, which failed. I believe that Mrs Pipchin’s management of children is quite astonishing. I have heard it commended in private circles ever since I was—dear me—how high!” Mrs Chick’s eye wandered about the bookcase near the bust of Mr Pitt, which was about ten feet from the ground.

“Perhaps I should say of Mrs Pipchin, my dear Sir,” observed Miss Tox, with an ingenuous blush, “having been so pointedly referred to, that the encomium which has been passed upon her by your sweet sister is well merited. Many ladies and gentleman, now grown up to be interesting members of society, have been indebted to her care. The humble individual who addresses you was once under her charge. I believe juvenile nobility itself is no stranger to her establishment.”

“Do I understand that this respectable matron keeps an establishment, Miss Tox?” the Mr Dombey, condescendingly.

“Why, I really don’t know,” rejoined that lady, “whether I am justified in calling it so. It is not a Preparatory School by any means. Should I express my meaning,” said Miss Tox, with peculiar sweetness, “if I designated it an infantine Boarding-House of a very select description?”

“On an exceedingly limited and particular scale,” suggested Mrs Chick, with a glance at her brother.

“Oh! Exclusion itself!” said Miss Tox.

There was something in this. Mrs Pipchin’s husband having broken his heart of the Peruvian mines was good. It had a rich sound. Besides, Mr Dombey was in a state almost amounting to consternation at the idea of Paul remaining where he was one hour after his removal had been recommended by the medical practitioner. It was a stoppage and delay upon the road the child must traverse, slowly at the best, before the goal was reached. Their recommendation of Mrs Pipchin had great weight with him; for he knew that they were jealous of any interference with their charge, and he never for a moment took it into account that they might be solicitous to divide a responsibility, of which he had, as shown just now, his own established views. Broke his heart of the Peruvian mines, mused Mr Dombey. Well! a very respectable way of doing It.

“Supposing we should decide, on to-morrow’s inquiries, to send Paul down to Brighton to this lady, who would go with him?” inquired Mr Dombey, after some reflection.

“I don’t think you could send the child anywhere at present without Florence, my dear Paul,” returned his sister, hesitating. “It’s quite an infatuation with him. He’s very young, you know, and has his fancies.”

Mr Dombey turned his head away, and going slowly to the bookcase, and unlocking it, brought back a book to read.

“Anybody else, Louisa?” he said, without looking up, and turning over the leaves.

“Wickam, of course. Wickam would be quite sufficient, I should say,” returned his sister. “Paul being in such hands as Mrs Pipchin’s, you could hardly send anybody who would be a further check upon her. You would go down yourself once a week at least, of course.”

“Of course,” said Mr Dombey; and sat looking at one page for an hour afterwards, without reading one word.

This celebrated Mrs Pipchin was a marvellous ill-favoured, ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping figure, with a mottled face, like bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard grey eye, that looked as if it might have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury. Forty years at least had elapsed since the Peruvian mines had been the death of Mr Pipchin; but his relict still wore black bombazeen, of such a lustreless, deep, dead, sombre shade, that gas itself couldn’t light her up after dark, and her presence was a quencher to any number of candles. She was generally spoken of as “a great manager” of children; and the secret of her management was, to give them everything that they didn’t like, and nothing that they did—which was found to sweeten their dispositions very much. She was such a bitter old lady, that one was tempted to believe there had been some mistake in the application of the Peruvian machinery, and that all her waters of gladness and milk of human kindness, had been pumped out dry, instead of the mines.

The Castle of this ogress and child-queller was in a steep by-street at Brighton; where the soil was more than usually chalky, flinty, and sterile, and the houses were more than usually brittle and thin; where the small front-gardens had the unaccountable property of producing nothing but marigolds, whatever was sown in them; and where snails were constantly discovered holding on to the street doors, and other public places they were not expected to ornament, with the tenacity of cupping-glasses. In the winter time the air couldn’t be got out of the Castle, and in the summer time it couldn’t be got in. There was such a continual reverberation of wind in it, that it sounded like a great shell, which the inhabitants were obliged to hold to their ears night and day, whether they liked it or no. It was not, naturally, a fresh-smelling house; and in the window of the front parlour, which was never opened, Mrs Pipchin kept a collection of plants in pots, which imparted an earthy flavour of their own to the establishment. However choice examples of their kind, too, these plants were of a kind peculiarly adapted to the embowerment of Mrs Pipchin. There were half-a-dozen specimens of the cactus, writhing round bits of lath, like hairy serpents; another specimen shooting out broad claws, like a green lobster; several creeping vegetables, possessed of sticky and adhesive leaves; and one uncomfortable flower-pot hanging to the ceiling, which appeared to have boiled over, and tickling people underneath with its long green ends, reminded them of spiders—in which Mrs Pipchin’s dwelling was uncommonly prolific, though perhaps it challenged competition still more proudly, in the season, in point of earwigs.

Mrs Pipchin’s scale of charges being high, however, to all who could afford to pay, and Mrs Pipchin very seldom sweetening the equable acidity of her nature in favour of anybody, she was held to be an old “lady of remarkable firmness, who was quite scientific in her knowledge of the childish character.” On this reputation, and on the broken heart of Mr Pipchin, she had contrived, taking one year with another, to eke out a tolerable sufficient living since her husband’s demise. Within three days after Mrs Chick’s first allusion to her, this excellent old lady had the satisfaction of anticipating a handsome addition to her current receipts, from the pocket of Mr Dombey; and of receiving Florence and her little brother Paul, as inmates of the Castle.

Mrs Chick and Miss Tox, who had brought them down on the previous night (which they all passed at an Hotel), had just driven away from the door, on their journey home again; and Mrs Pipchin, with her back to the fire, stood, reviewing the new-comers, like an old soldier. Mrs Pipchin’s middle-aged niece, her good-natured and devoted slave, but possessing a gaunt and iron-bound aspect, and much afflicted with boils on her nose, was divesting Master Bitherstone of the clean collar he had worn on parade. Miss Pankey, the only other little boarder at present, had that moment been walked off to the Castle Dungeon (an empty apartment at the back, devoted to correctional purposes), for having sniffed thrice, in the presence of visitors.

“Well, Sir,” said Mrs Pipchin to Paul, “how do you think you shall like me?”

“I don’t think I shall like you at all,” replied Paul. “I want to go away. This isn’t my house.”

“No. It’s mine,” retorted Mrs Pipchin.

“It’s a very nasty one,” said Paul.

“There’s a worse place in it than this though,” said Mrs Pipchin, “where we shut up our bad boys.”

“Has he ever been in it?” asked Paul: pointing out Master Bitherstone.

Mrs Pipchin nodded assent; and Paul had enough to do, for the rest of that day, in surveying Master Bitherstone from head to foot, and watching all the workings of his countenance, with the interest attaching to a boy of mysterious and terrible experiences.

At one o’clock there was a dinner, chiefly of the farinaceous and vegetable kind, when Miss Pankey (a mild little blue-eyed morsel of a child, who was shampoo’d every morning, and seemed in danger of being rubbed away, altogether) was led in from captivity by the ogress herself, and instructed that nobody who sniffed before visitors ever went to Heaven. When this great truth had been thoroughly impressed upon her, she was regaled with rice; and subsequently repeated the form of grace established in the Castle, in which there was a special clause, thanking Mrs Pipchin for a good dinner. Mrs Pipchin’s niece, Berinthia, took cold pork. Mrs Pipchin, whose constitution required warm nourishment, made a special repast of mutton-chops, which were brought in hot and hot, between two plates, and smelt very nice.

As it rained after dinner, and they couldn’t go out walking on the beach, and Mrs Pipchin’s constitution required rest after chops, they went away with Berry (otherwise Berinthia) to the Dungeon; an empty room looking out upon a chalk wall and a water-butt, and made ghastly by a ragged fireplace without any stove in it. Enlivened by company, however, this was the best place after all; for Berry played with them there, and seemed to enjoy a game at romps as much as they did; until Mrs Pipchin knocking angrily at the wall, like the Cock Lane Ghost revived, they left off, and Berry told them stories in a whisper until twilight.

For tea there was plenty of milk and water, and bread and butter, with a little black tea-pot for Mrs Pipchin and Berry, and buttered toast unlimited for Mrs Pipchin, which was brought in, hot and hot, like the chops. Though Mrs Pipchin got very greasy, outside, over this dish, it didn’t seem to lubricate her internally, at all; for she was as fierce as ever, and the hard grey eye knew no softening.

After tea, Berry brought out a little work-box, with the Royal Pavilion on the lid, and fell to working busily; while Mrs Pipchin, having put on her spectacles and opened a great volume bound in green baize, began to nod. And whenever Mrs Pipchin caught herself falling forward into the fire, and woke up, she filliped Master Bitherstone on the nose for nodding too.

At last it was the children’s bedtime, and after prayers they went to bed. As little Miss Pankey was afraid of sleeping alone in the dark, Mrs Pipchin always made a point of driving her upstairs herself, like a sheep; and it was cheerful to hear Miss Pankey moaning long afterwards, in the least eligible chamber, and Mrs Pipchin now and then going in to shake her. At about half-past nine o’clock the odour of a warm sweet-bread (Mrs Pipchin’s constitution wouldn’t go to sleep without sweet-bread) diversified the prevailing fragrance of the house, which Mrs Wickam said was “a smell of building;” and slumber fell upon the Castle shortly after.

The breakfast next morning was like the tea over night, except that Mrs Pipchin took her roll instead of toast, and seemed a little more irate when it was over. Master Bitherstone read aloud to the rest a pedigree from Genesis (judiciously selected by Mrs Pipchin), getting over the names with the ease and clearness of a person tumbling up the treadmill. That done, Miss Pankey was borne away to be shampoo’d; and Master Bitherstone to have something else done to him with salt water, from which he always returned very blue and dejected. Paul and Florence went out in the meantime on the beach with Wickam—who was constantly in tears—and at about noon Mrs Pipchin presided over some Early Readings. It being a part of Mrs Pipchin’s system not to encourage a child’s mind to develop and expand itself like a young flower, but to open it by force like an oyster, the moral of these lessons was usually of a violent and stunning character: the hero—a naughty boy—seldom, in the mildest catastrophe, being finished off anything less than a lion, or a bear.

Such was life at Mrs Pipchin’s. On Saturday Mr Dombey came down; and Florence and Paul would go to his Hotel, and have tea. They passed the whole of Sunday with him, and generally rode out before dinner; and on these occasions Mr Dombey seemed to grow, like Falstaff’s assailants, and instead of being one man in buckram, to become a dozen. Sunday evening was the most melancholy evening in the week; for Mrs Pipchin always made a point of being particularly cross on Sunday nights. Miss Pankey was generally brought back from an aunt’s at Rottingdean, in deep distress; and Master Bitherstone, whose relatives were all in India, and who was required to sit, between the services, in an erect position with his head against the parlour wall, neither moving hand nor foot, suffered so acutely in his young spirits that he once asked Florence, on a Sunday night, if she could give him any idea of the way back to Bengal.

But it was generally said that Mrs Pipchin was a woman of system with children; and no doubt she was. Certainly the wild ones went home tame enough, after sojourning for a few months beneath her hospitable roof. It was generally said, too, that it was highly creditable of Mrs Pipchin to have devoted herself to this way of life, and to have made such a sacrifice of her feelings, and such a resolute stand against her troubles, when Mr Pipchin broke his heart in the Peruvian mines.

At this exemplary old lady, Paul would sit staring in his little arm-chair by the fire, for any length of time. He never seemed to know what weariness was, when he was looking fixedly at Mrs Pipchin. He was not fond of her; he was not afraid of her; but in those old, old moods of his, she seemed to have a grotesque attraction for him. There he would sit, looking at her, and warming his hands, and looking at her, until he sometimes quite confounded Mrs Pipchin, Ogress as she was. Once she asked him, when they were alone, what he was thinking about.

“You,” said Paul, without the least reserve.

“And what are you thinking about me?” asked Mrs Pipchin.

“I’m thinking how old you must be,” said Paul.

“You mustn’t say such things as that, young gentleman,” returned the dame. “That’ll never do.”

“Why not?” asked Paul.

“Because it’s not polite,” said Mrs Pipchin, snappishly.

“Not polite?” said Paul.

“No.”

“It’s not polite,” said Paul, innocently, “to eat all the mutton chops and toast”, Wickam says.

“Wickam,” retorted Mrs Pipchin, colouring, “is a wicked, impudent, bold-faced hussy.”

“What’s that?” inquired Paul.

“Never you mind, Sir,” retorted Mrs Pipchin. “Remember the story of the little boy that was gored to death by a mad bull for asking questions.”

“If the bull was mad,” said Paul, “how did he know that the boy had asked questions? Nobody can go and whisper secrets to a mad bull. I don’t believe that story.”

“You don’t believe it, Sir?” repeated Mrs Pipchin, amazed.

“No,” said Paul.

“Not if it should happen to have been a tame bull, you little Infidel?” said Mrs Pipchin.

As Paul had not considered the subject in that light, and had founded his conclusions on the alleged lunacy of the bull, he allowed himself to be put down for the present. But he sat turning it over in his mind, with such an obvious intention of fixing Mrs Pipchin presently, that even that hardy old lady deemed it prudent to retreat until he should have forgotten the subject.

From that time, Mrs Pipchin appeared to have something of the same odd kind of attraction towards Paul, as Paul had towards her. She would make him move his chair to her side of the fire, instead of sitting opposite; and there he would remain in a nook between Mrs Pipchin and the fender, with all the light of his little face absorbed into the black bombazeen drapery, studying every line and wrinkle of her countenance, and peering at the hard grey eye, until Mrs Pipchin was sometimes fain to shut it, on pretence of dozing. Mrs Pipchin had an old black cat, who generally lay coiled upon the centre foot of the fender, purring egotistically, and winking at the fire until the contracted pupils of his eyes were like two notes of admiration. The good old lady might have been—not to record it disrespectfully—a witch, and Paul and the cat her two familiars, as they all sat by the fire together. It would have been quite in keeping with the appearance of the party if they had all sprung up the chimney in a high wind one night, and never been heard of any more.

This, however, never came to pass. The cat, and Paul, and Mrs Pipchin, were constantly to be found in their usual places after dark; and Paul, eschewing the companionship of Master Bitherstone, went on studying Mrs Pipchin, and the cat, and the fire, night after night, as if they were a book of necromancy, in three volumes.

Mrs Wickam put her own construction on Paul’s eccentricities; and being confirmed in her low spirits by a perplexed view of chimneys from the room where she was accustomed to sit, and by the noise of the wind, and by the general dulness (gashliness was Mrs Wickam’s strong expression) of her present life, deduced the most dismal reflections from the foregoing premises. It was a part of Mrs Pipchin’s policy to prevent her own “young hussy”—that was Mrs Pipchin’s generic name for female servant—from communicating with Mrs Wickam: to which end she devoted much of her time to concealing herself behind doors, and springing out on that devoted maiden, whenever she made an approach towards Mrs Wickam’s apartment. But Berry was free to hold what converse she could in that quarter, consistently with the discharge of the multifarious duties at which she toiled incessantly from morning to night; and to Berry Mrs Wickam unburdened her mind.

“What a pretty fellow he is when he’s asleep!” said Berry, stopping to look at Paul in bed, one night when she took up Mrs Wickam’s supper.

“Ah!” sighed Mrs Wickam. “He need be.”

“Why, he’s not ugly when he’s awake,” observed Berry.

“No, Ma’am. Oh, no. No more was my Uncle’s Betsey Jane,” said Mrs Wickam.

Berry looked as if she would like to trace the connexion of ideas between Paul Dombey and Mrs Wickam’s Uncle’s Betsey Jane.

“My Uncle’s wife,” Mrs Wickam went on to say, “died just like his Mama. My Uncle’s child took on just as Master Paul do.”

“Took on! You don’t think he grieves for his Mama, sure?” argued Berry, sitting down on the side of the bed. “He can’t remember anything about her, you know, Mrs Wickam. It’s not possible.”

“No, Ma’am,” said Mrs Wickam “No more did my Uncle’s child. But my Uncle’s child said very strange things sometimes, and looked very strange, and went on very strange, and was very strange altogether. My Uncle’s child made people’s blood run cold, some times, she did!”

“How?” asked Berry.

“I wouldn’t have sat up all night alone with Betsey Jane!” said Mrs Wickam, “not if you’d have put Wickam into business next morning for himself. I couldn’t have done it, Miss Berry.

Miss Berry naturally asked why not? But Mrs Wickam, agreeably to the usage of some ladies in her condition, pursued her own branch of the subject, without any compunction.

“Betsey Jane,” said Mrs Wickam, “was as sweet a child as I could wish to see. I couldn’t wish to see a sweeter. Everything that a child could have in the way of illnesses, Betsey Jane had come through. The cramps was as common to her,” said Mrs Wickam, “as biles is to yourself, Miss Berry.” Miss Berry involuntarily wrinkled her nose.

“But Betsey Jane,” said Mrs Wickam, lowering her voice, and looking round the room, and towards Paul in bed, “had been minded, in her cradle, by her departed mother. I couldn’t say how, nor I couldn’t say when, nor I couldn’t say whether the dear child knew it or not, but Betsey Jane had been watched by her mother, Miss Berry!” and Mrs Wickam, with a very white face, and with watery eyes, and with a tremulous voice, again looked fearfully round the room, and towards Paul in bed.

“Nonsense!” cried Miss Berry—somewhat resentful of the idea.

“You may say nonsense! I ain’t offended, Miss. I hope you may be able to think in your own conscience that it is nonsense; you’ll find your spirits all the better for it in this—you’ll excuse my being so free—in this burying-ground of a place; which is wearing of me down. Master Paul’s a little restless in his sleep. Pat his back, if you please.”

“Of course you think,” said Berry, gently doing what she was asked, “that he has been nursed by his mother, too?”

“Betsey Jane,” returned Mrs Wickam in her most solemn tones, “was put upon as that child has been put upon, and changed as that child has changed. I have seen her sit, often and often, think, think, thinking, like him. I have seen her look, often and often, old, old, old, like him. I have heard her, many a time, talk just like him. I consider that child and Betsey Jane on the same footing entirely, Miss Berry.”

“Is your Uncle’s child alive?” asked Berry.

“Yes, Miss, she is alive,” returned Mrs Wickam with an air of triumph, for it was evident. Miss Berry expected the reverse; “and is married to a silver-chaser. Oh yes, Miss, SHE is alive,” said Mrs Wickam, laying strong stress on her nominative case.

It being clear that somebody was dead, Mrs Pipchin’s niece inquired who it was.

“I wouldn’t wish to make you uneasy,” returned Mrs Wickam, pursuing her supper. “Don’t ask me.”

This was the surest way of being asked again. Miss Berry repeated her question, therefore; and after some resistance, and reluctance, Mrs Wickam laid down her knife, and again glancing round the room and at Paul in bed, replied:

“She took fancies to people; whimsical fancies, some of them; others, affections that one might expect to see—only stronger than common. They all died.”

This was so very unexpected and awful to Mrs Pipchin’s niece, that she sat upright on the hard edge of the bedstead, breathing short, and surveying her informant with looks of undisguised alarm.

Mrs Wickam shook her left fore-finger stealthily towards the bed where Florence lay; then turned it upside down, and made several emphatic points at the floor; immediately below which was the parlour in which Mrs Pipchin habitually consumed the toast.

“Remember my words, Miss Berry,” said Mrs Wickam, “and be thankful that Master Paul is not too fond of you. I am, that he’s not too fond of me, I assure you; though there isn’t much to live for—you’ll excuse my being so free—in this jail of a house!”

Miss Berry’s emotion might have led to her patting Paul too hard on the back, or might have produced a cessation of that soothing monotony, but he turned in his bed just now, and, presently awaking, sat up in it with his hair hot and wet from the effects of some childish dream, and asked for Florence.

She was out of her own bed at the first sound of his voice; and bending over his pillow immediately, sang him to sleep again. Mrs Wickam shaking her head, and letting fall several tears, pointed out the little group to Berry, and turned her eyes up to the ceiling.

“He’s asleep now, my dear,” said Mrs Wickam after a pause, “you’d better go to bed again. Don’t you feel cold?”

“No, nurse,” said Florence, laughing. “Not at all.”

“Ah!” sighed Mrs Wickam, and she shook her head again, expressing to the watchful Berry, “we shall be cold enough, some of us, by and by!”

Berry took the frugal supper-tray, with which Mrs Wickam had by this time done, and bade her good-night.

“Good-night, Miss!” returned Wickam softly. “Good-night! Your aunt is an old lady, Miss Berry, and it’s what you must have looked for, often.”

This consolatory farewell, Mrs Wickam accompanied with a look of heartfelt anguish; and being left alone with the two children again, and becoming conscious that the wind was blowing mournfully, she indulged in melancholy—that cheapest and most accessible of luxuries—until she was overpowered by slumber.

