Paul’s Introduction to a New Scene
Mrs Pipchin’s constitution was made of such hard metal, in spite of its
liability to the fleshly weaknesses of standing in need of repose after
chops, and of requiring to be coaxed to sleep by the soporific agency
of sweet-breads, that it utterly set at naught the predictions of Mrs
Wickam, and showed no symptoms of decline. Yet, as Paul’s rapt interest
in the old lady continued unbated, Mrs Wickam would not budge an inch
from the position she had taken up. Fortifying and entrenching herself
on the strong ground of her Uncle’s Betsey Jane, she advised Miss
Berry, as a friend, to prepare herself for the worst; and forewarned
her that her aunt might, at any time, be expected to go off suddenly,
like a powder-mill.
“I hope, Miss Berry,” Mrs Wickam would observe, “that you’ll come into
whatever little property there may be to leave. You deserve it, I am
sure, for yours is a trying life. Though there don’t seem much worth
coming into—you’ll excuse my being so open—in this dismal den.”
Poor Berry took it all in good part, and drudged and slaved away as
usual; perfectly convinced that Mrs Pipchin was one of the most
meritorious persons in the world, and making every day innumerable
sacrifices of herself upon the altar of that noble old woman. But all
these immolations of Berry were somehow carried to the credit of Mrs
Pipchin by Mrs Pipchin’s friends and admirers; and were made to
harmonise with, and carry out, that melancholy fact of the deceased Mr
Pipchin having broken his heart in the Peruvian mines.
For example, there was an honest grocer and general dealer in the
retail line of business, between whom and Mrs Pipchin there was a small
memorandum book, with a greasy red cover, perpetually in question, and
concerning which divers secret councils and conferences were
continually being held between the parties to that register, on the mat
in the passage, and with closed doors in the parlour. Nor were there
wanting dark hints from Master Bitherstone (whose temper had been made
revengeful by the solar heats of India acting on his blood), of
balances unsettled, and of a failure, on one occasion within his
memory, in the supply of moist sugar at tea-time. This grocer being a
bachelor and not a man who looked upon the surface for beauty, had once
made honourable offers for the hand of Berry, which Mrs Pipchin had,
with contumely and scorn, rejected. Everybody said how laudable this
was in Mrs Pipchin, relict of a man who had died of the Peruvian mines;
and what a staunch, high, independent spirit the old lady had. But
nobody said anything about poor Berry, who cried for six weeks (being
soundly rated by her good aunt all the time), and lapsed into a state
of hopeless spinsterhood.
“Berry’s very fond of you, ain’t she?” Paul once asked Mrs Pipchin when
they were sitting by the fire with the cat.
“Yes,” said Mrs Pipchin.
“Why?” asked Paul.
“Why!” returned the disconcerted old lady. “How can you ask such
things, Sir! why are you fond of your sister Florence?”
“Because she’s very good,” said Paul. “There’s nobody like Florence.”
“Well!” retorted Mrs Pipchin, shortly, “and there’s nobody like me, I
suppose.”
“Ain’t there really though?” asked Paul, leaning forward in his chair,
and looking at her very hard.
“No,” said the old lady.
“I am glad of that,” observed Paul, rubbing his hands thoughtfully.
“That’s a very good thing.”
Mrs Pipchin didn’t dare to ask him why, lest she should receive some
perfectly annihilating answer. But as a compensation to her wounded
feelings, she harassed Master Bitherstone to that extent until
bed-time, that he began that very night to make arrangements for an
overland return to India, by secreting from his supper a quarter of a
round of bread and a fragment of moist Dutch cheese, as the beginning
of a stock of provision to support him on the voyage.
