had noted  this bleak time,
and felt  its influence, as  if in some hidden natural antipathy to  it; and
now it was very, very gloomy.
     Her Mama  had not come to her room that night, which  was  one cause of
her  having sat late out of her bed. In her general uneasiness, no less than
in her ardent longing to have somebody  to speak  to, and to break the spell
of gloom and silence, Florence directed her steps towards the  chamber where
she slept.
     The  door  was  not  fastened  within,  and  yielded  smoothly  to  her
hesitating  hand. She  was  surprised to find a bright light burning;  still
more  surprised,  on  looking  in,  to  see  that  her  Mama,  but partially
undressed, was sitting near  the ashes of the fire,  which had  crumbled and
dropped away. Her eyes were intently bent upon  the air; and in their light,
and in her face, and in her  form,  and in the grasp with which she held the
elbows of her  chair as  if  about  to start  up, Florence  saw such  fierce
emotion that it terrified her.
     'Mama!' she cried, 'what is the matter?'
     Edith  started; looking at her with such  a  strange dread in her face,
that Florence was more frightened than before.
     'Mama!' said Florence, hurriedly advancing.  'Dear  Mama! what  is  the
matter?'
     'I have  not been well,' said Edith, shaking, and still  looking at her
in the same strange way. 'I have had had dreams, my love.'
     'And not yet been to bed, Mama?'
     'No,' she returned. 'Half-waking dreams.'
     Her features gradually softened; and suffering Florence  to come closer
to her, within her embrace, she said  in a tender manner, 'But  what does my
bird do here? What does my bird do here?'
     'I have been  uneasy,  Mama, in  not  seeing you  to-night,  and in not
knowing how Papa was; and I - '
     Florence stopped there, and said no more.
     'Is it late?' asked Edith, fondly  putting back the curls that  mingled
with her own dark hair, and strayed upon her face.
     'Very late. Near day.'
     'Near day!' she repeated in surprise.
     'Dear Mama, what have you done to your hand?' said Florence.
     Edith drew it suddenly away, and, for a moment, looked at her  with the
same strange dread (there was a sort of wild avoidance in it) as before; but
she  presently said,  'Nothing,  nothing.  A  blow.' And  then she said, 'My
Florence!' and then her bosom heaved, and she was weeping passionately.
     'Mama!' said Florence. 'Oh Mama, what  can  I do, what should I  do, to
make us happier? Is there anything?'
     'Nothing,' she replied.
     'Are you sure of that? Can it never be? If I speak now of what is in my
thoughts,  in spite  of what we  have agreed,' said Florence,  'you will not
blame me, will you?'
     'It is useless,' she replied, 'useless. I  have told you,  dear, that I
have had bad dreams. Nothing can change them, or prevent them coming back.'
     'I do not understand,' said Florence, gazing on her agitated face which
seemed to darken as she looked.
     'I  have dreamed,' said  Edith in a low voice, 'of a  pride that is all
powerless  for good, all powerful for evil;  of a pride that has been galled
and goaded, through many shameful years, and has never recoiled except  upon
itself;  a pride that has debased its  owner  with the consciousness of deep
humiliation, and never helped its owner boldly to resent it or  avoid it, or
to  say,  "This  shall not be!" a pride that, rightly guided, might have led
perhaps to better things, but  which,  misdirected  and perverted,  like all
else belonging to the same possessor, has been self-contempt, mere hardihood
and ruin.'
     She neither looked  nor  spoke to Florence now, but went on  as  if she
were alone.
     'I  have dreamed,' she  said, 'of  such indifference  and  callousness,
arising  from  this  self-contempt;  this  wretched, inefficient,  miserable
pride; that it  has gone on with listless  steps even to the altar, yielding
to the old,  familiar, beckoning finger, -  oh mother, oh mother! - while it
spurned it; and willing to be hateful to itself for once and for all, rather
than to be stung daily in some new form. Mean, poor thing!'
     And  now with gathering and darkening  emotion, she  looked as  she had
looked when Florence entered.
     'And I have dreamed,' she said, 'that in a first late effort to achieve
a purpose,  it has been  trodden  on, and trodden down by  a base  foot, but
turns and looks upon him. I have dreamed  that it is  wounded,  hunted,  set
upon by  dogs, but that it stands at hay,  and will not yield;  no,  that it
cannot if it would; but that it is urged on to hate
     Her clenched hand tightened on the trembling  arm she had in hers,  and
as she looked  down on  the alarmed and  wondering face, frown subsided. 'Oh
Florence!' she said, 'I think  I have been nearly mad to-night!' and humbled
her proud head upon her neck and wept again.
     'Don't leave me! be near me! I have no hope but in you! These words she
said a score of times.
     Soon  she grew calmer, and was full of pity  for the tears of Florence,
and for  her  waking at such untimely hours.  And  the day now dawning, with
folded her in her arms and laid  her down  upon her bed, and, not lying down
herself, sat by her, and bade her try to sleep.
     'For you are weary, dearest, and unhappy, and should rest.'
     'I am indeed unhappy, dear Mama, tonight,' said  Florence. 'But you are
weary and unhappy, too.'
     'Not when you lie asleep so near me, sweet.'
     They  kissed each other,  and Florence, worn out, gradually fell into a
gentle slumber; but as her eyes closed on the face beside her, it was so sad
to think  upon the face downstairs, that her  hand  drew closer to Edith for
some comfort; yet, even in the act, it faltered, lest it should be deserting
him. So, in her sleep, she tried  to reconcile the two together, and to show
them that she loved them both, but could not do it, and her waking grief was
part of her dreams.
     Edith,  sitting by, looked down at the  dark eyelashes lying wet on the
flushed cheeks, and looked with gentleness and pity, for she knew the truth.
But  no sleep  hung  upon her own eyes.  As  the day came  on she  still sat
watching and waking, with the placid hand in hers, and  sometimes whispered,
as  she looked at the hushed face, 'Be near me, Florence. I have no hope but
in you!'

        CHAPTER 44.
     A Separation

     With the day, though not so early as the sun, uprose Miss Susan Nipper.
There was a heaviness  in this young maiden's  exceedingly sharp black eyes,
that abated somewhat of their sparkling, and suggested - which was not their
usual character -  the possibility of their being sometimes  shut. There was
likewise a  swollen look about them, as if they had  been crying over-night.
But the Nipper, so far from being cast down, was singularly brisk and  bold,
and all her energies appeared to be braced  up for some great feat. This was
noticeable even in her dress, which was much more tight and trim than usual;
and in occasional twitches of  her head as she  went about  the house, which
were mightily expressive of determination.
     In a word,  she had  formed a  determination, and an  aspiring  one: it
being nothing less than this  - to  penetrate  to Mr Dombey's  presence, and
have  speech of  that  gentleman alone.  'I have often  said I  would,'  she
remarked,  in  a  threatening  manner, to  herself, that morning,  with many
twitches of her head, 'and now I will!'
     Spurring  herself on  to  the accomplishment of this desperate  design,
with a sharpness that was peculiar to herself, Susan Nipper haunted the hall
and  staircase  during  the  whole forenoon, without  finding  a  favourable
opportunity for the assault. Not at all  baffled by this discomfiture, which
indeed had a stimulating effect, and put her on  her mettle,  she diminished
nothing of her vigilance; and  at last discovered, towards evening, that her
sworn foe Mrs Pipchin, under pretence of having sat up all night, was dozing
in her own room, and that Mr Dombey was lying on his sofa, unattended.
     With a  twitch - not of her  head merely,  this  time, but of her whole
self  - the  Nipper  went on tiptoe to Mr  Dombey's door, and knocked. 'Come
in!' said Mr Dombey. Susan encouraged herself with a  final twitch, and went
in.
     Mr Dombey, who was eyeing the fire, gave an amazed look at his visitor,
and raised himself a little on his arm. The Nipper dropped a curtsey.
     'What do you want?' said Mr Dombey.
     'If you please, Sir, I wish to speak to you,' said Susan.
     Mr Dombey  moved  his lips as if he were repeating  the words,  but  he
seemed so lost in astonishment at the presumption of  the young woman  as to
be incapable of giving them utterance.
     'I have been  in your service, Sir,' said Susan  Nipper, with her usual
rapidity, 'now twelve  'year  a waiting  on  Miss Floy my own young lady who
couldn't speak plain when I first come here and I was old in this house when
Mrs  Richards was new, I may  not be  Meethosalem, but  I am  not a child in
arms.'
     Mr Dombey, raised upon his  arm and looking  at her, offered no comment
on this preparatory statement of fact.
     'There  never was a dearer or a blesseder young lady than is  my  young
lady, Sir,' said Susan, 'and  I  ought to know a great deal better than some
for I have seen her in her grief and I have seen her in her joy (there's not
been much of it) and I have seen her with her brother and I have seen her in
her loneliness and some have never seen her, and  I  say to some and all - I
do!' and here the black-eyed shook her head, and slightly stamped her  foot;
'that she's the blessedest and dearest angel is Miss Floy that ever drew the
breath of life, the  more that I was  torn to pieces Sir the more I'd say it
though I may not be a Fox's Martyr..'
     Mr Dombey turned yet paler than his fall had made him, with indignation
and astonishment; and kept  his eyes upon the speaker as if he accused them,
and his ears too, of playing him false.
     'No one  could  be anything but true  and faithful to  Miss Floy, Sir,'
pursued Susan,  'and I take no merit  for my  service of twelve year,  for I
love her - yes, I say to some and all I do!' - and here the black-eyed shook
her head again, and slightly stamped her foot again, and checked a sob; 'but
true and  faithful service  gives me right to speak I hope, and speak I must
and will now, right or wrong.
     'What do you mean, woman?' said Mr Dombey,  glaring at her. 'How do you
dare?'
     'What I mean, Sir, is to speak respectful and without offence, but out,
and how I dare I know not but I do!'said Susan. 'Oh! you don't know my young
lady Sir you don't indeed, you'd never know so little of her, if you did.'
     Mr Dombey, in a fury, put his hand out for the bell-rope; but there was
no bell-rope  on that side of the  fire,  and he could not rise and cross to
the  other  without assistance. The  quick eye of  the  Nipper  detected his
helplessness immediately, and now, as she afterwards observed, she felt  she
had got him.
     'Miss Floy,' said Susan Nipper, 'is the most devoted and  most  patient
and  most dutiful and beautiful  of daughters, there ain't no gentleman,  no
Sir, though as great and rich as all the greatest and richest of England put
together, but might be  proud of  her and  would and  ought. If he  knew her
value right, he'd rather lose his greatness  and his fortune piece by  piece
and beg his way in rags from door to door, I say to some and all, he would!'
cried  Susan  Nipper,  bursting into tears,  'than bring the sorrow  on  her
tender heart that I have seen it suffer in this house!'
     'Woman,' cried Mr Dombey, 'leave the room.
     'Begging  your pardon, not even  if  I am to leave the situation, Sir,'
replied the steadfast  Nipper, 'in which I have been  so many years and seen
so much  -  although I hope you'd never  have the heart to send me from Miss
Floy  for such a  cause - will I go now till I have said the rest, I may not
be a Indian widow Sir and I am not and I would  not so become but if I  once
made up my mind to burn myself alive, I'd do it! And I've made my mind up to
go on.'
     Which was rendered no  less clear by  the expression of Susan  Nipper's
countenance, than by her words.
     'There  ain't a  person in your service, Sir,' pursued the  black-eyed,
'that has always stood more in awe of you than me and you may think how true
it is when I make so bold as say that I have  hundreds and hundreds of times
thought of speaking to you and never been able to make my mind up to it till
last night, but last night decided of me.'
