Mr Dombey goes upon a Journey
Mr Dombey, Sir,” said Major Bagstock, “Joey” B. is not in general a
man of sentiment, for Joseph is tough. But Joe has his feelings, Sir,
and when they are awakened—Damme, Mr Dombey,” cried the Major with
sudden ferocity, “this is weakness, and I won’t submit to it!”
Major Bagstock delivered himself of these expressions on receiving Mr
Dombey as his guest at the head of his own staircase in Princess’s
Place. Mr Dombey had come to breakfast with the Major, previous to
their setting forth on their trip; and the ill-starved Native had
already undergone a world of misery arising out of the muffins, while,
in connexion with the general question of boiled eggs, life was a
burden to him.
“It is not for an old soldier of the Bagstock breed,” observed the
Major, relapsing into a mild state, “to deliver himself up, a prey to
his own emotions; but—damme, Sir,” cried the Major, in another spasm of
ferocity, “I condole with you!”
The Major’s purple visage deepened in its hue, and the Major’s lobster
eyes stood out in bolder relief, as he shook Mr Dombey by the hand,
imparting to that peaceful action as defiant a character as if it had
been the prelude to his immediately boxing Mr Dombey for a thousand
pounds a side and the championship of England. With a rotatory motion
of his head, and a wheeze very like the cough of a horse, the Major
then conducted his visitor to the sitting-room, and there welcomed him
(having now composed his feelings) with the freedom and frankness of a
travelling companion.
“Dombey,” said the Major, “I’m glad to see you. I’m proud to see you.
There are not many men in Europe to whom J. Bagstock would say that—for
Josh is blunt. Sir: it’s his nature—but Joey B. is proud to see you,
Dombey.”
“Major,” returned Mr Dombey, “you are very obliging.”
“No, Sir,” said the Major, “Devil a bit! That’s not my character. If
that had been Joe’s character, Joe might have been, by this time,
Lieutenant-General Sir Joseph Bagstock, K.C.B., and might have received
you in very different quarters. You don’t know old Joe yet, I find. But
this occasion, being special, is a source of pride to me. By the Lord,
Sir,” said the Major resolutely, “it’s an honour to me!”
Mr Dombey, in his estimation of himself and his money, felt that this
was very true, and therefore did not dispute the point. But the
instinctive recognition of such a truth by the Major, and his plain
avowal of it, were very able. It was a confirmation to Mr Dombey, if he
had required any, of his not being mistaken in the Major. It was an
assurance to him that his power extended beyond his own immediate
sphere; and that the Major, as an officer and a gentleman, had a no
less becoming sense of it, than the beadle of the Royal Exchange.
And if it were ever consolatory to know this, or the like of this, it
was consolatory then, when the impotence of his will, the instability
of his hopes, the feebleness of wealth, had been so direfully impressed
upon him. What could it do, his boy had asked him. Sometimes, thinking
of the baby question, he could hardly forbear inquiring, himself, what
could it do indeed: what had it done?
But these were lonely thoughts, bred late at night in the sullen
despondency and gloom of his retirement, and pride easily found its
reassurance in many testimonies to the truth, as unimpeachable and
precious as the Major’s. Mr Dombey, in his friendlessness, inclined to
the Major. It cannot be said that he warmed towards him, but he thawed
a little, The Major had had some part—and not too much—in the days by
the seaside. He was a man of the world, and knew some great people. He
talked much, and told stories; and Mr Dombey was disposed to regard him
as a choice spirit who shone in society, and who had not that poisonous
ingredient of poverty with which choice spirits in general are too much
adulterated. His station was undeniable. Altogether the Major was a
creditable companion, well accustomed to a life of leisure, and to such
places as that they were about to visit, and having an air of
gentlemanly ease about him that mixed well enough with his own City
character, and did not compete with it at all. If Mr Dombey had any
lingering idea that the Major, as a man accustomed, in the way of his
calling, to make light of the ruthless hand that had lately crushed his
hopes, might unconsciously impart some useful philosophy to him, and
scare away his weak regrets, he hid it from himself, and left it lying
at the bottom of his pride, unexamined.
“Where is my scoundrel?” said the Major, looking wrathfully round the
room.
The Native, who had no particular name, but answered to any
vituperative epithet, presented himself instantly at the door and
ventured to come no nearer.
“You villain!” said the choleric Major, “where’s the breakfast?”
