Paul’s Further Progress, Growth and Character
Beneath the watching and attentive eyes of Time—so far another
Major—Paul’s slumbers gradually changed. More and more light broke in
upon them; distincter and distincter dreams disturbed them; an
accumulating crowd of objects and impressions swarmed about his rest;
and so he passed from babyhood to childhood, and became a talking,
walking, wondering Dombey.
On the downfall and banishment of Richards, the nursery may be said to
have been put into commission: as a Public Department is sometimes,
when no individual Atlas can be found to support it The Commissioners
were, of course, Mrs Chick and Miss Tox: who devoted themselves to
their duties with such astonishing ardour that Major Bagstock had every
day some new reminder of his being forsaken, while Mr Chick, bereft of
domestic supervision, cast himself upon the gay world, dined at clubs
and coffee-houses, smelt of smoke on three different occasions, went to
the play by himself, and in short, loosened (as Mrs Chick once told
him) every social bond, and moral obligation.
Yet, in spite of his early promise, all this vigilance and care could
not make little Paul a thriving boy. Naturally delicate, perhaps, he
pined and wasted after the dismissal of his nurse, and, for a long
time, seemed but to wait his opportunity of gliding through their
hands, and seeking his lost mother. This dangerous ground in his
steeple-chase towards manhood passed, he still found it very rough
riding, and was grievously beset by all the obstacles in his course.
Every tooth was a break-neck fence, and every pimple in the measles a
stone wall to him. He was down in every fit of the hooping-cough, and
rolled upon and crushed by a whole field of small diseases, that came
trooping on each other’s heels to prevent his getting up again. Some
bird of prey got into his throat instead of the thrush; and the very
chickens turning ferocious—if they have anything to do with that infant
malady to which they lend their name—worried him like tiger-cats.
The chill of Paul’s christening had struck home, perhaps to some
sensitive part of his nature, which could not recover itself in the
cold shade of his father; but he was an unfortunate child from that
day. Mrs Wickam often said she never see a dear so put upon.
Mrs Wickam was a waiter’s wife—which would seem equivalent to being any
other man’s widow—whose application for an engagement in Mr Dombey’s
service had been favourably considered, on account of the apparent
impossibility of her having any followers, or anyone to follow; and
who, from within a day or two of Paul’s sharp weaning, had been engaged
as his nurse. Mrs Wickam was a meek woman, of a fair complexion, with
her eyebrows always elevated, and her head always drooping; who was
always ready to pity herself, or to be pitied, or to pity anybody else;
and who had a surprising natural gift of viewing all subjects in an
utterly forlorn and pitiable light, and bringing dreadful precedents to
bear upon them, and deriving the greatest consolation from the exercise
of that talent.
It is hardly necessary to observe, that no touch of this quality ever
reached the magnificent knowledge of Mr Dombey. It would have been
remarkable, indeed, if any had; when no one in the house—not even Mrs
Chick or Miss Tox—dared ever whisper to him that there had, on any one
occasion, been the least reason for uneasiness in reference to little
Paul. He had settled, within himself, that the child must necessarily
pass through a certain routine of minor maladies, and that the sooner
he did so the better. If he could have bought him off, or provided a
substitute, as in the case of an unlucky drawing for the militia, he
would have been glad to do so, on liberal terms. But as this was not
feasible, he merely wondered, in his haughty manner, now and then, what
Nature meant by it; and comforted himself with the reflection that
there was another milestone passed upon the road, and that the great
end of the journey lay so much the nearer. For the feeling uppermost in
his mind, now and constantly intensifying, and increasing in it as Paul
grew older, was impatience. Impatience for the time to come, when his
visions of their united consequence and grandeur would be triumphantly
realized.
Some philosophers tell us that selfishness is at the root of our best
loves and affections. Mr Dombey’s young child was, from the beginning,
so distinctly important to him as a part of his own greatness, or
(which is the same thing) of the greatness of Dombey and Son, that
there is no doubt his parental affection might have been easily traced,
like many a goodly superstructure of fair fame, to a very low
foundation. But he loved his son with all the love he had. If there
were a warm place in his frosty heart, his son occupied it; if its very
hard surface could receive the impression of any image, the image of
that son was there; though not so much as an infant, or as a boy, but
as a grown man—the “Son” of the Firm. Therefore he was impatient to
advance into the future, and to hurry over the intervening passages of
his history. Therefore he had little or no anxiety about them, in spite
of his love; feeling as if the boy had a charmed life, and must become
the man with whom he held such constant communication in his thoughts,
and for whom he planned and projected, as for an existing reality,
every day.
Thus Paul grew to be nearly five years old. He was a pretty little
fellow; though there was something wan and wistful in his small face,
that gave occasion to many significant shakes of Mrs Wickam’s head, and
many long-drawn inspirations of Mrs Wickam’s breath. His temper gave
abundant promise of being imperious in after-life; and he had as
hopeful an apprehension of his own importance, and the rightful
subservience of all other things and persons to it, as heart could
desire. He was childish and sportive enough at times, and not of a
sullen disposition; but he had a strange, old-fashioned, thoughtful
way, at other times, of sitting brooding in his miniature arm-chair,
when he looked (and talked) like one of those terrible little Beings in
the Fairy tales, who, at a hundred and fifty or two hundred years of
age, fantastically represent the children for whom they have been
substituted. He would frequently be stricken with this precocious mood
upstairs in the nursery; and would sometimes lapse into it suddenly,
exclaiming that he was tired: even while playing with Florence, or
driving Miss Tox in single harness. But at no time did he fall into it
so surely, as when, his little chair being carried down into his
father’s room, he sat there with him after dinner, by the fire. They
were the strangest pair at such a time that ever firelight shone upon.