     Mr Dombey, in a paroxysm  of rage, made another grasp  at the bell-rope
that  was  not  there, and,  in its  absence,  pulled  his hair rather  than
nothing.
     'I have  seen,' said Susan Nipper,  'Miss Floy strive and  strive  when
nothing but a child so sweet and  patient that the best of  women might have
copied from  her,  I've  seen her  sitting  nights  together  half the night
through to  help  her delicate  brother  with  his learning,  I've seen  her
helping him  and watching  him at  other times - some well know when  - I've
seen  her, with no encouragement  and no help,  grow up to  be a lady, thank
God!  that is the  grace and pride of every company she  goes  in,  and I've
always seen her cruelly neglected and keenly feeling of it  - I say to  some
and all, I have!  - and never said one  word, but  ordering one's self lowly
and reverently towards one's betters, is  not  to  be a worshipper of graven
images, and I will and must speak!'
     'Is there  anybody there?' cried Mr Dombey, calling out. 'Where are the
men? where are the women? Is there no one there?'
     'I left  my  dear young lady out of bed  late last night,'  said Susan,
nothing checked, 'and  I knew why, for you was ill Sir and she  didn't  know
how ill and that was enough to make her wretched  as I saw it did. I may not
be  a  Peacock; but I have my eyes  - and  I sat up a little in  my own room
thinking she  might  be lonesome and might  want me,  and  I  saw her  steal
downstairs and come to this door as if it was a guilty  thing to look at her
own Pa,  and then steal back again and  go  into them lonely  drawing-rooms,
a-crying  so, that I could hardly  bear to hear  it. I can not bear  to hear
it,' said Susan  Nipper, wiping her black eyes, and fixing them undauntingly
on Mr  Dombey's infuriated face. 'It's not the first time  I have  heard it,
not by many and many a time you don't know your own daughter, Sir, you don't
know what you're doing,  Sir, I say to some and all,' cried Susan Nipper, in
a final burst, 'that it's a sinful shame!'
     'Why,  hoity  toity!' cried the  voice of  Mrs  Pipchin, as  the  black
bombazeen garments of that  fair Peruvian Miner swept into the room. 'What's
this, indeed?'
     Susan favoured  Mrs Pipchin with a look she  had invented expressly for
her when they first became acquainted, and resigned the reply to Mr Dombey.
     'What's this?' repeated Mr Dombey, almost foaming. 'What's this, Madam?
You who  are at the head of this household,  and bound to keep  it in order,
have reason to inquire. Do you know this woman?'
     'I know very  little  good of her, Sir,' croaked Mrs Pipchin. 'How dare
you come here, you hussy? Go along with you!'
     But the inflexible  Nipper,  merely honouring Mrs  Pipchin with another
look, remained.
     'Do you call it managing this  establishment, Madam,'  said Mr  Dombey,
'to leave a  person like this at liberty to come and talk to me! A gentleman
-  in  his own house - in his own room - assailed with  the impertinences of
women-servants!'
     'Well, Sir,' returned Mrs Pipchin, with vengeance in her hard grey eye,
'I exceedingly deplore it;  nothing can  be  more irregular; nothing  can be
more out of all bounds and reason; but I regret to say, Sir, that this young
woman is quite  beyond control. She  has been spoiled by Miss Dombey, and is
amenable to  nobody. You know  you're  not,' said  Mrs Pipchin, sharply, and
shaking her head at Susan Nipper. 'For shame, you hussy! Go along with you!'
     'If you find people  in my  service  who are  not to be controlled, Mrs
Pipchin,' said Mr  Dombey, turning back towards the  fire, 'you know what to
do with them, I presume. You know what you are here for? Take her away!'
     'Sir, I know what to do,' retorted Mrs Pipchin, 'and of course shall do
it'  Susan Nipper,'  snapping her up particularly short,  'a month's warning
from this hour.'
     'Oh indeed!' cried Susan, loftily.
     'Yes,' returned Mrs Pipchin, 'and  don't smile at me, you minx, or I'll
know the reason why! Go along with you this minute!'
     'I  intend to go this minute, you may  rely upon  it,' said the voluble
Nipper. 'I have been in this house waiting on my young lady a dozen year and
I won't stop in it one hour under notice from a person owning to the name of
Pipchin trust me, Mrs P.'
     'A  good riddance  of  bad rubbish!' said  that wrathful old lady. 'Get
along with you, or I'll have you carried out!'
     'My  comfort is,' said Susan, looking back at Mr  Dombey, 'that I  have
told a piece of truth this day which ought to have been told long before and
can't be told too  often or too plain  and that no amount  of Pipchinses - I
hope the number of 'em mayn't be  great' (here Mrs  Pipchin  uttered a  very
sharp 'Go  along with you!' and Miss  Nipper repeated  the  look) 'can unsay
what I have said, though they gave a whole year full  of  warnings beginning
at ten o'clock in  the forenoon  and  never leaving off till twelve at night
and died of the exhaustion which would be a Jubilee!'
     With  these words, Miss  Nipper  preceded her foe out of the  room; and
walking upstairs to  her  own  apartments  in great state,  to  the  choking
exasperation of  the  ireful Pipchin, sat down among her boxes and began  to
cry.
     From  this soft mood she  was soon  aroused,  with a very wholesome and
refreshing effect, by the voice of Mrs Pipchin outside the door.
     'Does that bold-faced slut,' said the fell Pipchin, 'intend to take her
warning, or does she not?'
     Miss  Nipper replied from within  that  the  person described  did  not
inhabit  that  part of the house, but that her name was Pipchin, and she was
to be found in the housekeeper's room.
     'You  saucy baggage!' retorted Mrs Pipchin,  rattling at  the handle of
the door. 'Go along with you this minute. Pack up your things directly!  How
dare you talk in this way to a gentle-woman who has seen better days?'
     To  which  Miss Nipper rejoined  from  her castle, that she  pitied the
better days that had seen Mrs Pipchin; and that for her part she  considered
the worst  days  in the year to  be about that lady's mark, except that they
were much too good for her.
     'But  you  needn't trouble yourself to make a noise  at my  door,' said
Susan Nipper, 'nor to contaminate the key-hole with your eye, I'm packing up
and going you may take your affidavit.'
     The Dowager expressed her lively satisfaction at this intelligence, and
with some general opinions upon young hussies as a race, and especially upon
their demerits after being spoiled  by Miss Dombey, withdrew to prepare  the
Nipper~s wages. Susan then bestirred  herself  to get  her  trunks in order,
that  she might take an immediate and dignified departure;  sobbing heartily
all the time, as she thought of Florence.
     The object of her regret was not long in  coming  to  her, for the news
soon spread over the house that  Susan Nipper had had a disturbance with Mrs
Pipchin,  and that they  had both appealed to Mr Dombey,  and that there had
been an unprecedented piece of work in Mr  Dombey's room, and that Susan was
going. The latter part  of this confused rumour,  Florence  found  to be  so
correct,  that Susan had locked the  last trunk and was sitting upon it with
her bonnet on, when she came into her room.
     'Susan!' cried Florence. 'Going to leave me! You!'
     'Oh for goodness gracious sake, Miss Floy,' said Susan, sobbing, 'don't
speak a word to me  or I shall demean myself before them'  Pipchinses, and I
wouldn't have 'em see me cry Miss Floy for worlds!'
     'Susan!' said Florence. 'My dear girl,  my  old friend! What shall I do
without you! Can you bear to go away so?'
     'No-n-o-o, my darling  dear Miss Floy, I can't indeed,'  sobbed  Susan.
'But it can't be helped,  I've  done my duty' Miss, I  have  indeed. It's no
fault  of mine.  I am quite resigned. I couldn't  stay my  month or  I could
never leave  you then my darling  and I  must at last  as well as at  first,
don't speak  to  me  Miss Floy, for though I'm  pretty firm I'm not a marble
doorpost, my own dear.'
     'What is it? Why is it?' said Florence, 'Won't you tell me?' For  Susan
was shaking her head.
     'No-n-no,  my  darling,' returned Susan. 'Don't ask me,  for I mustn't,
and whatever you  do don't put in a word  for me to stop, for it couldn't be
and you'd only wrong  yourself,  and  so God bless  you my  own precious and
forgive me any harm I have  done, or any temper  I have showed in  all these
many years!'
     With which entreaty, very heartily delivered, Susan hugged her mistress
in her arms.
     'My  darling there's a many that may  come to serve you and be glad  to
serve you and who'll  serve you well and true,' said Susan, 'but there can't
be one who'll serve you so affectionate as me  or  love you  half as dearly,
that's my comfort' Good-bye, sweet Miss Floy!'
     'Where will you go, Susan?' asked her weeping mistress.
     'I've got a brother down in the country Miss  - a farmer in  Essex said
the  heart-broken Nipper, 'that keeps ever so  many co-o-ows and pigs  and I
shall go down there by the coach and sto-op with him, and don't mind me, for
I've  got  money in  the  Savings  Banks my dear,  and needn't take  another
service  just yet, which I  couldn't, couldn't, couldn't  do, my heart's own
mistress!' Susan  finished  with  a  burst of sorrow, which was  opportunely
broken by the voice of Mrs Pipchin talking downstairs; on hearing which, she
dried  her  red and  swollen eyes, and made  a melancholy feint  of  calling
jauntily to Mr Towlinson to fetch a cab and carry down her boxes.
     Florence, pale and hurried and  distressed, but  withheld from  useless
interference even here, by her dread of causing any new division between her
father and his wife (whose stern, indignant face had been a warning to her a
few  moments  since),  and  by  her  apprehension  of  being   in  some  way
unconsciously connected  already  with  the dismissal of her old servant and
friend,  followed,  weeping,  downstairs to  Edith's dressing-room,  whither
Susan betook herself to make her parting curtsey.
     'Now,  here's  the  cab, and here's the boxes, get along with you, do!'
said Mrs Pipchin, presenting herself at the same moment. 'I beg your pardon,
Ma'am, but Mr Dombey's orders are imperative.'
     Edith,  sitting  under the hands of  her maid -  she was  going out  to
dinner - preserved her haughty face, and took not the least notice.
     'There's your money,' said Mrs Pipchin, who in pursuance of her system,
and in recollection of the Mines, was accustomed to rout the servants about,
as  she   had  routed  her  young  Brighton  boarders;  to  the  everlasting
acidulation of Master Bitherstone, 'and the sooner this house sees your back
the better.
     Susan had no spirits even for  the look that  belonged to Ma Pipchin by
right; so  she  dropped  her curtsey to Mrs  Dombey  (who  inclined her head
without one word, and whose eye avoided everyone but Florence), and gave one
last parting hug  to her young mistress, and received her parting embrace in
return.  Poor Susan's face at this crisis, in  the intensity of her feelings
and the  determined suffocation of her sobs, lest  one should become audible
and  be  a  triumph  to  Mrs  Pipchin,  presented  a  series  of   the  most
extraordinary physiognomical phenomena ever witnessed.
     'I beg your pardon, Miss, I'm sure,'  said Towlinson, outside the  door
with the  boxes,  addressing Florence, 'but Mr Toots is in the drawing-room,
and sends his compliments, and begs to know how Diogenes and Master is.'
     Quick as thought, Florence glided out and hastened downstairs, where Mr
Toots,  in the most  splendid vestments, was breathing very hard  with doubt
and agitation on the subject of her coming.
     'Oh, how de do, Miss Dombey,' said Mr Toots, 'God bless my soul!'
     This last ejaculation was occasioned by Mr  Toots's deep concern at the
distress he saw in Florence's  face; which caused him to stop short in a fit
of chuckles, and become an image of despair.