Mrs Pipchin had kept watch and ward over little Paul and his sister for
nearly twelve months. They had been home twice, but only for a few
days; and had been constant in their weekly visits to Mr Dombey at the
hotel. By little and little Paul had grown stronger, and had become
able to dispense with his carriage; though he still looked thin and
delicate; and still remained the same old, quiet, dreamy child that he
had been when first consigned to Mrs Pipchin’s care. One Saturday
afternoon, at dusk, great consternation was occasioned in the Castle by
the unlooked-for announcement of Mr Dombey as a visitor to Mrs Pipchin.
The population of the parlour was immediately swept upstairs as on the
wings of a whirlwind, and after much slamming of bedroom doors, and
trampling overhead, and some knocking about of Master Bitherstone by
Mrs Pipchin, as a relief to the perturbation of her spirits, the black
bombazeen garments of the worthy old lady darkened the audience-chamber
where Mr Dombey was contemplating the vacant arm-chair of his son and
heir.
“Mrs Pipchin,” said Mr Dombey, “How do you do?”
“Thank you, Sir,” said Mrs Pipchin, “I am pretty well, considering.”
Mrs Pipchin always used that form of words. It meant, considering her
virtues, sacrifices, and so forth.
“I can’t expect, Sir, to be very well,” said Mrs Pipchin, taking a
chair and fetching her breath; “but such health as I have, I am
grateful for.”
Mr Dombey inclined his head with the satisfied air of a patron, who
felt that this was the sort of thing for which he paid so much a
quarter. After a moment’s silence he went on to say:
“Mrs Pipchin, I have taken the liberty of calling, to consult you in
reference to my son. I have had it in my mind to do so for some time
past; but have deferred it from time to time, in order that his health
might be thoroughly re-established. You have no misgivings on that
subject, Mrs Pipchin?”
“Brighton has proved very beneficial, Sir,” returned Mrs Pipchin. “Very
beneficial, indeed.”
“I purpose,” said Mr Dombey, “his remaining at Brighton.”
Mrs Pipchin rubbed her hands, and bent her grey eyes on the fire.
“But,” pursued Mr Dombey, stretching out his forefinger, “but possibly
that he should now make a change, and lead a different kind of life
here. In short, Mrs Pipchin, that is the object of my visit. My son is
getting on, Mrs Pipchin. Really, he is getting on.”
There was something melancholy in the triumphant air with which Mr
Dombey said this. It showed how long Paul’s childish life had been to
him, and how his hopes were set upon a later stage of his existence.
Pity may appear a strange word to connect with anyone so haughty and so
cold, and yet he seemed a worthy subject for it at that moment.
“Six years old!” said Mr Dombey, settling his neckcloth—perhaps to hide
an irrepressible smile that rather seemed to strike upon the surface of
his face and glance away, as finding no resting-place, than to play
there for an instant. “Dear me, six will be changed to sixteen, before
we have time to look about us.”
“Ten years,” croaked the unsympathetic Pipchin, with a frosty
glistening of her hard grey eye, and a dreary shaking of her bent head,
“is a long time.”
“It depends on circumstances, returned Mr Dombey; “at all events, Mrs
Pipchin, my son is six years old, and there is no doubt, I fear, that
in his studies he is behind many children of his age—or his youth,”
said Mr Dombey, quickly answering what he mistrusted was a shrewd
twinkle of the frosty eye, “his youth is a more appropriate expression.
Now, Mrs Pipchin, instead of being behind his peers, my son ought to be
before them; far before them. There is an eminence ready for him to
mount upon. There is nothing of chance or doubt in the course before my
son. His way in life was clear and prepared, and marked out before he
existed. The education of such a young gentleman must not be delayed.
It must not be left imperfect. It must be very steadily and seriously
undertaken, Mrs Pipchin.”
“Well, Sir,” said Mrs Pipchin, “I can say nothing to the contrary.”
“I was quite sure, Mrs Pipchin,” returned Mr Dombey, approvingly, “that
a person of your good sense could not, and would not.”