Although the niece of Mrs Pipchin did not expect to find that exemplary dragon prostrate on the hearth-rug when she went downstairs, she was relieved to find her unusually fractious and severe, and with every present appearance of intending to live a long time to be a comfort to all who knew her. Nor had she any symptoms of declining, in the course of the ensuing week, when the constitutional viands still continued to disappear in regular succession, notwithstanding that Paul studied her as attentively as ever, and occupied his usual seat between the black skirts and the fender, with unwavering constancy.

But as Paul himself was no stronger at the expiration of that time than he had been on his first arrival, though he looked much healthier in the face, a little carriage was got for him, in which he could lie at his ease, with an alphabet and other elementary works of reference, and be wheeled down to the sea-side. Consistent in his odd tastes, the child set aside a ruddy-faced lad who was proposed as the drawer of this carriage, and selected, instead, his grandfather—a weazen, old, crab-faced man, in a suit of battered oilskin, who had got tough and stringy from long pickling in salt water, and who smelt like a weedy sea-beach when the tide is out.

With this notable attendant to pull him along, and Florence always walking by his side, and the despondent Wickam bringing up the rear, he went down to the margin of the ocean every day; and there he would sit or lie in his carriage for hours together: never so distressed as by the company of children—Florence alone excepted, always.

“Go away, if you please,” he would say to any child who came to bear him company. “Thank you, but I don’t want you.”

Some small voice, near his ear, would ask him how he was, perhaps.

“I am very well, I thank you,” he would answer. “But you had better go and play, if you please.”

Then he would turn his head, and watch the child away, and say to Florence, “We don’t want any others, do we? Kiss me, Floy.”

He had even a dislike, at such times, to the company of Wickam, and was well pleased when she strolled away, as she generally did, to pick up shells and acquaintances. His favourite spot was quite a lonely one, far away from most loungers; and with Florence sitting by his side at work, or reading to him, or talking to him, and the wind blowing on his face, and the water coming up among the wheels of his bed, he wanted nothing more.

“Floy,” he said one day, “where’s India, where that boy’s friends live?”

“Oh, it’s a long, long distance off,” said Florence, raising her eyes from her work.

“Weeks off?” asked Paul.

“Yes dear. Many weeks’ journey, night and day.”

“If you were in India, Floy,” said Paul, after being silent for a minute, “I should—what is it that Mama did? I forget.”

“Loved me!” answered Florence.

“No, no. Don’t I love you now, Floy? What is it?—Died. If you were in India, I should die, Floy.”

She hurriedly put her work aside, and laid her head down on his pillow, caressing him. And so would she, she said, if he were there. He would be better soon.

“Oh! I am a great deal better now!” he answered. “I don’t mean that. I mean that I should die of being so sorry and so lonely, Floy!”

Another time, in the same place, he fell asleep, and slept quietly for a long time. Awaking suddenly, he listened, started up, and sat listening.

Florence asked him what he thought he heard.

“I want to know what it says,” he answered, looking steadily in her face. “The sea” Floy, what is it that it keeps on saying?”

She told him that it was only the noise of the rolling waves.

“Yes, yes,” he said. “But I know that they are always saying something. Always the same thing. What place is over there?” He rose up, looking eagerly at the horizon.

She told him that there was another country opposite, but he said he didn’t mean that: he meant further away—farther away!

Very often afterwards, in the midst of their talk, he would break off, to try to understand what it was that the waves were always saying; and would rise up in his couch to look towards that invisible region, far away.

IX. In which the Wooden Midshipman gets into Trouble

That spice of romance and love of the marvellous, of which there was a pretty strong infusion in the nature of young Walter Gay, and which the guardianship of his Uncle, old Solomon Gills, had not very much weakened by the waters of stern practical experience, was the occasion of his attaching an uncommon and delightful interest to the adventure of Florence with Good Mrs Brown. He pampered and cherished it in his memory, especially that part of it with which he had been associated: until it became the spoiled child of his fancy, and took its own way, and did what it liked with it.

The recollection of those incidents, and his own share in them, may have been made the more captivating, perhaps, by the weekly dreamings of old Sol and Captain Cuttle on Sundays. Hardly a Sunday passed, without mysterious references being made by one or other of those worthy chums to Richard Whittington; and the latter gentleman had even gone so far as to purchase a ballad of considerable antiquity, that had long fluttered among many others, chiefly expressive of maritime sentiments, on a dead wall in the Commercial Road: which poetical performance set forth the courtship and nuptials of a promising young coal-whipper with a certain “lovely Peg,” the accomplished daughter of the master and part-owner of a Newcastle collier. In this stirring legend, Captain Cuttle descried a profound metaphysical bearing on the case of Walter and Florence; and it excited him so much, that on very festive occasions, as birthdays and a few other non-Dominical holidays, he would roar through the whole song in the little back parlour; making an amazing shake on the word Pe-e-eg, with which every verse concluded, in compliment to the heroine of the piece.

But a frank, free-spirited, open-hearted boy, is not much given to analysing the nature of his own feelings, however strong their hold upon him: and Walter would have found it difficult to decide this point. He had a great affection for the wharf where he had encountered Florence, and for the streets (albeit not enchanting in themselves) by which they had come home. The shoes that had so often tumbled off by the way, he preserved in his own room; and, sitting in the little back parlour of an evening, he had drawn a whole gallery of fancy portraits of Good Mrs Brown. It may be that he became a little smarter in his dress after that memorable occasion; and he certainly liked in his leisure time to walk towards that quarter of the town where Mr Dombey’s house was situated, on the vague chance of passing little Florence in the street. But the sentiment of all this was as boyish and innocent as could be. Florence was very pretty, and it is pleasant to admire a pretty face. Florence was defenceless and weak, and it was a proud thought that he had been able to render her any protection and assistance. Florence was the most grateful little creature in the world, and it was delightful to see her bright gratitude beaming in her face. Florence was neglected and coldly looked upon, and his breast was full of youthful interest for the slighted child in her dull, stately home.

Thus it came about that, perhaps some half-a-dozen times in the course of the year, Walter pulled off his hat to Florence in the street, and Florence would stop to shake hands. Mrs Wickam (who, with a characteristic alteration of his name, invariably spoke of him as “Young Graves”) was so well used to this, knowing the story of their acquaintance, that she took no heed of it at all. Miss Nipper, on the other hand, rather looked out for these occasions: her sensitive young heart being secretly propitiated by Walter’s good looks, and inclining to the belief that its sentiments were responded to.

In this way, Walter, so far from forgetting or losing sight of his acquaintance with Florence, only remembered it better and better. As to its adventurous beginning, and all those little circumstances which gave it a distinctive character and relish, he took them into account, more as a pleasant story very agreeable to his imagination, and not to be dismissed from it, than as a part of any matter of fact with which he was concerned. They set off Florence very much, to his fancy; but not himself. Sometimes he thought (and then he walked very fast) what a grand thing it would have been for him to have been going to sea on the day after that first meeting, and to have gone, and to have done wonders there, and to have stopped away a long time, and to have come back an Admiral of all the colours of the dolphin, or at least a Post-Captain with epaulettes of insupportable brightness, and have married Florence (then a beautiful young woman) in spite of Mr Dombey’s teeth, cravat, and watch-chain, and borne her away to the blue shores of somewhere or other, triumphantly. But these flights of fancy seldom burnished the brass plate of Dombey and Son’s Offices into a tablet of golden hope, or shed a brilliant lustre on their dirty skylights; and when the Captain and Uncle Sol talked about Richard Whittington and masters’ daughters, Walter felt that he understood his true position at Dombey and Son’s, much better than they did.

So it was that he went on doing what he had to do from day to day, in a cheerful, pains-taking, merry spirit; and saw through the sanguine complexion of Uncle Sol and Captain Cuttle; and yet entertained a thousand indistinct and visionary fancies of his own, to which theirs were work-a-day probabilities. Such was his condition at the Pipchin period, when he looked a little older than of yore, but not much; and was the same light-footed, light-hearted, light-headed lad, as when he charged into the parlour at the head of Uncle Sol and the imaginary boarders, and lighted him to bring up the Madeira.

“Uncle Sol,” said Walter, “I don’t think you’re well. You haven’t eaten any breakfast. I shall bring a doctor to you, if you go on like this.”

“He can’t give me what I want, my boy,” said Uncle Sol. “At least he is in good practice if he can—and then he wouldn’t.”

“What is it, Uncle? Customers?”

“Ay,” returned Solomon, with a sigh. “Customers would do.”

“Confound it, Uncle!” said Walter, putting down his breakfast cup with a clatter, and striking his hand on the table: “when I see the people going up and down the street in shoals all day, and passing and re-passing the shop every minute, by scores, I feel half tempted to rush out, collar somebody, bring him in, and make him buy fifty pounds’ worth of instruments for ready money. What are you looking in at the door for?—” continued Walter, apostrophizing an old gentleman with a powdered head (inaudibly to him of course), who was staring at a ship’s telescope with all his might and main. “That’s no use. I could do that. Come in and buy it!”

The old gentleman, however, having satiated his curiosity, walked calmly away.

“There he goes!” said Walter. “That’s the way with ’em all. But, Uncle—I say, Uncle Sol”—for the old man was meditating and had not responded to his first appeal. “Don’t be cast down. Don’t be out of spirits, Uncle. When orders do come, they’ll come in such a crowd, you won’t be able to execute ’em.”

“I shall be past executing ’em, whenever they come, my boy,” returned Solomon Gills. “They’ll never come to this shop again, till I am out of t.”

“I say, Uncle! You musn’t really, you know!” urged Walter. “Don’t!”

Old Sol endeavoured to assume a cheery look, and smiled across the little table at him as pleasantly as he could.

“There’s nothing more than usual the matter; is there, Uncle?” said Walter, leaning his elbows on the tea tray, and bending over, to speak the more confidentially and kindly. “Be open with me, Uncle, if there is, and tell me all about it.”

“No, no, no,” returned Old Sol. “More than usual? No, no. What should there be the matter more than usual?”

Walter answered with an incredulous shake of his head. “That’s what I want to know,” he said, “and you ask me! I’ll tell you what, Uncle, when I see you like this, I am quite sorry that I live with you.”

Old Sol opened his eyes involuntarily.

“Yes. Though nobody ever was happier than I am and always have been with you, I am quite sorry that I live with you, when I see you with anything in your mind.”

“I am a little dull at such times, I know,” observed Solomon, meekly rubbing his hands.

“What I mean, Uncle Sol,” pursued Walter, bending over a little more to pat him on the shoulder, “is, that then I feel you ought to have, sitting here and pouring out the tea instead of me, a nice little dumpling of a wife, you know,—a comfortable, capital, cosy old lady, who was just a match for you, and knew how to manage you, and keep you in good heart. Here am I, as loving a nephew as ever was (I am sure I ought to be!) but I am only a nephew, and I can’t be such a companion to you when you’re low and out of sorts as she would have made herself, years ago, though I’m sure I’d give any money if I could cheer you up. And so I say, when I see you with anything on your mind, that I feel quite sorry you haven’t got somebody better about you than a blundering young rough-and-tough boy like me, who has got the will to console you, Uncle, but hasn’t got the way—hasn’t got the way,” repeated Walter, reaching over further yet, to shake his Uncle by the hand.

“Wally, my dear boy,” said Solomon, “if the cosy little old lady had taken her place in this parlour five and forty years ago, I never could have been fonder of her than I am of you.”

“I know that, Uncle Sol,” returned Walter. “Lord bless you, I know that. But you wouldn’t have had the whole weight of any uncomfortable secrets if she had been with you, because she would have known how to relieve you of ’em, and I don’t.”

“Yes, yes, you do,” returned the Instrument-maker.

“Well then, what’s the matter, Uncle Sol?” said Walter, coaxingly. “Come! What’s the matter?”

Solomon Gills persisted that there was nothing the matter; and maintained it so resolutely, that his nephew had no resource but to make a very indifferent imitation of believing him.

“All I can say is, Uncle Sol, that if there is—”

“But there isn’t,” said Solomon.

“Very well,” said Walter. “Then I’ve no more to say; and that’s lucky, for my time’s up for going to business. I shall look in by-and-by when I’m out, to see how you get on, Uncle. And mind, Uncle! I’ll never believe you again, and never tell you anything more about Mr Carker the Junior, if I find out that you have been deceiving me!”

Solomon Gills laughingly defied him to find out anything of the kind; and Walter, revolving in his thoughts all sorts of impracticable ways of making fortunes and placing the wooden Midshipman in a position of independence, betook himself to the offices of Dombey and Son with a heavier countenance than he usually carried there.

There lived in those days, round the corner—in Bishopsgate Street Without—one Brogley, sworn broker and appraiser, who kept a shop where every description of second-hand furniture was exhibited in the most uncomfortable aspect, and under circumstances and in combinations the most completely foreign to its purpose. Dozens of chairs hooked on to washing-stands, which with difficulty poised themselves on the shoulders of sideboards, which in their turn stood upon the wrong side of dining-tables, gymnastic with their legs upward on the tops of other dining-tables, were among its most reasonable arrangements. A banquet array of dish-covers, wine-glasses, and decanters was generally to be seen, spread forth upon the bosom of a four-post bedstead, for the entertainment of such genial company as half-a-dozen pokers, and a hall lamp. A set of window curtains with no windows belonging to them, would be seen gracefully draping a barricade of chests of drawers, loaded with little jars from chemists’ shops; while a homeless hearthrug severed from its natural companion the fireside, braved the shrewd east wind in its adversity, and trembled in melancholy accord with the shrill complainings of a cabinet piano, wasting away, a string a day, and faintly resounding to the noises of the street in its jangling and distracted brain. Of motionless clocks that never stirred a finger, and seemed as incapable of being successfully wound up, as the pecuniary affairs of their former owners, there was always great choice in Mr Brogley’s shop; and various looking-glasses, accidentally placed at compound interest of reflection and refraction, presented to the eye an eternal perspective of bankruptcy and ruin.

Mr Brogley himself was a moist-eyed, pink-complexioned, crisp-haired man, of a bulky figure and an easy temper—for that class of Caius Marius who sits upon the ruins of other people’s Carthages, can keep up his spirits well enough. He had looked in at Solomon’s shop sometimes, to ask a question about articles in Solomon’s way of business; and Walter knew him sufficiently to give him good day when they met in the street. But as that was the extent of the broker’s acquaintance with Solomon Gills also, Walter was not a little surprised when he came back in the course of the forenoon, agreeably to his promise, to find Mr Brogley sitting in the back parlour with his hands in his pockets, and his hat hanging up behind the door.

“Well, Uncle Sol!” said Walter. The old man was sitting ruefully on the opposite side of the table, with his spectacles over his eyes, for a wonder, instead of on his forehead. “How are you now?”

Solomon shook his head, and waved one hand towards the broker, as introducing him.

“Is there anything the matter?” asked Walter, with a catching in his breath.

“No, no. There’s nothing the matter, said Mr Brogley. “Don’t let it put you out of the way.”

Walter looked from the broker to his Uncle in mute amazement.

“The fact is,” said Mr Brogley, “there’s a little payment on a bond debt —three hundred and seventy odd, overdue: and I’m in possession.”

“In possession!” cried Walter, looking round at the shop.

“Ah!” said Mr Brogley, in confidential assent, and nodding his head as if he would urge the advisability of their all being comfortable together. “It’s an execution. That’s what it is. Don’t let it put you out of the way. I come myself, because of keeping it quiet and sociable. You know me. It’s quite private.”

“Uncle Sol!” faltered Walter.

“Wally, my boy,” returned his uncle. “It’s the first time. Such a calamity never happened to me before. I’m an old man to begin.” Pushing up his spectacles again (for they were useless any longer to conceal his emotion), he covered his face with his hand, and sobbed aloud, and his tears fell down upon his coffee-coloured waistcoat.

“Uncle Sol! Pray! oh don’t!” exclaimed Walter, who really felt a thrill of terror in seeing the old man weep. “For God’s sake don’t do that. Mr Brogley, what shall I do?”

“I should recommend you looking up a friend or so,” said Mr Brogley, “and talking it over.”

“To be sure!” cried Walter, catching at anything. “Certainly! Thankee. Captain Cuttle’s the man, Uncle. Wait till I run to Captain Cuttle. Keep your eye upon my Uncle, will you, Mr Brogley, and make him as comfortable as you can while I am gone? Don’t despair, Uncle Sol. Try and keep a good heart, there’s a dear fellow!”

Saying this with great fervour, and disregarding the old man’s broken remonstrances, Walter dashed out of the shop again as hard as he could go; and, having hurried round to the office to excuse himself on the plea of his Uncle’s sudden illness, set off, full speed, for Captain Cuttle’s residence.

Everything seemed altered as he ran along the streets. There were the usual entanglement and noise of carts, drays, omnibuses, waggons, and foot passengers, but the misfortune that had fallen on the wooden Midshipman made it strange and new. Houses and shops were different from what they used to be, and bore Mr Brogley’s warrant on their fronts in large characters. The broker seemed to have got hold of the very churches; for their spires rose into the sky with an unwonted air. Even the sky itself was changed, and had an execution in it plainly.

Captain Cuttle lived on the brink of a little canal near the India Docks, where there was a swivel bridge which opened now and then to let some wandering monster of a ship come roaming up the street like a stranded leviathan. The gradual change from land to water, on the approach to Captain Cuttle’s lodgings, was curious. It began with the erection of flagstaffs, as appurtenances to public-houses; then came slop-sellers’ shops, with Guernsey shirts, sou’wester hats, and canvas pantaloons, at once the tightest and the loosest of their order, hanging up outside. These were succeeded by anchor and chain-cable forges, where sledgehammers were dinging upon iron all day long. Then came rows of houses, with little vane-surmounted masts uprearing themselves from among the scarlet beans. Then, ditches. Then, pollard willows. Then, more ditches. Then, unaccountable patches of dirty water, hardly to be descried, for the ships that covered them. Then, the air was perfumed with chips; and all other trades were swallowed up in mast, oar, and block-making, and boatbuilding. Then, the ground grew marshy and unsettled. Then, there was nothing to be smelt but rum and sugar. Then, Captain Cuttle’s lodgings—at once a first floor and a top storey, in Brig Place—were close before you.

The Captain was one of those timber-looking men, suits of oak as well as hearts, whom it is almost impossible for the liveliest imagination to separate from any part of their dress, however insignificant. Accordingly, when Walter knocked at the door, and the Captain instantly poked his head out of one of his little front windows, and hailed him, with the hard glared hat already on it, and the shirt-collar like a sail, and the wide suit of blue, all standing as usual, Walter was as fully persuaded that he was always in that state, as if the Captain had been a bird and those had been his feathers.

“Wal”r, my lad!” said Captain Cuttle. “Stand by and knock again. Hard! It’s washing day.”

Walter, in his impatience, gave a prodigious thump with the knocker.

“Hard it is!” said Captain Cuttle, and immediately drew in his head, as if he expected a squall.

Nor was he mistaken: for a widow lady, with her sleeves rolled up to her shoulders, and her arms frothy with soap-suds and smoking with hot water, replied to the summons with startling rapidity. Before she looked at Walter she looked at the knocker, and then, measuring him with her eyes from head to foot, said she wondered he had left any of it.

“Captain Cuttle’s at home, I know,” said Walter with a conciliatory smile.

“Is he?” replied the widow lady. “In-deed!”

“He has just been speaking to me,” said Walter, in breathless explanation.

“Has he?” replied the widow lady. “Then p’raps you’ll give him Mrs MacStinger’s respects, and say that the next time he lowers himself and his lodgings by talking out of the winder she’ll thank him to come down and open the door too.” Mrs MacStinger spoke loud, and listened for any observations that might be offered from the first floor.

“I’ll mention it,” said Walter, “if you’ll have the goodness to let me in, Ma’am.”

For he was repelled by a wooden fortification extending across the doorway, and put there to prevent the little MacStingers in their moments of recreation from tumbling down the steps.

“A boy that can knock my door down,” said Mrs MacStinger, contemptuously, “can get over that, I should hope!” But Walter, taking this as a permission to enter, and getting over it, Mrs MacStinger immediately demanded whether an Englishwoman’s house was her castle or not; and whether she was to be broke in upon by “raff.” On these subjects her thirst for information was still very importunate, when Walter, having made his way up the little staircase through an artificial fog occasioned by the washing, which covered the banisters with a clammy perspiration, entered Captain Cuttle’s room, and found that gentleman in ambush behind the door.

“Never owed her a penny, Wal”r,” said Captain Cuttle, in a low voice, and with visible marks of trepidation on his countenance. “Done her a world of good turns, and the children too. Vixen at times, though. Whew!”

“I should go away, Captain Cuttle,” said Walter.

“Dursn’t do it, Wal”r,” returned the Captain. “She’d find me out, wherever I went. Sit down. How’s Gills?”

The Captain was dining (in his hat) off cold loin of mutton, porter, and some smoking hot potatoes, which he had cooked himself, and took out of a little saucepan before the fire as he wanted them. He unscrewed his hook at dinner-time, and screwed a knife into its wooden socket instead, with which he had already begun to peel one of these potatoes for Walter. His rooms were very small, and strongly impregnated with tobacco-smoke, but snug enough: everything being stowed away, as if there were an earthquake regularly every half-hour.