     'Dear  Mr Toots,'  said Florence, 'you are so friendly  to  me, and  so
honest, that I am sure I may ask a favour of you.
     'Miss Dombey,' returned Mr Toots, 'if  you'll only name  one, you'll  -
you'll  give me  an appetite. To which,' said Mr Toots, with some sentiment,
'I have long been a stranger.
     'Susan, who is an old friend of  mine, the oldest friend I  have,' said
Florence, 'is about to leave here suddenly, and quite alone,  poor girl. She
is going home, a little way into the country. Might I ask you to  take  care
of her until she is in the coach?'
     'Miss Dombey,'  returned  Mr Toots, 'you really do me an honour  and  a
kindness.  This proof  of your  confidence, after  the manner in which I was
Beast enough to conduct myself at Brighton - '
     'Yes,' said Florence, hurriedly - 'no - don't think of that. Then would
you have the kindness to - to go? and to be ready to meet her when she comes
out? Thank you a thousand times! You ease my mind so much.  She doesn't seem
so desolate. You  cannot think how grateful I  feel to you, or  what  a good
friend I am sure you are!' and Florence in her earnestness thanked him again
and again; and Mr  Toots, in his earnestness, hurried away -  but backwards,
that he might lose no glimpse of her.
     Florence  had not the courage to go out, when she saw poor Susan in the
hall, with Mrs Pipchin driving her forth,  and  Diogenes  jumping about her,
and  terrifying Mrs Pipchin to  the  last degree  by  making  snaps  at  her
bombazeen skirts, and howling with anguish at  the sound of her voice -  for
the good duenna  was the dearest and most cherished aversion of  his breast.
But she saw Susan shake hands with the servants all round,  and turn once to
look at her old home; and she saw Diogenes bound out after the cab, and want
to follow  it,  and testify an impossibility of conviction  that he  had  no
longer any  property in the fare; and the door was shut, and the hurry over,
and her tears flowed fast for  the loss of an old friend, whom no one  could
replace. No one. No one.
     Mr Toots, like the leal and trusty soul he was,  stopped the  cabriolet
in a twinkling, and told Susan Nipper of  his commission, at which she cried
more than before.
     'Upon my soul and body!' said Mr Toots, taking  his seat beside her. 'I
feel for you. Upon my word and honour  I think you  can hardly know your own
feelings  better than I imagine them. I  can  conceive nothing more dreadful
than to have to leave Miss Dombey.'
     Susan abandoned herself to her grief now, and it really was touching to
see her.
     'I say,' said Mr Toots, 'now, don't! at least I mean now do, you know!'
     'Do what, Mr Toots!' cried Susan.
     'Why, come home to my  place, and  have some  dinner before you start,'
said  Mr  Toots.  'My cook's  a most respectable woman  -  one  of  the most
motherly  people  I  ever  saw  -  and  she'll  be  delighted  to  make  you
comfortable. Her son,' said Mr Toots, as an additional  recommendation, 'was
educated in the Bluecoat School,' and blown up in a powder-mill.'
     Susan  accepting  this kind  offer,  Mr  Toots  conducted  her  to  his
dwelling, where  they were received  by  the  Matron in  question who  fully
justified his character of her, and by the Chicken who at first supposed, on
seeing a  lady in the vehicle, that Mr Dombey had  been  doubled up, ably to
his old recommendation, and Miss Dombey abducted. This gentleman awakened in
Miss Nipper some considerable astonishment; for, having been defeated by the
Larkey  Boy, his visage  was in a state of such great dilapidation, as to be
hardly  presentable in society with  comfort  to the beholders.  The Chicken
himself  attributed this punishment to his having had the  misfortune to get
into Chancery  early  in the proceedings, when he was severely fibbed by the
Larkey  one, and heavily grassed. But it appeared from the published records
of that  great  contest that the  Larkey Boy had had it all his own way from
the  beginning, and  that the Chicken had  been  tapped, and bunged, and had
received pepper, and  had been made groggy, and had come  up piping, and had
endured a complication of similar strange inconveniences, until  he had been
gone into and finished.
     After  a  good  repast,  and  much  hospitality, Susan  set out for the
coach-office in another cabriolet, with Mr Toots inside, as  before, and the
Chicken on the  box, who, whatever  distinction  he conferred on  the little
party by  the  moral  weight  and heroism of  his  character,  was  scarcely
ornamental to  it,  physically speaking,  on account  of his plasters; which
were numerous.  But the Chicken  had  registered a vow,  in  secret, that he
would never leave Mr Toots  (who was secretly pining to get rid of him), for
any less consideration than the  good-will and fixtures of  a  public-house;
and being ambitious to go into that line, and drink himself to death as soon
as possible, he felt it his cue to make his company unacceptable.
     The  night-coach  by  which  Susan  was  to go, was  on  the  point  of
departure.  Mr  Toots  having  put  her  inside,  lingered  by  the  window,
irresolutely,  until the driver  was about to  mount; when, standing  on the
step, and  putting in  a  face that by the light of the lamp was anxious and
confused, he said abruptly:
     'I say, Susan! Miss Dombey, you know - '
     'Yes, Sir.'
     'Do you think she could - you know - eh?'
     'I beg your pardon, Mr Toots,' said Susan, 'but I don't hear you.
     'Do you think she could be brought, you know - not exactly at once, but
in  time - in  a long time - to - to love me, you know? There!' said poor Mr
Toots.
     'Oh  dear  no!' returned Susan, shaking her head. 'I should say, never.
Never!'
     'Thank'ee!' said Mr Toots. 'It's of no consequence. Good-night. It's of
no consequence, thank'ee!'

        CHAPTER 45.
     The Trusty Agent

     Edith  went out alone that day, and  returned  home early. It was but a
few minutes after ten o'clock,  when her carriage rolled along the street in
which she lived.
     There was the same enforced composure on  her face, that there had been
when  she was dressing; and the wreath upon her head encircled the same cold
and  steady brow. But  it would have been better to have seen its leaves and
flowers reft into fragments by her passionate hand, or rendered shapeless by
the   fitful  searches  of  a   throbbing  and  bewildered  brain  for   any
resting-place,  than   adorning   such   tranquillity.   So   obdurate,   so
unapproachable,  so  unrelenting, one  would have thought that nothing could
soften such a woman's nature, and that everything in life had hardened it.
     Arrived  at  her own  door, she  was alighting,  when some  one  coming
quietly from the hall, and standing bareheaded,  offered  her  his  arm. The
servant being thrust aside, she had no choice but to touch it;  and she then
knew whose arm it was.
     'How is your patient, Sir?' she asked, with a curled lip.
     'He is  better,' returned Carker. 'He is doing very  well.  I have left
him for the night.'
     She  bent her head,  and was passing up the staircase, when he followed
and said, speaking at the bottom:
     'Madam! May I beg the favour of a minute's audience?'
     She stopped and turned her  eyes back 'It is an unseasonable time, Sir,
and I am fatigued. Is your business urgent?'
     'It is very urgent, returned Carker. 'As  I  am so fortunate as to have
met you, let me press my petition.'
     She looked down for a moment at his glistening mouth;  and he looked up
at her, standing  above him  in her stately  dress, and thought,  again, how
beautiful she was.
     'Where is Miss Dombey?' she asked the servant, aloud.
     'In the morning room, Ma'am.'
     'Show the way there!' Turning her eyes again on the attentive gentleman
at the bottom of  the  stairs, and informing him with a slight motion of her
head, that he was at liberty to follow, she passed on.
     'I  beg your pardon!  Madam! Mrs  Dombey!' cried  the  soft and  nimble
Carker,  at her  side in  a moment. 'May I be permitted to entreat that Miss
Dombey is not present?'
     She  confronted   him,  with   a   quick  look,   but  with   the  same
self-possession and steadiness.
     'I  would  spare  Miss Dombey,'  said  Carker,  in a  low  voice,  'the
knowledge of what I have to say. At least, Madam, I would leave it to you to
decide whether  she shall  know of it or  not. I owe  that to  you. It is my
bounden duty to you. After our former interview, it would be monstrous in me
if I did otherwise.'
     She slowly withdrew her eyes from his face, and turning to the servant,
said, 'Some other room.' He led the way to a drawing-room, which he speedily
lighted up and then left them.  While  he remained,  not a word  was spoken.
Edith enthroned herself  upon a  couch  by the fire; and Mr Carker, with his
hat in his hand and his eyes bent upon the carpet, stood before her, at some
little distance.
     'Before I hear you, Sir,' said Edith, when the door was closed, 'I wish
you to hear me.'
     'To  be addressed by  Mrs  Dombey,'  he returned, 'even in  accents  of
unmerited reproach, is an honour  I so greatly esteem,  that although I were
not her servant in all things, I should defer to such a wish, most readily.'
     'If you are charged by the man  whom  you have just now  left, Sir;' Mr
Carker raised his eyes, as if he were going to counterfeit surprise, but she
met them, and stopped him, if such  were his intention; 'with any message to
me, do not attempt to deliver it, for I will not receive it. I need scarcely
ask you if you are come on such an errand. I have expected you some time.
     'It is my misfortune,' he replied, 'to be here, wholly against my will,
for such a purpose. Allow me to say that I am here for two purposes. That is
one.'
     'That one, Sir,' she returned, 'is ended. Or, if you return to it - '
     'Can  Mrs  Dombey believe,'  said Carker, coming nearer, 'that  I would
return to it in the face of her prohibition? Is it possible that Mrs Dombey,
having no regard to my unfortunate position, is so determined to consider me
inseparable from my instructor as to do me great and wilful injustice?'
     'Sir,'  returned Edith,  bending  her  dark  gaze full  upon  him,  and
speaking with a  rising passion that  inflated  her  proud  nostril and  her
swelling  neck, and  stirred the delicate white down  upon a robe she  wore,
thrown loosely over shoulders that could  hear its snowy neighbourhood. 'Why
do you present yourself to me, as you have done, and speak to me of love and
duty to my husband, and pretend to think that I am happily married, and that
I honour  him? How dare you venture  so to affront me, when you know - I  do
not know better, Sir: I  have seen it in your every glance, and heard  it in
your every word - that in place of affection between us  there  is  aversion
and contempt, and  that I  despise him hardly less than I despise myself for
being his! Injustice! If I had done justice to the  torment you have made me
feel, and  to my sense  of the insult you have  put upon  me, I should  have
slain you!'
     She  had  asked  him why he  did  this. Had she not been blinded by her
pride and wrath, and self-humiliation, - which she was, fiercely as she bent
her gaze upon  him, -  she would have seen  the answer in his face. To bring
her to this declaration.
     She saw it not, and cared not whether it  was there or no. She saw only
the indignities and struggles she had undergone and had to undergo,  and was
writhing under them. As she sat looking fixedly at them, rather than at him,
she plucked the  feathers  from a pinion of  some  rare and  beautiful bird,
which hung from her  wrist  by a golden thread, to serve  her as a  fan, and
rained them on the ground.
     He did not shrink beneath her gaze, but stood, until such outward signs
of her anger as had escaped her control subsided,  with the air of a man who
had his sufficient reply in reserve and would presently deliver  it. And  he
then spoke, looking straight into her kindling eyes.
     'Madam,' he said, 'I know, and knew before to-day, that I have found no
favour with  you; and I knew why. Yes. I knew why. You have spoken so openly
to me; I am so relieved by the possession of your confidence - '
     'Confidence!' she repeated, with disdain.
     He passed it over.