“There is a great deal of nonsense—and worse—talked about young people
not being pressed too hard at first, and being tempted on, and all the
rest of it, Sir,” said Mrs Pipchin, impatiently rubbing her hooked
nose. “It never was thought of in my time, and it has no business to be
thought of now. My opinion is ‘keep ’em at it’.”
“My good madam,” returned Mr Dombey, “you have not acquired your
reputation undeservedly; and I beg you to believe, Mrs Pipchin, that I
am more than satisfied with your excellent system of management, and
shall have the greatest pleasure in commending it whenever my poor
commendation—” Mr Dombey’s loftiness when he affected to disparage his
own importance, passed all bounds—“can be of any service. I have been
thinking of Doctor Blimber’s, Mrs Pipchin.”
“My neighbour, Sir?” said Mrs Pipchin. “I believe the Doctor’s is an
excellent establishment. I’ve heard that it’s very strictly conducted,
and there is nothing but learning going on from morning to night.”
“And it’s very expensive,” added Mr Dombey.
“And it’s very expensive, Sir,” returned Mrs Pipchin, catching at the
fact, as if in omitting that, she had omitted one of its leading
merits.
“I have had some communication with the Doctor, Mrs Pipchin,” said Mr
Dombey, hitching his chair anxiously a little nearer to the fire, “and
he does not consider Paul at all too young for his purpose. He
mentioned several instances of boys in Greek at about the same age. If
I have any little uneasiness in my own mind, Mrs Pipchin, on the
subject of this change, it is not on that head. My son not having known
a mother has gradually concentrated much—too much—of his childish
affection on his sister. Whether their separation—” Mr Dombey said no
more, but sat silent.
“Hoity-toity!” exclaimed Mrs Pipchin, shaking out her black bombazeen
skirts, and plucking up all the ogress within her. “If she don’t like
it, Mr Dombey, she must be taught to lump it.” The good lady apologised
immediately afterwards for using so common a figure of speech, but said
(and truly) that that was the way she reasoned with ’em.
Mr Dombey waited until Mrs Pipchin had done bridling and shaking her
head, and frowning down a legion of Bitherstones and Pankeys; and then
said quietly, but correctively, “He, my good madam, he.”
Mrs Pipchin’s system would have applied very much the same mode of cure
to any uneasiness on the part of Paul, too; but as the hard grey eye
was sharp enough to see that the recipe, however Mr Dombey might admit
its efficacy in the case of the daughter, was not a sovereign remedy
for the son, she argued the point; and contended that change, and new
society, and the different form of life he would lead at Doctor
Blimber’s, and the studies he would have to master, would very soon
prove sufficient alienations. As this chimed in with Mr Dombey’s own
hope and belief, it gave that gentleman a still higher opinion of Mrs
Pipchin’s understanding; and as Mrs Pipchin, at the same time, bewailed
the loss of her dear little friend (which was not an overwhelming shock
to her, as she had long expected it, and had not looked, in the
beginning, for his remaining with her longer than three months), he
formed an equally good opinion of Mrs Pipchin’s disinterestedness. It
was plain that he had given the subject anxious consideration, for he
had formed a plan, which he announced to the ogress, of sending Paul to
the Doctor’s as a weekly boarder for the first half year, during which
time Florence would remain at the Castle, that she might receive her
brother there, on Saturdays. This would wean him by degrees, Mr Dombey
said; possibly with a recollection of his not having been weaned by
degrees on a former occasion.
Mr Dombey finished the interview by expressing his hope that Mrs
Pipchin would still remain in office as general superintendent and
overseer of his son, pending his studies at Brighton; and having kissed
Paul, and shaken hands with Florence, and beheld Master Bitherstone in
his collar of state, and made Miss Pankey cry by patting her on the
head (in which region she was uncommonly tender, on account of a habit
Mrs Pipchin had of sounding it with her knuckles, like a cask), he
withdrew to his hotel and dinner: resolved that Paul, now that he was
getting so old and well, should begin a vigorous course of education
forthwith, to qualify him for the position in which he was to shine;
and that Doctor Blimber should take him in hand immediately.