The dark servant disappeared in search of it, and was quickly heard
reascending the stairs in such a tremulous state, that the plates and
dishes on the tray he carried, trembling sympathetically as he came,
rattled again, all the way up.
“Dombey,” said the Major, glancing at the Native as he arranged the
table, and encouraging him with an awful shake of his fist when he
upset a spoon, “here is a devilled grill, a savoury pie, a dish of
kidneys, and so forth. Pray sit down. Old Joe can give you nothing but
camp fare, you see.”
“Very excellent fare, Major,” replied his guest; and not in mere
politeness either; for the Major always took the best possible care of
himself, and indeed ate rather more of rich meats than was good for
him, insomuch that his Imperial complexion was mainly referred by the
faculty to that circumstance.
“You have been looking over the way, Sir,” observed the Major. “Have
you seen our friend?”
“You mean Miss Tox,” retorted Mr Dombey. “No.”
“Charming woman, Sir,” said the Major, with a fat laugh rising in his
short throat, and nearly suffocating him.
“Miss Tox is a very good sort of person, I believe,” replied Mr Dombey.
The haughty coldness of the reply seemed to afford Major Bagstock
infinite delight. He swelled and swelled, exceedingly: and even laid
down his knife and fork for a moment, to rub his hands.
“Old Joe, Sir,” said the Major, “was a bit of a favourite in that
quarter once. But Joe has had his day. J. Bagstock is
extinguished—outrivalled—floored, Sir.”
“I should have supposed,” Mr Dombey replied, “that the lady’s day for
favourites was over: but perhaps you are jesting, Major.”
“Perhaps you are jesting, Dombey?” was the Major’s rejoinder.
There never was a more unlikely possibility. It was so clearly
expressed in Mr Dombey’s face, that the Major apologised.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I see you are in earnest. I tell you
what, Dombey.” The Major paused in his eating, and looked mysteriously
indignant. “That’s a de-vilish ambitious woman, Sir.”
Mr Dombey said “Indeed?” with frigid indifference: mingled perhaps with
some contemptuous incredulity as to Miss Tox having the presumption to
harbour such a superior quality.
“That woman, Sir,” said the Major, “is, in her way, a Lucifer. Joey B.
has had his day, Sir, but he keeps his eyes. He sees, does Joe. His
Royal Highness the late Duke of York observed of Joey, at a levee, that
he saw.”
The Major accompanied this with such a look, and, between eating,
drinking, hot tea, devilled grill, muffins, and meaning, was altogether
so swollen and inflamed about the head, that even Mr Dombey showed some
anxiety for him.
“That ridiculous old spectacle, Sir,” pursued the Major, “aspires. She
aspires sky-high, Sir. Matrimonially, Dombey.”
“I am sorry for her,” said Mr Dombey.
“Don’t say that, Dombey,” returned the Major in a warning voice.
“Why should I not, Major?” said Mr Dombey.
The Major gave no answer but the horse’s cough, and went on eating
vigorously.
“She has taken an interest in your household,” said the Major, stopping
short again, “and has been a frequent visitor at your house for some
time now.”
“Yes,” replied Mr Dombey with great stateliness, “Miss Tox was
originally received there, at the time of Mrs Dombey’s death, as a
friend of my sister’s; and being a well-behaved person, and showing a
liking for the poor infant, she was permitted—may I say encouraged—to
repeat her visits with my sister, and gradually to occupy a kind of
footing of familiarity in the family. I have,” said Mr Dombey, in the
tone of a man who was making a great and valuable concession, “I have a
respect for Miss Tox. She has been so obliging as to render many little
services in my house: trifling and insignificant services perhaps,
Major, but not to be disparaged on that account: and I hope I have had
the good fortune to be enabled to acknowledge them by such attention
and notice as it has been in my power to bestow. I hold myself indebted
to Miss Tox, Major,” added Mr Dombey, with a slight wave of his hand,
“for the pleasure of your acquaintance.”
“Dombey,” said the Major, warmly: “no! No, Sir! Joseph Bagstock can
never permit that assertion to pass uncontradicted. Your knowledge of
old Joe, Sir, such as he is, and old Joe’s knowledge of you, Sir, had
its origin in a noble fellow, Sir—in a great creature, Sir. Dombey!”
said the Major, with a struggle which it was not very difficult to
parade, his whole life being a struggle against all kinds of apoplectic
symptoms, “we knew each other through your boy.”