“How’s Gills?” inquired the Captain.

Walter, who had by this time recovered his breath, and lost his spirits—or such temporary spirits as his rapid journey had given him—looked at his questioner for a moment, said “Oh, Captain Cuttle!” and burst into tears.

No words can describe the Captain’s consternation at this sight. Mrs MacStinger faded into nothing before it. He dropped the potato and the fork—and would have dropped the knife too if he could—and sat gazing at the boy, as if he expected to hear next moment that a gulf had opened in the City, which had swallowed up his old friend, coffee-coloured suit, buttons, chronometer, spectacles, and all.

But when Walter told him what was really the matter, Captain Cuttle, after a moment’s reflection, started up into full activity. He emptied out of a little tin canister on the top shelf of the cupboard, his whole stock of ready money (amounting to thirteen pounds and half-a-crown), which he transferred to one of the pockets of his square blue coat; further enriched that repository with the contents of his plate chest, consisting of two withered atomies of tea-spoons, and an obsolete pair of knock-knee’d sugar-tongs; pulled up his immense double-cased silver watch from the depths in which it reposed, to assure himself that that valuable was sound and whole; re-attached the hook to his right wrist; and seizing the stick covered over with knobs, bade Walter come along.

Remembering, however, in the midst of his virtuous excitement, that Mrs MacStinger might be lying in wait below, Captain Cuttle hesitated at last, not without glancing at the window, as if he had some thoughts of escaping by that unusual means of egress, rather than encounter his terrible enemy. He decided, however, in favour of stratagem.

“Wal”r,” said the Captain, with a timid wink, “go afore, my lad. Sing out, ‘good-bye, Captain Cuttle,’ when you’re in the passage, and shut the door. Then wait at the corner of the street “till you see me.

These directions were not issued without a previous knowledge of the enemy’s tactics, for when Walter got downstairs, Mrs MacStinger glided out of the little back kitchen, like an avenging spirit. But not gliding out upon the Captain, as she had expected, she merely made a further allusion to the knocker, and glided in again.

Some five minutes elapsed before Captain Cuttle could summon courage to attempt his escape; for Walter waited so long at the street corner, looking back at the house, before there were any symptoms of the hard glazed hat. At length the Captain burst out of the door with the suddenness of an explosion, and coming towards him at a great pace, and never once looking over his shoulder, pretended, as soon as they were well out of the street, to whistle a tune.

“Uncle much hove down, Wal”r?” inquired the Captain, as they were walking along.

“I am afraid so. If you had seen him this morning, you would never have forgotten it.”

“Walk fast, Wal”r, my lad,” returned the Captain, mending his pace; “and walk the same all the days of your life. Overhaul the catechism for that advice, and keep it!”

The Captain was too busy with his own thoughts of Solomon Gills, mingled perhaps with some reflections on his late escape from Mrs MacStinger, to offer any further quotations on the way for Walter’s moral improvement They interchanged no other word until they arrived at old Sol’s door, where the unfortunate wooden Midshipman, with his instrument at his eye, seemed to be surveying the whole horizon in search of some friend to help him out of his difficulty.

“Gills!” said the Captain, hurrying into the back parlour, and taking him by the hand quite tenderly. “Lay your head well to the wind, and we’ll fight through it. All you’ve got to do,” said the Captain, with the solemnity of a man who was delivering himself of one of the most precious practical tenets ever discovered by human wisdom, “is to lay your head well to the wind, and we’ll fight through it!”

Old Sol returned the pressure of his hand, and thanked him.

Captain Cuttle, then, with a gravity suitable to the nature of the occasion, put down upon the table the two tea-spoons and the sugar-tongs, the silver watch, and the ready money; and asked Mr Brogley, the broker, what the damage was.

“Come! What do you make of it?” said Captain Cuttle.

“Why, Lord help you!” returned the broker; “you don’t suppose that property’s of any use, do you?”

“Why not?” inquired the Captain.

“Why? The amount’s three hundred and seventy, odd,” replied the broker.

“Never mind,” returned the Captain, though he was evidently dismayed by the figures: “all’s fish that comes to your net, I suppose?”

“Certainly,” said Mr Brogley. “But sprats ain’t whales, you know.”

The philosophy of this observation seemed to strike the Captain. He ruminated for a minute; eyeing the broker, meanwhile, as a deep genius; and then called the Instrument-maker aside.

“Gills,” said Captain Cuttle, “what’s the bearings of this business? Who’s the creditor?”

“Hush!” returned the old man. “Come away. Don’t speak before Wally. It’s a matter of security for Wally’s father—an old bond. I’ve paid a good deal of it, Ned, but the times are so bad with me that I can’t do more just now. I’ve foreseen it, but I couldn’t help it. Not a word before Wally, for all the world.”

“You’ve got some money, haven’t you?” whispered the Captain.

“Yes, yes—oh yes—I’ve got some,” returned old Sol, first putting his hands into his empty pockets, and then squeezing his Welsh wig between them, as if he thought he might wring some gold out of it; “but I—the little I have got, isn’t convertible, Ned; it can’t be got at. I have been trying to do something with it for Wally, and I’m old fashioned, and behind the time. It’s here and there, and—and, in short, it’s as good as nowhere,” said the old man, looking in bewilderment about him.

He had so much the air of a half-witted person who had been hiding his money in a variety of places, and had forgotten where, that the Captain followed his eyes, not without a faint hope that he might remember some few hundred pounds concealed up the chimney, or down in the cellar. But Solomon Gills knew better than that.

“I’m behind the time altogether, my dear Ned,” said Sol, in resigned despair, “a long way. It’s no use my lagging on so far behind it. The stock had better be sold—it’s worth more than this debt—and I had better go and die somewhere, on the balance. I haven’t any energy left. I don’t understand things. This had better be the end of it. Let ’em sell the stock and take him down,” said the old man, pointing feebly to the wooden Midshipman, “and let us both be broken up together.”

“And what d’ye mean to do with Wal”r?” said the Captain. “There, there! Sit ye down, Gills, sit ye down, and let me think o’ this. If I warn’t a man on a small annuity, that was large enough till today, I hadn’t need to think of it. But you only lay your head well to the wind,” said the Captain, again administering that unanswerable piece of consolation, “and you’re all right!”

Old Sol thanked him from his heart, and went and laid it against the back parlour fire-place instead.

Captain Cuttle walked up and down the shop for some time, cogitating profoundly, and bringing his bushy black eyebrows to bear so heavily on his nose, like clouds setting on a mountain, that Walter was afraid to offer any interruption to the current of his reflections. Mr Brogley, who was averse to being any constraint upon the party, and who had an ingenious cast of mind, went, softly whistling, among the stock; rattling weather-glasses, shaking compasses as if they were physic, catching up keys with loadstones, looking through telescopes, endeavouring to make himself acquainted with the use of the globes, setting parallel rulers astride on to his nose, and amusing himself with other philosophical transactions.

“Wal”r!” said the Captain at last. “I’ve got it.”

“Have you, Captain Cuttle?” cried Walter, with great animation.

“Come this way, my lad,” said the Captain. “The stock’s the security. I’m another. Your governor’s the man to advance money.”

“Mr Dombey!” faltered Walter.

The Captain nodded gravely. “Look at him,” he said. “Look at Gills. If they was to sell off these things now, he’d die of it. You know he would. We mustn’t leave a stone unturned—and there’s a stone for you.”

“A stone!—Mr Dombey!” faltered Walter.

“You run round to the office, first of all, and see if he’s there,” said Captain Cuttle, clapping him on the back. “Quick!”

Walter felt he must not dispute the command—a glance at his Uncle would have determined him if he had felt otherwise—and disappeared to execute it. He soon returned, out of breath, to say that Mr Dombey was not there. It was Saturday, and he had gone to Brighton.

“I tell you what, Wal”r!” said the Captain, who seemed to have prepared himself for this contingency in his absence. “We’ll go to Brighton. I’ll back you, my boy. I’ll back you, Wal”r. We’ll go to Brighton by the afternoon’s coach.”

If the application must be made to Mr Dombey at all, which was awful to think of, Walter felt that he would rather prefer it alone and unassisted, than backed by the personal influence of Captain Cuttle, to which he hardly thought Mr Dombey would attach much weight. But as the Captain appeared to be of quite another opinion, and was bent upon it, and as his friendship was too zealous and serious to be trifled with by one so much younger than himself, he forbore to hint the least objection. Cuttle, therefore, taking a hurried leave of Solomon Gills, and returning the ready money, the teaspoons, the sugar-tongs, and the silver watch, to his pocket—with a view, as Walter thought, with horror, to making a gorgeous impression on Mr Dombey—bore him off to the coach-office, without a minute’s delay, and repeatedly assured him, on the road, that he would stick by him to the last.

X. Containing the Sequel of the Midshipman’s Disaster

Major Bagstock, after long and frequent observation of Paul, across Princess’s Place, through his double-barrelled opera-glass; and after receiving many minute reports, daily, weekly, and monthly, on that subject, from the native who kept himself in constant communication with Miss Tox’s maid for that purpose; came to the conclusion that Dombey, Sir, was a man to be known, and that J. B. was the boy to make his acquaintance.

Miss Tox, however, maintaining her reserved behaviour, and frigidly declining to understand the Major whenever he called (which he often did) on any little fishing excursion connected with this project, the Major, in spite of his constitutional toughness and slyness, was fain to leave the accomplishment of his desire in some measure to chance, “which,” as he was used to observe with chuckles at his club, “has been fifty to one in favour of Joey B., Sir, ever since his elder brother died of Yellow Jack in the West Indies.”

It was some time coming to his aid in the present instance, but it befriended him at last. When the dark servant, with full particulars, reported Miss Tox absent on Brighton service, the Major was suddenly touched with affectionate reminiscences of his friend Bill Bitherstone of Bengal, who had written to ask him, if he ever went that way, to bestow a call upon his only son. But when the same dark servant reported Paul at Mrs Pipchin’s, and the Major, referring to the letter favoured by Master Bitherstone on his arrival in England—to which he had never had the least idea of paying any attention—saw the opening that presented itself, he was made so rabid by the gout, with which he happened to be then laid up, that he threw a footstool at the dark servant in return for his intelligence, and swore he would be the death of the rascal before he had done with him: which the dark servant was more than half disposed to believe.

At length the Major being released from his fit, went one Saturday growling down to Brighton, with the native behind him; apostrophizing Miss Tox all the way, and gloating over the prospect of carrying by storm the distinguished friend to whom she attached so much mystery, and for whom she had deserted him.

“Would you, Ma’am, would you!” said the Major, straining with vindictiveness, and swelling every already swollen vein in his head. “Would you give Joey B. the go-by, Ma’am? Not yet, Ma’am, not yet! Damme, not yet, Sir. Joe is awake, Ma’am. Bagstock is alive, Sir. J. B. knows a move or two, Ma’am. Josh has his weather-eye open, Sir. You’ll find him tough, Ma’am. Tough, Sir, tough is Joseph. Tough, and de-vilish sly!”

And very tough indeed Master Bitherstone found him, when he took that young gentleman out for a walk. But the Major, with his complexion like a Stilton cheese, and his eyes like a prawn’s, went roving about, perfectly indifferent to Master Bitherstone’s amusement, and dragging Master Bitherstone along, while he looked about him high and low, for Mr Dombey and his children.

In good time the Major, previously instructed by Mrs Pipchin, spied out Paul and Florence, and bore down upon them; there being a stately gentleman (Mr Dombey, doubtless) in their company. Charging with Master Bitherstone into the very heart of the little squadron, it fell out, of course, that Master Bitherstone spoke to his fellow-sufferers. Upon that the Major stopped to notice and admire them; remembered with amazement that he had seen and spoken to them at his friend Miss Tox’s in Princess’s Place; opined that Paul was a devilish fine fellow, and his own little friend; inquired if he remembered Joey B. the Major; and finally, with a sudden recollection of the conventionalities of life, turned and apologised to Mr Dombey.

“But my little friend here, Sir,” said the Major, “makes a boy of me again: An old soldier, Sir—Major Bagstock, at your service—is not ashamed to confess it.” Here the Major lifted his hat. “Damme, Sir,” cried the Major with sudden warmth, “I envy you.” Then he recollected himself, and added, “Excuse my freedom.”

Mr Dombey begged he wouldn’t mention it.

“An old campaigner, Sir,” said the Major, “a smoke-dried, sun-burnt, used-up, invalided old dog of a Major, Sir, was not afraid of being condemned for his whim by a man like Mr Dombey. I have the honour of addressing Mr Dombey, I believe?”

“I am the present unworthy representative of that name, Major,” returned Mr Dombey.

“By G—, Sir!” said the Major, “it’s a great name. It’s a name, Sir,” said the Major firmly, as if he defied Mr Dombey to contradict him, and would feel it his painful duty to bully him if he did, “that is known and honoured in the British possessions abroad. It is a name, Sir, that a man is proud to recognise. There is nothing adulatory in Joseph Bagstock, Sir. His Royal Highness the Duke of York observed on more than one occasion, ‘there is no adulation in Joey. He is a plain old soldier is Joe. He is tough to a fault is Joseph:’ but it’s a great name, Sir. By the Lord, it’s a great name!” said the Major, solemnly.

“You are good enough to rate it higher than it deserves, perhaps, Major,” returned Mr Dombey.

“No, Sir,” said the Major, in a severe tone. No, Mr Dombey, let us understand each other. That is not the Bagstock vein, Sir. You don’t know Joseph B. He is a blunt old blade is Josh. No flattery in him, Sir. Nothing like it.”

Mr Dombey inclined his head, and said he believed him to be in earnest, and that his high opinion was gratifying.

“My little friend here, Sir,” croaked the Major, looking as amiably as he could, on Paul, “will certify for Joseph Bagstock that he is a thorough-going, down-right, plain-spoken, old Trump, Sir, and nothing more. That boy, Sir,” said the Major in a lower tone, “will live in history. That boy, Sir, is not a common production. Take care of him, Mr Dombey.”

Mr Dombey seemed to intimate that he would endeavour to do so.

“Here is a boy here, Sir,” pursued the Major, confidentially, and giving him a thrust with his cane. “Son of Bitherstone of Bengal. Bill Bitherstone formerly of ours. That boy’s father and myself, Sir, were sworn friends. Wherever you went, Sir, you heard of nothing but Bill Bitherstone and Joe Bagstock. Am I blind to that boy’s defects? By no means. He’s a fool, Sir.”

Mr Dombey glanced at the libelled Master Bitherstone, of whom he knew at least as much as the Major did, and said, in quite a complacent manner, “Really?”

“That is what he is, sir,” said the Major. “He’s a fool. Joe Bagstock never minces matters. The son of my old friend Bill Bitherstone, of Bengal, is a born fool, Sir.” Here the Major laughed till he was almost black. “My little friend is destined for a public school, I presume, Mr Dombey?” said the Major when he had recovered.

“I am not quite decided,” returned Mr Dombey. “I think not. He is delicate.”

“If he’s delicate, Sir,” said the Major, “you are right. None but the tough fellows could live through it, Sir, at Sandhurst. We put each other to the torture there, Sir. We roasted the new fellows at a slow fire, and hung ’em out of a three pair of stairs window, with their heads downwards. Joseph Bagstock, Sir, was held out of the window by the heels of his boots, for thirteen minutes by the college clock.”

The Major might have appealed to his countenance in corroboration of this story. It certainly looked as if he had hung out a little too long.

“But it made us what we were, Sir,” said the Major, settling his shirt frill. “We were iron, Sir, and it forged us. Are you remaining here, Mr Dombey?”

“I generally come down once a week, Major,” returned that gentleman. “I stay at the Bedford.”

“I shall have the honour of calling at the Bedford, Sir, if you’ll permit me,” said the Major. “Joey B., Sir, is not in general a calling man, but Mr Dombey’s is not a common name. I am much indebted to my little friend, Sir, for the honour of this introduction.”

Mr Dombey made a very gracious reply; and Major Bagstock, having patted Paul on the head, and said of Florence that her eyes would play the Devil with the youngsters before long—“and the oldsters too, Sir, if you come to that,” added the Major, chuckling very much—stirred up Master Bitherstone with his walking-stick, and departed with that young gentleman, at a kind of half-trot; rolling his head and coughing with great dignity, as he staggered away, with his legs very wide asunder.

In fulfilment of his promise, the Major afterwards called on Mr Dombey; and Mr Dombey, having referred to the army list, afterwards called on the Major. Then the Major called at Mr Dombey’s house in town; and came down again, in the same coach as Mr Dombey. In short, Mr Dombey and the Major got on uncommonly well together, and uncommonly fast: and Mr Dombey observed of the Major, to his sister, that besides being quite a military man he was really something more, as he had a very admirable idea of the importance of things unconnected with his own profession.

At length Mr Dombey, bringing down Miss Tox and Mrs Chick to see the children, and finding the Major again at Brighton, invited him to dinner at the Bedford, and complimented Miss Tox highly, beforehand, on her neighbour and acquaintance.

“My dearest Louisa,” said Miss Tox to Mrs Chick, when they were alone together, on the morning of the appointed day, “if I should seem at all reserved to Major Bagstock, or under any constraint with him, promise me not to notice it.”

“My dear Lucretia,” returned Mrs Chick, “what mystery is involved in this remarkable request? I must insist upon knowing.”

“Since you are resolved to extort a confession from me, Louisa,” said Miss Tox instantly, “I have no alternative but to confide to you that the Major has been particular.”

“Particular!” repeated Mrs Chick.

“The Major has long been very particular indeed, my love, in his attentions,” said Miss Tox, “occasionally they have been so very marked, that my position has been one of no common difficulty.”

“Is he in good circumstances?” inquired Mrs Chick.

“I have every reason to believe, my dear—indeed I may say I know,” returned Miss Tox, “that he is wealthy. He is truly military, and full of anecdote. I have been informed that his valour, when he was in active service, knew no bounds. I am told that he did all sorts of things in the Peninsula, with every description of fire-arm; and in the East and West Indies, my love, I really couldn’t undertake to say what he did not do.”

“Very creditable to him indeed,” said Mrs Chick, “extremely so; and you have given him no encouragement, my dear?”

“If I were to say, Louisa,” replied Miss Tox, with every demonstration of making an effort that rent her soul, “that I never encouraged Major Bagstock slightly, I should not do justice to the friendship which exists between you and me. It is, perhaps, hardly in the nature of woman to receive such attentions as the Major once lavished upon myself without betraying some sense of obligation. But that is past—long past. Between the Major and me there is now a yawning chasm, and I will not feign to give encouragement, Louisa, where I cannot give my heart. My affections,” said Miss Tox—“but, Louisa, this is madness!” and departed from the room.

All this Mrs Chick communicated to her brother before dinner: and it by no means indisposed Mr Dombey to receive the Major with unwonted cordiality. The Major, for his part, was in a state of plethoric satisfaction that knew no bounds: and he coughed, and choked, and chuckled, and gasped, and swelled, until the waiters seemed positively afraid of him.

“Your family monopolises Joe’s light, Sir,” said the Major, when he had saluted Miss Tox. “Joe lives in darkness. Princess’s Place is changed into Kamschatka in the winter time. There is no ray of sun, Sir, for Joey B., now.”

“Miss Tox is good enough to take a great deal of interest in Paul, Major,” returned Mr Dombey on behalf of that blushing virgin.

“Damme Sir,” said the Major, “I’m jealous of my little friend. I’m pining away Sir. The Bagstock breed is degenerating in the forsaken person of old Joe.” And the Major, becoming bluer and bluer and puffing his cheeks further and further over the stiff ridge of his tight cravat, stared at Miss Tox, until his eyes seemed as if he were at that moment being overdone before the slow fire at the military college.

Notwithstanding the palpitation of the heart which these allusions occasioned her, they were anything but disagreeable to Miss Tox, as they enabled her to be extremely interesting, and to manifest an occasional incoherence and distraction which she was not at all unwilling to display. The Major gave her abundant opportunities of exhibiting this emotion: being profuse in his complaints, at dinner, of her desertion of him and Princess’s Place: and as he appeared to derive great enjoyment from making them, they all got on very well.

None the worse on account of the Major taking charge of the whole conversation, and showing as great an appetite in that respect as in regard of the various dainties on the table, among which he may be almost said to have wallowed: greatly to the aggravation of his inflammatory tendencies. Mr Dombey’s habitual silence and reserve yielding readily to this usurpation, the Major felt that he was coming out and shining: and in the flow of spirits thus engendered, rang such an infinite number of new changes on his own name that he quite astonished himself. In a word, they were all very well pleased. The Major was considered to possess an inexhaustible fund of conversation; and when he took a late farewell, after a long rubber, Mr Dombey again complimented the blushing Miss Tox on her neighbour and acquaintance.