Whenever a young gentleman was taken in hand by Doctor Blimber, he
might consider himself sure of a pretty tight squeeze. The Doctor only
undertook the charge of ten young gentlemen, but he had, always ready,
a supply of learning for a hundred, on the lowest estimate; and it was
at once the business and delight of his life to gorge the unhappy ten
with it.
In fact, Doctor Blimber’s establishment was a great hot-house, in which
there was a forcing apparatus incessantly at work. All the boys blew
before their time. Mental green-peas were produced at Christmas, and
intellectual asparagus all the year round. Mathematical gooseberries
(very sour ones too) were common at untimely seasons, and from mere
sprouts of bushes, under Doctor Blimber’s cultivation. Every
description of Greek and Latin vegetable was got off the driest twigs
of boys, under the frostiest circumstances. Nature was of no
consequence at all. No matter what a young gentleman was intended to
bear, Doctor Blimber made him bear to pattern, somehow or other.
This was all very pleasant and ingenious, but the system of forcing was
attended with its usual disadvantages. There was not the right taste
about the premature productions, and they didn’t keep well. Moreover,
one young gentleman, with a swollen nose and an excessively large head
(the oldest of the ten who had “gone through” everything), suddenly
left off blowing one day, and remained in the establishment a mere
stalk. And people did say that the Doctor had rather overdone it with
young Toots, and that when he began to have whiskers he left off having
brains.
There young Toots was, at any rate; possessed of the gruffest of voices
and the shrillest of minds; sticking ornamental pins into his shirt,
and keeping a ring in his waistcoat pocket to put on his little finger
by stealth, when the pupils went out walking; constantly falling in
love by sight with nurserymaids, who had no idea of his existence; and
looking at the gas-lighted world over the little iron bars in the
left-hand corner window of the front three pairs of stairs, after
bed-time, like a greatly overgrown cherub who had sat up aloft much too
long.
The Doctor was a portly gentleman in a suit of black, with strings at
his knees, and stockings below them. He had a bald head, highly
polished; a deep voice; and a chin so very double, that it was a wonder
how he ever managed to shave into the creases. He had likewise a pair
of little eyes that were always half shut up, and a mouth that was
always half expanded into a grin, as if he had, that moment, posed a
boy, and were waiting to convict him from his own lips. Insomuch, that
when the Doctor put his right hand into the breast of his coat, and
with his other hand behind him, and a scarcely perceptible wag of his
head, made the commonest observation to a nervous stranger, it was like
a sentiment from the sphynx, and settled his business.
The Doctor’s was a mighty fine house, fronting the sea. Not a joyful
style of house within, but quite the contrary. Sad-coloured curtains,
whose proportions were spare and lean, hid themselves despondently
behind the windows. The tables and chairs were put away in rows, like
figures in a sum; fires were so rarely lighted in the rooms of
ceremony, that they felt like wells, and a visitor represented the
bucket; the dining-room seemed the last place in the world where any
eating or drinking was likely to occur; there was no sound through all
the house but the ticking of a great clock in the hall, which made
itself audible in the very garrets; and sometimes a dull cooing of
young gentlemen at their lessons, like the murmurings of an assemblage
of melancholy pigeons.
Miss Blimber, too, although a slim and graceful maid, did no soft
violence to the gravity of the house. There was no light nonsense about
Miss Blimber. She kept her hair short and crisp, and wore spectacles.
She was dry and sandy with working in the graves of deceased languages.
None of your live languages for Miss Blimber. They must be dead—stone
dead—and then Miss Blimber dug them up like a Ghoul.
Mrs Blimber, her Mama, was not learned herself, but she pretended to
be, and that did quite as well. She said at evening parties, that if
she could have known Cicero, she thought she could have died contented.