Mr Dombey so erect and solemn, gazing at the glare; his little image,
with an old, old face, peering into the red perspective with the fixed
and rapt attention of a sage. Mr Dombey entertaining complicated
worldly schemes and plans; the little image entertaining Heaven knows
what wild fancies, half-formed thoughts, and wandering speculations. Mr
Dombey stiff with starch and arrogance; the little image by
inheritance, and in unconscious imitation. The two so very much alike,
and yet so monstrously contrasted.
On one of these occasions, when they had both been perfectly quiet for
a long time, and Mr Dombey only knew that the child was awake by
occasionally glancing at his eye, where the bright fire was sparkling
like a jewel, little Paul broke silence thus:
“Papa! what’s money?”
The abrupt question had such immediate reference to the subject of Mr
Dombey’s thoughts, that Mr Dombey was quite disconcerted.
“What is money, Paul?” he answered. “Money?”
“Yes,” said the child, laying his hands upon the elbows of his little
chair, and turning the old face up towards Mr Dombey’s; “what is
money?”
Mr Dombey was in a difficulty. He would have liked to give him some
explanation involving the terms circulating-medium, currency,
depreciation of currency, paper, bullion, rates of exchange, value of
precious metals in the market, and so forth; but looking down at the
little chair, and seeing what a long way down it was, he answered:
“Gold, and silver, and copper. Guineas, shillings, half-pence. You know
what they are?”
“Oh yes, I know what they are,” said Paul. “I don’t mean that, Papa. I
mean what’s money after all?”
Heaven and Earth, how old his face was as he turned it up again towards
his father’s!
“What is money after all!” said Mr Dombey, backing his chair a little,
that he might the better gaze in sheer amazement at the presumptuous
atom that propounded such an inquiry.
“I mean, Papa, what can it do?” returned Paul, folding his arms (they
were hardly long enough to fold), and looking at the fire, and up at
him, and at the fire, and up at him again.
Mr Dombey drew his chair back to its former place, and patted him on
the head. “You’ll know better by-and-by, my man,” he said. “Money,
Paul, can do anything.” He took hold of the little hand, and beat it
softly against one of his own, as he said so.
But Paul got his hand free as soon as he could; and rubbing it gently
to and fro on the elbow of his chair, as if his wit were in the palm,
and he were sharpening it—and looking at the fire again, as though the
fire had been his adviser and prompter—repeated, after a short pause:
“Anything, Papa?”
“Yes. Anything—almost,” said Mr Dombey.
“Anything means everything, don’t it, Papa?” asked his son: not
observing, or possibly not understanding, the qualification.
“It includes it: yes,” said Mr Dombey.
“Why didn’t money save me my Mama?” returned the child. “It isn’t
cruel, is it?”
“Cruel!” said Mr Dombey, settling his neckcloth, and seeming to resent
the idea. “No. A good thing can’t be cruel.”
“If it’s a good thing, and can do anything,” said the little fellow,
thoughtfully, as he looked back at the fire, “I wonder why it didn’t
save me my Mama.”
He didn’t ask the question of his father this time. Perhaps he had
seen, with a child’s quickness, that it had already made his father
uncomfortable. But he repeated the thought aloud, as if it were quite
an old one to him, and had troubled him very much; and sat with his
chin resting on his hand, still cogitating and looking for an
explanation in the fire.
Mr Dombey having recovered from his surprise, not to say his alarm (for
it was the very first occasion on which the child had ever broached the
subject of his mother to him, though he had had him sitting by his
side, in this same manner, evening after evening), expounded to him how
that money, though a very potent spirit, never to be disparaged on any
account whatever, could not keep people alive whose time was come to
die; and how that we must all die, unfortunately, even in the City,
though we were never so rich. But how that money caused us to be
honoured, feared, respected, courted, and admired, and made us powerful
and glorious in the eyes of all men; and how that it could, very often,
even keep off death, for a long time together. How, for example, it had
secured to his Mama the services of Mr Pilkins, by which he, Paul, had
often profited himself; likewise of the great Doctor Parker Peps, whom
he had never known. And how it could do all, that could be done. This,
with more to the same purpose, Mr Dombey instilled into the mind of his
son, who listened attentively, and seemed to understand the greater
part of what was said to him.
“It can’t make me strong and quite well, either, Papa; can it?” asked
Paul, after a short silence; rubbing his tiny hands.
“Why, you are strong and quite well,” returned Mr Dombey. “Are you
not?”
Oh! the age of the face that was turned up again, with an expression,
half of melancholy, half of slyness, on it!
“You are as strong and well as such little people usually are? Eh?”
said Mr Dombey.
“Florence is older than I am, but I’m not as strong and well as
Florence, “I know,” returned the child; “and I believe that when
Florence was as little as me, she could play a great deal longer at a
time without tiring herself. I am so tired sometimes,” said little
Paul, warming his hands, and looking in between the bars of the grate,
as if some ghostly puppet-show were performing there, “and my bones
ache so (Wickam says it’s my bones), that I don’t know what to do.”
“Ay! But that’s at night,” said Mr Dombey, drawing his own chair closer
to his son’s, and laying his hand gently on his back; “little people
should be tired at night, for then they sleep well.”
“Oh, it’s not at night, Papa,” returned the child, “it’s in the day;
and I lie down in Florence’s lap, and she sings to me. At night I dream
about such cu-ri-ous things!”
And he went on, warming his hands again, and thinking about them, like
an old man or a young goblin.