But all the way home to his own hotel, the Major incessantly said to himself, and of himself, “Sly, Sir—sly, Sir—de-vil-ish sly!” And when he got there, sat down in a chair, and fell into a silent fit of laughter, with which he was sometimes seized, and which was always particularly awful. It held him so long on this occasion that the dark servant, who stood watching him at a distance, but dared not for his life approach, twice or thrice gave him over for lost. His whole form, but especially his face and head, dilated beyond all former experience; and presented to the dark man’s view, nothing but a heaving mass of indigo. At length he burst into a violent paroxysm of coughing, and when that was a little better burst into such ejaculations as the following:

“Would you, Ma’am, would you? Mrs Dombey, eh, Ma’am? I think not, Ma’am. Not while Joe B. can put a spoke in your wheel, Ma’am. J. B.“s even with you now, Ma’am. He isn’t altogether bowled out, yet, Sir, isn’t Bagstock. She’s deep, Sir, deep, but Josh is deeper. Wide awake is old Joe—broad awake, and staring, Sir!” There was no doubt of this last assertion being true, and to a very fearful extent; as it continued to be during the greater part of that night, which the Major chiefly passed in similar exclamations, diversified with fits of coughing and choking that startled the whole house.

It was on the day after this occasion (being Sunday) when, as Mr Dombey, Mrs Chick, and Miss Tox were sitting at breakfast, still eulogising the Major, Florence came running in: her face suffused with a bright colour, and her eyes sparkling joyfully: and cried,

“Papa! Papa! Here’s Walter! and he won’t come in.”

“Who?” cried Mr Dombey. “What does she mean? What is this?”

“Walter, Papa!” said Florence timidly; sensible of having approached the presence with too much familiarity. “Who found me when I was lost.”

“Does she mean young Gay, Louisa?” inquired Mr Dombey, knitting his brows. “Really, this child’s manners have become very boisterous. She cannot mean young Gay, I think. See what it is, will you?”

Mrs Chick hurried into the passage, and returned with the information that it was young Gay, accompanied by a very strange-looking person; and that young Gay said he would not take the liberty of coming in, hearing Mr Dombey was at breakfast, but would wait until Mr Dombey should signify that he might approach.

“Tell the boy to come in now,” said Mr Dombey. “Now, Gay, what is the matter? Who sent you down here? Was there nobody else to come?”

“I beg your pardon, Sir,” returned Walter. “I have not been sent. I have been so bold as to come on my own account, which I hope you’ll pardon when I mention the cause.

But Mr Dombey, without attending to what he said, was looking impatiently on either side of him (as if he were a pillar in his way) at some object behind.

“What’s that?” said Mr Dombey. “Who is that? I think you have made some mistake in the door, Sir.”

“Oh, I’m very sorry to intrude with anyone, Sir,” cried Walter, hastily: “but this is—this is Captain Cuttle, Sir.”

“Wal”r, my lad,” observed the Captain in a deep voice: “stand by!”

At the same time the Captain, coming a little further in, brought out his wide suit of blue, his conspicuous shirt-collar, and his knobby nose in full relief, and stood bowing to Mr Dombey, and waving his hook politely to the ladies, with the hard glazed hat in his one hand, and a red equator round his head which it had newly imprinted there.

Mr Dombey regarded this phenomenon with amazement and indignation, and seemed by his looks to appeal to Mrs Chick and Miss Tox against it. Little Paul, who had come in after Florence, backed towards Miss Tox as the Captain waved his hook, and stood on the defensive.

“Now, Gay,” said Mr Dombey. “What have you got to say to me?”

Again the Captain observed, as a general opening of the conversation that could not fail to propitiate all parties, “Wal”r, standby!”

“I am afraid, Sir,” began Walter, trembling, and looking down at the ground, “that I take a very great liberty in coming—indeed, I am sure I do. I should hardly have had the courage to ask to see you, Sir, even after coming down, I am afraid, if I had not overtaken Miss Dombey, and—”

“Well!” said Mr Dombey, following his eyes as he glanced at the attentive Florence, and frowning unconsciously as she encouraged him with a smile. “Go on, if you please.”

“Ay, ay,” observed the Captain, considering it incumbent on him, as a point of good breeding, to support Mr Dombey. “Well said! Go on, Wal”r.”

Captain Cuttle ought to have been withered by the look which Mr Dombey bestowed upon him in acknowledgment of his patronage. But quite innocent of this, he closed one eye in reply, and gave Mr Dombey to understand, by certain significant motions of his hook, that Walter was a little bashful at first, and might be expected to come out shortly.

“It is entirely a private and personal matter, that has brought me here, Sir,” continued Walter, faltering, “and Captain Cuttle—”

“Here!” interposed the Captain, as an assurance that he was at hand, and might be relied upon.

“Who is a very old friend of my poor Uncle’s, and a most excellent man, Sir,” pursued Walter, raising his eyes with a look of entreaty in the Captain’s behalf, “was so good as to offer to come with me, which I could hardly refuse.”

“No, no, no;” observed the Captain complacently. “Of course not. No call for refusing. Go on, Wal”r.”

“And therefore, Sir,” said Walter, venturing to meet Mr Dombey’s eye, and proceeding with better courage in the very desperation of the case, now that there was no avoiding it, “therefore I have come, with him, Sir, to say that my poor old Uncle is in very great affliction and distress. That, through the gradual loss of his business, and not being able to make a payment, the apprehension of which has weighed very heavily upon his mind, months and months, as indeed I know, Sir, he has an execution in his house, and is in danger of losing all he has, and breaking his heart. And that if you would, in your kindness, and in your old knowledge of him as a respectable man, do anything to help him out of his difficulty, Sir, we never could thank you enough for it.”

Walter’s eyes filled with tears as he spoke; and so did those of Florence. Her father saw them glistening, though he appeared to look at Walter only.

“It is a very large sum, Sir,” said Walter. “More than three hundred pounds. My Uncle is quite beaten down by his misfortune, it lies so heavy on him; and is quite unable to do anything for his own relief. He doesn’t even know yet, that I have come to speak to you. You would wish me to say, Sir,” added Walter, after a moment’s hesitation, “exactly what it is I want. I really don’t know, Sir. There is my Uncle’s stock, on which I believe I may say, confidently, there are no other demands, and there is Captain Cuttle, who would wish to be security too. I—I hardly like to mention,” said Walter, “such earnings as mine; but if you would allow them—accumulate—payment—advance—Uncle—frugal, honourable, old man.” Walter trailed off, through these broken sentences, into silence: and stood with downcast head, before his employer.

Considering this a favourable moment for the display of the valuables, Captain Cuttle advanced to the table; and clearing a space among the breakfast-cups at Mr Dombey’s elbow, produced the silver watch, the ready money, the teaspoons, and the sugar-tongs; and piling them up into a heap that they might look as precious as possible, delivered himself of these words:

“Half a loaf’s better than no bread, and the same remark holds good with crumbs. There’s a few. Annuity of one hundred pound premium also ready to be made over. If there is a man chock full of science in the world, it’s old Sol Gills. If there is a lad of promise—one flowing,” added the Captain, in one of his happy quotations, “with milk and honey—it’s his nevy!”

The Captain then withdrew to his former place, where he stood arranging his scattered locks with the air of a man who had given the finishing touch to a difficult performance.

When Walter ceased to speak, Mr Dombey’s eyes were attracted to little Paul, who, seeing his sister hanging down her head and silently weeping in her commiseration for the distress she had heard described, went over to her, and tried to comfort her: looking at Walter and his father as he did so, with a very expressive face. After the momentary distraction of Captain Cuttle’s address, which he regarded with lofty indifference, Mr Dombey again turned his eyes upon his son, and sat steadily regarding the child, for some moments, in silence.

“What was this debt contracted for?” asked Mr Dombey, at length. “Who is the creditor?”

“He don’t know,” replied the Captain, putting his hand on Walter’s shoulder. “I do. It came of helping a man that’s dead now, and that’s cost my friend Gills many a hundred pound already. More particulars in private, if agreeable.”

“People who have enough to do to hold their own way,” said Mr Dombey, unobservant of the Captain’s mysterious signs behind Walter, and still looking at his son, “had better be content with their own obligations and difficulties, and not increase them by engaging for other men. It is an act of dishonesty and presumption, too,” said Mr Dombey, sternly; “great presumption; for the wealthy could do no more. Paul, come here!”

The child obeyed: and Mr Dombey took him on his knee.

“If you had money now—” said Mr Dombey. “Look at me!”

Paul, whose eyes had wandered to his sister, and to Walter, looked his father in the face.

“If you had money now,” said Mr Dombey; “as much money as young Gay has talked about; what would you do?”

“Give it to his old Uncle,” returned Paul.

“Lend it to his old Uncle, eh?” retorted Mr Dombey. “Well! When you are old enough, you know, you will share my money, and we shall use it together.”

“Dombey and Son,” interrupted Paul, who had been tutored early in the phrase.

“Dombey and Son,” repeated his father. “Would you like to begin to be Dombey and Son, now, and lend this money to young Gay’s Uncle?”

“Oh! if you please, Papa!” said Paul: “and so would Florence.”

“Girls,” said Mr Dombey, “have nothing to do with Dombey and Son. Would you like it?”

“Yes, Papa, yes!”

“Then you shall do it,” returned his father. “And you see, Paul,” he added, dropping his voice, “how powerful money is, and how anxious people are to get it. Young Gay comes all this way to beg for money, and you, who are so grand and great, having got it, are going to let him have it, as a great favour and obligation.”

Paul turned up the old face for a moment, in which there was a sharp understanding of the reference conveyed in these words: but it was a young and childish face immediately afterwards, when he slipped down from his father’s knee, and ran to tell Florence not to cry any more, for he was going to let young Gay have the money.

Mr Dombey then turned to a side-table, and wrote a note and sealed it. During the interval, Paul and Florence whispered to Walter, and Captain Cuttle beamed on the three, with such aspiring and ineffably presumptuous thoughts as Mr Dombey never could have believed in. The note being finished, Mr Dombey turned round to his former place, and held it out to Walter.

“Give that,” he said, “the first thing to-morrow morning, to Mr Carker. He will immediately take care that one of my people releases your Uncle from his present position, by paying the amount at issue; and that such arrangements are made for its repayment as may be consistent with your Uncle’s circumstances. You will consider that this is done for you by Master Paul.”

Walter, in the emotion of holding in his hand the means of releasing his good Uncle from his trouble, would have endeavoured to express something of his gratitude and joy. But Mr Dombey stopped him short.

“You will consider that it is done,” he repeated, “by Master Paul. I have explained that to him, and he understands it. I wish no more to be said.”

As he motioned towards the door, Walter could only bow his head and retire. Miss Tox, seeing that the Captain appeared about to do the same, interposed.

“My dear Sir,” she said, addressing Mr Dombey, at whose munificence both she and Mrs Chick were shedding tears copiously; “I think you have overlooked something. Pardon me, Mr Dombey, I think, in the nobility of your character, and its exalted scope, you have omitted a matter of detail.”

“Indeed, Miss Tox!” said Mr Dombey.

“The gentleman with the—Instrument,” pursued Miss Tox, glancing at Captain Cuttle, “has left upon the table, at your elbow—”

“Good Heaven!” said Mr Dombey, sweeping the Captain’s property from him, as if it were so much crumb indeed. “Take these things away. I am obliged to you, Miss Tox; it is like your usual discretion. Have the goodness to take these things away, Sir!”

Captain Cuttle felt he had no alternative but to comply. But he was so much struck by the magnanimity of Mr Dombey, in refusing treasures lying heaped up to his hand, that when he had deposited the teaspoons and sugar-tongs in one pocket, and the ready money in another, and had lowered the great watch down slowly into its proper vault, he could not refrain from seizing that gentleman’s right hand in his own solitary left, and while he held it open with his powerful fingers, bringing the hook down upon its palm in a transport of admiration. At this touch of warm feeling and cold iron, Mr Dombey shivered all over.

Captain Cuttle then kissed his hook to the ladies several times, with great elegance and gallantry; and having taken a particular leave of Paul and Florence, accompanied Walter out of the room. Florence was running after them in the earnestness of her heart, to send some message to old Sol, when Mr Dombey called her back, and bade her stay where she was.

“Will you never be a Dombey, my dear child!” said Mrs Chick, with pathetic reproachfulness.

“Dear aunt,” said Florence. “Don’t be angry with me. I am so thankful to Papa!”

She would have run and thrown her arms about his neck if she had dared; but as she did not dare, she glanced with thankful eyes towards him, as he sat musing; sometimes bestowing an uneasy glance on her, but, for the most part, watching Paul, who walked about the room with the new-blown dignity of having let young Gay have the money.

And young Gay—Walter—what of him?

He was overjoyed to purge the old man’s hearth from bailiffs and brokers, and to hurry back to his Uncle with the good tidings. He was overjoyed to have it all arranged and settled next day before noon; and to sit down at evening in the little back parlour with old Sol and Captain Cuttle; and to see the Instrument-maker already reviving, and hopeful for the future, and feeling that the wooden Midshipman was his own again. But without the least impeachment of his gratitude to Mr Dombey, it must be confessed that Walter was humbled and cast down. It is when our budding hopes are nipped beyond recovery by some rough wind, that we are the most disposed to picture to ourselves what flowers they might have borne, if they had flourished; and now, when Walter found himself cut off from that great Dombey height, by the depth of a new and terrible tumble, and felt that all his old wild fancies had been scattered to the winds in the fall, he began to suspect that they might have led him on to harmless visions of aspiring to Florence in the remote distance of time.

The Captain viewed the subject in quite a different light. He appeared to entertain a belief that the interview at which he had assisted was so very satisfactory and encouraging, as to be only a step or two removed from a regular betrothal of Florence to Walter; and that the late transaction had immensely forwarded, if not thoroughly established, the Whittingtonian hopes. Stimulated by this conviction, and by the improvement in the spirits of his old friend, and by his own consequent gaiety, he even attempted, in favouring them with the ballad of “Lovely Peg” for the third time in one evening, to make an extemporaneous substitution of the name “Florence;” but finding this difficult, on account of the word Peg invariably rhyming to leg (in which personal beauty the original was described as having excelled all competitors), he hit upon the happy thought of changing it to Fle-e-eg; which he accordingly did, with an archness almost supernatural, and a voice quite vociferous, notwithstanding that the time was close at hand when he must seek the abode of the dreadful Mrs MacStinger.

That same evening the Major was diffuse at his club, on the subject of his friend Dombey in the City. “Damme, Sir,” said the Major, “he’s a prince, is my friend Dombey in the City. I tell you what, Sir. If you had a few more men among you like old Joe Bagstock and my friend Dombey in the City, Sir, you’d do!”

XI. Paul’s Introduction to a New Scene

Mrs Pipchin’s constitution was made of such hard metal, in spite of its liability to the fleshly weaknesses of standing in need of repose after chops, and of requiring to be coaxed to sleep by the soporific agency of sweet-breads, that it utterly set at naught the predictions of Mrs Wickam, and showed no symptoms of decline. Yet, as Paul’s rapt interest in the old lady continued unbated, Mrs Wickam would not budge an inch from the position she had taken up. Fortifying and entrenching herself on the strong ground of her Uncle’s Betsey Jane, she advised Miss Berry, as a friend, to prepare herself for the worst; and forewarned her that her aunt might, at any time, be expected to go off suddenly, like a powder-mill.

“I hope, Miss Berry,” Mrs Wickam would observe, “that you’ll come into whatever little property there may be to leave. You deserve it, I am sure, for yours is a trying life. Though there don’t seem much worth coming into—you’ll excuse my being so open—in this dismal den.”

Poor Berry took it all in good part, and drudged and slaved away as usual; perfectly convinced that Mrs Pipchin was one of the most meritorious persons in the world, and making every day innumerable sacrifices of herself upon the altar of that noble old woman. But all these immolations of Berry were somehow carried to the credit of Mrs Pipchin by Mrs Pipchin’s friends and admirers; and were made to harmonise with, and carry out, that melancholy fact of the deceased Mr Pipchin having broken his heart in the Peruvian mines.

For example, there was an honest grocer and general dealer in the retail line of business, between whom and Mrs Pipchin there was a small memorandum book, with a greasy red cover, perpetually in question, and concerning which divers secret councils and conferences were continually being held between the parties to that register, on the mat in the passage, and with closed doors in the parlour. Nor were there wanting dark hints from Master Bitherstone (whose temper had been made revengeful by the solar heats of India acting on his blood), of balances unsettled, and of a failure, on one occasion within his memory, in the supply of moist sugar at tea-time. This grocer being a bachelor and not a man who looked upon the surface for beauty, had once made honourable offers for the hand of Berry, which Mrs Pipchin had, with contumely and scorn, rejected. Everybody said how laudable this was in Mrs Pipchin, relict of a man who had died of the Peruvian mines; and what a staunch, high, independent spirit the old lady had. But nobody said anything about poor Berry, who cried for six weeks (being soundly rated by her good aunt all the time), and lapsed into a state of hopeless spinsterhood.

“Berry’s very fond of you, ain’t she?” Paul once asked Mrs Pipchin when they were sitting by the fire with the cat.

“Yes,” said Mrs Pipchin.

“Why?” asked Paul.

“Why!” returned the disconcerted old lady. “How can you ask such things, Sir! why are you fond of your sister Florence?”

“Because she’s very good,” said Paul. “There’s nobody like Florence.”

“Well!” retorted Mrs Pipchin, shortly, “and there’s nobody like me, I suppose.”

“Ain’t there really though?” asked Paul, leaning forward in his chair, and looking at her very hard.

“No,” said the old lady.

“I am glad of that,” observed Paul, rubbing his hands thoughtfully. “That’s a very good thing.”

Mrs Pipchin didn’t dare to ask him why, lest she should receive some perfectly annihilating answer. But as a compensation to her wounded feelings, she harassed Master Bitherstone to that extent until bed-time, that he began that very night to make arrangements for an overland return to India, by secreting from his supper a quarter of a round of bread and a fragment of moist Dutch cheese, as the beginning of a stock of provision to support him on the voyage.

Mrs Pipchin had kept watch and ward over little Paul and his sister for nearly twelve months. They had been home twice, but only for a few days; and had been constant in their weekly visits to Mr Dombey at the hotel. By little and little Paul had grown stronger, and had become able to dispense with his carriage; though he still looked thin and delicate; and still remained the same old, quiet, dreamy child that he had been when first consigned to Mrs Pipchin’s care. One Saturday afternoon, at dusk, great consternation was occasioned in the Castle by the unlooked-for announcement of Mr Dombey as a visitor to Mrs Pipchin. The population of the parlour was immediately swept upstairs as on the wings of a whirlwind, and after much slamming of bedroom doors, and trampling overhead, and some knocking about of Master Bitherstone by Mrs Pipchin, as a relief to the perturbation of her spirits, the black bombazeen garments of the worthy old lady darkened the audience-chamber where Mr Dombey was contemplating the vacant arm-chair of his son and heir.

“Mrs Pipchin,” said Mr Dombey, “How do you do?”

“Thank you, Sir,” said Mrs Pipchin, “I am pretty well, considering.”

Mrs Pipchin always used that form of words. It meant, considering her virtues, sacrifices, and so forth.

“I can’t expect, Sir, to be very well,” said Mrs Pipchin, taking a chair and fetching her breath; “but such health as I have, I am grateful for.”

Mr Dombey inclined his head with the satisfied air of a patron, who felt that this was the sort of thing for which he paid so much a quarter. After a moment’s silence he went on to say:

“Mrs Pipchin, I have taken the liberty of calling, to consult you in reference to my son. I have had it in my mind to do so for some time past; but have deferred it from time to time, in order that his health might be thoroughly re-established. You have no misgivings on that subject, Mrs Pipchin?”

“Brighton has proved very beneficial, Sir,” returned Mrs Pipchin. “Very beneficial, indeed.”

“I purpose,” said Mr Dombey, “his remaining at Brighton.”

Mrs Pipchin rubbed her hands, and bent her grey eyes on the fire.

“But,” pursued Mr Dombey, stretching out his forefinger, “but possibly that he should now make a change, and lead a different kind of life here. In short, Mrs Pipchin, that is the object of my visit. My son is getting on, Mrs Pipchin. Really, he is getting on.”

There was something melancholy in the triumphant air with which Mr Dombey said this. It showed how long Paul’s childish life had been to him, and how his hopes were set upon a later stage of his existence. Pity may appear a strange word to connect with anyone so haughty and so cold, and yet he seemed a worthy subject for it at that moment.

“Six years old!” said Mr Dombey, settling his neckcloth—perhaps to hide an irrepressible smile that rather seemed to strike upon the surface of his face and glance away, as finding no resting-place, than to play there for an instant. “Dear me, six will be changed to sixteen, before we have time to look about us.”

“Ten years,” croaked the unsympathetic Pipchin, with a frosty glistening of her hard grey eye, and a dreary shaking of her bent head, “is a long time.”