Mr Dombey seemed touched, as it is not improbable the Major designed he
should be, by this allusion. He looked down and sighed: and the Major,
rousing himself fiercely, again said, in reference to the state of mind
into which he felt himself in danger of falling, that this was
weakness, and nothing should induce him to submit to it.
“Our friend had a remote connexion with that event,” said the Major,
“and all the credit that belongs to her, J. B. is willing to give her,
Sir. Notwithstanding which, Ma’am,” he added, raising his eyes from his
plate, and casting them across Princess’s Place, to where Miss Tox was
at that moment visible at her window watering her flowers, “you’re a
scheming jade, Ma’am, and your ambition is a piece of monstrous
impudence. If it only made yourself ridiculous, Ma’am,” said the Major,
rolling his head at the unconscious Miss Tox, while his starting eyes
appeared to make a leap towards her, “you might do that to your heart’s
content, Ma’am, without any objection, I assure you, on the part of
Bagstock.” Here the Major laughed frightfully up in the tips of his
ears and in the veins of his head. “But when, Ma’am,” said the Major,
“you compromise other people, and generous, unsuspicious people too, as
a repayment for their condescension, you stir the blood of old Joe in
his body.”
“Major,” said Mr Dombey, reddening, “I hope you do not hint at anything
so absurd on the part of Miss Tox as—”
“Dombey,” returned the Major, “I hint at nothing. But Joey B. has lived
in the world, Sir: lived in the world with his eyes open, Sir, and his
ears cocked: and Joe tells you, Dombey, that there’s a devilish artful
and ambitious woman over the way.”
Mr Dombey involuntarily glanced over the way; and an angry glance he
sent in that direction, too.
“That’s all on such a subject that shall pass the lips of Joseph
Bagstock,” said the Major firmly. “Joe is not a tale-bearer, but there
are times when he must speak, when he will speak!—confound your arts,
Ma’am,” cried the Major, again apostrophising his fair neighbour, with
great ire,—“when the provocation is too strong to admit of his
remaining silent.”
The emotion of this outbreak threw the Major into a paroxysm of horse’s
coughs, which held him for a long time. On recovering he added:
“And now, Dombey, as you have invited Joe—old Joe, who has no other
merit, Sir, but that he is tough and hearty—to be your guest and guide
at Leamington, command him in any way you please, and he is wholly
yours. I don’t know, Sir,” said the Major, wagging his double chin with
a jocose air, “what it is you people see in Joe to make you hold him in
such great request, all of you; but this I know, Sir, that if he wasn’t
pretty tough, and obstinate in his refusals, you’d kill him among you
with your invitations and so forth, in double-quick time.”
Mr Dombey, in a few words, expressed his sense of the preference he
received over those other distinguished members of society who were
clamouring for the possession of Major Bagstock. But the Major cut him
short by giving him to understand that he followed his own
inclinations, and that they had risen up in a body and said with one
accord, “J. B., Dombey is the man for you to choose as a friend.”
The Major being by this time in a state of repletion, with essence of
savoury pie oozing out at the corners of his eyes, and devilled grill
and kidneys tightening his cravat: and the time moreover approaching
for the departure of the railway train to Birmingham, by which they
were to leave town: the Native got him into his great-coat with immense
difficulty, and buttoned him up until his face looked staring and
gasping, over the top of that garment, as if he were in a barrel. The
Native then handed him separately, and with a decent interval between
each supply, his washleather gloves, his thick stick, and his hat;
which latter article the Major wore with a rakish air on one side of
his head, by way of toning down his remarkable visage. The Native had
previously packed, in all possible and impossible parts of Mr Dombey’s
chariot, which was in waiting, an unusual quantity of carpet-bags and
small portmanteaus, no less apoplectic in appearance than the Major
himself: and having filled his own pockets with Seltzer water, East
India sherry, sandwiches, shawls, telescopes, maps, and newspapers, any
or all of which light baggage the Major might require at any instant of
the journey, he announced that everything was ready. To complete the
equipment of this unfortunate foreigner (currently believed to be a
prince in his own country), when he took his seat in the rumble by the
side of Mr Towlinson, a pile of the Major’s cloaks and great-coats was
hurled upon him by the landlord, who aimed at him from the pavement
with those great missiles like a Titan, and so covered him up, that he
proceeded, in a living tomb, to the railroad station.