Mr Dombey was so astonished, and so uncomfortable, and so perfectly at
a loss how to pursue the conversation, that he could only sit looking
at his son by the light of the fire, with his hand resting on his back,
as if it were detained there by some magnetic attraction. Once he
advanced his other hand, and turned the contemplative face towards his
own for a moment. But it sought the fire again as soon as he released
it; and remained, addressed towards the flickering blaze, until the
nurse appeared, to summon him to bed.
“I want Florence to come for me,” said Paul.
“Won’t you come with your poor Nurse Wickam, Master Paul?” inquired
that attendant, with great pathos.
“No, I won’t,” replied Paul, composing himself in his arm-chair again,
like the master of the house.
Invoking a blessing upon his innocence, Mrs Wickam withdrew, and
presently Florence appeared in her stead. The child immediately started
up with sudden readiness and animation, and raised towards his father
in bidding him good-night, a countenance so much brighter, so much
younger, and so much more child-like altogether, that Mr Dombey, while
he felt greatly reassured by the change, was quite amazed at it.
After they had left the room together, he thought he heard a soft voice
singing; and remembering that Paul had said his sister sung to him, he
had the curiosity to open the door and listen, and look after them. She
was toiling up the great, wide, vacant staircase, with him in her arms;
his head was lying on her shoulder, one of his arms thrown negligently
round her neck. So they went, toiling up; she singing all the way, and
Paul sometimes crooning out a feeble accompaniment. Mr Dombey looked
after them until they reached the top of the staircase—not without
halting to rest by the way—and passed out of his sight; and then he
still stood gazing upwards, until the dull rays of the moon, glimmering
in a melancholy manner through the dim skylight, sent him back to his
room.
Mrs Chick and Miss Tox were convoked in council at dinner next day; and
when the cloth was removed, Mr Dombey opened the proceedings by
requiring to be informed, without any gloss or reservation, whether
there was anything the matter with Paul, and what Mr Pilkins said about
him.
“For the child is hardly,” said Mr Dombey, “as stout as I could wish.”
“My dear Paul,” returned Mrs Chick, “with your usual happy
discrimination, which I am weak enough to envy you, every time I am in
your company; and so I think is Miss Tox.”
“Oh my dear!” said Miss Tox, softly, “how could it be otherwise?
Presumptuous as it is to aspire to such a level; still, if the bird of
night may—but I’ll not trouble Mr Dombey with the sentiment. It merely
relates to the Bulbul.”
Mr Dombey bent his head in stately recognition of the Bulbuls as an
old-established body.
“With your usual happy discrimination, my dear Paul,” resumed Mrs
Chick, “you have hit the point at once. Our darling is altogether as
stout as we could wish. The fact is, that his mind is too much for him.
His soul is a great deal too large for his frame. I am sure the way in
which that dear child talks!” said Mrs Chick, shaking her head; “no one
would believe. His expressions, Lucretia, only yesterday upon the
subject of Funerals!”
“I am afraid,” said Mr Dombey, interrupting her testily, “that some of
those persons upstairs suggest improper subjects to the child. He was
speaking to me last night about his—about his Bones,” said Mr Dombey,
laying an irritated stress upon the word. “What on earth has anybody to
do with the—with the—Bones of my son? He is not a living skeleton, I
suppose.”
“Very far from it,” said Mrs Chick, with unspeakable expression.
“I hope so,” returned her brother. “Funerals again! who talks to the
child of funerals? We are not undertakers, or mutes, or grave-diggers,
I believe.”
“Very far from it,” interposed Mrs Chick, with the same profound
expression as before.
“Then who puts such things into his head?” said Mr Dombey. “Really I
was quite dismayed and shocked last night. Who puts such things into
his head, Louisa?”
“My dear Paul,” said Mrs Chick, after a moment’s silence, “it is of no
use inquiring. I do not think, I will tell you candidly that Wickam is
a person of very cheerful spirit, or what one would call a—”
“A daughter of Momus,” Miss Tox softly suggested.
“Exactly so,” said Mrs Chick; “but she is exceedingly attentive and
useful, and not at all presumptuous; indeed I never saw a more biddable
woman. I would say that for her, if I was put upon my trial before a
Court of Justice.”
“Well! you are not put upon your trial before a Court of Justice, at
present, Louisa,” returned Mr Dombey, chafing, “and therefore it don’t
matter.”
“My dear Paul,” said Mrs Chick, in a warning voice, “I must be spoken
to kindly, or there is an end of me,” at the same time a premonitory
redness developed itself in Mrs Chick’s eyelids which was an invariable
sign of rain, unless the weather changed directly.
“I was inquiring, Louisa,” observed Mr Dombey, in an altered voice, and
after a decent interval, “about Paul’s health and actual state.”
“If the dear child,” said Mrs Chick, in the tone of one who was summing
up what had been previously quite agreed upon, instead of saying it all
for the first time, “is a little weakened by that last attack, and is
not in quite such vigorous health as we could wish; and if he has some
temporary weakness in his system, and does occasionally seem about to
lose, for the moment, the use of his—”
Mrs Chick was afraid to say limbs, after Mr Dombey’s recent objection
to bones, and therefore waited for a suggestion from Miss Tox, who,
true to her office, hazarded “members.”
“Members!” repeated Mr Dombey.
“I think the medical gentleman mentioned legs this morning, my dear
Louisa, did he not?” said Miss Tox.
“Why, of course he did, my love,” retorted Mrs Chick, mildly
reproachful. “How can you ask me? You heard him. I say, if our dear
Paul should lose, for the moment, the use of his legs, these are
casualties common to many children at his time of life, and not to be
prevented by any care or caution. The sooner you understand that, Paul,
and admit that, the better. If you have any doubt as to the amount of
care, and caution, and affection, and self-sacrifice, that has been
bestowed upon little Paul, I should wish to refer the question to your
medical attendant, or to any of your dependants in this house. Call
Towlinson,” said Mrs Chick, “I believe he has no prejudice in our
favour; quite the contrary. I should wish to hear what accusation
Towlinson can make!”