“It depends on circumstances, returned Mr Dombey; “at all events, Mrs Pipchin, my son is six years old, and there is no doubt, I fear, that in his studies he is behind many children of his age—or his youth,” said Mr Dombey, quickly answering what he mistrusted was a shrewd twinkle of the frosty eye, “his youth is a more appropriate expression. Now, Mrs Pipchin, instead of being behind his peers, my son ought to be before them; far before them. There is an eminence ready for him to mount upon. There is nothing of chance or doubt in the course before my son. His way in life was clear and prepared, and marked out before he existed. The education of such a young gentleman must not be delayed. It must not be left imperfect. It must be very steadily and seriously undertaken, Mrs Pipchin.”

“Well, Sir,” said Mrs Pipchin, “I can say nothing to the contrary.”

“I was quite sure, Mrs Pipchin,” returned Mr Dombey, approvingly, “that a person of your good sense could not, and would not.”

“There is a great deal of nonsense—and worse—talked about young people not being pressed too hard at first, and being tempted on, and all the rest of it, Sir,” said Mrs Pipchin, impatiently rubbing her hooked nose. “It never was thought of in my time, and it has no business to be thought of now. My opinion is ‘keep ’em at it’.”

“My good madam,” returned Mr Dombey, “you have not acquired your reputation undeservedly; and I beg you to believe, Mrs Pipchin, that I am more than satisfied with your excellent system of management, and shall have the greatest pleasure in commending it whenever my poor commendation—” Mr Dombey’s loftiness when he affected to disparage his own importance, passed all bounds—“can be of any service. I have been thinking of Doctor Blimber’s, Mrs Pipchin.”

“My neighbour, Sir?” said Mrs Pipchin. “I believe the Doctor’s is an excellent establishment. I’ve heard that it’s very strictly conducted, and there is nothing but learning going on from morning to night.”

“And it’s very expensive,” added Mr Dombey.

“And it’s very expensive, Sir,” returned Mrs Pipchin, catching at the fact, as if in omitting that, she had omitted one of its leading merits.

“I have had some communication with the Doctor, Mrs Pipchin,” said Mr Dombey, hitching his chair anxiously a little nearer to the fire, “and he does not consider Paul at all too young for his purpose. He mentioned several instances of boys in Greek at about the same age. If I have any little uneasiness in my own mind, Mrs Pipchin, on the subject of this change, it is not on that head. My son not having known a mother has gradually concentrated much—too much—of his childish affection on his sister. Whether their separation—” Mr Dombey said no more, but sat silent.

“Hoity-toity!” exclaimed Mrs Pipchin, shaking out her black bombazeen skirts, and plucking up all the ogress within her. “If she don’t like it, Mr Dombey, she must be taught to lump it.” The good lady apologised immediately afterwards for using so common a figure of speech, but said (and truly) that that was the way she reasoned with ’em.

Mr Dombey waited until Mrs Pipchin had done bridling and shaking her head, and frowning down a legion of Bitherstones and Pankeys; and then said quietly, but correctively, “He, my good madam, he.”

Mrs Pipchin’s system would have applied very much the same mode of cure to any uneasiness on the part of Paul, too; but as the hard grey eye was sharp enough to see that the recipe, however Mr Dombey might admit its efficacy in the case of the daughter, was not a sovereign remedy for the son, she argued the point; and contended that change, and new society, and the different form of life he would lead at Doctor Blimber’s, and the studies he would have to master, would very soon prove sufficient alienations. As this chimed in with Mr Dombey’s own hope and belief, it gave that gentleman a still higher opinion of Mrs Pipchin’s understanding; and as Mrs Pipchin, at the same time, bewailed the loss of her dear little friend (which was not an overwhelming shock to her, as she had long expected it, and had not looked, in the beginning, for his remaining with her longer than three months), he formed an equally good opinion of Mrs Pipchin’s disinterestedness. It was plain that he had given the subject anxious consideration, for he had formed a plan, which he announced to the ogress, of sending Paul to the Doctor’s as a weekly boarder for the first half year, during which time Florence would remain at the Castle, that she might receive her brother there, on Saturdays. This would wean him by degrees, Mr Dombey said; possibly with a recollection of his not having been weaned by degrees on a former occasion.

Mr Dombey finished the interview by expressing his hope that Mrs Pipchin would still remain in office as general superintendent and overseer of his son, pending his studies at Brighton; and having kissed Paul, and shaken hands with Florence, and beheld Master Bitherstone in his collar of state, and made Miss Pankey cry by patting her on the head (in which region she was uncommonly tender, on account of a habit Mrs Pipchin had of sounding it with her knuckles, like a cask), he withdrew to his hotel and dinner: resolved that Paul, now that he was getting so old and well, should begin a vigorous course of education forthwith, to qualify him for the position in which he was to shine; and that Doctor Blimber should take him in hand immediately.

Whenever a young gentleman was taken in hand by Doctor Blimber, he might consider himself sure of a pretty tight squeeze. The Doctor only undertook the charge of ten young gentlemen, but he had, always ready, a supply of learning for a hundred, on the lowest estimate; and it was at once the business and delight of his life to gorge the unhappy ten with it.

In fact, Doctor Blimber’s establishment was a great hot-house, in which there was a forcing apparatus incessantly at work. All the boys blew before their time. Mental green-peas were produced at Christmas, and intellectual asparagus all the year round. Mathematical gooseberries (very sour ones too) were common at untimely seasons, and from mere sprouts of bushes, under Doctor Blimber’s cultivation. Every description of Greek and Latin vegetable was got off the driest twigs of boys, under the frostiest circumstances. Nature was of no consequence at all. No matter what a young gentleman was intended to bear, Doctor Blimber made him bear to pattern, somehow or other.

This was all very pleasant and ingenious, but the system of forcing was attended with its usual disadvantages. There was not the right taste about the premature productions, and they didn’t keep well. Moreover, one young gentleman, with a swollen nose and an excessively large head (the oldest of the ten who had “gone through” everything), suddenly left off blowing one day, and remained in the establishment a mere stalk. And people did say that the Doctor had rather overdone it with young Toots, and that when he began to have whiskers he left off having brains.

There young Toots was, at any rate; possessed of the gruffest of voices and the shrillest of minds; sticking ornamental pins into his shirt, and keeping a ring in his waistcoat pocket to put on his little finger by stealth, when the pupils went out walking; constantly falling in love by sight with nurserymaids, who had no idea of his existence; and looking at the gas-lighted world over the little iron bars in the left-hand corner window of the front three pairs of stairs, after bed-time, like a greatly overgrown cherub who had sat up aloft much too long.

The Doctor was a portly gentleman in a suit of black, with strings at his knees, and stockings below them. He had a bald head, highly polished; a deep voice; and a chin so very double, that it was a wonder how he ever managed to shave into the creases. He had likewise a pair of little eyes that were always half shut up, and a mouth that was always half expanded into a grin, as if he had, that moment, posed a boy, and were waiting to convict him from his own lips. Insomuch, that when the Doctor put his right hand into the breast of his coat, and with his other hand behind him, and a scarcely perceptible wag of his head, made the commonest observation to a nervous stranger, it was like a sentiment from the sphynx, and settled his business.

The Doctor’s was a mighty fine house, fronting the sea. Not a joyful style of house within, but quite the contrary. Sad-coloured curtains, whose proportions were spare and lean, hid themselves despondently behind the windows. The tables and chairs were put away in rows, like figures in a sum; fires were so rarely lighted in the rooms of ceremony, that they felt like wells, and a visitor represented the bucket; the dining-room seemed the last place in the world where any eating or drinking was likely to occur; there was no sound through all the house but the ticking of a great clock in the hall, which made itself audible in the very garrets; and sometimes a dull cooing of young gentlemen at their lessons, like the murmurings of an assemblage of melancholy pigeons.

Miss Blimber, too, although a slim and graceful maid, did no soft violence to the gravity of the house. There was no light nonsense about Miss Blimber. She kept her hair short and crisp, and wore spectacles. She was dry and sandy with working in the graves of deceased languages. None of your live languages for Miss Blimber. They must be dead—stone dead—and then Miss Blimber dug them up like a Ghoul.

Mrs Blimber, her Mama, was not learned herself, but she pretended to be, and that did quite as well. She said at evening parties, that if she could have known Cicero, she thought she could have died contented. It was the steady joy of her life to see the Doctor’s young gentlemen go out walking, unlike all other young gentlemen, in the largest possible shirt-collars, and the stiffest possible cravats. It was so classical, she said.

As to Mr Feeder, B.A., Doctor Blimber’s assistant, he was a kind of human barrel-organ, with a little list of tunes at which he was continually working, over and over again, without any variation. He might have been fitted up with a change of barrels, perhaps, in early life, if his destiny had been favourable; but it had not been; and he had only one, with which, in a monotonous round, it was his occupation to bewilder the young ideas of Doctor Blimber’s young gentlemen. The young gentlemen were prematurely full of carking anxieties. They knew no rest from the pursuit of stony-hearted verbs, savage noun-substantives, inflexible syntactic passages, and ghosts of exercises that appeared to them in their dreams. Under the forcing system, a young gentleman usually took leave of his spirits in three weeks. He had all the cares of the world on his head in three months. He conceived bitter sentiments against his parents or guardians in four; he was an old misanthrope, in five; envied Curtius that blessed refuge in the earth, in six; and at the end of the first twelvemonth had arrived at the conclusion, from which he never afterwards departed, that all the fancies of the poets, and lessons of the sages, were a mere collection of words and grammar, and had no other meaning in the world.

But he went on blow, blow, blowing, in the Doctor’s hothouse, all the time; and the Doctor’s glory and reputation were great, when he took his wintry growth home to his relations and friends.

Upon the Doctor’s door-steps one day, Paul stood with a fluttering heart, and with his small right hand in his father’s. His other hand was locked in that of Florence. How tight the tiny pressure of that one; and how loose and cold the other!

Mrs Pipchin hovered behind the victim, with her sable plumage and her hooked beak, like a bird of ill-omen. She was out of breath—for Mr Dombey, full of great thoughts, had walked fast—and she croaked hoarsely as she waited for the opening of the door.

“Now, Paul,” said Mr Dombey, exultingly. “This is the way indeed to be Dombey and Son, and have money. You are almost a man already.”

“Almost,” returned the child.

Even his childish agitation could not master the sly and quaint yet touching look, with which he accompanied the reply.

It brought a vague expression of dissatisfaction into Mr Dombey’s face; but the door being opened, it was quickly gone.

“Doctor Blimber is at home, I believe?” said Mr Dombey.

The man said yes; and as they passed in, looked at Paul as if he were a little mouse, and the house were a trap. He was a weak-eyed young man, with the first faint streaks or early dawn of a grin on his countenance. It was mere imbecility; but Mrs Pipchin took it into her head that it was impudence, and made a snap at him directly.

“How dare you laugh behind the gentleman’s back?” said Mrs Pipchin. “And what do you take me for?”

“I ain’t a laughing at nobody, and I’m sure I don’t take you for nothing, Ma’am,” returned the young man, in consternation.

“A pack of idle dogs!” said Mrs Pipchin, “only fit to be turnspits. Go and tell your master that Mr Dombey’s here, or it’ll be worse for you!”

The weak-eyed young man went, very meekly, to discharge himself of this commission; and soon came back to invite them to the Doctor’s study.

“You’re laughing again, Sir,” said Mrs Pipchin, when it came to her turn, bringing up the rear, to pass him in the hall.

“I ain’t,” returned the young man, grievously oppressed. “I never see such a thing as this!”

“What is the matter, Mrs Pipchin?” said Mr Dombey, looking round. “Softly! Pray!”

Mrs Pipchin, in her deference, merely muttered at the young man as she passed on, and said, “Oh! he was a precious fellow”—leaving the young man, who was all meekness and incapacity, affected even to tears by the incident. But Mrs Pipchin had a way of falling foul of all meek people; and her friends said who could wonder at it, after the Peruvian mines!

The Doctor was sitting in his portentous study, with a globe at each knee, books all round him, Homer over the door, and Minerva on the mantel-shelf. “And how do you do, Sir?” he said to Mr Dombey, “and how is my little friend?” Grave as an organ was the Doctor’s speech; and when he ceased, the great clock in the hall seemed (to Paul at least) to take him up, and to go on saying, “how, is, my, lit, tle, friend? how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?” over and over and over again.

The little friend being something too small to be seen at all from where the Doctor sat, over the books on his table, the Doctor made several futile attempts to get a view of him round the legs; which Mr Dombey perceiving, relieved the Doctor from his embarrassment by taking Paul up in his arms, and sitting him on another little table, over against the Doctor, in the middle of the room.

“Ha!” said the Doctor, leaning back in his chair with his hand in his breast. “Now I see my little friend. How do you do, my little friend?”

The clock in the hall wouldn’t subscribe to this alteration in the form of words, but continued to repeat how, is, my, lit, tle, friend? how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?”

“Very well, I thank you, Sir,” returned Paul, answering the clock quite as much as the Doctor.

“Ha!” said Doctor Blimber. “Shall we make a man of him?”

“Do you hear, Paul?” added Mr Dombey; Paul being silent.

“Shall we make a man of him?” repeated the Doctor.

“I had rather be a child,” replied Paul.

“Indeed!” said the Doctor. “Why?”

The child sat on the table looking at him, with a curious expression of suppressed emotion in his face, and beating one hand proudly on his knee as if he had the rising tears beneath it, and crushed them. But his other hand strayed a little way the while, a little farther—farther from him yet—until it lighted on the neck of Florence. “This is why,” it seemed to say, and then the steady look was broken up and gone; the working lip was loosened; and the tears came streaming forth.

“Mrs Pipchin,” said his father, in a querulous manner, “I am really very sorry to see this.”

“Come away from him, do, Miss Dombey,” quoth the matron.

“Never mind,” said the Doctor, blandly nodding his head, to keep Mrs Pipchin back. “Never mind; we shall substitute new cares and new impressions, Mr Dombey, very shortly. You would still wish my little friend to acquire—”

“Everything, if you please, Doctor,” returned Mr Dombey, firmly.

“Yes,” said the Doctor, who, with his half-shut eyes, and his usual smile, seemed to survey Paul with the sort of interest that might attach to some choice little animal he was going to stuff. “Yes, exactly. Ha! We shall impart a great variety of information to our little friend, and bring him quickly forward, I daresay. I daresay. Quite a virgin soil, I believe you said, Mr Dombey?”

“Except some ordinary preparation at home, and from this lady,” replied Mr Dombey, introducing Mrs Pipchin, who instantly communicated a rigidity to her whole muscular system, and snorted defiance beforehand, in case the Doctor should disparage her; “except so far, Paul has, as yet, applied himself to no studies at all.”

Doctor Blimber inclined his head, in gentle tolerance of such insignificant poaching as Mrs Pipchin’s, and said he was glad to hear it. It was much more satisfactory, he observed, rubbing his hands, to begin at the foundation. And again he leered at Paul, as if he would have liked to tackle him with the Greek alphabet, on the spot.

“That circumstance, indeed, Doctor Blimber,” pursued Mr Dombey, glancing at his little son, “and the interview I have already had the pleasure of holding with you, renders any further explanation, and consequently, any further intrusion on your valuable time, so unnecessary, that—”

“Now, Miss Dombey!” said the acid Pipchin.

“Permit me,” said the Doctor, “one moment. Allow me to present Mrs Blimber and my daughter; who will be associated with the domestic life of our young Pilgrim to Parnassus Mrs Blimber,” for the lady, who had perhaps been in waiting, opportunely entered, followed by her daughter, that fair Sexton in spectacles, “Mr Dombey. My daughter Cornelia, Mr Dombey. Mr Dombey, my love,” pursued the Doctor, turning to his wife, “is so confiding as to—do you see our little friend?”

Mrs Blimber, in an excess of politeness, of which Mr Dombey was the object, apparently did not, for she was backing against the little friend, and very much endangering his position on the table. But, on this hint, she turned to admire his classical and intellectual lineaments, and turning again to Mr Dombey, said, with a sigh, that she envied his dear son.

“Like a bee, Sir,” said Mrs Blimber, with uplifted eyes, “about to plunge into a garden of the choicest flowers, and sip the sweets for the first time Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Terence, Plautus, Cicero. What a world of honey have we here. It may appear remarkable, Mr Dombey, in one who is a wife—the wife of such a husband—”

“Hush, hush,” said Doctor Blimber. “Fie for shame.”

“Mr Dombey will forgive the partiality of a wife,” said Mrs Blimber, with an engaging smile.

Mr Dombey answered “Not at all:” applying those words, it is to be presumed, to the partiality, and not to the forgiveness.

“And it may seem remarkable in one who is a mother also,” resumed Mrs Blimber.

“And such a mother,” observed Mr Dombey, bowing with some confused idea of being complimentary to Cornelia.

“But really,” pursued Mrs Blimber, “I think if I could have known Cicero, and been his friend, and talked with him in his retirement at Tusculum (beau-ti-ful Tusculum!), I could have died contented.”

A learned enthusiasm is so very contagious, that Mr Dombey half believed this was exactly his case; and even Mrs Pipchin, who was not, as we have seen, of an accommodating disposition generally, gave utterance to a little sound between a groan and a sigh, as if she would have said that nobody but Cicero could have proved a lasting consolation under that failure of the Peruvian Mines, but that he indeed would have been a very Davy-lamp of refuge.

Cornelia looked at Mr Dombey through her spectacles, as if she would have liked to crack a few quotations with him from the authority in question. But this design, if she entertained it, was frustrated by a knock at the room-door.

“Who is that?” said the Doctor. “Oh! Come in, Toots; come in. Mr Dombey, Sir.” Toots bowed. “Quite a coincidence!” said Doctor Blimber. “Here we have the beginning and the end. Alpha and Omega. Our head boy, Mr Dombey.”

The Doctor might have called him their head and shoulders boy, for he was at least that much taller than any of the rest. He blushed very much at finding himself among strangers, and chuckled aloud.

“An addition to our little Portico, Toots,” said the Doctor; “Mr Dombey’s son.”

Young Toots blushed again; and finding, from a solemn silence which prevailed, that he was expected to say something, said to Paul, “How are you?” in a voice so deep, and a manner so sheepish, that if a lamb had roared it couldn’t have been more surprising.

“Ask Mr Feeder, if you please, Toots,” said the Doctor, “to prepare a few introductory volumes for Mr Dombey’s son, and to allot him a convenient seat for study. My dear, I believe Mr Dombey has not seen the dormitories.”

“If Mr Dombey will walk upstairs,” said Mrs Blimber, “I shall be more than proud to show him the dominions of the drowsy god.”

With that, Mrs Blimber, who was a lady of great suavity, and a wiry figure, and who wore a cap composed of sky-blue materials, proceeded upstairs with Mr Dombey and Cornelia; Mrs Pipchin following, and looking out sharp for her enemy the footman.

While they were gone, Paul sat upon the table, holding Florence by the hand, and glancing timidly from the Doctor round and round the room, while the Doctor, leaning back in his chair, with his hand in his breast as usual, held a book from him at arm’s length, and read. There was something very awful in this manner of reading. It was such a determined, unimpassioned, inflexible, cold-blooded way of going to work. It left the Doctor’s countenance exposed to view; and when the Doctor smiled suspiciously at his author, or knit his brows, or shook his head and made wry faces at him, as much as to say, “Don’t tell me, Sir; I know better,” it was terrific.

Toots, too, had no business to be outside the door, ostentatiously examining the wheels in his watch, and counting his half-crowns. But that didn’t last long; for Doctor Blimber, happening to change the position of his tight plump legs, as if he were going to get up, Toots swiftly vanished, and appeared no more.

Mr Dombey and his conductress were soon heard coming downstairs again, talking all the way; and presently they re-entered the Doctor’s study.

“I hope, Mr Dombey,” said the Doctor, laying down his book, “that the arrangements meet your approval.”

“They are excellent, Sir,” said Mr Dombey.

“Very fair, indeed,” said Mrs Pipchin, in a low voice; never disposed to give too much encouragement.

“Mrs Pipchin,” said Mr Dombey, wheeling round, “will, with your permission, Doctor and Mrs Blimber, visit Paul now and then.”

“Whenever Mrs Pipchin pleases,” observed the Doctor.

“Always happy to see her,” said Mrs Blimber.

“I think,” said Mr Dombey, “I have given all the trouble I need, and may take my leave. Paul, my child,” he went close to him, as he sat upon the table. “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Papa.”

The limp and careless little hand that Mr Dombey took in his, was singularly out of keeping with the wistful face. But he had no part in its sorrowful expression. It was not addressed to him. No, no. To Florence—all to Florence.

If Mr Dombey in his insolence of wealth, had ever made an enemy, hard to appease and cruelly vindictive in his hate, even such an enemy might have received the pang that wrung his proud heart then, as compensation for his injury.

He bent down, over his boy, and kissed him. If his sight were dimmed as he did so, by something that for a moment blurred the little face, and made it indistinct to him, his mental vision may have been, for that short time, the clearer perhaps.