But before the carriage moved away, and while the Native was in the act
of sepulture, Miss Tox appearing at her window, waved a lilywhite
handkerchief. Mr Dombey received this parting salutation very
coldly—very coldly even for him—and honouring her with the slightest
possible inclination of his head, leaned back in the carriage with a
very discontented look. His marked behaviour seemed to afford the Major
(who was all politeness in his recognition of Miss Tox) unbounded
satisfaction; and he sat for a long time afterwards, leering, and
choking, like an over-fed Mephistopheles.
During the bustle of preparation at the railway, Mr Dombey and the
Major walked up and down the platform side by side; the former taciturn
and gloomy, and the latter entertaining him, or entertaining himself,
with a variety of anecdotes and reminiscences, in most of which Joe
Bagstock was the principal performer. Neither of the two observed that
in the course of these walks, they attracted the attention of a working
man who was standing near the engine, and who touched his hat every
time they passed; for Mr Dombey habitually looked over the vulgar herd,
not at them; and the Major was looking, at the time, into the core of
one of his stories. At length, however, this man stepped before them as
they turned round, and pulling his hat off, and keeping it off, ducked
his head to Mr Dombey.
“Beg your pardon, Sir,” said the man, “but I hope you’re a doin’ pretty
well, Sir.”
He was dressed in a canvas suit abundantly besmeared with coal-dust and
oil, and had cinders in his whiskers, and a smell of half-slaked ashes
all over him. He was not a bad-looking fellow, nor even what could be
fairly called a dirty-looking fellow, in spite of this; and, in short,
he was Mr Toodle, professionally clothed.
“I shall have the honour of stokin’ of you down, Sir,” said Mr Toodle.
“Beg your pardon, Sir.—I hope you find yourself a coming round?”
Mr Dombey looked at him, in return for his tone of interest, as if a
man like that would make his very eyesight dirty.
“’Scuse the liberty, Sir,” said Toodle, seeing he was not clearly
remembered, “but my wife Polly, as was called Richards in your family—”
A change in Mr Dombey’s face, which seemed to express recollection of
him, and so it did, but it expressed in a much stronger degree an angry
sense of humiliation, stopped Mr Toodle short.
“Your wife wants money, I suppose,” said Mr Dombey, putting his hand in
his pocket, and speaking (but that he always did) haughtily.
“No thank’ee, Sir,” returned Toodle, “I can’t say she does. I don’t.”
Mr Dombey was stopped short now in his turn: and awkwardly: with his
hand in his pocket.
“No, Sir,” said Toodle, turning his oilskin cap round and round; “we’re
a doin’ pretty well, Sir; we haven’t no cause to complain in the
worldly way, Sir. We’ve had four more since then, Sir, but we rubs on.”
Mr Dombey would have rubbed on to his own carriage, though in so doing
he had rubbed the stoker underneath the wheels; but his attention was
arrested by something in connexion with the cap still going slowly
round and round in the man’s hand.
“We lost one babby,” observed Toodle, “there’s no denyin’.”
“Lately,” added Mr Dombey, looking at the cap.
“No, Sir, up’ard of three years ago, but all the rest is hearty. And in
the matter o readin’, Sir,” said Toodle, ducking again, as if to remind
Mr Dombey of what had passed between them on that subject long ago,
“them boys o’ mine, they learned me, among ’em, arter all. They’ve made
a wery tolerable scholar of me, Sir, them boys.”
“Come, Major!” said Mr Dombey.
“Beg your pardon, Sir,” resumed Toodle, taking a step before them and
deferentially stopping them again, still cap in hand: “I wouldn’t have
troubled you with such a pint except as a way of gettin’ in the name of
my son Biler—christened Robin—him as you was so good as to make a
Charitable Grinder on.”
“Well, man,” said Mr Dombey in his severest manner. “What about him?”
“Why, Sir,” returned Toodle, shaking his head with a face of great
anxiety and distress, “I’m forced to say, Sir, that he’s gone wrong.”
“He has gone wrong, has he?” said Mr Dombey, with a hard kind of
satisfaction.