“Surely you must know, Louisa,” observed Mr Dombey, “that I don’t
question your natural devotion to, and regard for, the future head of
my house.”
“I am glad to hear it, Paul,” said Mrs Chick; “but really you are very
odd, and sometimes talk very strangely, though without meaning it, I
know. If your dear boy’s soul is too much for his body, Paul, you
should remember whose fault that is—who he takes after, I mean—and make
the best of it. He’s as like his Papa as he can be. People have noticed
it in the streets. The very beadle, I am informed, observed it, so long
ago as at his christening. He’s a very respectable man, with children
of his own. He ought to know.”
“Mr Pilkins saw Paul this morning, I believe?” said Mr Dombey.
“Yes, he did,” returned his sister. “Miss Tox and myself were present.
Miss Tox and myself are always present. We make a point of it. Mr
Pilkins has seen him for some days past, and a very clever man I
believe him to be. He says it is nothing to speak of; which I can
confirm, if that is any consolation; but he recommended, today,
sea-air. Very wisely, Paul, I feel convinced.”
“Sea-air,” repeated Mr Dombey, looking at his sister.
“There is nothing to be made uneasy by, in that,” said Mrs Chick. “My
George and Frederick were both ordered sea-air, when they were about
his age; and I have been ordered it myself a great many times. I quite
agree with you, Paul, that perhaps topics may be incautiously mentioned
upstairs before him, which it would be as well for his little mind not
to expatiate upon; but I really don’t see how that is to be helped, in
the case of a child of his quickness. If he were a common child, there
would be nothing in it. I must say I think, with Miss Tox, that a short
absence from this house, the air of Brighton, and the bodily and mental
training of so judicious a person as Mrs Pipchin for instance—”
“Who is Mrs Pipchin, Louisa?” asked Mr Dombey; aghast at this familiar
introduction of a name he had never heard before.
“Mrs Pipchin, my dear Paul,” returned his sister, “is an elderly
lady—Miss Tox knows her whole history—who has for some time devoted all
the energies of her mind, with the greatest success, to the study and
treatment of infancy, and who has been extremely well connected. Her
husband broke his heart in—how did you say her husband broke his heart,
my dear? I forget the precise circumstances.
“In pumping water out of the Peruvian Mines,” replied Miss Tox.
“Not being a Pumper himself, of course,” said Mrs Chick, glancing at
her brother; and it really did seem necessary to offer the explanation,
for Miss Tox had spoken of him as if he had died at the handle; “but
having invested money in the speculation, which failed. I believe that
Mrs Pipchin’s management of children is quite astonishing. I have heard
it commended in private circles ever since I was—dear me—how high!” Mrs
Chick’s eye wandered about the bookcase near the bust of Mr Pitt, which
was about ten feet from the ground.
“Perhaps I should say of Mrs Pipchin, my dear Sir,” observed Miss Tox,
with an ingenuous blush, “having been so pointedly referred to, that
the encomium which has been passed upon her by your sweet sister is
well merited. Many ladies and gentleman, now grown up to be interesting
members of society, have been indebted to her care. The humble
individual who addresses you was once under her charge. I believe
juvenile nobility itself is no stranger to her establishment.”
“Do I understand that this respectable matron keeps an establishment,
Miss Tox?” the Mr Dombey, condescendingly.
“Why, I really don’t know,” rejoined that lady, “whether I am justified
in calling it so. It is not a Preparatory School by any means. Should I
express my meaning,” said Miss Tox, with peculiar sweetness, “if I
designated it an infantine Boarding-House of a very select
description?”
“On an exceedingly limited and particular scale,” suggested Mrs Chick,
with a glance at her brother.
“Oh! Exclusion itself!” said Miss Tox.
There was something in this. Mrs Pipchin’s husband having broken his
heart of the Peruvian mines was good. It had a rich sound. Besides, Mr
Dombey was in a state almost amounting to consternation at the idea of
Paul remaining where he was one hour after his removal had been
recommended by the medical practitioner. It was a stoppage and delay
upon the road the child must traverse, slowly at the best, before the
goal was reached. Their recommendation of Mrs Pipchin had great weight
with him; for he knew that they were jealous of any interference with
their charge, and he never for a moment took it into account that they
might be solicitous to divide a responsibility, of which he had, as
shown just now, his own established views. Broke his heart of the
Peruvian mines, mused Mr Dombey. Well! a very respectable way of doing
It.
“Supposing we should decide, on to-morrow’s inquiries, to send Paul
down to Brighton to this lady, who would go with him?” inquired Mr
Dombey, after some reflection.
“I don’t think you could send the child anywhere at present without
Florence, my dear Paul,” returned his sister, hesitating. “It’s quite
an infatuation with him. He’s very young, you know, and has his
fancies.”
Mr Dombey turned his head away, and going slowly to the bookcase, and
unlocking it, brought back a book to read.
“Anybody else, Louisa?” he said, without looking up, and turning over
the leaves.
“Wickam, of course. Wickam would be quite sufficient, I should say,”
returned his sister. “Paul being in such hands as Mrs Pipchin’s, you
could hardly send anybody who would be a further check upon her. You
would go down yourself once a week at least, of course.”
“Of course,” said Mr Dombey; and sat looking at one page for an hour
afterwards, without reading one word.
This celebrated Mrs Pipchin was a marvellous ill-favoured,
ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping figure, with a mottled face,
like bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard grey eye, that looked as if it
might have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury.