     ' - that I  will make no pretence  of concealment. I did  see  from the
first, that there was no affection on your part for Mr Dombey - how could it
possibly exist between such different subjects? And I have seen, since, that
stronger feelings  than  indifference have  been engendered in your breast -
how could that  possibly be  otherwise,  either, circumstanced as  you  have
been? But was it for me to presume to  avow this knowledge to you in so many
words?'
     'Was  it for you, Sir,' she replied, 'to  feign that other  belief, and
audaciously to thrust it on me day by day?'
     'Madam, it was,' he eagerly retorted.  'If I had done  less,  if  I had
done  anything but that, I should not be speaking to you thus; and I foresaw
- who  could better foresee, for who has had greater experience of Mr Dombey
than myself? - that unless your character should prove to be as yielding and
obedient as that of his first submissive lady, which I did not believe - '
     A haughty smile gave him reason to observe that he might repeat this.
     'I say, which I did not believe, -  the time was likely  to come,  when
such an understanding as we have now arrived at, would be serviceable.'
     'Serviceable to whom, Sir?' she demanded scornfully.
     'To you. I will not add  to  myself, as warning me to refrain even from
that limited commendation  of Mr Dombey, in which I can honestly indulge, in
order  that I may not have the misfortune of saying anything distasteful  to
one whose aversion and contempt,' with great expression, 'are so keen.'
     'Is  it honest in you, Sir,' said  Edith, 'to confess to your  "limited
commendation,"  and to  speak  in that tone of  disparagement, even  of him:
being his chief counsellor and flatterer!'
     'Counsellor,  -  yes,'  said  Carker.   'Flatterer,  -   no.  A  little
reservation  I  fear  I must confess to. But  our interest  and  convenience
commonly oblige many of us to make professions that we cannot  feel. We have
partnerships  of  interest  and  convenience,  friendships  of  interest and
convenience, dealings of interest and convenience, marriages of interest and
convenience, every day.'
     She  bit her blood-red  lip; but  without wavering in  the  dark, stern
watch she kept upon him.
     'Madam,' said Mr  Carker, sitting down in a  chair  that was  near her,
with an air of the most profound and most considerate respect, 'why should I
hesitate now, being altogether devoted to your service, to speak plainly? It
was natural that  a lady,  endowed as  you are,  should think it feasible to
change her husband's character in some respects, and mould  him to  a better
form.'
     'It  was  not  natural  to me, Sir,'  she  rejoined.  'I had never  any
expectation or intention of that kind.'
     The proud undaunted face showed him it was resolute  to wear no mask he
offered,  but was  set upon a reckless disclosure of itself,  indifferent to
any aspect in which it might present itself to such as he.
     'At  least it was natural,' he resumed, 'that  you should deem it quite
possible to live with Mr Dombey as his  wife, at once  without submitting to
him,  and  without coming into such violent collision  with him. But, Madam,
you did not know Mr Dombey (as you have since ascertained), when you thought
that. You did not know how exacting and how proud he  is, or how he is, if I
may  say  so,  the slave of  his own  greatness,  and goes yoked  to his own
triumphal car like a beast  of burden, with  no idea on earth but that it is
behind him and is to be drawn on, over everything and through everything.'
     His teeth  gleamed through  his malicious relish of this conceit, as he
went on talking:
     'Mr Dombey is  really capable of no  more  true consideration  for you,
Madam, than for me. The comparison is an extreme  one; I intend it to be so;
but quite just.  Mr Dombey, in the plenitude of  his power, asked me - I had
it  from his own  lips yesterday morning - to  be  his  go-between  to  you,
because he knows  I am not agreeable to you,  and because  he intends that I
shall  be  a punishment for  your  contumacy; and  besides  that, because he
really does consider, that I, his paid servant, am an  ambassador whom it is
derogatory to the dignity - not of the  lady to whom I have the happiness of
speaking; she has no  existence in  his mind -  but of  his wife, a  part of
himself, to receive. You may imagine how regardless of me, how obtuse to the
possibility of my having any individual sentiment or opinion he is,  when he
tells  me, openly, that I am so employed. You know how perfectly indifferent
to your feelings he is, when he threatens you with such a messenger. As you,
of course, have not forgotten that he did.'
     She watched  him still attentively. But he watched her too; and  he saw
that this indication  of a  knowledge  on his part,  of something  that  had
passed between herself  and her husband, rankled and smarted in her  haughty
breast, like a poisoned arrow.
     'I do not recall all this to widen the  breach between  yourself and Mr
Dombey, Madam - Heaven forbid! what would it  profit me? - but as an example
of the hopelessness of impressing Mr  Dombey with a sense that anybody is to
be considered when he is  in  question.  We who are about him, have, in  our
various positions, done our part, I  daresay,  to confirm him  in his way of
thinking; but if we had not done  so, others would - or they  would not have
been about him; and it has always been, from  the beginning, the very staple
of his  life. Mr  Dombey has had to deal, in short, with none but submissive
and dependent persons, who have bowed the knee,  and  bent  the neck, before
him. He has never known what it is to have angry pride and strong resentment
opposed to him.'
     'But  he will know it  now!' she seemed to say; though her lips did not
part,  nor her eyes falter. He saw the soft down  tremble once again, and he
saw her  lay  the plumage of the  beautiful  bird against  her bosom  for  a
moment; and he unfolded one more ring of the coil into which he had gathered
himself.
     'Mr  Dombey, though a most honourable gentleman,' he said, 'is so prone
to  pervert  even  facts to  his own view, when  he  is at  all  opposed, in
consequence of the warp in his mind, that he - can I give a  better instance
than this! - he sincerely believes (you  will  excuse the folly of what I am
about to say; it not being mine) that his severe  expression of  opinion  to
his present wife, on a certain special occasion she may remember, before the
lamented death  of  Mrs Skewton,  produced a withering  effect, and for  the
moment quite subdued her!'
     Edith laughed. How harshly and unmusically need not be described. It is
enough that he was glad to hear her.
     'Madam,'  he resumed, 'I have done  with this. Your own opinions are so
strong, and, I am persuaded, so unalterable,' he repeated those words slowly
and with great emphasis, 'that I am almost afraid to incur your  displeasure
anew, when I say that  in  spite of these defects  and my  full knowledge of
them, I have become habituated to Mr Dombey, and esteem him.  But when I say
so, it is not, believe  me, for the mere sake of vaunting a feeling  that is
so  utterly at variance  with your  own, and  for  which  you  can  have  no
sympathy' - oh how distinct and plain  and emphasized  this was! -  'but  to
give  you an assurance  of the zeal with which, in this unhappy matter, I am
yours, and the indignation with which I regard the part I am to fill!'
     She sat as if she were afraid to take her eyes from his face.
     And now to unwind the last ring of the coil!
     'It is growing late,' said Carker, after a pause, 'and you are, as  you
said, fatigued. But the second  object of this interview, I must not forget.
I  must recommend you, I  must entreat  you in the  most earnest manner, for
sufficient  reasons  that I have, to  be cautious in  your demonstrations of
regard for Miss Dombey.'
     'Cautious! What do you mean?'
     'To be careful how you exhibit too much affection for that young lady.'
     'Too much affection, Sir!'  said  Edith,  knitting her broad  brow  and
rising. 'Who judges my affection, or measures it out? You?'
     'It is not I who do so.' He was, or feigned to be, perplexed.
     'Who then?'
     'Can you not guess who then?'
     'I do not choose to guess,' she answered.
     'Madam,' he said after a little hesitation; meantime they had been, and
still were, regarding each other as before;  'I am in a difficulty here. You
have told me  you  will  receive no message,  and you  have  forbidden me to
return  to that  subject; but the two subjects are  so closely  entwined,  I
find, that unless you will accept this vague  caution  from one who  has now
the honour to possess your confidence, though the way to it has been through
your displeasure, I must violate the injunction you have laid upon me.'
     'You know that you are free to do so, Sir,' said Edith. 'Do it.'
     So pale,  so trembling,  so  impassioned!  He had not miscalculated the
effect then!
     'His instructions were,' he said, in a low voice, 'that I should inform
you that your demeanour towards Miss Dombey is not agreeable to him. That it
suggests comparisons  to him  which are not favourable to himself.  That  he
desires it may be wholly changed; and  that if you  are  in earnest,  he  is
confident it will be; for your  continued show of affection will not benefit
its object.'
     'That is a threat,' she said.
     'That is a  threat,'  he answered, in  his  voiceless manner of assent:
adding aloud, 'but not directed against you.'
     Proud, erect, and  dignified, as she stood confronting him; and looking
through  him as she did, with her  full bright flashing eye; and smiling, as
she  was, with scorn  and bitterness; she sunk as if the  ground had dropped
beneath her, and in an instant would have  fallen  on the floor, but that he
caught  her in his arms. As instantaneously  she threw him off,  the  moment
that he  touched  her,  and, drawing back, confronted him again, immoveable,
with her hand stretched out.
     'Please to leave me. Say no more to-night.'
     'I feel the urgency of this,' said Mr Carker, 'because it is impossible
to say  what unforeseen  consequences might  arise, or  how soon, from  your
being unacquainted  with his  state of  mind. I  understand Miss  Dombey  is
concerned, now, at the dismissal of her old servant, which is likely to have
been a minor consequence in  itself. You don't blame me  for requesting that
Miss Dombey might not be present. May I hope so?'
     'I do not. Please to leave me, Sir.'
     'I knew that your  regard for the young lady, which is very sincere and
strong,  I am well  persuaded, would render it  a great  unhappiness to you,
ever to be a prey  to the reflection  that you had  injured her position and
ruined her future hopes,' said Carker hurriedly, but eagerly.
     'No more to-night. Leave me, if you please.'
     'I  shall be here constantly in my  attendance upon  him,  and  in  the
transaction of business matters.  You will allow me to see you again, and to
consult what should be done, and learn your wishes?'
     She motioned him towards the door.
     'I cannot even decide whether to tell him I have spoken to you yet;  or
to  lead  him  to suppose  that  I have  deferred  doing  so,  for  want  of
opportunity,  or for any other reason. It will be  necessary that you should
enable me to consult with you very soon.
     'At any time but now,' she answered.
     'You will understand, when I wish to see you, that Miss  Dombey is  not
to be present; and that I seek an interview as one who has  the happiness to
possess your confidence, and who comes to render you every assistance in his
power, and, perhaps, on many occasions, to ward off evil from her?'
     Looking at him still  with the same apparent dread of releasing him for
a moment from the  influence of her steady gaze, whatever that might be, she
answered, 'Yes!' and once more bade him go.
     He bowed, as if in compliance; but  turning  back,  when he  had nearly
reached the door, said:
     'I am forgiven, and have explained my fault. May I -  for Miss Dombey's
sake, and for my own - take your hand before I go?'
     She gave him the gloved  hand she had maimed last night. He  took it in
one of his, and kissed it, and withdrew. And when he had closed the door, he
waved the hand with which he had taken hers, and thrust it in his breast.
     Edith saw no one that night, but locked her door, and kept herself
     alone.
     She did not weep; she showed no greater agitation, outwardly, than when
she  was  riding home. She  laid as proud  a head upon her pillow as she had
borne in her carriage; and her prayer ran thus:
     'May this man be a liar! For if he has spoken truth, she is lost to me,
and I have no hope left!'
     This man, meanwhile, went home  musing to bed,  thinking, with a dainty
pleasure, how imperious  her passion was, how she had sat before  him in her
beauty,  with  the dark  eyes that had never turned away  but once;  how the
white down had fluttered; how the bird's feathers had been  strewn upon  the
ground.

        CHAPTER 46.