“He has fell into bad company, you see, genelmen,” pursued the father,
looking wistfully at both, and evidently taking the Major into the
conversation with the hope of having his sympathy. “He has got into bad
ways. God send he may come to again, genelmen, but he’s on the wrong
track now! You could hardly be off hearing of it somehow, Sir,” said
Toodle, again addressing Mr Dombey individually; “and it’s better I
should out and say my boy’s gone rather wrong. Polly’s dreadful down
about it, genelmen,” said Toodle with the same dejected look, and
another appeal to the Major.
“A son of this man’s whom I caused to be educated, Major,” said Mr
Dombey, giving him his arm. “The usual return!”
“Take advice from plain old Joe, and never educate that sort of people,
Sir,” returned the Major. “Damme, Sir, it never does! It always fails!”
The simple father was beginning to submit that he hoped his son, the
quondam Grinder, huffed and cuffed, and flogged and badged, and taught,
as parrots are, by a brute jobbed into his place of schoolmaster with
as much fitness for it as a hound, might not have been educated on
quite a right plan in some undiscovered respect, when Mr Dombey angrily
repeating “The usual return!” led the Major away. And the Major being
heavy to hoist into Mr Dombey’s carriage, elevated in mid-air, and
having to stop and swear that he would flay the Native alive, and break
every bone in his skin, and visit other physical torments upon him,
every time he couldn’t get his foot on the step, and fell back on that
dark exile, had barely time before they started to repeat hoarsely that
it would never do: that it always failed: and that if he were to
educate “his own vagabond,” he would certainly be hanged.
Mr Dombey assented bitterly; but there was something more in his
bitterness, and in his moody way of falling back in the carriage, and
looking with knitted brows at the changing objects without, than the
failure of that noble educational system administered by the Grinders’
Company. He had seen upon the man’s rough cap a piece of new crape, and
he had assured himself, from his manner and his answers, that he wore
it for _his_ son.
So! from high to low, at home or abroad, from Florence in his great
house to the coarse churl who was feeding the fire then smoking before
them, everyone set up some claim or other to a share in his dead boy,
and was a bidder against him! Could he ever forget how that woman had
wept over his pillow, and called him her own child! or how he, waking
from his sleep, had asked for her, and had raised himself in his bed
and brightened when she came in!
To think of this presumptuous raker among coals and ashes going on
before there, with his sign of mourning! To think that he dared to
enter, even by a common show like that, into the trial and
disappointment of a proud gentleman’s secret heart! To think that this
lost child, who was to have divided with him his riches, and his
projects, and his power, and allied with whom he was to have shut out
all the world as with a double door of gold, should have let in such a
herd to insult him with their knowledge of his defeated hopes, and
their boasts of claiming community of feeling with himself, so far
removed: if not of having crept into the place wherein he would have
lorded it, alone!
He found no pleasure or relief in the journey. Tortured by these
thoughts he carried monotony with him, through the rushing landscape,
and hurried headlong, not through a rich and varied country, but a
wilderness of blighted plans and gnawing jealousies. The very speed at
which the train was whirled along, mocked the swift course of the young
life that had been borne away so steadily and so inexorably to its
foredoomed end. The power that forced itself upon its iron way—its
own—defiant of all paths and roads, piercing through the heart of every
obstacle, and dragging living creatures of all classes, ages, and
degrees behind it, was a type of the triumphant monster, Death.
Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, from the town, burrowing
among the dwellings of men and making the streets hum, flashing out
into the meadows for a moment, mining in through the damp earth,
booming on in darkness and heavy air, bursting out again into the sunny
day so bright and wide; away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle,
through the fields, through the woods, through the corn, through the
hay, through the chalk, through the mould, through the clay, through
the rock, among objects close at hand and almost in the grasp, ever
flying from the traveller, and a deceitful distance ever moving slowly
within him: like as in the track of the remorseless monster, Death!
Through the hollow, on the height, by the heath, by the orchard, by the
park, by the garden, over the canal, across the river, where the sheep
are feeding, where the mill is going, where the barge is floating,
where the dead are lying, where the factory is smoking, where the
stream is running, where the village clusters, where the great
cathedral rises, where the bleak moor lies, and the wild breeze smooths
or ruffles it at its inconstant will; away, with a shriek, and a roar,
and a rattle, and no trace to leave behind but dust and vapour: like as
in the track of the remorseless monster, Death!