“I shall see you soon, Paul. You are free on Saturdays and Sundays, you know.”

“Yes, Papa,” returned Paul: looking at his sister. “On Saturdays and Sundays.”

“And you’ll try and learn a great deal here, and be a clever man,” said Mr Dombey; “won’t you?”

“I’ll try,” returned the child, wearily.

“And you’ll soon be grown up now!” said Mr Dombey.

“Oh! very soon!” replied the child. Once more the old, old look passed rapidly across his features like a strange light. It fell on Mrs Pipchin, and extinguished itself in her black dress. That excellent ogress stepped forward to take leave and to bear off Florence, which she had long been thirsting to do. The move on her part roused Mr Dombey, whose eyes were fixed on Paul. After patting him on the head, and pressing his small hand again, he took leave of Doctor Blimber, Mrs Blimber, and Miss Blimber, with his usual polite frigidity, and walked out of the study.

Despite his entreaty that they would not think of stirring, Doctor Blimber, Mrs Blimber, and Miss Blimber all pressed forward to attend him to the hall; and thus Mrs Pipchin got into a state of entanglement with Miss Blimber and the Doctor, and was crowded out of the study before she could clutch Florence. To which happy accident Paul stood afterwards indebted for the dear remembrance, that Florence ran back to throw her arms round his neck, and that hers was the last face in the doorway: turned towards him with a smile of encouragement, the brighter for the tears through which it beamed.

It made his childish bosom heave and swell when it was gone; and sent the globes, the books, blind Homer and Minerva, swimming round the room. But they stopped, all of a sudden; and then he heard the loud clock in the hall still gravely inquiring “how, is, my, lit, tle, friend? how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?” as it had done before.

He sat, with folded hands, upon his pedestal, silently listening. But he might have answered “weary, weary! very lonely, very sad!” And there, with an aching void in his young heart, and all outside so cold, and bare, and strange, Paul sat as if he had taken life unfurnished, and the upholsterer were never coming.

XII. Paul’s Education

After the lapse of some minutes, which appeared an immense time to little Paul Dombey on the table, Doctor Blimber came back. The Doctor’s walk was stately, and calculated to impress the juvenile mind with solemn feelings. It was a sort of march; but when the Doctor put out his right foot, he gravely turned upon his axis, with a semi-circular sweep towards the left; and when he put out his left foot, he turned in the same manner towards the right. So that he seemed, at every stride he took, to look about him as though he were saying, “Can anybody have the goodness to indicate any subject, in any direction, on which I am uninformed? I rather think not.”

Mrs Blimber and Miss Blimber came back in the Doctor’s company; and the Doctor, lifting his new pupil off the table, delivered him over to Miss Blimber.

“Cornelia,” said the Doctor, “Dombey will be your charge at first. Bring him on, Cornelia, bring him on.”

Miss Blimber received her young ward from the Doctor’s hands; and Paul, feeling that the spectacles were surveying him, cast down his eyes.

“How old are you, Dombey?” said Miss Blimber.

“Six,” answered Paul, wondering, as he stole a glance at the young lady, why her hair didn’t grow long like Florence’s, and why she was like a boy.

“How much do you know of your Latin Grammar, Dombey?” said Miss Blimber.

“None of it,” answered Paul. Feeling that the answer was a shock to Miss Blimber’s sensibility, he looked up at the three faces that were looking down at him, and said:

“I haven’t been well. I have been a weak child. I couldn’t learn a Latin Grammar when I was out, every day, with old Glubb. I wish you’d tell old Glubb to come and see me, if you please.”

“What a dreadfully low name” said Mrs Blimber. “Unclassical to a degree! Who is the monster, child?”

“What monster?” inquired Paul.

“Glubb,” said Mrs Blimber, with a great disrelish.

“He’s no more a monster than you are,” returned Paul.

“What!” cried the Doctor, in a terrible voice. “Ay, ay, ay? Aha! What’s that?”

Paul was dreadfully frightened; but still he made a stand for the absent Glubb, though he did it trembling.

“He’s a very nice old man, Ma’am,” he said. “He used to draw my couch. He knows all about the deep sea, and the fish that are in it, and the great monsters that come and lie on rocks in the sun, and dive into the water again when they’re startled, blowing and splashing so, that they can be heard for miles. There are some creatures, said Paul, warming with his subject, “I don’t know how many yards long, and I forget their names, but Florence knows, that pretend to be in distress; and when a man goes near them, out of compassion, they open their great jaws, and attack him. But all he has got to do,” said Paul, boldly tendering this information to the very Doctor himself, “is to keep on turning as he runs away, and then, as they turn slowly, because they are so long, and can’t bend, he’s sure to beat them. And though old Glubb don’t know why the sea should make me think of my Mama that’s dead, or what it is that it is always saying—always saying! he knows a great deal about it. And I wish,” the child concluded, with a sudden falling of his countenance, and failing in his animation, as he looked like one forlorn, upon the three strange faces, “that you’d let old Glubb come here to see me, for I know him very well, and he knows me.”

“Ha!” said the Doctor, shaking his head; “this is bad, but study will do much.”

Mrs Blimber opined, with something like a shiver, that he was an unaccountable child; and, allowing for the difference of visage, looked at him pretty much as Mrs Pipchin had been used to do.

“Take him round the house, Cornelia,” said the Doctor, “and familiarise him with his new sphere. Go with that young lady, Dombey.”

Dombey obeyed; giving his hand to the abstruse Cornelia, and looking at her sideways, with timid curiosity, as they went away together. For her spectacles, by reason of the glistening of the glasses, made her so mysterious, that he didn’t know where she was looking, and was not indeed quite sure that she had any eyes at all behind them.

Cornelia took him first to the schoolroom, which was situated at the back of the hall, and was approached through two baize doors, which deadened and muffled the young gentlemen’s voices. Here, there were eight young gentlemen in various stages of mental prostration, all very hard at work, and very grave indeed. Toots, as an old hand, had a desk to himself in one corner: and a magnificent man, of immense age, he looked, in Paul’s young eyes, behind it.

Mr Feeder, B.A., who sat at another little desk, had his Virgil stop on, and was slowly grinding that tune to four young gentlemen. Of the remaining four, two, who grasped their foreheads convulsively, were engaged in solving mathematical problems; one with his face like a dirty window, from much crying, was endeavouring to flounder through a hopeless number of lines before dinner; and one sat looking at his task in stony stupefaction and despair—which it seemed had been his condition ever since breakfast time.

The appearance of a new boy did not create the sensation that might have been expected. Mr Feeder, B.A. (who was in the habit of shaving his head for coolness, and had nothing but little bristles on it), gave him a bony hand, and told him he was glad to see him—which Paul would have been very glad to have told him, if he could have done so with the least sincerity. Then Paul, instructed by Cornelia, shook hands with the four young gentlemen at Mr Feeder’s desk; then with the two young gentlemen at work on the problems, who were very feverish; then with the young gentleman at work against time, who was very inky; and lastly with the young gentleman in a state of stupefaction, who was flabby and quite cold.

Paul having been already introduced to Toots, that pupil merely chuckled and breathed hard, as his custom was, and pursued the occupation in which he was engaged. It was not a severe one; for on account of his having “gone through” so much (in more senses than one), and also of his having, as before hinted, left off blowing in his prime, Toots now had licence to pursue his own course of study: which was chiefly to write long letters to himself from persons of distinction, adds “P. Toots, Esquire, Brighton, Sussex,” and to preserve them in his desk with great care.

These ceremonies passed, Cornelia led Paul upstairs to the top of the house; which was rather a slow journey, on account of Paul being obliged to land both feet on every stair, before he mounted another. But they reached their journey’s end at last; and there, in a front room, looking over the wild sea, Cornelia showed him a nice little bed with white hangings, close to the window, on which there was already beautifully written on a card in round text—down strokes very thick, and up strokes very fine—DOMBEY; while two other little bedsteads in the same room were announced, through like means, as respectively appertaining unto BRIGGS and TOZER.

Just as they got downstairs again into the hall, Paul saw the weak-eyed young man who had given that mortal offence to Mrs Pipchin, suddenly seize a very large drumstick, and fly at a gong that was hanging up, as if he had gone mad, or wanted vengeance. Instead of receiving warning, however, or being instantly taken into custody, the young man left off unchecked, after having made a dreadful noise. Then Cornelia Blimber said to Dombey that dinner would be ready in a quarter of an hour, and perhaps he had better go into the schoolroom among his “friends.”

So Dombey, deferentially passing the great clock which was still as anxious as ever to know how he found himself, opened the schoolroom door a very little way, and strayed in like a lost boy: shutting it after him with some difficulty. His friends were all dispersed about the room except the stony friend, who remained immoveable. Mr Feeder was stretching himself in his grey gown, as if, regardless of expense, he were resolved to pull the sleeves off.

“Heigh ho hum!” cried Mr Feeder, shaking himself like a cart-horse. “Oh dear me, dear me! Ya-a-a-ah!”

Paul was quite alarmed by Mr Feeder’s yawning; it was done on such a great scale, and he was so terribly in earnest. All the boys too (Toots excepted) seemed knocked up, and were getting ready for dinner—some newly tying their neckcloths, which were very stiff indeed; and others washing their hands or brushing their hair, in an adjoining ante-chamber—as if they didn’t think they should enjoy it at all.

Young Toots who was ready beforehand, and had therefore nothing to do, and had leisure to bestow upon Paul, said, with heavy good nature:

“Sit down, Dombey.”

“Thank you, Sir,” said Paul.

His endeavouring to hoist himself on to a very high window-seat, and his slipping down again, appeared to prepare Toots’s mind for the reception of a discovery.

“You’re a very small chap;” said Mr Toots.

“Yes, Sir, I’m small,” returned Paul. “Thank you, Sir.”

For Toots had lifted him into the seat, and done it kindly too.

“Who’s your tailor?” inquired Toots, after looking at him for some moments.

“It’s a woman that has made my clothes as yet,” said Paul. “My sister’s dressmaker.”

“My tailor’s Burgess and Co.,” said Toots. “Fash’nable. But very dear.”

Paul had wit enough to shake his head, as if he would have said it was easy to see that; and indeed he thought so.

“Your father’s regularly rich, ain’t he?” inquired Mr Toots.

“Yes, Sir,” said Paul. “He’s Dombey and Son.”

“And which?” demanded Toots.

“And Son, Sir,” replied Paul.

Mr Toots made one or two attempts, in a low voice, to fix the Firm in his mind; but not quite succeeding, said he would get Paul to mention the name again to-morrow morning, as it was rather important. And indeed he purposed nothing less than writing himself a private and confidential letter from Dombey and Son immediately.

By this time the other pupils (always excepting the stony boy) gathered round. They were polite, but pale; and spoke low; and they were so depressed in their spirits, that in comparison with the general tone of that company, Master Bitherstone was a perfect Miller, or complete Jest Book.” And yet he had a sense of injury upon him, too, had Bitherstone.

“You sleep in my room, don’t you?” asked a solemn young gentleman, whose shirt-collar curled up the lobes of his ears.

“Master Briggs?” inquired Paul.

“Tozer,” said the young gentleman.

Paul answered yes; and Tozer pointing out the stony pupil, said that was Briggs. Paul had already felt certain that it must be either Briggs or Tozer, though he didn’t know why.

“Is yours a strong constitution?” inquired Tozer.

Paul said he thought not. Tozer replied that he thought not also, judging from Paul’s looks, and that it was a pity, for it need be. He then asked Paul if he were going to begin with Cornelia; and on Paul saying “yes,” all the young gentlemen (Briggs excepted) gave a low groan.

It was drowned in the tintinnabulation of the gong, which sounding again with great fury, there was a general move towards the dining-room; still excepting Briggs the stony boy, who remained where he was, and as he was; and on its way to whom Paul presently encountered a round of bread, genteelly served on a plate and napkin, and with a silver fork lying crosswise on the top of it. Doctor Blimber was already in his place in the dining-room, at the top of the table, with Miss Blimber and Mrs Blimber on either side of him. Mr Feeder in a black coat was at the bottom. Paul’s chair was next to Miss Blimber; but it being found, when he sat in it, that his eyebrows were not much above the level of the table-cloth, some books were brought in from the Doctor’s study, on which he was elevated, and on which he always sat from that time— carrying them in and out himself on after occasions, like a little elephant and castle.

Grace having been said by the Doctor, dinner began. There was some nice soup; also roast meat, boiled meat, vegetables, pie, and cheese. Every young gentleman had a massive silver fork, and a napkin; and all the arrangements were stately and handsome. In particular, there was a butler in a blue coat and bright buttons, who gave quite a winey flavour to the table beer; he poured it out so superbly.

Nobody spoke, unless spoken to, except Doctor Blimber, Mrs Blimber, and Miss Blimber, who conversed occasionally. Whenever a young gentleman was not actually engaged with his knife and fork or spoon, his eye, with an irresistible attraction, sought the eye of Doctor Blimber, Mrs Blimber, or Miss Blimber, and modestly rested there. Toots appeared to be the only exception to this rule. He sat next Mr Feeder on Paul’s side of the table, and frequently looked behind and before the intervening boys to catch a glimpse of Paul.

Only once during dinner was there any conversation that included the young gentlemen. It happened at the epoch of the cheese, when the Doctor, having taken a glass of port wine, and hemmed twice or thrice, said:

“It is remarkable, Mr Feeder, that the Romans—”

At the mention of this terrible people, their implacable enemies, every young gentleman fastened his gaze upon the Doctor, with an assumption of the deepest interest. One of the number who happened to be drinking, and who caught the Doctor’s eye glaring at him through the side of his tumbler, left off so hastily that he was convulsed for some moments, and in the sequel ruined Doctor Blimber’s point.

“It is remarkable, Mr Feeder,” said the Doctor, beginning again slowly, “that the Romans, in those gorgeous and profuse entertainments of which we read in the days of the Emperors, when luxury had attained a height unknown before or since, and when whole provinces were ravaged to supply the splendid means of one Imperial Banquet—”

Here the offender, who had been swelling and straining, and waiting in vain for a full stop, broke out violently.

“Johnson,” said Mr Feeder, in a low reproachful voice, “take some water.”

The Doctor, looking very stern, made a pause until the water was brought, and then resumed:

“And when, Mr Feeder—”

But Mr Feeder, who saw that Johnson must break out again, and who knew that the Doctor would never come to a period before the young gentlemen until he had finished all he meant to say, couldn’t keep his eye off Johnson; and thus was caught in the fact of not looking at the Doctor, who consequently stopped.

“I beg your pardon, Sir,” said Mr Feeder, reddening. “I beg your pardon, Doctor Blimber.”

“And when,” said the Doctor, raising his voice, “when, Sir, as we read, and have no reason to doubt—incredible as it may appear to the vulgar—of our time—the brother of Vitellius prepared for him a feast, in which were served, of fish, two thousand dishes—”

“Take some water, Johnson—dishes, Sir,” said Mr Feeder.

“Of various sorts of fowl, five thousand dishes.”

“Or try a crust of bread,” said Mr Feeder.

“And one dish,” pursued Doctor Blimber, raising his voice still higher as he looked all round the table, “called, from its enormous dimensions, the Shield of Minerva, and made, among other costly ingredients, of the brains of pheasants—”

“Ow, ow, ow!” (from Johnson.)

“Woodcocks—”

“Ow, ow, ow!”

“The sounds of the fish called scari—”

“You’ll burst some vessel in your head,” said Mr Feeder. “You had better let it come.”

“And the spawn of the lamprey, brought from the Carpathian Sea,” pursued the Doctor, in his severest voice; “when we read of costly entertainments such as these, and still remember, that we have a Titus—”

“What would be your mother’s feelings if you died of apoplexy!” said Mr Feeder.

“A Domitian—”

“And you’re blue, you know,” said Mr Feeder.

“A Nero, a Tiberius, a Caligula, a Heliogabalus, and many more, pursued the Doctor; “it is, Mr Feeder—if you are doing me the honour to attend—remarkable; VERY remarkable, Sir—”

But Johnson, unable to suppress it any longer, burst at that moment into such an overwhelming fit of coughing, that although both his immediate neighbours thumped him on the back, and Mr Feeder himself held a glass of water to his lips, and the butler walked him up and down several times between his own chair and the sideboard, like a sentry, it was a full five minutes before he was moderately composed. Then there was a profound silence.

“Gentlemen,” said Doctor Blimber, “rise for Grace! Cornelia, lift Dombey down”—nothing of whom but his scalp was accordingly seen above the tablecloth. “Johnson will repeat to me tomorrow morning before breakfast, without book, and from the Greek Testament, the first chapter of the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Ephesians. We will resume our studies, Mr Feeder, in half-an-hour.”

The young gentlemen bowed and withdrew. Mr Feeder did likewise. During the half-hour, the young gentlemen, broken into pairs, loitered arm-in-arm up and down a small piece of ground behind the house, or endeavoured to kindle a spark of animation in the breast of Briggs. But nothing happened so vulgar as play. Punctually at the appointed time, the gong was sounded, and the studies, under the joint auspices of Doctor Blimber and Mr Feeder, were resumed.

As the Olympic game of lounging up and down had been cut shorter than usual that day, on Johnson’s account, they all went out for a walk before tea. Even Briggs (though he hadn’t begun yet) partook of this dissipation; in the enjoyment of which he looked over the cliff two or three times darkly. Doctor Blimber accompanied them; and Paul had the honour of being taken in tow by the Doctor himself: a distinguished state of things, in which he looked very little and feeble.

Tea was served in a style no less polite than the dinner; and after tea, the young gentlemen rising and bowing as before, withdrew to fetch up the unfinished tasks of that day, or to get up the already looming tasks of to-morrow. In the meantime Mr Feeder withdrew to his own room; and Paul sat in a corner wondering whether Florence was thinking of him, and what they were all about at Mrs Pipchin’s.

Mr Toots, who had been detained by an important letter from the Duke of Wellington, found Paul out after a time; and having looked at him for a long while, as before, inquired if he was fond of waistcoats.

Paul said “Yes, Sir.”

“So am I,” said Toots.

No word more spoke Toots that night; but he stood looking at Paul as if he liked him; and as there was company in that, and Paul was not inclined to talk, it answered his purpose better than conversation.

At eight o’clock or so, the gong sounded again for prayers in the dining-room, where the butler afterwards presided over a side-table, on which bread and cheese and beer were spread for such young gentlemen as desired to partake of those refreshments. The ceremonies concluded by the Doctor’s saying, “Gentlemen, we will resume our studies at seven to-morrow;” and then, for the first time, Paul saw Cornelia Blimber’s eye, and saw that it was upon him. When the Doctor had said these words, “Gentlemen, we will resume our studies at seven tomorrow,” the pupils bowed again, and went to bed.

In the confidence of their own room upstairs, Briggs said his head ached ready to split, and that he should wish himself dead if it wasn’t for his mother, and a blackbird he had at home. Tozer didn’t say much, but he sighed a good deal, and told Paul to look out, for his turn would come to-morrow. After uttering those prophetic words, he undressed himself moodily, and got into bed. Briggs was in his bed too, and Paul in his bed too, before the weak-eyed young man appeared to take away the candle, when he wished them good-night and pleasant dreams. But his benevolent wishes were in vain, as far as Briggs and Tozer were concerned; for Paul, who lay awake for a long while, and often woke afterwards, found that Briggs was ridden by his lesson as a nightmare: and that Tozer, whose mind was affected in his sleep by similar causes, in a minor degree talked unknown tongues, or scraps of Greek and Latin—it was all one to Paul—which, in the silence of night, had an inexpressibly wicked and guilty effect.

Paul had sunk into a sweet sleep, and dreamed that he was walking hand in hand with Florence through beautiful gardens, when they came to a large sunflower which suddenly expanded itself into a gong, and began to sound. Opening his eyes, he found that it was a dark, windy morning, with a drizzling rain: and that the real gong was giving dreadful note of preparation, down in the hall.

So he got up directly, and found Briggs with hardly any eyes, for nightmare and grief had made his face puffy, putting his boots on: while Tozer stood shivering and rubbing his shoulders in a very bad humour. Poor Paul couldn’t dress himself easily, not being used to it, and asked them if they would have the goodness to tie some strings for him; but as Briggs merely said “Bother!” and Tozer, “Oh yes!” he went down when he was otherwise ready, to the next storey, where he saw a pretty young woman in leather gloves, cleaning a stove. The young woman seemed surprised at his appearance, and asked him where his mother was. When Paul told her she was dead, she took her gloves off, and did what he wanted; and furthermore rubbed his hands to warm them; and gave him a kiss; and told him whenever he wanted anything of that sort—meaning in the dressing way—to ask for “Melia; which Paul, thanking her very much, said he certainly would. He then proceeded softly on his journey downstairs, towards the room in which the young gentlemen resumed their studies, when, passing by a door that stood ajar, a voice from within cried, “Is that Dombey?” On Paul replying, “Yes, Ma’am:” for he knew the voice to be Miss Blimber’s: Miss Blimber said, “Come in, Dombey.” And in he went.