It was the steady joy of her life to see the Doctor’s young gentlemen
go out walking, unlike all other young gentlemen, in the largest
possible shirt-collars, and the stiffest possible cravats. It was so
classical, she said.
As to Mr Feeder, B.A., Doctor Blimber’s assistant, he was a kind of
human barrel-organ, with a little list of tunes at which he was
continually working, over and over again, without any variation. He
might have been fitted up with a change of barrels, perhaps, in early
life, if his destiny had been favourable; but it had not been; and he
had only one, with which, in a monotonous round, it was his occupation
to bewilder the young ideas of Doctor Blimber’s young gentlemen. The
young gentlemen were prematurely full of carking anxieties. They knew
no rest from the pursuit of stony-hearted verbs, savage
noun-substantives, inflexible syntactic passages, and ghosts of
exercises that appeared to them in their dreams. Under the forcing
system, a young gentleman usually took leave of his spirits in three
weeks. He had all the cares of the world on his head in three months.
He conceived bitter sentiments against his parents or guardians in
four; he was an old misanthrope, in five; envied Curtius that blessed
refuge in the earth, in six; and at the end of the first twelvemonth
had arrived at the conclusion, from which he never afterwards departed,
that all the fancies of the poets, and lessons of the sages, were a
mere collection of words and grammar, and had no other meaning in the
world.
But he went on blow, blow, blowing, in the Doctor’s hothouse, all the
time; and the Doctor’s glory and reputation were great, when he took
his wintry growth home to his relations and friends.
Upon the Doctor’s door-steps one day, Paul stood with a fluttering
heart, and with his small right hand in his father’s. His other hand
was locked in that of Florence. How tight the tiny pressure of that
one; and how loose and cold the other!
Mrs Pipchin hovered behind the victim, with her sable plumage and her
hooked beak, like a bird of ill-omen. She was out of breath—for Mr
Dombey, full of great thoughts, had walked fast—and she croaked
hoarsely as she waited for the opening of the door.
“Now, Paul,” said Mr Dombey, exultingly. “This is the way indeed to be
Dombey and Son, and have money. You are almost a man already.”
“Almost,” returned the child.
Even his childish agitation could not master the sly and quaint yet
touching look, with which he accompanied the reply.
It brought a vague expression of dissatisfaction into Mr Dombey’s face;
but the door being opened, it was quickly gone.
“Doctor Blimber is at home, I believe?” said Mr Dombey.
The man said yes; and as they passed in, looked at Paul as if he were a
little mouse, and the house were a trap. He was a weak-eyed young man,
with the first faint streaks or early dawn of a grin on his
countenance. It was mere imbecility; but Mrs Pipchin took it into her
head that it was impudence, and made a snap at him directly.
“How dare you laugh behind the gentleman’s back?” said Mrs Pipchin.
“And what do you take me for?”
“I ain’t a laughing at nobody, and I’m sure I don’t take you for
nothing, Ma’am,” returned the young man, in consternation.
“A pack of idle dogs!” said Mrs Pipchin, “only fit to be turnspits. Go
and tell your master that Mr Dombey’s here, or it’ll be worse for you!”
The weak-eyed young man went, very meekly, to discharge himself of this
commission; and soon came back to invite them to the Doctor’s study.
“You’re laughing again, Sir,” said Mrs Pipchin, when it came to her
turn, bringing up the rear, to pass him in the hall.
“I ain’t,” returned the young man, grievously oppressed. “I never see
such a thing as this!”
“What is the matter, Mrs Pipchin?” said Mr Dombey, looking round.
“Softly! Pray!”
Mrs Pipchin, in her deference, merely muttered at the young man as she
passed on, and said, “Oh! he was a precious fellow”—leaving the young
man, who was all meekness and incapacity, affected even to tears by the
incident. But Mrs Pipchin had a way of falling foul of all meek people;
and her friends said who could wonder at it, after the Peruvian mines!