Breasting the wind and light, the shower and sunshine, away, and still
away, it rolls and roars, fierce and rapid, smooth and certain, and
great works and massive bridges crossing up above, fall like a beam of
shadow an inch broad, upon the eye, and then are lost. Away, and still
away, onward and onward ever: glimpses of cottage-homes, of houses,
mansions, rich estates, of husbandry and handicraft, of people, of old
roads and paths that look deserted, small, and insignificant as they
are left behind: and so they do, and what else is there but such
glimpses, in the track of the indomitable monster, Death!
Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, plunging down into the
earth again, and working on in such a storm of energy and perseverance,
that amidst the darkness and whirlwind the motion seems reversed, and
to tend furiously backward, until a ray of light upon the wet wall
shows its surface flying past like a fierce stream. Away once more into
the day, and through the day, with a shrill yell of exultation,
roaring, rattling, tearing on, spurning everything with its dark
breath, sometimes pausing for a minute where a crowd of faces are, that
in a minute more are not; sometimes lapping water greedily, and before
the spout at which it drinks has ceased to drip upon the ground,
shrieking, roaring, rattling through the purple distance!
Louder and louder yet, it shrieks and cries as it comes tearing on
resistless to the goal: and now its way, still like the way of Death,
is strewn with ashes thickly. Everything around is blackened. There are
dark pools of water, muddy lanes, and miserable habitations far below.
There are jagged walls and falling houses close at hand, and through
the battered roofs and broken windows, wretched rooms are seen, where
want and fever hide themselves in many wretched shapes, while smoke and
crowded gables, and distorted chimneys, and deformity of brick and
mortar penning up deformity of mind and body, choke the murky distance.
As Mr Dombey looks out of his carriage window, it is never in his
thoughts that the monster who has brought him there has let the light
of day in on these things: not made or caused them. It was the
journey’s fitting end, and might have been the end of everything; it
was so ruinous and dreary.
So, pursuing the one course of thought, he had the one relentless
monster still before him. All things looked black, and cold, and deadly
upon him, and he on them. He found a likeness to his misfortune
everywhere. There was a remorseless triumph going on about him, and it
galled and stung him in his pride and jealousy, whatever form it took:
though most of all when it divided with him the love and memory of his
lost boy.
There was a face—he had looked upon it, on the previous night, and it
on him with eyes that read his soul, though they were dim with tears,
and hidden soon behind two quivering hands—that often had attended him
in fancy, on this ride. He had seen it, with the expression of last
night, timidly pleading to him. It was not reproachful, but there was
something of doubt, almost of hopeful incredulity in it, which, as he
once more saw that fade away into a desolate certainty of his dislike,
was like reproach. It was a trouble to him to think of this face of
Florence.
Because he felt any new compunction towards it? No. Because the feeling
it awakened in him—of which he had had some old foreshadowing in older
times—was full-formed now, and spoke out plainly, moving him too much,
and threatening to grow too strong for his composure. Because the face
was abroad, in the expression of defeat and persecution that seemed to
encircle him like the air. Because it barbed the arrow of that cruel
and remorseless enemy on which his thoughts so ran, and put into its
grasp a double-handed sword. Because he knew full well, in his own
breast, as he stood there, tinging the scene of transition before him
with the morbid colours of his own mind, and making it a ruin and a
picture of decay, instead of hopeful change, and promise of better
things, that life had quite as much to do with his complainings as
death. One child was gone, and one child left. Why was the object of
his hope removed instead of her?
The sweet, calm, gentle presence in his fancy, moved him to no
reflection but that. She had been unwelcome to him from the first; she
was an aggravation of his bitterness now. If his son had been his only
child, and the same blow had fallen on him, it would have been heavy to
bear; but infinitely lighter than now, when it might have fallen on her
(whom he could have lost, or he believed it, without a pang), and had
not. Her loving and innocent face rising before him, had no softening
or winning influence. He rejected the angel, and took up with the
tormenting spirit crouching in his bosom. Her patience, goodness,
youth, devotion, love, were as so many atoms in the ashes upon which he
set his heel. He saw her image in the blight and blackness all around
him, not irradiating but deepening the gloom. More than once upon this
journey, and now again as he stood pondering at this journey’s end,
tracing figures in the dust with his stick, the thought came into his
mind, what was there he could interpose between himself and it?