Miss Blimber presented exactly the appearance she had presented yesterday, except that she wore a shawl. Her little light curls were as crisp as ever, and she had already her spectacles on, which made Paul wonder whether she went to bed in them. She had a cool little sitting-room of her own up there, with some books in it, and no fire But Miss Blimber was never cold, and never sleepy.

Now, Dombey,” said Miss Blimber, “I am going out for a constitutional.”

Paul wondered what that was, and why she didn’t send the footman out to get it in such unfavourable weather. But he made no observation on the subject: his attention being devoted to a little pile of new books, on which Miss Blimber appeared to have been recently engaged.

“These are yours, Dombey,” said Miss Blimber.

“All of ’em, Ma’am?” said Paul.

“Yes,” returned Miss Blimber; “and Mr Feeder will look you out some more very soon, if you are as studious as I expect you will be, Dombey.”

“Thank you, Ma’am,” said Paul.

“I am going out for a constitutional,” resumed Miss Blimber; “and while I am gone, that is to say in the interval between this and breakfast, Dombey, I wish you to read over what I have marked in these books, and to tell me if you quite understand what you have got to learn. Don’t lose time, Dombey, for you have none to spare, but take them downstairs, and begin directly.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” answered Paul.

There were so many of them, that although Paul put one hand under the bottom book and his other hand and his chin on the top book, and hugged them all closely, the middle book slipped out before he reached the door, and then they all tumbled down on the floor. Miss Blimber said, “Oh, Dombey, Dombey, this is really very careless!” and piled them up afresh for him; and this time, by dint of balancing them with great nicety, Paul got out of the room, and down a few stairs before two of them escaped again. But he held the rest so tight, that he only left one more on the first floor, and one in the passage; and when he had got the main body down into the schoolroom, he set off upstairs again to collect the stragglers. Having at last amassed the whole library, and climbed into his place, he fell to work, encouraged by a remark from Tozer to the effect that he “was in for it now;” which was the only interruption he received till breakfast time. At that meal, for which he had no appetite, everything was quite as solemn and genteel as at the others; and when it was finished, he followed Miss Blimber upstairs.

“Now, Dombey,” said Miss Blimber. “How have you got on with those books?”

They comprised a little English, and a deal of Latin—names of things, declensions of articles and substantives, exercises thereon, and preliminary rules—a trifle of orthography, a glance at ancient history, a wink or two at modern ditto, a few tables, two or three weights and measures, and a little general information. When poor Paul had spelt out number two, he found he had no idea of number one; fragments whereof afterwards obtruded themselves into number three, which slided into number four, which grafted itself on to number two. So that whether twenty Romuluses made a Remus, or hic haec hoc was troy weight, or a verb always agreed with an ancient Briton, or three times four was Taurus a bull, were open questions with him.

“Oh, Dombey, Dombey!” said Miss Blimber, “this is very shocking.”

“If you please,” said Paul, “I think if I might sometimes talk a little to old Glubb, I should be able to do better.”

“Nonsense, Dombey,” said Miss Blimber. “I couldn’t hear of it. This is not the place for Glubbs of any kind. You must take the books down, I suppose, Dombey, one by one, and perfect yourself in the day’s instalment of subject A, before you turn at all to subject B. I am sorry to say, Dombey, that your education appears to have been very much neglected.”

“So Papa says,” returned Paul; “but I told you—I have been a weak child. Florence knows I have. So does Wickam.”

“Who is Wickam?” asked Miss Blimber.

“She has been my nurse,” Paul answered.

“I must beg you not to mention Wickam to me, then,” said Miss Blimber. “I couldn’t allow it”.

“You asked me who she was,” said Paul.

“Very well,” returned Miss Blimber; “but this is all very different indeed from anything of that sort, Dombey, and I couldn’t think of permitting it. As to having been weak, you must begin to be strong. And now take away the top book, if you please, Dombey, and return when you are master of the theme.”

Miss Blimber expressed her opinions on the subject of Paul’s uninstructed state with a gloomy delight, as if she had expected this result, and were glad to find that they must be in constant communication. Paul withdrew with the top task, as he was told, and laboured away at it, down below: sometimes remembering every word of it, and sometimes forgetting it all, and everything else besides: until at last he ventured upstairs again to repeat the lesson, when it was nearly all driven out of his head before he began, by Miss Blimber’s shutting up the book, and saying, “Go on, Dombey!” a proceeding so suggestive of the knowledge inside of her, that Paul looked upon the young lady with consternation, as a kind of learned Guy Fawkes, or artificial Bogle, stuffed full of scholastic straw.

He acquitted himself very well, nevertheless; and Miss Blimber, commending him as giving promise of getting on fast, immediately provided him with subject B; from which he passed to C, and even D before dinner. It was hard work, resuming his studies, soon after dinner; and he felt giddy and confused and drowsy and dull. But all the other young gentlemen had similar sensations, and were obliged to resume their studies too, if there were any comfort in that. It was a wonder that the great clock in the hall, instead of being constant to its first inquiry, never said, “Gentlemen, we will now resume our studies,” for that phrase was often enough repeated in its neighbourhood. The studies went round like a mighty wheel, and the young gentlemen were always stretched upon it.

After tea there were exercises again, and preparations for next day by candlelight. And in due course there was bed; where, but for that resumption of the studies which took place in dreams, were rest and sweet forgetfulness.

Oh Saturdays! Oh happy Saturdays, when Florence always came at noon, and never would, in any weather, stay away, though Mrs Pipchin snarled and growled, and worried her bitterly. Those Saturdays were Sabbaths for at least two little Christians among all the Jews, and did the holy Sabbath work of strengthening and knitting up a brother’s and a sister’s love.

Not even Sunday nights—the heavy Sunday nights, whose shadow darkened the first waking burst of light on Sunday mornings—could mar those precious Saturdays. Whether it was the great sea-shore, where they sat, and strolled together; or whether it was only Mrs Pipchin’s dull back room, in which she sang to him so softly, with his drowsy head upon her arm; Paul never cared. It was Florence. That was all he thought of. So, on Sunday nights, when the Doctor’s dark door stood agape to swallow him up for another week, the time was come for taking leave of Florence; no one else.

Mrs Wickam had been drafted home to the house in town, and Miss Nipper, now a smart young woman, had come down. To many a single combat with Mrs Pipchin, did Miss Nipper gallantly devote herself, and if ever Mrs Pipchin in all her life had found her match, she had found it now. Miss Nipper threw away the scabbard the first morning she arose in Mrs Pipchin’s house. She asked and gave no quarter. She said it must be war, and war it was; and Mrs Pipchin lived from that time in the midst of surprises, harassings, and defiances, and skirmishing attacks that came bouncing in upon her from the passage, even in unguarded moments of chops, and carried desolation to her very toast.

Miss Nipper had returned one Sunday night with Florence, from walking back with Paul to the Doctor’s, when Florence took from her bosom a little piece of paper, on which she had pencilled down some words.

“See here, Susan,” she said. “These are the names of the little books that Paul brings home to do those long exercises with, when he is so tired. I copied them last night while he was writing.”

“Don’t show ’em to me, Miss Floy, if you please,” returned Nipper, “I’d as soon see Mrs Pipchin.”

“I want you to buy them for me, Susan, if you will, tomorrow morning. I have money enough,” said Florence.

“Why, goodness gracious me, Miss Floy,” returned Miss Nipper, “how can you talk like that, when you have books upon books already, and masterses and mississes a teaching of you everything continual, though my belief is that your Pa, Miss Dombey, never would have learnt you nothing, never would have thought of it, unless you’d asked him—when he couldn’t well refuse; but giving consent when asked, and offering when unasked, Miss, is quite two things; I may not have my objections to a young man’s keeping company with me, and when he puts the question, may say ‘yes,’ but that’s not saying ‘would you be so kind as like me.’”

“But you can buy me the books, Susan; and you will, when you know why I want them.”

“Well, Miss, and why do you want ’em?” replied Nipper; adding, in a lower voice, “If it was to fling at Mrs Pipchin’s head, I’d buy a cart-load.”

“Paul has a great deal too much to do, Susan,” said Florence, “I am sure of it.”

“And well you may be, Miss,” returned her maid, “and make your mind quite easy that the willing dear is worked and worked away. If those is Latin legs,” exclaimed Miss Nipper, with strong feeling—in allusion to Paul’s; “give me English ones.”

“I am afraid he feels lonely and lost at Doctor Blimber’s, Susan,” pursued Florence, turning away her face.

“Ah,” said Miss Nipper, with great sharpness, “Oh, them ‘Blimbers’”

“Don’t blame anyone,” said Florence. “It’s a mistake.”

“I say nothing about blame, Miss,” cried Miss Nipper, “for I know that you object, but I may wish, Miss, that the family was set to work to make new roads, and that Miss Blimber went in front and had the pickaxe.”

After this speech, Miss Nipper, who was perfectly serious, wiped her eyes.

“I think I could perhaps give Paul some help, Susan, if I had these books,” said Florence, “and make the coming week a little easier to him. At least I want to try. So buy them for me, dear, and I will never forget how kind it was of you to do it!”

It must have been a harder heart than Susan Nipper’s that could have rejected the little purse Florence held out with these words, or the gentle look of entreaty with which she seconded her petition. Susan put the purse in her pocket without reply, and trotted out at once upon her errand.

The books were not easy to procure; and the answer at several shops was, either that they were just out of them, or that they never kept them, or that they had had a great many last month, or that they expected a great many next week But Susan was not easily baffled in such an enterprise; and having entrapped a white-haired youth, in a black calico apron, from a library where she was known, to accompany her in her quest, she led him such a life in going up and down, that he exerted himself to the utmost, if it were only to get rid of her; and finally enabled her to return home in triumph.

With these treasures then, after her own daily lessons were over, Florence sat down at night to track Paul’s footsteps through the thorny ways of learning; and being possessed of a naturally quick and sound capacity, and taught by that most wonderful of masters, love, it was not long before she gained upon Paul’s heels, and caught and passed him.

Not a word of this was breathed to Mrs Pipchin: but many a night when they were all in bed, and when Miss Nipper, with her hair in papers and herself asleep in some uncomfortable attitude, reposed unconscious by her side; and when the chinking ashes in the grate were cold and grey; and when the candles were burnt down and guttering out;—Florence tried so hard to be a substitute for one small Dombey, that her fortitude and perseverance might have almost won her a free right to bear the name herself.

And high was her reward, when one Saturday evening, as little Paul was sitting down as usual to “resume his studies,” she sat down by his side, and showed him all that was so rough, made smooth, and all that was so dark, made clear and plain, before him. It was nothing but a startled look in Paul’s wan face—a flush—a smile—and then a close embrace—but God knows how her heart leapt up at this rich payment for her trouble.

“Oh, Floy!” cried her brother, “how I love you! How I love you, Floy!”

“And I you, dear!”

“Oh! I am sure of that, Floy.”

He said no more about it, but all that evening sat close by her, very quiet; and in the night he called out from his little room within hers, three or four times, that he loved her.

Regularly, after that, Florence was prepared to sit down with Paul on Saturday night, and patiently assist him through so much as they could anticipate together of his next week’s work. The cheering thought that he was labouring on where Florence had just toiled before him, would, of itself, have been a stimulant to Paul in the perpetual resumption of his studies; but coupled with the actual lightening of his load, consequent on this assistance, it saved him, possibly, from sinking underneath the burden which the fair Cornelia Blimber piled upon his back.

It was not that Miss Blimber meant to be too hard upon him, or that Doctor Blimber meant to bear too heavily on the young gentlemen in general. Cornelia merely held the faith in which she had been bred; and the Doctor, in some partial confusion of his ideas, regarded the young gentlemen as if they were all Doctors, and were born grown up. Comforted by the applause of the young gentlemen’s nearest relations, and urged on by their blind vanity and ill-considered haste, it would have been strange if Doctor Blimber had discovered his mistake, or trimmed his swelling sails to any other tack.

Thus in the case of Paul. When Doctor Blimber said he made great progress and was naturally clever, Mr Dombey was more bent than ever on his being forced and crammed. In the case of Briggs, when Doctor Blimber reported that he did not make great progress yet, and was not naturally clever, Briggs senior was inexorable in the same purpose. In short, however high and false the temperature at which the Doctor kept his hothouse, the owners of the plants were always ready to lend a helping hand at the bellows, and to stir the fire.

Such spirits as he had in the outset, Paul soon lost of course. But he retained all that was strange, and old, and thoughtful in his character: and under circumstances so favourable to the development of those tendencies, became even more strange, and old, and thoughtful, than before.

The only difference was, that he kept his character to himself. He grew more thoughtful and reserved, every day; and had no such curiosity in any living member of the Doctor’s household, as he had had in Mrs Pipchin. He loved to be alone; and in those short intervals when he was not occupied with his books, liked nothing so well as wandering about the house by himself, or sitting on the stairs, listening to the great clock in the hall. He was intimate with all the paperhanging in the house; saw things that no one else saw in the patterns; found out miniature tigers and lions running up the bedroom walls, and squinting faces leering in the squares and diamonds of the floor-cloth.

The solitary child lived on, surrounded by this arabesque work of his musing fancy, and no one understood him. Mrs Blimber thought him “odd,” and sometimes the servants said among themselves that little Dombey “moped;” but that was all.

Unless young Toots had some idea on the subject, to the expression of which he was wholly unequal. Ideas, like ghosts (according to the common notion of ghosts), must be spoken to a little before they will explain themselves; and Toots had long left off asking any questions of his own mind. Some mist there may have been, issuing from that leaden casket, his cranium, which, if it could have taken shape and form, would have become a genie; but it could not; and it only so far followed the example of the smoke in the Arabian story, as to roll out in a thick cloud, and there hang and hover. But it left a little figure visible upon a lonely shore, and Toots was always staring at it.

“How are you?” he would say to Paul, fifty times a day. “Quite well, Sir, thank you,” Paul would answer. “Shake hands,” would be Toots’s next advance.

Which Paul, of course, would immediately do. Mr Toots generally said again, after a long interval of staring and hard breathing, “How are you?” To which Paul again replied, “Quite well, Sir, thank you.”

One evening Mr Toots was sitting at his desk, oppressed by correspondence, when a great purpose seemed to flash upon him. He laid down his pen, and went off to seek Paul, whom he found at last, after a long search, looking through the window of his little bedroom.

“I say!” cried Toots, speaking the moment he entered the room, lest he should forget it; “what do you think about?”

“Oh! I think about a great many things,” replied Paul.

“Do you, though?” said Toots, appearing to consider that fact in itself surprising. “If you had to die,” said Paul, looking up into his face—Mr Toots started, and seemed much disturbed.

“Don’t you think you would rather die on a moonlight night, when the sky was quite clear, and the wind blowing, as it did last night?”

Mr Toots said, looking doubtfully at Paul, and shaking his head, that he didn’t know about that.

“Not blowing, at least,” said Paul, “but sounding in the air like the sea sounds in the shells. It was a beautiful night. When I had listened to the water for a long time, I got up and looked out. There was a boat over there, in the full light of the moon; a boat with a sail.”

The child looked at him so steadfastly, and spoke so earnestly, that Mr Toots, feeling himself called upon to say something about this boat, said, “Smugglers.” But with an impartial remembrance of there being two sides to every question, he added, “or Preventive.”

“A boat with a sail,” repeated Paul, “in the full light of the moon. The sail like an arm, all silver. It went away into the distance, and what do you think it seemed to do as it moved with the waves?”

“Pitch,” said Mr Toots.

“It seemed to beckon,” said the child, “to beckon me to come!—There she is! There she is!”

Toots was almost beside himself with dismay at this sudden exclamation, after what had gone before, and cried “Who?”

“My sister Florence!” cried Paul, “looking up here, and waving her hand. She sees me—she sees me! Good-night, dear, good-night, good-night.”

His quick transition to a state of unbounded pleasure, as he stood at his window, kissing and clapping his hands: and the way in which the light retreated from his features as she passed out of his view, and left a patient melancholy on the little face: were too remarkable wholly to escape even Toots’s notice. Their interview being interrupted at this moment by a visit from Mrs Pipchin, who usually brought her black skirts to bear upon Paul just before dusk, once or twice a week, Toots had no opportunity of improving the occasion: but it left so marked an impression on his mind that he twice returned, after having exchanged the usual salutations, to ask Mrs Pipchin how she did. This the irascible old lady conceived to be a deeply devised and long-meditated insult, originating in the diabolical invention of the weak-eyed young man downstairs, against whom she accordingly lodged a formal complaint with Doctor Blimber that very night; who mentioned to the young man that if he ever did it again, he should be obliged to part with him.

The evenings being longer now, Paul stole up to his window every evening to look out for Florence. She always passed and repassed at a certain time, until she saw him; and their mutual recognition was a gleam of sunshine in Paul’s daily life. Often after dark, one other figure walked alone before the Doctor’s house. He rarely joined them on the Saturdays now. He could not bear it. He would rather come unrecognised, and look up at the windows where his son was qualifying for a man; and wait, and watch, and plan, and hope.

Oh! could he but have seen, or seen as others did, the slight spare boy above, watching the waves and clouds at twilight, with his earnest eyes, and breasting the window of his solitary cage when birds flew by, as if he would have emulated them, and soared away!

XIII. Shipping Intelligence and Office Business

Mr Dombey’s offices were in a court where there was an old-established stall of choice fruit at the corner: where perambulating merchants, of both sexes, offered for sale at any time between the hours of ten and five, slippers, pocket-books, sponges, dogs’ collars, and Windsor soap; and sometimes a pointer or an oil-painting.

The pointer always came that way, with a view to the Stock Exchange, where a sporting taste (originating generally in bets of new hats) is much in vogue. The other commodities were addressed to the general public; but they were never offered by the vendors to Mr Dombey. When he appeared, the dealers in those wares fell off respectfully. The principal slipper and dogs’ collar man—who considered himself a public character, and whose portrait was screwed on to an artist’s door in Cheapside—threw up his forefinger to the brim of his hat as Mr Dombey went by. The ticket-porter, if he were not absent on a job, always ran officiously before, to open Mr Dombey’s office door as wide as possible, and hold it open, with his hat off, while he entered.

The clerks within were not a whit behind-hand in their demonstrations of respect. A solemn hush prevailed, as Mr Dombey passed through the outer office. The wit of the Counting-House became in a moment as mute as the row of leathern fire-buckets hanging up behind him. Such vapid and flat daylight as filtered through the ground-glass windows and skylights, leaving a black sediment upon the panes, showed the books and papers, and the figures bending over them, enveloped in a studious gloom, and as much abstracted in appearance, from the world without, as if they were assembled at the bottom of the sea; while a mouldy little strong room in the obscure perspective, where a shaded lamp was always burning, might have represented the cavern of some ocean monster, looking on with a red eye at these mysteries of the deep.

When Perch the messenger, whose place was on a little bracket, like a timepiece, saw Mr Dombey come in—or rather when he felt that he was coming, for he had usually an instinctive sense of his approach—he hurried into Mr Dombey’s room, stirred the fire, carried fresh coals from the bowels of the coal-box, hung the newspaper to air upon the fender, put the chair ready, and the screen in its place, and was round upon his heel on the instant of Mr Dombey’s entrance, to take his great-coat and hat, and hang them up. Then Perch took the newspaper, and gave it a turn or two in his hands before the fire, and laid it, deferentially, at Mr Dombey’s elbow. And so little objection had Perch to being deferential in the last degree, that if he might have laid himself at Mr Dombey’s feet, or might have called him by some such title as used to be bestowed upon the Caliph Haroun Alraschid, he would have been all the better pleased.

As this honour would have been an innovation and an experiment, Perch was fain to content himself by expressing as well as he could, in his manner, You are the light of my Eyes. You are the Breath of my Soul. You are the commander of the Faithful Perch! With this imperfect happiness to cheer him, he would shut the door softly, walk away on tiptoe, and leave his great chief to be stared at, through a dome-shaped window in the leads, by ugly chimney-pots and backs of houses, and especially by the bold window of a hair-cutting saloon on a first floor, where a waxen effigy, bald as a Mussulman in the morning, and covered, after eleven o’clock in the day, with luxuriant hair and whiskers in the latest Christian fashion, showed him the wrong side of its head for ever.

Between Mr Dombey and the common world, as it was accessible through the medium of the outer office—to which Mr Dombey’s presence in his own room may be said to have struck like damp, or cold air—there were two degrees of descent. Mr Carker in his own office was the first step; Mr Morfin, in his own office, was the second. Each of these gentlemen occupied a little chamber like a bath-room, opening from the passage outside Mr Dombey’s door. Mr Carker, as Grand Vizier, inhabited the room that was nearest to the Sultan. Mr Morfin, as an officer of inferior state, inhabited the room that was nearest to the clerks.