Forty years at least had elapsed since the Peruvian mines had been the
death of Mr Pipchin; but his relict still wore black bombazeen, of such
a lustreless, deep, dead, sombre shade, that gas itself couldn’t light
her up after dark, and her presence was a quencher to any number of
candles. She was generally spoken of as “a great manager” of children;
and the secret of her management was, to give them everything that they
didn’t like, and nothing that they did—which was found to sweeten their
dispositions very much. She was such a bitter old lady, that one was
tempted to believe there had been some mistake in the application of
the Peruvian machinery, and that all her waters of gladness and milk of
human kindness, had been pumped out dry, instead of the mines.
The Castle of this ogress and child-queller was in a steep by-street at
Brighton; where the soil was more than usually chalky, flinty, and
sterile, and the houses were more than usually brittle and thin; where
the small front-gardens had the unaccountable property of producing
nothing but marigolds, whatever was sown in them; and where snails were
constantly discovered holding on to the street doors, and other public
places they were not expected to ornament, with the tenacity of
cupping-glasses. In the winter time the air couldn’t be got out of the
Castle, and in the summer time it couldn’t be got in. There was such a
continual reverberation of wind in it, that it sounded like a great
shell, which the inhabitants were obliged to hold to their ears night
and day, whether they liked it or no. It was not, naturally, a
fresh-smelling house; and in the window of the front parlour, which was
never opened, Mrs Pipchin kept a collection of plants in pots, which
imparted an earthy flavour of their own to the establishment. However
choice examples of their kind, too, these plants were of a kind
peculiarly adapted to the embowerment of Mrs Pipchin. There were
half-a-dozen specimens of the cactus, writhing round bits of lath, like
hairy serpents; another specimen shooting out broad claws, like a green
lobster; several creeping vegetables, possessed of sticky and adhesive
leaves; and one uncomfortable flower-pot hanging to the ceiling, which
appeared to have boiled over, and tickling people underneath with its
long green ends, reminded them of spiders—in which Mrs Pipchin’s
dwelling was uncommonly prolific, though perhaps it challenged
competition still more proudly, in the season, in point of earwigs.
Mrs Pipchin’s scale of charges being high, however, to all who could
afford to pay, and Mrs Pipchin very seldom sweetening the equable
acidity of her nature in favour of anybody, she was held to be an old
“lady of remarkable firmness, who was quite scientific in her knowledge
of the childish character.” On this reputation, and on the broken heart
of Mr Pipchin, she had contrived, taking one year with another, to eke
out a tolerable sufficient living since her husband’s demise. Within
three days after Mrs Chick’s first allusion to her, this excellent old
lady had the satisfaction of anticipating a handsome addition to her
current receipts, from the pocket of Mr Dombey; and of receiving
Florence and her little brother Paul, as inmates of the Castle.
Mrs Chick and Miss Tox, who had brought them down on the previous night
(which they all passed at an Hotel), had just driven away from the
door, on their journey home again; and Mrs Pipchin, with her back to
the fire, stood, reviewing the new-comers, like an old soldier. Mrs
Pipchin’s middle-aged niece, her good-natured and devoted slave, but
possessing a gaunt and iron-bound aspect, and much afflicted with boils
on her nose, was divesting Master Bitherstone of the clean collar he
had worn on parade. Miss Pankey, the only other little boarder at
present, had that moment been walked off to the Castle Dungeon (an
empty apartment at the back, devoted to correctional purposes), for
having sniffed thrice, in the presence of visitors.
“Well, Sir,” said Mrs Pipchin to Paul, “how do you think you shall like
me?”
“I don’t think I shall like you at all,” replied Paul. “I want to go
away. This isn’t my house.”
“No. It’s mine,” retorted Mrs Pipchin.
“It’s a very nasty one,” said Paul.
“There’s a worse place in it than this though,” said Mrs Pipchin,
“where we shut up our bad boys.”
“Has he ever been in it?” asked Paul: pointing out Master Bitherstone.
Mrs Pipchin nodded assent; and Paul had enough to do, for the rest of
that day, in surveying Master Bitherstone from head to foot, and
watching all the workings of his countenance, with the interest
attaching to a boy of mysterious and terrible experiences.
At one o’clock there was a dinner, chiefly of the farinaceous and
vegetable kind, when Miss Pankey (a mild little blue-eyed morsel of a
child, who was shampoo’d every morning, and seemed in danger of being
rubbed away, altogether) was led in from captivity by the ogress
herself, and instructed that nobody who sniffed before visitors ever
went to Heaven. When this great truth had been thoroughly impressed
upon her, she was regaled with rice; and subsequently repeated the form
of grace established in the Castle, in which there was a special
clause, thanking Mrs Pipchin for a good dinner. Mrs Pipchin’s niece,
Berinthia, took cold pork. Mrs Pipchin, whose constitution required
warm nourishment, made a special repast of mutton-chops, which were
brought in hot and hot, between two plates, and smelt very nice.
As it rained after dinner, and they couldn’t go out walking on the
beach, and Mrs Pipchin’s constitution required rest after chops, they
went away with Berry (otherwise Berinthia) to the Dungeon; an empty
room looking out upon a chalk wall and a water-butt, and made ghastly
by a ragged fireplace without any stove in it. Enlivened by company,
however, this was the best place after all; for Berry played with them
there, and seemed to enjoy a game at romps as much as they did; until
Mrs Pipchin knocking angrily at the wall, like the Cock Lane Ghost
revived, they left off, and Berry told them stories in a whisper until
twilight.
For tea there was plenty of milk and water, and bread and butter, with
a little black tea-pot for Mrs Pipchin and Berry, and buttered toast
unlimited for Mrs Pipchin, which was brought in, hot and hot, like the
chops. Though Mrs Pipchin got very greasy, outside, over this dish, it
didn’t seem to lubricate her internally, at all; for she was as fierce
as ever, and the hard grey eye knew no softening.