The Major, who had been blowing and panting all the way down, like
another engine, and whose eye had often wandered from his newspaper to
leer at the prospect, as if there were a procession of discomfited Miss
Toxes pouring out in the smoke of the train, and flying away over the
fields to hide themselves in any place of refuge, aroused his friends
by informing him that the post-horses were harnessed and the carriage
ready.
“Dombey,” said the Major, rapping him on the arm with his cane, “don’t
be thoughtful. It’s a bad habit, Old Joe, Sir, wouldn’t be as tough as
you see him, if he had ever encouraged it. You are too great a man,
Dombey, to be thoughtful. In your position, Sir, you’re far above that
kind of thing.”
The Major even in his friendly remonstrances, thus consulting the
dignity and honour of Mr Dombey, and showing a lively sense of their
importance, Mr Dombey felt more than ever disposed to defer to a
gentleman possessing so much good sense and such a well-regulated mind;
accordingly he made an effort to listen to the Major’s stories, as they
trotted along the turnpike road; and the Major, finding both the pace
and the road a great deal better adapted to his conversational powers
than the mode of travelling they had just relinquished, came out of his
entertainment.
But still the Major, blunt and tough as he was, and as he so very often
said he was, administered some palatable catering to his companion’s
appetite. He related, or rather suffered it to escape him,
accidentally, and as one might say, grudgingly and against his will,
how there was great curiosity and excitement at the club, in regard of
his friend Dombey. How he was suffocated with questions, Sir. How old
Joe Bagstock was a greater man than ever, there, on the strength of
Dombey. How they said, “Bagstock, your friend Dombey now, what is the
view he takes of such and such a question? Though, by the Rood, Sir,”
said the Major, with a broad stare, “how they discovered that J. B.
ever came to know you, is a mystery!”
In this flow of spirits and conversation, only interrupted by his usual
plethoric symptoms, and by intervals of lunch, and from time to time by
some violent assault upon the Native, who wore a pair of ear-rings in
his dark-brown ears, and on whom his European clothes sat with an
outlandish impossibility of adjustment—being, of their own accord, and
without any reference to the tailor’s art, long where they ought to be
short, short where they ought to be long, tight where they ought to be
loose, and loose where they ought to be tight—and to which he imparted
a new grace, whenever the Major attacked him, by shrinking into them
like a shrivelled nut, or a cold monkey—in this flow of spirits and
conversation, the Major continued all day: so that when evening came
on, and found them trotting through the green and leafy road near
Leamington, the Major’s voice, what with talking and eating and
chuckling and choking, appeared to be in the box under the rumble, or
in some neighbouring hay-stack. Nor did the Major improve it at the
Royal Hotel, where rooms and dinner had been ordered, and where he so
oppressed his organs of speech by eating and drinking, that when he
retired to bed he had no voice at all, except to cough with, and could
only make himself intelligible to the dark servant by gasping at him.
He not only rose next morning, however, like a giant refreshed, but
conducted himself, at breakfast like a giant refreshing. At this meal
they arranged their daily habits. The Major was to take the
responsibility of ordering everything to eat and drink; and they were
to have a late breakfast together every morning, and a late dinner
together every day. Mr Dombey would prefer remaining in his own room,
or walking in the country by himself, on that first day of their
sojourn at Leamington; but next morning he would be happy to accompany
the Major to the Pump-room, and about the town. So they parted until
dinner-time. Mr Dombey retired to nurse his wholesome thoughts in his
own way. The Major, attended by the Native carrying a camp-stool, a
great-coat, and an umbrella, swaggered up and down through all the
public places: looking into subscription books to find out who was
there, looking up old ladies by whom he was much admired, reporting J.
B. tougher than ever, and puffing his rich friend Dombey wherever he
went. There never was a man who stood by a friend more staunchly than
the Major, when in puffing him, he puffed himself.
It was surprising how much new conversation the Major had to let off at
dinner-time, and what occasion he gave Mr Dombey to admire his social
qualities. At breakfast next morning, he knew the contents of the
latest newspapers received; and mentioned several subjects in connexion
with them, on which his opinion had recently been sought by persons of
such power and might, that they were only to be obscurely hinted at. Mr
Dombey, who had been so long shut up within himself, and who had
rarely, at any time, overstepped the enchanted circle within which the
operations of Dombey and Son were conducted, began to think this an
improvement on his solitary life; and in place of excusing himself for
another day, as he had thought of doing when alone, walked out with the
Major arm-in-arm.