The Doctor was sitting in his portentous study, with a globe at each
knee, books all round him, Homer over the door, and Minerva on the
mantel-shelf. “And how do you do, Sir?” he said to Mr Dombey, “and how
is my little friend?” Grave as an organ was the Doctor’s speech; and
when he ceased, the great clock in the hall seemed (to Paul at least)
to take him up, and to go on saying, “how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?
how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?” over and over and over again.
The little friend being something too small to be seen at all from
where the Doctor sat, over the books on his table, the Doctor made
several futile attempts to get a view of him round the legs; which Mr
Dombey perceiving, relieved the Doctor from his embarrassment by taking
Paul up in his arms, and sitting him on another little table, over
against the Doctor, in the middle of the room.
“Ha!” said the Doctor, leaning back in his chair with his hand in his
breast. “Now I see my little friend. How do you do, my little friend?”
The clock in the hall wouldn’t subscribe to this alteration in the form
of words, but continued to repeat how, is, my, lit, tle, friend? how,
is, my, lit, tle, friend?”
“Very well, I thank you, Sir,” returned Paul, answering the clock quite
as much as the Doctor.
“Ha!” said Doctor Blimber. “Shall we make a man of him?”
“Do you hear, Paul?” added Mr Dombey; Paul being silent.
“Shall we make a man of him?” repeated the Doctor.
“I had rather be a child,” replied Paul.
“Indeed!” said the Doctor. “Why?”
The child sat on the table looking at him, with a curious expression of
suppressed emotion in his face, and beating one hand proudly on his
knee as if he had the rising tears beneath it, and crushed them. But
his other hand strayed a little way the while, a little farther—farther
from him yet—until it lighted on the neck of Florence. “This is why,”
it seemed to say, and then the steady look was broken up and gone; the
working lip was loosened; and the tears came streaming forth.
“Mrs Pipchin,” said his father, in a querulous manner, “I am really
very sorry to see this.”
“Come away from him, do, Miss Dombey,” quoth the matron.
“Never mind,” said the Doctor, blandly nodding his head, to keep Mrs
Pipchin back. “Never mind; we shall substitute new cares and new
impressions, Mr Dombey, very shortly. You would still wish my little
friend to acquire—”
“Everything, if you please, Doctor,” returned Mr Dombey, firmly.
“Yes,” said the Doctor, who, with his half-shut eyes, and his usual
smile, seemed to survey Paul with the sort of interest that might
attach to some choice little animal he was going to stuff. “Yes,
exactly. Ha! We shall impart a great variety of information to our
little friend, and bring him quickly forward, I daresay. I daresay.
Quite a virgin soil, I believe you said, Mr Dombey?”
“Except some ordinary preparation at home, and from this lady,” replied
Mr Dombey, introducing Mrs Pipchin, who instantly communicated a
rigidity to her whole muscular system, and snorted defiance beforehand,
in case the Doctor should disparage her; “except so far, Paul has, as
yet, applied himself to no studies at all.”
Doctor Blimber inclined his head, in gentle tolerance of such
insignificant poaching as Mrs Pipchin’s, and said he was glad to hear
it. It was much more satisfactory, he observed, rubbing his hands, to
begin at the foundation. And again he leered at Paul, as if he would
have liked to tackle him with the Greek alphabet, on the spot.
“That circumstance, indeed, Doctor Blimber,” pursued Mr Dombey,
glancing at his little son, “and the interview I have already had the
pleasure of holding with you, renders any further explanation, and
consequently, any further intrusion on your valuable time, so
unnecessary, that—”
“Now, Miss Dombey!” said the acid Pipchin.
“Permit me,” said the Doctor, “one moment. Allow me to present Mrs
Blimber and my daughter; who will be associated with the domestic life
of our young Pilgrim to Parnassus Mrs Blimber,” for the lady, who had
perhaps been in waiting, opportunely entered, followed by her daughter,
that fair Sexton in spectacles, “Mr Dombey. My daughter Cornelia, Mr
Dombey. Mr Dombey, my love,” pursued the Doctor, turning to his wife,
“is so confiding as to—do you see our little friend?”