After tea, Berry brought out a little work-box, with the Royal Pavilion
on the lid, and fell to working busily; while Mrs Pipchin, having put
on her spectacles and opened a great volume bound in green baize, began
to nod. And whenever Mrs Pipchin caught herself falling forward into
the fire, and woke up, she filliped Master Bitherstone on the nose for
nodding too.
At last it was the children’s bedtime, and after prayers they went to
bed. As little Miss Pankey was afraid of sleeping alone in the dark,
Mrs Pipchin always made a point of driving her upstairs herself, like a
sheep; and it was cheerful to hear Miss Pankey moaning long afterwards,
in the least eligible chamber, and Mrs Pipchin now and then going in to
shake her. At about half-past nine o’clock the odour of a warm
sweet-bread (Mrs Pipchin’s constitution wouldn’t go to sleep without
sweet-bread) diversified the prevailing fragrance of the house, which
Mrs Wickam said was “a smell of building;” and slumber fell upon the
Castle shortly after.
The breakfast next morning was like the tea over night, except that Mrs
Pipchin took her roll instead of toast, and seemed a little more irate
when it was over. Master Bitherstone read aloud to the rest a pedigree
from Genesis (judiciously selected by Mrs Pipchin), getting over the
names with the ease and clearness of a person tumbling up the
treadmill. That done, Miss Pankey was borne away to be shampoo’d; and
Master Bitherstone to have something else done to him with salt water,
from which he always returned very blue and dejected. Paul and Florence
went out in the meantime on the beach with Wickam—who was constantly in
tears—and at about noon Mrs Pipchin presided over some Early Readings.
It being a part of Mrs Pipchin’s system not to encourage a child’s mind
to develop and expand itself like a young flower, but to open it by
force like an oyster, the moral of these lessons was usually of a
violent and stunning character: the hero—a naughty boy—seldom, in the
mildest catastrophe, being finished off anything less than a lion, or a
bear.
Such was life at Mrs Pipchin’s. On Saturday Mr Dombey came down; and
Florence and Paul would go to his Hotel, and have tea. They passed the
whole of Sunday with him, and generally rode out before dinner; and on
these occasions Mr Dombey seemed to grow, like Falstaff’s assailants,
and instead of being one man in buckram, to become a dozen. Sunday
evening was the most melancholy evening in the week; for Mrs Pipchin
always made a point of being particularly cross on Sunday nights. Miss
Pankey was generally brought back from an aunt’s at Rottingdean, in
deep distress; and Master Bitherstone, whose relatives were all in
India, and who was required to sit, between the services, in an erect
position with his head against the parlour wall, neither moving hand
nor foot, suffered so acutely in his young spirits that he once asked
Florence, on a Sunday night, if she could give him any idea of the way
back to Bengal.
But it was generally said that Mrs Pipchin was a woman of system with
children; and no doubt she was. Certainly the wild ones went home tame
enough, after sojourning for a few months beneath her hospitable roof.
It was generally said, too, that it was highly creditable of Mrs
Pipchin to have devoted herself to this way of life, and to have made
such a sacrifice of her feelings, and such a resolute stand against her
troubles, when Mr Pipchin broke his heart in the Peruvian mines.
At this exemplary old lady, Paul would sit staring in his little
arm-chair by the fire, for any length of time. He never seemed to know
what weariness was, when he was looking fixedly at Mrs Pipchin. He was
not fond of her; he was not afraid of her; but in those old, old moods
of his, she seemed to have a grotesque attraction for him. There he
would sit, looking at her, and warming his hands, and looking at her,
until he sometimes quite confounded Mrs Pipchin, Ogress as she was.
Once she asked him, when they were alone, what he was thinking about.
[Illustration]
“You,” said Paul, without the least reserve.
“And what are you thinking about me?” asked Mrs Pipchin.
“I’m thinking how old you must be,” said Paul.
“You mustn’t say such things as that, young gentleman,” returned the
dame. “That’ll never do.”
“Why not?” asked Paul.
“Because it’s not polite,” said Mrs Pipchin, snappishly.
“Not polite?” said Paul.
“No.”
“It’s not polite,” said Paul, innocently, “to eat all the mutton chops
and toast”, Wickam says.
“Wickam,” retorted Mrs Pipchin, colouring, “is a wicked, impudent,
bold-faced hussy.”
“What’s that?” inquired Paul.
“Never you mind, Sir,” retorted Mrs Pipchin. “Remember the story of the
little boy that was gored to death by a mad bull for asking questions.”
“If the bull was mad,” said Paul, “how did he know that the boy had
asked questions? Nobody can go and whisper secrets to a mad bull. I
don’t believe that story.”
“You don’t believe it, Sir?” repeated Mrs Pipchin, amazed.
“No,” said Paul.
“Not if it should happen to have been a tame bull, you little Infidel?”
said Mrs Pipchin.
As Paul had not considered the subject in that light, and had founded
his conclusions on the alleged lunacy of the bull, he allowed himself
to be put down for the present. But he sat turning it over in his mind,
with such an obvious intention of fixing Mrs Pipchin presently, that
even that hardy old lady deemed it prudent to retreat until he should
have forgotten the subject.