     Recognizant and Reflective

     Among  sundry minor  alterations  in Mr  Carker's life and habits  that
began to  take  place  at  this  time, none  was  more  remarkable than  the
extraordinary diligence with which he applied himself  to business, and  the
closeness with which  he investigated  every  detail that the affairs of the
House  laid open to him. Always active and penetrating in  such matters, his
lynx-eyed vigilance  now increased twenty-fold. Not only did his weary watch
keep pace  with every present point that every day presented  to him in some
new  form, but in the midst of these engrossing occupations he found leisure
- that is, he made it - to review the past transactions of the Firm, and his
share in them, during  a  long series  of years. Frequently when  the clerks
were all gone,  the  offices  dark and  empty,  and  all  similar  places of
business shut up, Mr  Carker,  with the whole anatomy of  the iron room laid
bare before him,  would  explore the mysteries of books and papers, with the
patient progress of a man who was  dissecting the minutest nerves and fibres
of  his  subject.  Perch, the  messenger,  who  usually  remained  on  these
occasions, to entertain himself with the perusal of the Price Current by the
light  of one candle, or to doze over the fire in  the outer office, at  the
imminent risk  every moment of diving head foremost into the coal-box, could
not  withhold the tribute  of  his  admiration  from  this zealous  conduct,
although  it  much contracted his domestic enjoyments; and again, and again,
expatiated to Mrs Perch (now nursing twins) on the industry and acuteness of
their managing gentleman in the City.
     The same increased and  sharp attention that Mr Carker bestowed  on the
business of the House, he  applied to his own personal affairs. Though not a
partner  in  the  concern  -  a  distinction  hitherto  reserved  solely  to
inheritors of the  great name of  Dombey -  he was  in  the receipt  of some
percentage on its dealings; and, participating in all its facilities for the
employment of money to advantage, was  considered, by  the minnows among the
tritons  of  the East, a rich  man. It began to be said, among  these shrewd
observers, that  Jem Carker, of Dombey's, was looking about him to  see what
he was worth; and that he was calling in his money at a good  time, like the
long-headed fellow he was; and bets  were even offered on the Stock Exchange
that Jem was going to marry a rich widow.
     Yet  these  cares did not  in  the least  interfere  with  Mr  Carker's
watching of his chief, or with  his cleanness,  neatness, sleekness, or  any
cat-like quality he possessed. It was not so much that there was a change in
him,  in reference  to  any  of  his habits,  as  that  the  whole  man  was
intensified.  Everything  that  had  been  observable  in  him  before,  was
observable  now,  but with a  greater amount  of concentration.  He did each
single thing, as  if he did nothing else - a  pretty certain indication in a
man of  that range of ability and purpose,  that he is doing something which
sharpens and keeps alive his keenest powers.
     The only decided alteration in him was,  that  as  he  rode to  and fro
along  the streets, he would  fall  into deep fits  of musing,  like that in
which he  had come away  from  Mr  Dombey's house,  on  the morning  of that
gentleman's disaster. At such times, he would keep clear of the obstacles in
his  way, mechanically; and  would  appear to  see  and  hear nothing  until
arrival at his destination, or some sudden chance or effort roused him.
     Walking his  white-legged horse thus, to  the counting-house of  Dombey
and Son  one  day, he  was as unconscious of the observation of two pairs of
women's eyes, as of the fascinated orbs of  Rob the Grinder, who, in waiting
a  street's   length  from  the  appointed  place,  as  a  demonstration  of
punctuality, vainly touched and retouched his hat to attract  attention, and
trotted along on foot, by  his master's  side, prepared to  hold his stirrup
when he should alight.
     'See where he goes!' cried one of these two women, an old creature, who
stretched out her  shrivelled arm to point him out to her companion, a young
woman, who stood close beside her, withdrawn like herself into a gateway.
     Mrs Brown's  daughter looked out, at this  bidding  on  the part of Mrs
Brown; and there were wrath and vengeance in her face.
     'I never  thought to look at him again,' she said, in a low voice; 'but
it's well I should, perhaps. I see. I see!'
     'Not changed!' said the old woman, with a look of eager malice.
     'He changed!' returned the  other.  'What for?  What  has  he suffered?
There is change enough for twenty in me. Isn't that enough?'
     'See where he goes!' muttered the old woman, watching her daughter with
her red eyes; 'so easy and so trim a-horseback, while we are in the mud.'
     'And of it,' said her daughter impatiently. 'We are mud, underneath his
horse's feet. What should we be?'
     In  the intentness with which she looked  after him  again, she made  a
hasty gesture with her  hand when the  old woman began to  reply, as if  her
view could  be obstructed by mere  sound. Her  mother  watching her, and not
him, remained silent;  until  her kindling  glance subsided, and she drew  a
long breath, as if in the relief of his being gone.
     'Deary!' said the old  woman  then.  'Alice! Handsome  gall Ally!'  She
gently shook her sleeve  to arouse her attention. 'Will you let him go  like
that,  when  you  can  wring money  from  him?  Why, it's  a  wickedness, my
daughter.'
     'Haven't  I  told you,  that  I  will  not have  money from  him?'  she
returned. 'And don't you  yet  believe  me? Did  I take his  sister's money?
Would I touch a penny, if I knew it, that had gone through his white hands -
unless  it was, indeed, that  I could  poison it, and send  it back to  him?
Peace, mother, and come away.
     'And him so rich?' murmured the old woman. 'And us so poor!'
     'Poor in not  being able  to  pay  him  any of the  harm we  owe  him,'
returned her daughter. 'Let him give me  that sort of  riches, and I'll take
them from him, and use them.  Come away.  Its  no good looking at his horse.
Come away, mother!'
     But the old woman, for whom  the spectacle of Rob the Grinder returning
down  the  street,  leading  the  riderless  horse,  appeared to  have  some
extraneous interest that it did not possess in itself,  surveyed  that young
man with the utmost earnestness; and  seeming to have  whatever  doubts  she
entertained,  resolved  as he  drew  nearer, glanced  at  her  daughter with
brightened  eyes  and  with  her finger  on her lip,  and emerging  from the
gateway at the moment of his passing, touched him on the shoulder.
     'Why, where's my  sprightly Rob been, all this time!' she  said,  as he
turned round.
     The  sprightly Rob, whose sprightliness was very much diminished by the
salutation, looked exceedingly  dismayed, and said, with the water rising in
his eyes:
     'Oh! why  can't you  leave a  poor cove alone, Misses Brown,  when he's
getting an honest livelihood and conducting himself respectable? What do you
come and deprive a cove of his  character  for,  by talking to  him  in  the
streets, when he's  taking his master's  horse to a honest stable - a  horse
you'd go and sell  for cats' and dogs' meat if  you  had your  way!  Why,  I
thought,' said the Grinder, producing his concluding remark  as  if it  were
the climax of all his injuries, 'that you was dead long ago!'
     'This  is  the way,' cried the  old woman, appealing  to her  daughter,
'that he talks to me, who knew  him weeks and months together, my deary, and
have stood his  friend many and many a time among the pigeon-fancying tramps
and bird-catchers.'
     'Let the  birds be, will you, Misses Brown?' retorted Rob, in a tone of
the acutest anguish. 'I think a cove had better  have to  do with lions than
them  little  creeturs, for they're always flying back in your face when you
least expect  it.  Well,  how  d'ye do and what do  you want?'  These polite
inquiries the Grinder uttered,  as  it were under  protest, and  with  great
exasperation and vindictiveness.
     'Hark  how he speaks to an old friend, my deary!' said Mrs Brown, again
appealing to  her  daughter. 'But  there's some of  his old  friends  not so
patient as me. If I  was  to tell  some that he knows, and  has  spotted and
cheated with, where to find him - '
     'Will you hold  your  tongue, Misses  Brown?' interrupted the miserable
Grinder, glancing quickly round, as  though he expected to see  his master's
teeth shining at his elbow.  'What do you  take a pleasure in ruining a cove
for? At your time of life too! when you ought to be thinking of a variety of
things!'
     'What a gallant horse!' said the old woman, patting the animal's neck.
     'Let him alone,  will you,  Misses  Brown?' cried Rob, pushing away her
hand. 'You're enough to drive a penitent cove mad!'
     'Why, what hurt do I do him, child?' returned the old woman.
     'Hurt?' said  Rob. 'He's got a master that would find it  out if he was
touched with a straw.' And he blew upon the place where the old woman's hand
had rested for a moment, and smoothed  it gently  with his finger, as  if he
seriously believed what he said.
     The old woman  looking back  to  mumble and mouth  at her daughter, who
followed, kept  close to Rob's  heels as he walked on with the bridle in his
hand; and pursued the conversation.
     'A good place, Rob, eh?' said she. 'You're in luck, my child.'
     'Oh  don't  talk  about  luck,  Misses  Brown,'  returned the  wretched
Grinder, facing  round and stopping. 'If you'd  never  come, or if you'd  go
away, then indeed a cove  might be considered tolerable lucky.  Can't you go
along,  Misses Brown,  and  not  foller  me!'  blubbered  Rob,  with  sudden
defiance.  'If the young woman's a friend of yours,  why don't  she take you
away, instead of letting you make yourself so disgraceful!'
     'What!' croaked  the  old woman, putting her face close to  his, with a
malevolent grin  upon it  that  puckered  up the loose skin down in her very
throat. 'Do you deny your old chum! Have you lurked to my house fifty times,
and slept sound in a corner when you had no other bed but the paving-stones,
and do you talk to me like this! Have I bought and sold with you, and helped
you in my way of business,  schoolboy, sneak, and what not, and  do you tell
me to  go  along? Could I raise a crowd of old company  about  you to-morrow
morning, that would  follow you to ruin like copies of your own shadow,  and
do you turn on me with your bold looks! I'll go. Come, Alice.'
     'Stop, Misses Brown!' cried the distracted Grinder. 'What are you doing
of? Don't put yourself  in  a  passion! Don't let her  go,  if you please. I
haven't meant any offence. I said "how d'ye do," at first, didn't I? But you
wouldn't answer. How  you do? Besides,'  said Rob piteously, 'look here! How
can a cove stand talking  in the street with  his master's prad a wanting to
be  took to be rubbed down, and his master up to every individgle thing that
happens!'
     The old woman  made a  show  of being partially appeased, but shook her
head, and mouthed and muttered still.
     'Come  along to the stables, and  have a glass of something that's good
for you,  Misses Brown,  can't you?'  said Rob, 'instead of  going  on, like
that, which is no good to you, nor anybody else. Come  along with  her, will
you be  so kind?' said Rob. 'I'm sure I'm delighted to see her, if it wasn't
for the horse!'
     With this apology, Rob turned  away, a rueful picture of  despair,  and
walked  his  charge  down  a bye street'  The old  woman,  mouthing  at  her
daughter, followed close upon him. The daughter followed.
     Turning  into a silent  little  square or court-yard  that had  a great
church tower rising above it, and a packer's warehouse, and a bottle-maker's
warehouse, for  its  places  of  business,  Rob  the  Grinder delivered  the
white-legged horse to  the  hostler of a  quaint stable at the  corner;  and
inviting Mrs Brown and her daughter to seat themselves upon a stone bench at
the  gate  of  that  establishment,  soon  reappeared  from  a  neighbouring
public-house with a pewter measure and a glass.
     'Here's  master - Mr Carker, child!' said the old woman, slowly, as her
sentiment before drinking. 'Lord bless him!'
     'Why, I didn't tell you who he was,' observed Rob, with staring eyes.
     'We know him by sight,' said Mrs Brown, whose working mouth and nodding
head stopped for the  moment, in the fixedness of her attention. 'We saw him
pass this morning,  afore he got off his horse; when you were  ready to take
it.'