The gentleman last mentioned was a cheerful-looking, hazel-eyed elderly bachelor: gravely attired, as to his upper man, in black; and as to his legs, in pepper-and-salt colour. His dark hair was just touched here and there with specks of gray, as though the tread of Time had splashed it; and his whiskers were already white. He had a mighty respect for Mr Dombey, and rendered him due homage; but as he was of a genial temper himself, and never wholly at his ease in that stately presence, he was disquieted by no jealousy of the many conferences enjoyed by Mr Carker, and felt a secret satisfaction in having duties to discharge, which rarely exposed him to be singled out for such distinction. He was a great musical amateur in his way—after business; and had a paternal affection for his violoncello, which was once in every week transported from Islington, his place of abode, to a certain club-room hard by the Bank, where quartettes of the most tormenting and excruciating nature were executed every Wednesday evening by a private party.

Mr Carker was a gentleman thirty-eight or forty years old, of a florid complexion, and with two unbroken rows of glistening teeth, whose regularity and whiteness were quite distressing. It was impossible to escape the observation of them, for he showed them whenever he spoke; and bore so wide a smile upon his countenance (a smile, however, very rarely, indeed, extending beyond his mouth), that there was something in it like the snarl of a cat. He affected a stiff white cravat, after the example of his principal, and was always closely buttoned up and tightly dressed. His manner towards Mr Dombey was deeply conceived and perfectly expressed. He was familiar with him, in the very extremity of his sense of the distance between them. “Mr Dombey, to a man in your position from a man in mine, there is no show of subservience compatible with the transaction of business between us, that I should think sufficient. I frankly tell you, Sir, I give it up altogether. I feel that I could not satisfy my own mind; and Heaven knows, Mr Dombey, you can afford to dispense with the endeavour.” If he had carried these words about with him printed on a placard, and had constantly offered it to Mr Dombey’s perusal on the breast of his coat, he could not have been more explicit than he was.

This was Carker the Manager. Mr Carker the Junior, Walter’s friend, was his brother; two or three years older than he, but widely removed in station. The younger brother’s post was on the top of the official ladder; the elder brother’s at the bottom. The elder brother never gained a stave, or raised his foot to mount one. Young men passed above his head, and rose and rose; but he was always at the bottom. He was quite resigned to occupy that low condition: never complained of it: and certainly never hoped to escape from it.

“How do you do this morning?” said Mr Carker the Manager, entering Mr Dombey’s room soon after his arrival one day: with a bundle of papers in his hand.

“How do you do, Carker?” said Mr Dombey.

“Coolish!” observed Carker, stirring the fire.

“Rather,” said Mr Dombey.

“Any news of the young gentleman who is so important to us all?” asked Carker, with his whole regiment of teeth on parade.

“Yes—not direct news—I hear he’s very well,” said Mr Dombey. Who had come from Brighton over-night. But no one knew It.

“Very well, and becoming a great scholar, no doubt?” observed the Manager.

“I hope so,” returned Mr Dombey.

“Egad!” said Mr Carker, shaking his head, “Time flies!”

“I think so, sometimes,” returned Mr Dombey, glancing at his newspaper.

“Oh! You! You have no reason to think so,” observed Carker. “One who sits on such an elevation as yours, and can sit there, unmoved, in all seasons—hasn’t much reason to know anything about the flight of time. It’s men like myself, who are low down and are not superior in circumstances, and who inherit new masters in the course of Time, that have cause to look about us. I shall have a rising sun to worship, soon.”

“Time enough, time enough, Carker!” said Mr Dombey, rising from his chair, and standing with his back to the fire. “Have you anything there for me?”

“I don’t know that I need trouble you,” returned Carker, turning over the papers in his hand. “You have a committee today at three, you know.”

“And one at three, three-quarters,” added Mr Dombey.

“Catch you forgetting anything!” exclaimed Carker, still turning over his papers. “If Mr Paul inherits your memory, he’ll be a troublesome customer in the House. One of you is enough.”

“You have an accurate memory of your own,” said Mr Dombey.

“Oh! I!” returned the manager. “It’s the only capital of a man like me.”

Mr Dombey did not look less pompous or at all displeased, as he stood leaning against the chimney-piece, surveying his (of course unconscious) clerk, from head to foot. The stiffness and nicety of Mr Carker’s dress, and a certain arrogance of manner, either natural to him or imitated from a pattern not far off, gave great additional effect to his humility. He seemed a man who would contend against the power that vanquished him, if he could, but who was utterly borne down by the greatness and superiority of Mr Dombey.

“Is Morfin here?” asked Mr Dombey after a short pause, during which Mr Carker had been fluttering his papers, and muttering little abstracts of their contents to himself.

“Morfin’s here,” he answered, looking up with his widest and almost sudden smile; “humming musical recollections—of his last night’s quartette party, I suppose—through the walls between us, and driving me half mad. I wish he’d make a bonfire of his violoncello, and burn his music-books in it.”

“You respect nobody, Carker, I think,” said Mr Dombey.

“No?” inquired Carker, with another wide and most feline show of his teeth. “Well! Not many people, I believe. I wouldn’t answer perhaps,” he murmured, as if he were only thinking it, “for more than one.”

A dangerous quality, if real; and a not less dangerous one, if feigned. But Mr Dombey hardly seemed to think so, as he still stood with his back to the fire, drawn up to his full height, and looking at his head-clerk with a dignified composure, in which there seemed to lurk a stronger latent sense of power than usual.

“Talking of Morfin,” resumed Mr Carker, taking out one paper from the rest, “he reports a junior dead in the agency at Barbados, and proposes to reserve a passage in the Son and Heir—she’ll sail in a month or so—for the successor. You don’t care who goes, I suppose? We have nobody of that sort here.”

Mr Dombey shook his head with supreme indifference.

“It’s no very precious appointment,” observed Mr Carker, taking up a pen, with which to endorse a memorandum on the back of the paper. “I hope he may bestow it on some orphan nephew of a musical friend. It may perhaps stop his fiddle-playing, if he has a gift that way. Who’s that? Come in!”

“I beg your pardon, Mr Carker. I didn’t know you were here, Sir,” answered Walter; appearing with some letters in his hand, unopened, and newly arrived. “Mr Carker the junior, Sir—”

At the mention of this name, Mr Carker the Manager was or affected to be, touched to the quick with shame and humiliation. He cast his eyes full on Mr Dombey with an altered and apologetic look, abased them on the ground, and remained for a moment without speaking.

“I thought, Sir,” he said suddenly and angrily, turning on Walter, “that you had been before requested not to drag Mr Carker the Junior into your conversation.”

“I beg your pardon,” returned Walter. “I was only going to say that Mr Carker the Junior had told me he believed you were gone out, or I should not have knocked at the door when you were engaged with Mr Dombey. These are letters for Mr Dombey, Sir.”

“Very well, Sir,” returned Mr Carker the Manager, plucking them sharply from his hand. “Go about your business.”

But in taking them with so little ceremony, Mr Carker dropped one on the floor, and did not see what he had done; neither did Mr Dombey observe the letter lying near his feet. Walter hesitated for a moment, thinking that one or other of them would notice it; but finding that neither did, he stopped, came back, picked it up, and laid it himself on Mr Dombey’s desk. The letters were post-letters; and it happened that the one in question was Mrs Pipchin’s regular report, directed as usual—for Mrs Pipchin was but an indifferent penwoman—by Florence. Mr Dombey, having his attention silently called to this letter by Walter, started, and looked fiercely at him, as if he believed that he had purposely selected it from all the rest.

“You can leave the room, Sir!” said Mr Dombey, haughtily.

He crushed the letter in his hand; and having watched Walter out at the door, put it in his pocket without breaking the seal.

“These continual references to Mr Carker the Junior,” Mr Carker the Manager began, as soon as they were alone, “are, to a man in my position, uttered before one in yours, so unspeakably distressing—”

“Nonsense, Carker,” Mr Dombey interrupted. “You are too sensitive.”

“I am sensitive,” he returned. “If one in your position could by any possibility imagine yourself in my place: which you cannot: you would be so too.”

As Mr Dombey’s thoughts were evidently pursuing some other subject, his discreet ally broke off here, and stood with his teeth ready to present to him, when he should look up.

“You want somebody to send to the West Indies, you were saying,” observed Mr Dombey, hurriedly.

“Yes,” replied Carker.

“Send young Gay.”

“Good, very good indeed. Nothing easier,” said Mr Carker, without any show of surprise, and taking up the pen to re-endorse the letter, as coolly as he had done before. “‘Send young Gay.’”

“Call him back,” said Mr Dombey.

Mr Carker was quick to do so, and Walter was quick to return.

“Gay,” said Mr Dombey, turning a little to look at him over his shoulder. “Here is a—”

“An opening,” said Mr Carker, with his mouth stretched to the utmost.

“In the West Indies. At Barbados. I am going to send you,” said Mr Dombey, scorning to embellish the bare truth, “to fill a junior situation in the counting-house at Barbados. Let your Uncle know from me, that I have chosen you to go to the West Indies.”

Walter’s breath was so completely taken away by his astonishment, that he could hardly find enough for the repetition of the words “West Indies.”

“Somebody must go,” said Mr Dombey, “and you are young and healthy, and your Uncle’s circumstances are not good. Tell your Uncle that you are appointed. You will not go yet. There will be an interval of a month—or two perhaps.”

“Shall I remain there, Sir?” inquired Walter.

“Will you remain there, Sir!” repeated Mr Dombey, turning a little more round towards him. “What do you mean? What does he mean, Carker?”

“Live there, Sir,” faltered Walter.

“Certainly,” returned Mr Dombey.

Walter bowed.

“That’s all,” said Mr Dombey, resuming his letters. “You will explain to him in good time about the usual outfit and so forth, Carker, of course. He needn’t wait, Carker.”

“You needn’t wait, Gay,” observed Mr Carker: bare to the gums.

“Unless,” said Mr Dombey, stopping in his reading without looking off the letter, and seeming to listen. “Unless he has anything to say.”

“No, Sir,” returned Walter, agitated and confused, and almost stunned, as an infinite variety of pictures presented themselves to his mind; among which Captain Cuttle, in his glazed hat, transfixed with astonishment at Mrs MacStinger’s, and his uncle bemoaning his loss in the little back parlour, held prominent places. “I hardly know—I—I am much obliged, Sir.”

“He needn’t wait, Carker,” said Mr Dombey.

And as Mr Carker again echoed the words, and also collected his papers as if he were going away too, Walter felt that his lingering any longer would be an unpardonable intrusion—especially as he had nothing to say—and therefore walked out quite confounded.

Going along the passage, with the mingled consciousness and helplessness of a dream, he heard Mr Dombey’s door shut again, as Mr Carker came out: and immediately afterwards that gentleman called to him.

“Bring your friend Mr Carker the Junior to my room, Sir, if you please.”

Walter went to the outer office and apprised Mr Carker the Junior of his errand, who accordingly came out from behind a partition where he sat alone in one corner, and returned with him to the room of Mr Carker the Manager.

That gentleman was standing with his back to the fire, and his hands under his coat-tails, looking over his white cravat, as unpromisingly as Mr Dombey himself could have looked. He received them without any change in his attitude or softening of his harsh and black expression: merely signing to Walter to close the door.

“John Carker,” said the Manager, when this was done, turning suddenly upon his brother, with his two rows of teeth bristling as if he would have bitten him, “what is the league between you and this young man, in virtue of which I am haunted and hunted by the mention of your name? Is it not enough for you, John Carker, that I am your near relation, and can’t detach myself from that—”

“Say disgrace, James,” interposed the other in a low voice, finding that he stammered for a word. “You mean it, and have reason, say disgrace.”

“From that disgrace,” assented his brother with keen emphasis, “but is the fact to be blurted out and trumpeted, and proclaimed continually in the presence of the very House! In moments of confidence too? Do you think your name is calculated to harmonise in this place with trust and confidence, John Carker?”

“No,” returned the other. “No, James. God knows I have no such thought.”

“What is your thought, then?” said his brother, “and why do you thrust yourself in my way? Haven’t you injured me enough already?”

“I have never injured you, James, wilfully.”

“You are my brother,” said the Manager. “That’s injury enough.”

“I wish I could undo it, James.”

“I wish you could and would.”

During this conversation, Walter had looked from one brother to the other, with pain and amazement. He who was the Senior in years, and Junior in the House, stood, with his eyes cast upon the ground, and his head bowed, humbly listening to the reproaches of the other. Though these were rendered very bitter by the tone and look with which they were accompanied, and by the presence of Walter whom they so much surprised and shocked, he entered no other protest against them than by slightly raising his right hand in a deprecatory manner, as if he would have said, “Spare me!” So, had they been blows, and he a brave man, under strong constraint, and weakened by bodily suffering, he might have stood before the executioner.

Generous and quick in all his emotions, and regarding himself as the innocent occasion of these taunts, Walter now struck in, with all the earnestness he felt.

“Mr Carker,” he said, addressing himself to the Manager. “Indeed, indeed, this is my fault solely. In a kind of heedlessness, for which I cannot blame myself enough, I have, I have no doubt, mentioned Mr Carker the Junior much oftener than was necessary; and have allowed his name sometimes to slip through my lips, when it was against your expressed wish. But it has been my own mistake, Sir. We have never exchanged one word upon the subject—very few, indeed, on any subject. And it has not been,” added Walter, after a moment’s pause, “all heedlessness on my part, Sir; for I have felt an interest in Mr Carker ever since I have been here, and have hardly been able to help speaking of him sometimes, when I have thought of him so much!”

Walter said this from his soul, and with the very breath of honour. For he looked upon the bowed head, and the downcast eyes, and upraised hand, and thought, “I have felt it; and why should I not avow it in behalf of this unfriended, broken man!”

Mr Carker the Manager looked at him, as he spoke, and when he had finished speaking, with a smile that seemed to divide his face into two parts.

“You are an excitable youth, Gay,” he said; “and should endeavour to cool down a little now, for it would be unwise to encourage feverish predispositions. Be as cool as you can, Gay. Be as cool as you can. You might have asked Mr John Carker himself (if you have not done so) whether he claims to be, or is, an object of such strong interest.”

“James, do me justice,” said his brother. “I have claimed nothing; and I claim nothing. Believe me, on my—”

“Honour?” said his brother, with another smile, as he warmed himself before the fire.

“On my Me—on my fallen life!” returned the other, in the same low voice, but with a deeper stress on his words than he had yet seemed capable of giving them. “Believe me, I have held myself aloof, and kept alone. This has been unsought by me. I have avoided him and everyone.

“Indeed, you have avoided me, Mr Carker,” said Walter, with the tears rising to his eyes; so true was his compassion. “I know it, to my disappointment and regret. When I first came here, and ever since, I am sure I have tried to be as much your friend, as one of my age could presume to be; but it has been of no use.

“And observe,” said the Manager, taking him up quickly, “it will be of still less use, Gay, if you persist in forcing Mr John Carker’s name on people’s attention. That is not the way to befriend Mr John Carker. Ask him if he thinks it is.”

“It is no service to me,” said the brother. “It only leads to such a conversation as the present, which I need not say I could have well spared. No one can be a better friend to me:” he spoke here very distinctly, as if he would impress it upon Walter: “than in forgetting me, and leaving me to go my way, unquestioned and unnoticed.”

“Your memory not being retentive, Gay, of what you are told by others,” said Mr Carker the Manager, warming himself with great and increased satisfaction, “I thought it well that you should be told this from the best authority,” nodding towards his brother. “You are not likely to forget it now, I hope. That’s all, Gay. You can go.”

Walter passed out at the door, and was about to close it after him, when, hearing the voices of the brothers again, and also the mention of his own name, he stood irresolutely, with his hand upon the lock, and the door ajar, uncertain whether to return or go away. In this position he could not help overhearing what followed.

“Think of me more leniently, if you can, James,” said John Carker, “when I tell you I have had—how could I help having, with my history, written here”—striking himself upon the breast—“my whole heart awakened by my observation of that boy, Walter Gay. I saw in him when he first came here, almost my other self.”

“Your other self!” repeated the Manager, disdainfully.

“Not as I am, but as I was when I first came here too; as sanguine, giddy, youthful, inexperienced; flushed with the same restless and adventurous fancies; and full of the same qualities, fraught with the same capacity of leading on to good or evil.”

“I hope not,” said his brother, with some hidden and sarcastic meaning in his tone.

“You strike me sharply; and your hand is steady, and your thrust is very deep,” returned the other, speaking (or so Walter thought) as if some cruel weapon actually stabbed him as he spoke. “I imagined all this when he was a boy. I believed it. It was a truth to me. I saw him lightly walking on the edge of an unseen gulf where so many others walk with equal gaiety, and from which—”

“The old excuse,” interrupted his brother, as he stirred the fire. “So many. Go on. Say, so many fall.”

“From which ONE traveller fell,” returned the other, “who set forward, on his way, a boy like him, and missed his footing more and more, and slipped a little and a little lower; and went on stumbling still, until he fell headlong and found himself below a shattered man. Think what I suffered, when I watched that boy.”

“You have only yourself to thank for it,” returned the brother.

“Only myself,” he assented with a sigh. “I don’t seek to divide the blame or shame.”

“You have divided the shame,” James Carker muttered through his teeth. And, through so many and such close teeth, he could mutter well.

“Ah, James,” returned his brother, speaking for the first time in an accent of reproach, and seeming, by the sound of his voice, to have covered his face with his hands, “I have been, since then, a useful foil to you. You have trodden on me freely in your climbing up. Don’t spurn me with your heel!”

A silence ensued. After a time, Mr Carker the Manager was heard rustling among his papers, as if he had resolved to bring the interview to a conclusion. At the same time his brother withdrew nearer to the door.

“That’s all,” he said. “I watched him with such trembling and such fear, as was some little punishment to me, until he passed the place where I first fell; and then, though I had been his father, I believe I never could have thanked God more devoutly. I didn’t dare to warn him, and advise him; but if I had seen direct cause, I would have shown him my example. I was afraid to be seen speaking with him, lest it should be thought I did him harm, and tempted him to evil, and corrupted him: or lest I really should. There may be such contagion in me; I don’t know. Piece out my history, in connexion with young Walter Gay, and what he has made me feel; and think of me more leniently, James, if you can.”

With these words he came out to where Walter was standing. He turned a little paler when he saw him there, and paler yet when Walter caught him by the hand, and said in a whisper:

“Mr Carker, pray let me thank you! Let me say how much I feel for you! How sorry I am, to have been the unhappy cause of all this! How I almost look upon you now as my protector and guardian! How very, very much, I feel obliged to you and pity you!” said Walter, squeezing both his hands, and hardly knowing, in his agitation, what he did or said.

Mr Morfin’s room being close at hand and empty, and the door wide open, they moved thither by one accord: the passage being seldom free from someone passing to or fro. When they were there, and Walter saw in Mr Carker’s face some traces of the emotion within, he almost felt as if he had never seen the face before; it was so greatly changed.

“Walter,” he said, laying his hand on his shoulder. “I am far removed from you, and may I ever be. Do you know what I am?”

“What you are!” appeared to hang on Walter’s lips, as he regarded him attentively.

“It was begun,” said Carker, “before my twenty-first birthday—led up to, long before, but not begun till near that time. I had robbed them when I came of age. I robbed them afterwards. Before my twenty-second birthday, it was all found out; and then, Walter, from all men’s society, I died.”

Again his last few words hung trembling upon Walter’s lips, but he could neither utter them, nor any of his own.

“The House was very good to me. May Heaven reward the old man for his forbearance! This one, too, his son, who was then newly in the Firm, where I had held great trust! I was called into that room which is now his—I have never entered it since—and came out, what you know me. For many years I sat in my present seat, alone as now, but then a known and recognised example to the rest. They were all merciful to me, and I lived. Time has altered that part of my poor expiation; and I think, except the three heads of the House, there is no one here who knows my story rightly. Before the little boy grows up, and has it told to him, my corner may be vacant. I would rather that it might be so! This is the only change to me since that day, when I left all youth, and hope, and good men’s company, behind me in that room. God bless you, Walter! Keep you, and all dear to you, in honesty, or strike them dead!”

Some recollection of his trembling from head to foot, as if with excessive cold, and of his bursting into tears, was all that Walter could add to this, when he tried to recall exactly what had passed between them.

When Walter saw him next, he was bending over his desk in his old silent, drooping, humbled way. Then, observing him at his work, and feeling how resolved he evidently was that no further intercourse should arise between them, and thinking again and again on all he had seen and heard that morning in so short a time, in connexion with the history of both the Carkers, Walter could hardly believe that he was under orders for the West Indies, and would soon be lost to Uncle Sol, and Captain Cuttle, and to glimpses few and far between of Florence Dombey—no, he meant Paul—and to all he loved, and liked, and looked for, in his daily life.

But it was true, and the news had already penetrated to the outer office; for while he sat with a heavy heart, pondering on these things, and resting his head upon his arm, Perch the messenger, descending from his mahogany bracket, and jogging his elbow, begged his pardon, but wished to say in his ear, Did he think he could arrange to send home to England a jar of preserved Ginger, cheap, for Mrs Perch’s own eating, in the course of her recovery from her next confinement?