From that time, Mrs Pipchin appeared to have something of the same odd
kind of attraction towards Paul, as Paul had towards her. She would
make him move his chair to her side of the fire, instead of sitting
opposite; and there he would remain in a nook between Mrs Pipchin and
the fender, with all the light of his little face absorbed into the
black bombazeen drapery, studying every line and wrinkle of her
countenance, and peering at the hard grey eye, until Mrs Pipchin was
sometimes fain to shut it, on pretence of dozing. Mrs Pipchin had an
old black cat, who generally lay coiled upon the centre foot of the
fender, purring egotistically, and winking at the fire until the
contracted pupils of his eyes were like two notes of admiration. The
good old lady might have been—not to record it disrespectfully—a witch,
and Paul and the cat her two familiars, as they all sat by the fire
together. It would have been quite in keeping with the appearance of
the party if they had all sprung up the chimney in a high wind one
night, and never been heard of any more.
This, however, never came to pass. The cat, and Paul, and Mrs Pipchin,
were constantly to be found in their usual places after dark; and Paul,
eschewing the companionship of Master Bitherstone, went on studying Mrs
Pipchin, and the cat, and the fire, night after night, as if they were
a book of necromancy, in three volumes.
Mrs Wickam put her own construction on Paul’s eccentricities; and being
confirmed in her low spirits by a perplexed view of chimneys from the
room where she was accustomed to sit, and by the noise of the wind, and
by the general dulness (gashliness was Mrs Wickam’s strong expression)
of her present life, deduced the most dismal reflections from the
foregoing premises. It was a part of Mrs Pipchin’s policy to prevent
her own “young hussy”—that was Mrs Pipchin’s generic name for female
servant—from communicating with Mrs Wickam: to which end she devoted
much of her time to concealing herself behind doors, and springing out
on that devoted maiden, whenever she made an approach towards Mrs
Wickam’s apartment. But Berry was free to hold what converse she could
in that quarter, consistently with the discharge of the multifarious
duties at which she toiled incessantly from morning to night; and to
Berry Mrs Wickam unburdened her mind.
“What a pretty fellow he is when he’s asleep!” said Berry, stopping to
look at Paul in bed, one night when she took up Mrs Wickam’s supper.
“Ah!” sighed Mrs Wickam. “He need be.”
“Why, he’s not ugly when he’s awake,” observed Berry.
“No, Ma’am. Oh, no. No more was my Uncle’s Betsey Jane,” said Mrs
Wickam.
Berry looked as if she would like to trace the connexion of ideas
between Paul Dombey and Mrs Wickam’s Uncle’s Betsey Jane.
“My Uncle’s wife,” Mrs Wickam went on to say, “died just like his Mama.
My Uncle’s child took on just as Master Paul do.”
“Took on! You don’t think he grieves for his Mama, sure?” argued Berry,
sitting down on the side of the bed. “He can’t remember anything about
her, you know, Mrs Wickam. It’s not possible.”
“No, Ma’am,” said Mrs Wickam “No more did my Uncle’s child. But my
Uncle’s child said very strange things sometimes, and looked very
strange, and went on very strange, and was very strange altogether. My
Uncle’s child made people’s blood run cold, some times, she did!”
“How?” asked Berry.
“I wouldn’t have sat up all night alone with Betsey Jane!” said Mrs
Wickam, “not if you’d have put Wickam into business next morning for
himself. I couldn’t have done it, Miss Berry.
Miss Berry naturally asked why not? But Mrs Wickam, agreeably to the
usage of some ladies in her condition, pursued her own branch of the
subject, without any compunction.
“Betsey Jane,” said Mrs Wickam, “was as sweet a child as I could wish
to see. I couldn’t wish to see a sweeter. Everything that a child could
have in the way of illnesses, Betsey Jane had come through. The cramps
was as common to her,” said Mrs Wickam, “as biles is to yourself, Miss
Berry.” Miss Berry involuntarily wrinkled her nose.
“But Betsey Jane,” said Mrs Wickam, lowering her voice, and looking
round the room, and towards Paul in bed, “had been minded, in her
cradle, by her departed mother. I couldn’t say how, nor I couldn’t say
when, nor I couldn’t say whether the dear child knew it or not, but
Betsey Jane had been watched by her mother, Miss Berry!” and Mrs
Wickam, with a very white face, and with watery eyes, and with a
tremulous voice, again looked fearfully round the room, and towards
Paul in bed.
“Nonsense!” cried Miss Berry—somewhat resentful of the idea.
“You may say nonsense! I ain’t offended, Miss. I hope you may be able
to think in your own conscience that it is nonsense; you’ll find your
spirits all the better for it in this—you’ll excuse my being so free—in
this burying-ground of a place; which is wearing of me down. Master
Paul’s a little restless in his sleep. Pat his back, if you please.”
“Of course you think,” said Berry, gently doing what she was asked,
“that he has been nursed by his mother, too?”
“Betsey Jane,” returned Mrs Wickam in her most solemn tones, “was put
upon as that child has been put upon, and changed as that child has
changed. I have seen her sit, often and often, think, think, thinking,
like him. I have seen her look, often and often, old, old, old, like
him. I have heard her, many a time, talk just like him. I consider that
child and Betsey Jane on the same footing entirely, Miss Berry.”
“Is your Uncle’s child alive?” asked Berry.
“Yes, Miss, she is alive,” returned Mrs Wickam with an air of triumph,
for it was evident. Miss Berry expected the reverse; “and is married to
a silver-chaser. Oh yes, Miss, SHE is alive,” said Mrs Wickam, laying
strong stress on her nominative case.
It being clear that somebody was dead, Mrs Pipchin’s niece inquired who
it was.
“I wouldn’t wish to make you uneasy,” returned Mrs Wickam, pursuing her
supper. “Don’t ask me.”
This was the surest way of being asked again. Miss Berry repeated her
question, therefore; and after some resistance, and reluctance, Mrs
Wickam laid down her knife, and again glancing round the room and at
Paul in bed, replied:
“She took fancies to people; whimsical fancies, some of them; others,
affections that one might expect to see—only stronger than common. They
all died.”