     'Ay,  ay,'  returned  Rob,  appearing  to wish that  his readiness  had
carried  him to any  other place. - 'What's the matter with her?  Won't  she
drink?'
     This inquiry had reference to Alice,  who, folded in her cloak,  sat  a
little apart, profoundly inattentive to his offer of the replenished glass.
     The  old woman shook her head. 'Don't mind  her,'  she  said;  'she's a
strange creetur, if you know'd her, Rob. But Mr Carker
     'Hush!' said Rob,  glancing  cautiously up at  the packer's, and at the
bottle-maker's, as if,  from  any one of the tiers of warehouses, Mr  Carker
might be looking down. 'Softly.'
     'Why, he ain't here!' cried Mrs Brown.
     'I don't  know  that,' muttered Rob, whose glance  even wandered to the
church tower, as if he might be there, with a supernatural power of hearing.
     'Good master?' inquired Mrs Brown.
     Rob nodded; and added, in a low voice, 'precious sharp.'
     'Lives out of town, don't he, lovey?' said the old woman.
     'When he's  at  home,' returned Rob; 'but we don't  live  at  home just
now.'
     'Where then?' asked the old woman.
     'Lodgings; up near Mr Dombey's,' returned Rob.
     The younger  woman  fixed  her  eyes  so searchingly upon  him, and  so
suddenly, that Rob  was quite confounded, and  offered the  glass again, but
with no more effect upon her than before.
     'Mr Dombey - you  and I used to  talk about him, sometimes, you  know,'
said Rob to Mrs Brown. 'You used to get me to talk about him.'
     The old woman nodded.
     'Well,  Mr  Dombey,  he's  had  a  fall  from  his  horse,'  said  Rob,
unwillingly; 'and my master has to be up there, more than usual, either with
him, or Mrs Dombey, or some of 'em; and so we've come to town.'
     'Are they good friends, lovey?'asked the old woman.
     'Who?' retorted Rob.
     'He and she?'
     'What, Mr and Mrs Dombey?' said Rob. 'How should I know!'
     'Not  them  - Master  and Mrs Dombey, chick,'  replied  the  old woman,
coaxingly.
     'I don't know,' said Rob,  looking round him  again. 'I suppose so. How
curious you are, Misses Brown! Least said, soonest mended.'
     'Why there's no harm in it!' exclaimed the old woman, with a laugh, and
a clap of her hands.  'Sprightly Rob, has grown tame since he has been  well
off! There's no harm in It.
     'No, there's no  harm  in  it,  I  know,' returned  Rob, with the  same
distrustful glance  at the packer's  and the bottle-maker's, and the church;
'but blabbing, if it's only about the number of buttons on my master's coat,
won't do. I tell you it won't do with him. A cove had  better drown himself.
He  says so. I shouldn't have so much as told you what his name was, if  you
hadn't known it. Talk about somebody else.'
     As  Rob took another cautious survey of the yard, the  old woman made a
secret motion  to her daughter. It was momentary, but the  daughter,  with a
slight look of intelligence,  withdrew her eyes from the boy's face, and sat
folded in her cloak as before.
     'Rob, lovey!' said the old woman, beckoning him to the other end of the
bench. 'You were always a pet and favourite of mine. Now, weren't you? Don't
you know you were?'
     'Yes, Misses Brown,' replied the Grinder, with a very bad grace.
     'And you could leave  me!' said  the old woman, flinging her arms about
his neck.  'You could  go away,  and grow almost out of knowledge, and never
come  to tell  your poor old friend how  fortunate you were, proud lad! Oho,
Oho!'
     'Oh here's  a dreadful go for a  cove that's got a master wide awake in
the neighbourhood!' exclaimed the wretched Grinder. 'To  be howled over like
this here!'
     'Won't you  come and see me, Robby?' cried Mrs  Brown. 'Oho,  won't you
ever come and see me?'
     'Yes, I tell you! Yes, I will!' returned the Grinder.
     'That's my own Rob! That's  my lovey!' said Mrs Brown, drying the tears
upon  her  shrivelled  face, and  giving him a tender squeeze.  'At  the old
place, Rob?'
     'Yes,' replied the Grinder.
     'Soon, Robby dear?' cried Mrs Brown; 'and often?'
     'Yes. Yes. Yes,' replied Rob. 'I will indeed, upon my soul and body.'
     'And then,' said Mrs Brown, with her arms uplifted towards the sky, and
her head thrown back and shaking, 'if he's true to his word, I'll never come
a-near him though  I know where he is, and never breathe  a  syllable  about
him! Never!'
     This ejaculation seemed a drop of comfort to the miserable Grinder, who
shook Mrs  Brown  by  the hand upon it,  and implored her with tears in  his
eyes, to leave a cove and not destroy his prospects. Mrs Brown, with another
fond  embrace, assented; but in  the  act of  following her daughter, turned
back, with  her finger stealthily raised, and asked in  a hoarse whisper for
some money.
     'A  shilling, dear!' she  said,  with her  eager  avaricious  face, 'or
sixpence! For  old acquaintance sake. I'm so poor.  And my  handsome  gal' -
looking over her shoulder - 'she's my gal, Rob - half starves me.
     But  as the reluctant Grinder  put it in her hand, her daughter, coming
quietly back, caught the hand in hen, and twisted out the coin.
     'What,' she said, 'mother!  always money! money from the first,  and to
the last' Do you mind so little what I said but now? Here. Take it!'
     The old woman  uttered a moan as the money was restored, but without in
any other way opposing  its restoration, hobbled  at her daughter's side out
of the yard, and along the bye street upon  which  it opened. The astonished
and  dismayed  Rob staring  after  them, saw that they stopped,  and fell to
earnest  conversation  very  soon;  and more  than  once observed  a  darkly
threatening action of  the younger woman's hand (obviously  having reference
to someone of whom they spoke), and a crooning feeble imitation of it on the
part of Mrs Brown, that made him earnestly hope  he might not be the subject
of their discourse.
     With  the  present  consolation  that  they  were  gone, and  with  the
prospective comfort  that Mrs Brown could not  live  for  ever, and was  not
likely to live  long to  trouble him, the Grinder,  not otherwise regretting
his  misdeeds than  as they were  attended with such disagreeable incidental
consequences,  composed his ruffled features to a  more serene expression by
thinking of the admirable manner in which he had disposed of  Captain Cuttle
(a reflection  that seldom failed to put him in a flow of spirits), and went
to the Dombey Counting House to receive his master's orders.
     There his master, so subtle and vigilant of eye, that Rob quaked before
him, more than half expecting to be taxed with Mrs Brown, gave him the usual
morning's box  of papers for Mr Dombey,  and  a note  for Mrs Dombey: merely
nodding  his head as an enjoinder to be careful,  and to  use  dispatch  - a
mysterious  admonition,  fraught  in  the  Grinder's imagination with dismal
warnings and threats; and more powerful with him than any words.
     Alone again, in  his own room, Mr Carker applied himself  to work,  and
worked all day. He saw many visitors; overlooked a number of documents; went
in and out, to and from, sundry places of mercantile resort; and indulged in
no more  abstraction until the day's business was  done. But, when the usual
clearance of  papers from  his  table  was made at last,  he  fell into  his
thoughtful mood once more.
     He was  standing in his accustomed place  and attitude, with  his  eyes
intently fixed upon the ground, when his brother entered to bring  back some
letters  that had  been taken out in the  course of  the day.  He  put  them
quietly on the table, and was going immediately, when Mr Carker the Manager,
whose eyes had rested on him, on his entrance, as if they  had all this time
had him for the subject of their contemplation, instead of the office-floor,
said:
     'Well, John Carker, and what brings you here?'
     His brother pointed to the letters, and was again withdrawing.
     'I wonder,' said  the  Manager,  'that  you  can come  and go,  without
inquiring how our master is'.
     'We had word  this morning  in the Counting House, that  Mr  Dombey was
doing well,' replied his brother.
     'You are such a meek fellow,'  said the Manager, with a smile,  -  'but
you have grown so, in the  course of  years - that if any harm came  to him,
you'd be miserable, I dare swear now.'
     'I should be truly sorry, James,' returned the other.
     'He would be  sorry!'  said the Manager, pointing  at  him, as if there
were some other person present  to whom he was appealing. 'He would be truly
sorry! This brother of mine! This  junior  of the place, this slighted piece
of  lumber, pushed aside with  his face to the wall,  like a rotten picture,
and left so, for Heaven knows how many years he's all gratitude and respect,
and devotion too, he would have me believe!'
     'I  would have  you believe nothing, James,' returned the other. 'Be as
just to me as you  would to any other man below you. You ask a question, and
I answer it.'
     'And have  you  nothing,  Spaniel,'  said  the  Manager,  with  unusual
irascibility, 'to complain  of  in  him?  No  proud treatment  to resent, no
insolence, no foolery of state, no exaction of any sort! What the devil! are
you man or mouse?'
     'It would be strange if any  two persons could be  together for so many
years, especially as superior and inferior, without each having something to
complain  of  in  the  other -  as  he thought, at all  events, replied John
Carker. 'But apart from my history here - '
     'His history here!' exclaimed the Manager.  'Why, there it is. The very
fact that  makes him  an extreme  case, puts him out  of the  whole chapter!
Well?'
     'Apart from that, which, as you hint, gives me  a reason to be thankful
that  I alone (happily for all the rest) possess, surely there is no  one in
the House who would not say and feel at least as much. You do not think that
anybody here would be indifferent  to a mischance or misfortune happening to
the head of the House, or anything than truly sorry for it?'
     'You have  good  reason  to be  bound to  him too!' said  the  Manager,
contemptuously.  'Why, don't you  believe that you are kept here, as a cheap
example, and a famous instance of the clemency of Dombey and Son, redounding
to the credit of the illustrious House?'
     'No,' replied his brother, mildly, 'I have long believed that I am kept
here for more kind and disinterested reasons.
     'But you were going,'  said the Manager, with the snarl of a tiger-cat,
'to recite some Christian precept, I observed.'
     'Nay,  James,'  returned  the  other, 'though the  tie  of  brotherhood
between us has been long broken and thrown away - '
     'Who broke it, good Sir?' said the Manager.
     'I, by my misconduct. I do not charge it upon you.'
     The Manager replied, with that mute action of his bristling mouth, 'Oh,
you don't charge it upon me!' and bade him go on.
     'I  say,  though there  is not that tie between us, do not, I  entreat,
assail me with unnecessary taunts, or misinterpret what I say, or would say.
I was  only going to suggest to you that it would be  a  mistake to  suppose
that it is only  you,  who  have been selected  here,  above all others, for
advancement, confidence and distinction (selected, in the beginning, I know,
for  your great ability and  trustfulness), and who communicate  more freely
with  Mr Dombey than anyone,  and stand, it may be said, on equal terms with
him, and have been favoured and enriched by him - that it would be a mistake
to suppose that it is only you who are tender of his welfare and reputation.
There is no one  in the House, from yourself down to the lowest, I sincerely
believe, who does not participate in that feeling.'
     'You  lie!'  said  the  Manager,  red  with  sudden  anger.  'You're  a
hypocrite, John Carker, and you lie.'
     'James!'  cried the other, flushing in  his turn. 'What do  you mean by
these insulting words? Why do you so basely use them to me, unprovoked?'