Mrs Blimber, in an excess of politeness, of which Mr Dombey was the
object, apparently did not, for she was backing against the little
friend, and very much endangering his position on the table. But, on
this hint, she turned to admire his classical and intellectual
lineaments, and turning again to Mr Dombey, said, with a sigh, that she
envied his dear son.
“Like a bee, Sir,” said Mrs Blimber, with uplifted eyes, “about to
plunge into a garden of the choicest flowers, and sip the sweets for
the first time Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Terence, Plautus, Cicero. What a
world of honey have we here. It may appear remarkable, Mr Dombey, in
one who is a wife—the wife of such a husband—”
“Hush, hush,” said Doctor Blimber. “Fie for shame.”
“Mr Dombey will forgive the partiality of a wife,” said Mrs Blimber,
with an engaging smile.
Mr Dombey answered “Not at all:” applying those words, it is to be
presumed, to the partiality, and not to the forgiveness.
“And it may seem remarkable in one who is a mother also,” resumed Mrs
Blimber.
“And such a mother,” observed Mr Dombey, bowing with some confused idea
of being complimentary to Cornelia.
“But really,” pursued Mrs Blimber, “I think if I could have known
Cicero, and been his friend, and talked with him in his retirement at
Tusculum (beau-ti-ful Tusculum!), I could have died contented.”
A learned enthusiasm is so very contagious, that Mr Dombey half
believed this was exactly his case; and even Mrs Pipchin, who was not,
as we have seen, of an accommodating disposition generally, gave
utterance to a little sound between a groan and a sigh, as if she would
have said that nobody but Cicero could have proved a lasting
consolation under that failure of the Peruvian Mines, but that he
indeed would have been a very Davy-lamp of refuge.
Cornelia looked at Mr Dombey through her spectacles, as if she would
have liked to crack a few quotations with him from the authority in
question. But this design, if she entertained it, was frustrated by a
knock at the room-door.
“Who is that?” said the Doctor. “Oh! Come in, Toots; come in. Mr
Dombey, Sir.” Toots bowed. “Quite a coincidence!” said Doctor Blimber.
“Here we have the beginning and the end. Alpha and Omega. Our head boy,
Mr Dombey.”
The Doctor might have called him their head and shoulders boy, for he
was at least that much taller than any of the rest. He blushed very
much at finding himself among strangers, and chuckled aloud.
“An addition to our little Portico, Toots,” said the Doctor; “Mr
Dombey’s son.”
Young Toots blushed again; and finding, from a solemn silence which
prevailed, that he was expected to say something, said to Paul, “How
are you?” in a voice so deep, and a manner so sheepish, that if a lamb
had roared it couldn’t have been more surprising.
“Ask Mr Feeder, if you please, Toots,” said the Doctor, “to prepare a
few introductory volumes for Mr Dombey’s son, and to allot him a
convenient seat for study. My dear, I believe Mr Dombey has not seen
the dormitories.”
“If Mr Dombey will walk upstairs,” said Mrs Blimber, “I shall be more
than proud to show him the dominions of the drowsy god.”
With that, Mrs Blimber, who was a lady of great suavity, and a wiry
figure, and who wore a cap composed of sky-blue materials, proceeded
upstairs with Mr Dombey and Cornelia; Mrs Pipchin following, and
looking out sharp for her enemy the footman.
While they were gone, Paul sat upon the table, holding Florence by the
hand, and glancing timidly from the Doctor round and round the room,
while the Doctor, leaning back in his chair, with his hand in his
breast as usual, held a book from him at arm’s length, and read. There
was something very awful in this manner of reading. It was such a
determined, unimpassioned, inflexible, cold-blooded way of going to
work. It left the Doctor’s countenance exposed to view; and when the
Doctor smiled suspiciously at his author, or knit his brows, or shook
his head and made wry faces at him, as much as to say, “Don’t tell me,
Sir; I know better,” it was terrific.