This was so very unexpected and awful to Mrs Pipchin’s niece, that she
sat upright on the hard edge of the bedstead, breathing short, and
surveying her informant with looks of undisguised alarm.
Mrs Wickam shook her left fore-finger stealthily towards the bed where
Florence lay; then turned it upside down, and made several emphatic
points at the floor; immediately below which was the parlour in which
Mrs Pipchin habitually consumed the toast.
“Remember my words, Miss Berry,” said Mrs Wickam, “and be thankful that
Master Paul is not too fond of you. I am, that he’s not too fond of me,
I assure you; though there isn’t much to live for—you’ll excuse my
being so free—in this jail of a house!”
Miss Berry’s emotion might have led to her patting Paul too hard on the
back, or might have produced a cessation of that soothing monotony, but
he turned in his bed just now, and, presently awaking, sat up in it
with his hair hot and wet from the effects of some childish dream, and
asked for Florence.
She was out of her own bed at the first sound of his voice; and bending
over his pillow immediately, sang him to sleep again. Mrs Wickam
shaking her head, and letting fall several tears, pointed out the
little group to Berry, and turned her eyes up to the ceiling.
“He’s asleep now, my dear,” said Mrs Wickam after a pause, “you’d
better go to bed again. Don’t you feel cold?”
“No, nurse,” said Florence, laughing. “Not at all.”
“Ah!” sighed Mrs Wickam, and she shook her head again, expressing to
the watchful Berry, “we shall be cold enough, some of us, by and by!”
Berry took the frugal supper-tray, with which Mrs Wickam had by this
time done, and bade her good-night.
“Good-night, Miss!” returned Wickam softly. “Good-night! Your aunt is
an old lady, Miss Berry, and it’s what you must have looked for,
often.”
This consolatory farewell, Mrs Wickam accompanied with a look of
heartfelt anguish; and being left alone with the two children again,
and becoming conscious that the wind was blowing mournfully, she
indulged in melancholy—that cheapest and most accessible of
luxuries—until she was overpowered by slumber.
Although the niece of Mrs Pipchin did not expect to find that exemplary
dragon prostrate on the hearth-rug when she went downstairs, she was
relieved to find her unusually fractious and severe, and with every
present appearance of intending to live a long time to be a comfort to
all who knew her. Nor had she any symptoms of declining, in the course
of the ensuing week, when the constitutional viands still continued to
disappear in regular succession, notwithstanding that Paul studied her
as attentively as ever, and occupied his usual seat between the black
skirts and the fender, with unwavering constancy.
But as Paul himself was no stronger at the expiration of that time than
he had been on his first arrival, though he looked much healthier in
the face, a little carriage was got for him, in which he could lie at
his ease, with an alphabet and other elementary works of reference, and
be wheeled down to the sea-side. Consistent in his odd tastes, the
child set aside a ruddy-faced lad who was proposed as the drawer of
this carriage, and selected, instead, his grandfather—a weazen, old,
crab-faced man, in a suit of battered oilskin, who had got tough and
stringy from long pickling in salt water, and who smelt like a weedy
sea-beach when the tide is out.
With this notable attendant to pull him along, and Florence always
walking by his side, and the despondent Wickam bringing up the rear, he
went down to the margin of the ocean every day; and there he would sit
or lie in his carriage for hours together: never so distressed as by
the company of children—Florence alone excepted, always.
“Go away, if you please,” he would say to any child who came to bear
him company. “Thank you, but I don’t want you.”
Some small voice, near his ear, would ask him how he was, perhaps.
“I am very well, I thank you,” he would answer. “But you had better go
and play, if you please.”
Then he would turn his head, and watch the child away, and say to
Florence, “We don’t want any others, do we? Kiss me, Floy.”
He had even a dislike, at such times, to the company of Wickam, and was
well pleased when she strolled away, as she generally did, to pick up
shells and acquaintances. His favourite spot was quite a lonely one,
far away from most loungers; and with Florence sitting by his side at
work, or reading to him, or talking to him, and the wind blowing on his
face, and the water coming up among the wheels of his bed, he wanted
nothing more.
“Floy,” he said one day, “where’s India, where that boy’s friends
live?”
“Oh, it’s a long, long distance off,” said Florence, raising her eyes
from her work.
“Weeks off?” asked Paul.
“Yes dear. Many weeks’ journey, night and day.”
“If you were in India, Floy,” said Paul, after being silent for a
minute, “I should—what is it that Mama did? I forget.”
“Loved me!” answered Florence.
“No, no. Don’t I love you now, Floy? What is it?—Died. If you were in
India, I should die, Floy.”
She hurriedly put her work aside, and laid her head down on his pillow,
caressing him. And so would she, she said, if he were there. He would
be better soon.
“Oh! I am a great deal better now!” he answered. “I don’t mean that. I
mean that I should die of being so sorry and so lonely, Floy!”
Another time, in the same place, he fell asleep, and slept quietly for
a long time. Awaking suddenly, he listened, started up, and sat
listening.
Florence asked him what he thought he heard.
“I want to know what it says,” he answered, looking steadily in her
face. “The sea” Floy, what is it that it keeps on saying?”
She told him that it was only the noise of the rolling waves.
“Yes, yes,” he said. “But I know that they are always saying something.
Always the same thing. What place is over there?” He rose up, looking
eagerly at the horizon.
She told him that there was another country opposite, but he said he
didn’t mean that: he meant further away—farther away!
Very often afterwards, in the midst of their talk, he would break off,
to try to understand what it was that the waves were always saying; and
would rise up in his couch to look towards that invisible region, far
away.