     'I  tell you,'  said the Manager, 'that your hypocrisy  and  meekness -
that  all  the hypocrisy and meekness  of this  place - is not worth that to
me,' snapping his thumb and finger, 'and that I see through it as if it were
air! There  is  not a  man employed here, standing  between myself  and  the
lowest in place (of whom you are very considerate, and with  reason, for  he
is  not far off), who wouldn't be glad  at heart  to see his master humbled:
who  does  not  hate him,  secretly: who does not wish him evil  rather than
good: and who would not turn upon him, if he had the power and boldness. The
nearer to his favour, the nearer to  his insolence;  the closer to  him, the
farther from him. That's the creed here!'
     'I  don't  know,'  said  his brother,  whose  roused feelings had  soon
yielded   to   surprise,  'who   may  have  abused  your   ear   with   such
representations; or why you have chosen to try me, rather  than another. But
that you have been trying me, and tampering with me, I am now sure. You have
a different manner  and a different aspect from any that I ever saw m you. I
will only say to you, once more, you are deceived.'
     'I know I am,' said the Manager. 'I have told you so.'
     'Not by me,' returned his brother. 'By your informant, if you have one.
If not, by your own thoughts and suspicions.'
     'I have no suspicions,' said the  Manager.  'Mine are certainties.  You
pusillanimous, abject, cringing dogs! All making the same  show, all canting
the same story,  all whining the same  professions, all  harbouring the same
transparent secret.'
     His  brother withdrew, without  saying  more, and  shut  the door as he
concluded.  Mr Carker  the Manager  drew  a chair close before the fire, and
fell to beating the coals softly with the poker.
     'The faint-hearted, fawning knaves,' he muttered, with his  two shining
rows of teeth laid bare. 'There's  not one among them, who wouldn't feign to
be so  shocked  and outraged - ! Bah! There's not  one among them, but if he
had at once the  power, and  the wit  and  daring  to use it, would  scatter
Dombey's pride and lay it low, as ruthlessly as I rake out these ashes.'
     As he broke them  up and strewed them in the grate, he looked on with a
thoughtful  smile  at what  he was  doing. 'Without the same queen  beckoner
too!' he added presently;  'and there is  pride there, not to be forgotten -
witness our own acquaintance!' With  that he fell into a deeper reverie, and
sat pondering over the blackening grate, until he rose up like a man who had
been absorbed in a book, and looking round him took his hat and gloves, went
to where  his horse was waiting, mounted, and rode away  through the lighted
streets, for it was evening.
     He  rode  near  Mr  Dombey's  house;  and falling  into  a walk  as  he
approached it, looked  up at the windows The window  where he  had once seen
Florence sitting with  her dog attracted  his attention first, though  there
was  no light in it; but he smiled as he  carried his eyes up the tall front
of the house, and seemed to leave that object superciliously behind.
     'Time was,' he said, 'when it was well to watch even your rising little
star, and know in what  quarter there were clouds, to shadow you if needful.
But a planet has arisen, and you are lost in its light.'
     He turned the white-legged  horse round the street corner,  and  sought
one  shining window from among those at the  back of  the house.  Associated
with it was a certain stately presence, a  gloved hand,  the remembrance how
the  feathers of  a beautiful  bird's  wing had been showered down  upon the
floor, and how the light white down upon a robe had stirred and  rustled, as
in the rising of a distant storm. These were the things  he carried with him
as he turned away  again, and rode  through the darkening and deserted Parks
at a quick rate.
     In fatal truth, these  were associated with a woman, a proud woman, who
hated him, but who  by slow and sure degrees had been led on  by his  craft,
and her pride and resentment, to endure his company, and little by little to
receive him as one who had the privilege to  talk to  her of her own defiant
disregard of her own husband, and her abandonment of high consideration  for
herself. They were  associated with  a  woman who hated him  deeply, and who
knew him, and who mistrusted him because  she  knew him, and because he knew
her; but who fed her fierce resentment  by suffering him to draw  nearer and
yet  nearer to her every day, in spite of the hate she cherished for him. In
spite of it! For that very reason; since in its depths, too far down for her
threatening  eye to pierce, though she could see into  them  dimly, lay  the
dark  retaliation,  whose  faintest shadow seen once  and shuddered  at, and
never seen again, would have been sufficient stain upon her soul.
     Did the phantom of such a woman flit about him on his ride; true to the
reality, and obvious to him?
     Yes. He saw her in his mind, exactly  as she was.  She bore him company
with her pride, resentment, hatred, all as plain to him as her  beauty; with
nothing plainer to  him than her hatred of him. He saw her sometimes haughty
and  repellent at  his side, and  some times  down among  his horse's  feet,
fallen and in the dust.  But he always saw her as she was, without disguise,
and watched her on the dangerous way that she was going.
     And when his ride was over, and he was newly dressed, and came into the
light of her bright room with his bent head, soft voice, and soothing smile,
he saw her yet as plainly. He even suspected the mystery of the gloved hand,
and held it all the longer in his own for that suspicion. Upon the dangerous
way that she was going, he was, still; and not a footprint did she mark upon
it, but he set his own there, straight'

        CHAPTER 47.
     The Thunderbolt

     The  barrier between Mr Dombey and his wife was  not weakened by  time.
Ill-assorted couple, unhappy in themselves and in each other, bound together
by no  tie but  the manacle that joined their fettered hands, and  straining
that so harshly, in their shrinking asunder, that it wore  and chafed to the
bone,  Time, consoler of affliction and softener  of anger, could do nothing
to help them. Their pride, however different in kind  and object, was  equal
in degree;  and, in their flinty  opposition, struck out fire  between  them
which might smoulder or might blaze, as  circumstances were,  but  burned up
everything  within their mutual reach, and made their marriage way a road of
ashes.
     Let us  be just to him. In the monstrous delusion of his life, swelling
with every grain of  sand  that shifted  in its  glass, he  urged her on, he
little thought to what,  or considered  how;  but still his feeling  towards
her,  such as it  was, remained  as at first.  She had the  grand demerit of
unaccountably putting  herself in opposition to  the recognition of his vast
importance, and to the acknowledgment of her complete  submission to it, and
so far  it  was necessary to correct and reduce her; but otherwise he  still
considered her,  in his  cold way,  a lady capable of  doing honour, if  she
would,  to  his   choice  and  name,  and   of  reflecting  credit  on   his
proprietorship.
     Now,  she, with all her might of  passionate and proud resentment, bent
her dark glance from day to day, and hour  to hour - from  that night in her
own chamber, when  she  had  sat gazing  at the shadows on the wall, to  the
deeper night fast coming - upon one figure directing a crowd of humiliations
and exasperations against her; and that figure, still her husband's.
     Was Mr Dombey's master-vice, that ruled him so inexorably, an unnatural
characteristic?  It might be worthwhile, sometimes,  to  inquire what Nature
is, and how men work to change her, and whether, in the enforced distortions
so produced, it is not natural to be unnatural. Coop any son or  daughter of
our mighty mother  within narrow range, and bind the prisoner to  one  idea,
and foster it  by servile worship  of it on the part  of  the  few  timid or
designing people  standing round, and what is Nature to the  willing captive
who has never risen up upon the wings of  a free mind - drooping and useless
soon - to see her in her comprehensive truth!
     Alas! are there so few  things in  the world, about us, most unnatural,
and yet most natural in  being so? Hear the magistrate or judge admonish the
unnatural outcasts of society; unnatural in brutal habits, unnatural in want
of  decency, unnatural in  losing  and confounding all distinctions  between
good  and  evil; unnatural  in  ignorance,  in  vice,  in  recklessness,  in
contumacy, in mind,  in looks, in everything. But follow the  good clergyman
or doctor, who, with his life imperilled at every breath he draws, goes down
into their dens, lying within the  echoes of  our  carriage wheels and daily
tread upon the pavement stones. Look round upon the world of odious sights -
millions  of immortal creatures have  no  other  world  on  earth  - at  the
lightest mention  of which humanity revolts,  and  dainty delicacy living in
the next street, stops her ears, and lisps 'I don't believe it!' Breathe the
polluted air, foul with every impurity that is poisonous to health and life;
and have every sense, conferred upon our race for its delight and happiness,
offended, sickened and  disgusted,  and made a  channel by which misery  and
death  alone can  enter.  Vainly  attempt  to think of any simple plant,  or
flower,  or wholesome weed,  that,  set  in this foetid  bed, could have its
natural growth, or put its  little leaves off to the sun as GOD designed it.
And then, calling up some ghastly  child, with stunted form and wicked face,
hold forth on  its unnatural sinfulness, and lament its being, so early, far
away from Heaven - but think a little of its having been conceived, and born
and bred, in Hell!
     Those who study the  physical sciences, and bring them to bear upon the
health of Man, tell us that if the noxious particles that rise from vitiated
air were palpable to the sight, we should see them lowering in a dense black
cloud  above  such haunts,  and  rolling slowly on  to  corrupt  the  better
portions of a town. But if the moral pestilence that rises with them, and in
the eternal  laws of  our  Nature,  is inseparable from them,  could be made
discernible too, how terrible the revelation! Then should we see  depravity,
impiety,  drunkenness,  theft,  murder,  and a  long train of nameless  sins
against the natural affections and  repulsions  of mankind,  overhanging the
devoted spots, and creeping on, to blight the innocent and spread  contagion
among the pure. Then should we see how the same poisoned fountains that flow
into  our hospitals  and lazar-houses,  inundate the  jails,  and  make  the
convict-ships  swim  deep,  and  roll  across  the  seas, and  over-run vast
continents with crime. Then should we stand appalled to  know, that where we
generate  disease  to strike our  children down and  entail itself on unborn
generations, there also  we breed, by the same certain process, infancy that
knows no innocence, youth without modesty or shame,  maturity that is mature
in nothing but in suffering and guilt, blasted old age that is  a scandal on
the  form  we  bear. unnatural humanity!  When we shall  gather  grapes from
thorns,  and  figs from thistles; when  fields of grain shall spring up from
the offal in the bye-ways of our wicked cities, and roses bloom in  the  fat
churchyards that they cherish;  then we  may look for natural  humanity, and
find it growing from such seed.
     Oh for a good spirit who  would take the house-tops  off,  with a  mole
potent and benignant  hand than  the  lame demon  in the tale,  and  show  a
Christian people what dark shapes issue  from  amidst  their homes, to swell
the retinue of the Destroying Angel as he moves forth  among  them! For only
one night's view of the pale phantoms rising from the scenes of our too-long
neglect;  and from the thick and sullen air where Vice and  Fever  propagate
together, raining the tremendous social retributions which are  ever pouring
down, and ever coming thicker! Bright and blest the morning that should rise
on  such a night: for men, delayed no more  by stumbling-blocks of their own
making,  which  are  but specks  of  dust upon  the  path  between  them and
eternity, would then apply themselves,  like creatures of one common origin,
owing  one  duty to the Father of one family, and tending to one common end,
to make the world a better place!
     Not the less bright  and blest would that day  be for  rousing some who
never  have  looked out upon the  world  of  human  life  around them, to  a
knowledge of their own relation to it, and for making them acquainted with a
perversion  of  nature in their  own contracted sympathies and estimates; as
great, and yet as natural in its development when  once begun, as the lowest
degradation known.'
     But no  such day had ever dawned  on  Mr Dombey, or his wife;  and  the
course of each was taken.
     Through  six months that ensued upon his accident, they  held  the same
relations  one towards  the other. A  marble rock could not have stood  more
obdurately in his  way than she;  and no chilled spring, lying  uncheered by
any ray of light in the depths of a  deep cave, could be more sullen or more
cold than he.
     The hope that had fluttered within her when the promise of her new home
dawned, was quite gone from the heart of Florence now. That home  was nearly
two years old; and even the patient trust that was in her, could not survive
the daily blight of such  experience. If she had  any lingering fancy in the
nature of hope left, that Edith and her father might be happier together, in
some distant  time, she had none,  now, that her father would ever love her.