Toots, too, had no business to be outside the door, ostentatiously
examining the wheels in his watch, and counting his half-crowns. But
that didn’t last long; for Doctor Blimber, happening to change the
position of his tight plump legs, as if he were going to get up, Toots
swiftly vanished, and appeared no more.
Mr Dombey and his conductress were soon heard coming downstairs again,
talking all the way; and presently they re-entered the Doctor’s study.
“I hope, Mr Dombey,” said the Doctor, laying down his book, “that the
arrangements meet your approval.”
“They are excellent, Sir,” said Mr Dombey.
“Very fair, indeed,” said Mrs Pipchin, in a low voice; never disposed
to give too much encouragement.
“Mrs Pipchin,” said Mr Dombey, wheeling round, “will, with your
permission, Doctor and Mrs Blimber, visit Paul now and then.”
“Whenever Mrs Pipchin pleases,” observed the Doctor.
“Always happy to see her,” said Mrs Blimber.
“I think,” said Mr Dombey, “I have given all the trouble I need, and
may take my leave. Paul, my child,” he went close to him, as he sat
upon the table. “Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Papa.”
The limp and careless little hand that Mr Dombey took in his, was
singularly out of keeping with the wistful face. But he had no part in
its sorrowful expression. It was not addressed to him. No, no. To
Florence—all to Florence.
If Mr Dombey in his insolence of wealth, had ever made an enemy, hard
to appease and cruelly vindictive in his hate, even such an enemy might
have received the pang that wrung his proud heart then, as compensation
for his injury.
He bent down, over his boy, and kissed him. If his sight were dimmed as
he did so, by something that for a moment blurred the little face, and
made it indistinct to him, his mental vision may have been, for that
short time, the clearer perhaps.
“I shall see you soon, Paul. You are free on Saturdays and Sundays, you
know.”
“Yes, Papa,” returned Paul: looking at his sister. “On Saturdays and
Sundays.”
“And you’ll try and learn a great deal here, and be a clever man,” said
Mr Dombey; “won’t you?”
“I’ll try,” returned the child, wearily.
“And you’ll soon be grown up now!” said Mr Dombey.
“Oh! very soon!” replied the child. Once more the old, old look passed
rapidly across his features like a strange light. It fell on Mrs
Pipchin, and extinguished itself in her black dress. That excellent
ogress stepped forward to take leave and to bear off Florence, which
she had long been thirsting to do. The move on her part roused Mr
Dombey, whose eyes were fixed on Paul. After patting him on the head,
and pressing his small hand again, he took leave of Doctor Blimber, Mrs
Blimber, and Miss Blimber, with his usual polite frigidity, and walked
out of the study.
Despite his entreaty that they would not think of stirring, Doctor
Blimber, Mrs Blimber, and Miss Blimber all pressed forward to attend
him to the hall; and thus Mrs Pipchin got into a state of entanglement
with Miss Blimber and the Doctor, and was crowded out of the study
before she could clutch Florence. To which happy accident Paul stood
afterwards indebted for the dear remembrance, that Florence ran back to
throw her arms round his neck, and that hers was the last face in the
doorway: turned towards him with a smile of encouragement, the brighter
for the tears through which it beamed.
It made his childish bosom heave and swell when it was gone; and sent
the globes, the books, blind Homer and Minerva, swimming round the
room. But they stopped, all of a sudden; and then he heard the loud
clock in the hall still gravely inquiring “how, is, my, lit, tle,
friend? how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?” as it had done before.
He sat, with folded hands, upon his pedestal, silently listening. But
he might have answered “weary, weary! very lonely, very sad!” And
there, with an aching void in his young heart, and all outside so cold,
and bare, and strange, Paul sat as if he had taken life unfurnished,
and the upholsterer were never coming.