The little  interval in which  she  had imagined  that  she  saw some  small
relenting in  him, was  forgotten in  the long  remembrance of his  coldness
since and before, or only remembered as a sorrowful delusion.
     Florence loved him still, but, by degrees,  had come to love him rather
as  some  dear one  who had been, or who might  have been, than  as the hard
reality before her eyes. Something  of  the softened sadness with  which she
loved the memory of little Paul, or of her mother, seemed to enter now  into
her  thoughts  of  him,  and to  make them, as it were,  a dear remembrance.
Whether  it was  that he was dead to  her, and that partly  for this reason,
partly for his share  in those old objects of her affection, and  partly for
the  long  association of him with hopes that were withered and tendernesses
he had frozen, she could not have told; but the father whom she  loved began
to  be a  vague and dreamy idea  to her: hardly more substantially connected
with her real  life, than  the image she would sometimes  conjure up, of her
dear brother  yet  alive,  and growing  to  be a man,  who would protect and
cherish her.
     The change, if it may be called one, had stolen on  her like the change
from  childhood to womanhood, and  had  come  with it.  Florence was  almost
seventeen,  when,  in  her  lonely  musings,  she  was  conscious  of  these
thoughts.'
     She was often alone now,  for the old association between her  and  her
Mama was  greatly changed. At the time of her father's accident, and when he
was lying  in his room  downstairs,  Florence had first observed  that Edith
avoided her. Wounded and shocked, and yet unable to reconcile  this with her
affection when they did meet,  she sought her in her own room at night, once
more.
     'Mama,' said Florence, stealing softly to  her side, 'have  I  offended
you?'
     Edith answered 'No.'
     'I must have done something,'  said Florence. 'Tell me what it is.  You
have changed your manner to me, dear Mama. I cannot say how instantly I feel
the least change; for I love you with my whole heart.'
     'As I do you,' said Edith.  'Ah,  Florence,  believe me never more than
now!'
     'Why do you go away from me so often,  and keep away?' asked  Florence.
'And why do you sometimes look so strangely on  me, dear Mama? You do so, do
you not?'
     Edith signified assent with her dark eyes.
     'Why?' returned Florence imploringly. 'Tell me why, that I may know how
to please you better; and tell me this shall not be so any more.
     'My Florence,' answered Edith, taking the hand  that embraced her neck,
and  looking into  the eyes that looked into hers  so  lovingly, as Florence
knelt  upon the ground before  her; 'why it is,  I cannot  tell you.  It  is
neither for me to say, nor you to hear; but that it is, and that it must be,
I know. Should I do it if I did not?'
     'Are we to be estranged, Mama?' asked Florence, gazing at her like  one
frightened.
     Edith's silent lips formed 'Yes.'
     Florence looked at her with increasing fear and wonder, until she could
see her no more through the blinding tears that ran down her face.
     'Florence! my life!' said  Edith, hurriedly, 'listen  to  me.  I cannot
bear to see this grief.  Be calmer. You  see  that I am composed, and is  it
nothing to me?'
     She resumed her  steady voice and manner as she said the  latter words,
and added presently:
     'Not  wholly  estranged.  Partially:  and  only  that,  in  appearance,
Florence, for in my own breast I am still the same to you, and ever will be.
But what I do is not done for myself.'
     'Is it for me, Mama?' asked Florence.
     'It is  enough,' said Edith,  after a pause,  'to know what it is; why,
matters little. Dear Florence, it is better - it is necessary - it must be -
that our association should be less frequent. The confidence there  has been
between us must be broken off.'
     'When?' cried Florence. 'Oh, Mama, when?'
     'Now,' said Edith.
     'For all time to come?' asked Florence.
     'I do not say  that,' answered Edith. 'I do not  know  that. Nor will I
say  that  companionship between us  is,  at the best, an  ill-assorted  and
unholy  union, of which I might have  known no good could come. My  way here
has been through paths that  you will never tread, and my way henceforth may
lie - God knows - I do not see it - '
     Her voice died away into silence; and she sat, looking at Florence, and
almost shrinking  from her, with the same  strange dread  and wild avoidance
that  Florence  had noticed  once before.  The  same  dark  pride  and  rage
succeeded, sweeping  over her form  and features  like an angry chord across
the strings of a wild harp. But no softness or  humility ensued on that. She
did not lay her head down now, and weep, and say that she had no hope but in
Florence. She held  it up as if she were a beautiful Medusa, looking on him,
face  to face, to strike  him dead. Yes, and she would have  done it, if she
had had the charm.
     'Mama,'  said Florence, anxiously, 'there is  a  change in you, in more
than what you say to me, which alarms me. Let me stay with you a little.'
     'No,' said Edith, 'no, dearest. I am best left alone now, and I do best
to keep apart  from you, of all  else. Ask me no questions, but believe that
what I am when I seem fickle or  capricious to you, I am not of my own will,
or  for myself. Believe, though  we are  stranger to each other than we have
been, that I am unchanged to you within. Forgive me for having ever darkened
your dark home - I am  a shadow on it, I know well  - and let us never speak
of this again.'
     'Mama,' sobbed Florence, 'we are not to part?'
     'We  do  this  that  we may not  part,' said  Edith. 'Ask  no more. Go,
Florence! My love and my remorse go with you!'
     She embraced her, and dismissed her; and as Florence passed  out of her
room, Edith looked on the retiring figure, as if her good  angel went out in
that form,  and  left her  to  the haughty  and indignant  passions that now
claimed her for their own, and set their seal upon her brow.
     From that hour, Florence and she were, as they had been,  no  more. For
days  together, they would seldom meet, except at table, and  when Mr Dombey
was present. Then  Edith, imperious, inflexible, and silent, never looked at
her.  Whenever  Mr  Carker  was of  the party, as he  often was, during  the
progress of  Mr Dombey's  recovery, and  afterwards, Edith held herself more
removed from her, and was more distant towards her, than at other times. Yet
she and Florence never encountered, when there was no  one by, but she would
embrace  her as affectionately as of old, though not with the same relenting
of her proud aspect; and often, when she had  been out late, she would steal
up to  Florence's room, as she had been used to do, in the dark, and whisper
'Good-night,' on  her  pillow.  When  unconscious, in her  slumber,  of such
visits, Florence  would  sometimes awake,  as from a dream of  those  words,
softly spoken, and would seem to feel the touch of  lips upon  her face. But
less and less often as the months went on.
     And now the void in Florence's own heart began again, indeed, to make a
solitude  around  her.  As the  image  of  the  father whom  she  loved  had
insensibly  become a mere abstraction, so Edith, following  the fate of  all
the rest about whom her affections  had  entwined  themselves, was fleeting,
fading, growing  paler  in the distance, every  day.  Little by  little, she
receded from Florence, like  the retiring ghost of what she had been; little
by  little, the  chasm  between them widened  and seemed deeper;  little  by
little,  all the  power of earnestness  and tenderness  she  had  shown, was
frozen up in the bold, angry hardihood with which she  stood, upon the brink
of a deep precipice unseen by Florence, daring to look down.
     There was but one consideration to set against the heavy loss of Edith,
and  though it was slight comfort to her burdened heart,  she tried to think
it some relief. No longer divided between her affection and duty to the two,
Florence could  love  both and do no injustice to either. As shadows of  her
fond  imagination,  she could give them equal place  in her own  bosom,  and
wrong them with no doubts
     So she tried to do. At times, and  often too, wondering speculations on
the  cause of this change  in Edith, would obtrude themselves  upon her mind
and frighten  her; but in the calm of its  abandonment  once more to  silent
grief and loneliness,  it  was not a  curious  mind.  Florence had  only  to
remember that her star of promise was clouded in the general gloom that hung
upon the house, and to weep and be resigned.
     Thus living, in a dream wherein the overflowing love of her young heart
expended itself on airy forms, and in a real world where she had experienced
little but the  rolling back of  that strong tide upon itself, Florence grew
to be seventeen.  Timid  and retiring as her solitary  life had made her, it
had not  embittered her  sweet temper,  or  her  earnest nature. A  child in
innocent simplicity; a  woman  m  her modest  self-reliance,  and  her  deep
intensity of feeling; both child and woman seemed at  once expressed  in her
face and fragile delicacy of shape, and gracefully to  mingle there; - as if
the spring should  be unwilling to depart when summer  came, and  sought  to
blend  the  earlier beauties of  the flowers with their  bloom.  But in  her
thrilling voice, in  her calm eyes, sometimes in a sage ethereal light  that
seemed to rest  upon her head, and always in a certain pensive air upon  her
beauty, there was an expression, such as had been seen in the dead  boy; and
the council in the Servants'  Hall whispered so  among themselves, and shook
their  heads,  and   ate  and  drank  the   more,   in  a  closer   bond  of
good-fellowship.
     This observant body had plenty to say of Mr and  Mrs Dombey, and  of Mr
Carker, who appeared to be a mediator between them, and who came and went as
if he  were  trying to make peace,  but never could. They  all  deplored the
uncomfortable  state  of affairs,  and all  agreed  that  Mrs Pipchin (whose
unpopularity was  not  to  be surpassed) had some hand in  it; but, upon the
whole, it was agreeable  to have so good a subject for a rallying point, and
they made a great deal of it, and enjoyed themselves very much.
     The general visitors who came to the house, and those among whom Mr and
Mrs Dombey  visited, thought it a pretty  equal match, as to haughtiness, at
all events, and thought nothing more about it. The young lady with  the back
did not  appear  for some time after Mrs Skewton's  death; observing to some
particular friends, with her usual engaging little scream, that she couldn't
separate the family from a  notion of tombstones, and horrors  of that sort;
but when  she did come, she saw nothing wrong, except Mr  Dombey's wearing a
bunch  of gold  seals to  his watch,  which  shocked  her very much,  as  an
exploded superstition. This youthful fascinator considered a daughter-in-law
objectionable in  principle;  otherwise,  she  had  nothing  to  say against
Florence,  but that  she sadly  wanted  'style' -  which  might  mean  back,
perhaps. Many, who only came to  the house  on state occasions,  hardly knew
who Florence was, and said, going  home, 'Indeed, was that Miss  Dombey,  in
the   corner?  Very  pretty,  but  a  little  delicate  and  thoughtful   in
appearance!'
     None the  less  so, certainly, for  her life of  the last  six  months.
Florence  took  her seat  at the dinner-table, on the day before  the second
anniversary of her  father's marriage to Edith  (Mrs Skewton had been  lying
stricken with paralysis  when  the first came  round),  with an  uneasiness,
amounting to dread. She had no other warrant  for it, than the occasion, the
expression of her  father's face, in the hasty glance she caught of it,  and
the presence of Mr  Carker, which, always unpleasant to her, was  more so on
this day, than she had ever felt it before.
     Edith was richly  dressed, for  she and Mr Dombey  were engaged  in the
evening to some  large  assembly, and the dinner-hour that day was late. She
did not appear until they were seated at table, when Mr  Carker rose and led
her to her chair. Beautiful and lustrous as she  was,  there was that in her
face and air which seemed to separate her hopelessly from Florence, and from
everyone,  for ever more. And  yet,  for an instant, Florence saw a beam  of
kindness in her eyes, when they were turned on  her, that  made the distance
to which  she had  withdrawn  herself, a  greater cause of sorrow and regret
than ever.
     There was very little said  at dinner. Florence  heard her father speak
to Mr Carker sometimes  on business matters, and heard him softly reply, but
she paid little attention  to