After a Lapse
The sea had ebbed and flowed, through a whole year. Through a whole
year, the winds and clouds had come and gone; the ceaseless work of
Time had been performed, in storm and sunshine. Through a whole year,
the tides of human chance and change had set in their allotted courses.
Through a whole year, the famous House of Dombey and Son had fought a
fight for life, against cross accidents, doubtful rumours, unsuccessful
ventures, unpropitious times, and most of all, against the infatuation
of its head, who would not contract its enterprises by a hair’s
breadth, and would not listen to a word of warning that the ship he
strained so hard against the storm, was weak, and could not bear it.
The year was out, and the great House was down.
One summer afternoon; a year, wanting some odd days, after the marriage
in the City church; there was a buzz and whisper upon “Change of a
great failure. A certain cold proud man, well known there, was not
there, nor was he represented there. Next day it was noised abroad that
Dombey and Son had stopped, and next night there was a List of
Bankrupts published, headed by that name.
The world was very busy now, in sooth, and had a deal to say. It was an
innocently credulous and a much ill-used world. It was a world in which
there was no other sort of bankruptcy whatever. There were no
conspicuous people in it, trading far and wide on rotten banks of
religion, patriotism, virtue, honour. There was no amount worth
mentioning of mere paper in circulation, on which anybody lived pretty
handsomely, promising to pay great sums of goodness with no effects.
There were no shortcomings anywhere, in anything but money. The world
was very angry indeed; and the people especially, who, in a worse
world, might have been supposed to be apt traders themselves in shows
and pretences, were observed to be mightily indignant.
Here was a new inducement to dissipation, presented to that sport of
circumstances, Mr Perch the Messenger! It was apparently the fate of Mr
Perch to be always waking up, and finding himself famous. He had but
yesterday, as one might say, subsided into private life from the
celebrity of the elopement and the events that followed it; and now he
was made a more important man than ever, by the bankruptcy. Gliding
from his bracket in the outer office where he now sat, watching the
strange faces of accountants and others, who quickly superseded nearly
all the old clerks, Mr Perch had but to show himself in the court
outside, or, at farthest, in the bar of the King’s Arms, to be asked a
multitude of questions, almost certain to include that interesting
question, what would he take to drink? Then would Mr Perch descant upon
the hours of acute uneasiness he and Mrs Perch had suffered out at
Balls Pond, when they first suspected “things was going wrong.” Then
would Mr Perch relate to gaping listeners, in a low voice, as if the
corpse of the deceased House were lying unburied in the next room, how
Mrs Perch had first come to surmise that things was going wrong by
hearing him (Perch) moaning in his sleep, “twelve and ninepence in the
pound, twelve and ninepence in the pound!” Which act of somnambulism he
supposed to have originated in the impression made upon him by the
change in Mr Dombey’s face. Then would he inform them how he had once
said, “Might I make so bold as ask, Sir, are you unhappy in your mind?”
and how Mr Dombey had replied, “My faithful Perch—but no, it cannot
be!” and with that had struck his hand upon his forehead, and said,
“Leave me, Perch!” Then, in short, would Mr Perch, a victim to his
position, tell all manner of lies; affecting himself to tears by those
that were of a moving nature, and really believing that the inventions
of yesterday had, on repetition, a sort of truth about them today.
Mr Perch always closed these conferences by meekly remarking, that, of
course, whatever his suspicions might have been (as if he had ever had
any!) it wasn’t for _him_ to betray his trust, was it? Which sentiment
(there never being any creditors present) was received as doing great
honour to his feelings. Thus, he generally brought away a soothed
conscience and left an agreeable impression behind him, when he
returned to his bracket: again to sit watching the strange faces of the
accountants and others, making so free with the great mysteries, the
Books; or now and then to go on tiptoe into Mr Dombey’s empty room, and
stir the fire; or to take an airing at the door, and have a little more
doleful chat with any straggler whom he knew; or to propitiate, with
various small attentions, the head accountant: from whom Mr Perch had
expectations of a messengership in a Fire Office, when the affairs of
the House should be wound up.
To Major Bagstock, the bankruptcy was quite a calamity. The Major was
not a sympathetic character—his attention being wholly concentrated on
J. B.—nor was he a man subject to lively emotions, except in the
physical regards of gasping and choking. But he had so paraded his
friend Dombey at the club; had so flourished him at the heads of the
members in general, and so put them down by continual assertion of his
riches; that the club, being but human, was delighted to retort upon
the Major, by asking him, with a show of great concern, whether this
tremendous smash had been at all expected, and how his friend Dombey
bore it. To such questions, the Major, waxing very purple, would reply
that it was a bad world, Sir, altogether; that Joey knew a thing or
two, but had been done, Sir, done like an infant; that if you had
foretold this, Sir, to J. Bagstock, when he went abroad with Dombey and
was chasing that vagabond up and down France, J. Bagstock would have
pooh-pooh’d you—would have pooh-pooh’d you, Sir, by the Lord! That Joe
had been deceived, Sir, taken in, hoodwinked, blindfolded, but was
broad awake again and staring; insomuch, Sir, that if Joe’s father were
to rise up from the grave to-morrow, he wouldn’t trust the old blade
with a penny piece, but would tell him that his son Josh was too old a
soldier to be done again, Sir. That he was a suspicious, crabbed,
cranky, used-up, J. B. infidel, Sir; and that if it were consistent
with the dignity of a rough and tough old Major, of the old school, who
had had the honour of being personally known to, and commended by,
their late Royal Highnesses the Dukes of Kent and York, to retire to a
tub and live in it, by Gad! Sir, he’d have a tub in Pall Mall
to-morrow, to show his contempt for mankind!
Of all this, and many variations of the same tune, the Major would
deliver himself with so many apoplectic symptoms, such rollings of his
head, and such violent growls of ill usage and resentment, that the
younger members of the club surmised he had invested money in his
friend Dombey’s House, and lost it; though the older soldiers and
deeper dogs, who knew Joe better, wouldn’t hear of such a thing. The
unfortunate Native, expressing no opinion, suffered dreadfully; not
merely in his moral feelings, which were regularly fusilladed by the
Major every hour in the day, and riddled through and through, but in
his sensitiveness to bodily knocks and bumps, which was kept
continually on the stretch. For six entire weeks after the bankruptcy,
this miserable foreigner lived in a rainy season of boot-jacks and
brushes.
Mrs Chick had three ideas upon the subject of the terrible reverse. The
first was that she could not understand it. The second, that her
brother had not made an effort. The third, that if she had been invited
to dinner on the day of that first party, it never would have happened;
and that she had said so, at the time.
Nobody’s opinion stayed the misfortune, lightened it, or made it
heavier. It was understood that the affairs of the House were to be
wound up as they best could be; that Mr Dombey freely resigned
everything he had, and asked for no favour from anyone. That any
resumption of the business was out of the question, as he would listen
to no friendly negotiation having that compromise in view; that he had
relinquished every post of trust or distinction he had held, as a man
respected among merchants; that he was dying, according to some; that
he was going melancholy mad, according to others; that he was a broken
man, according to all.
The clerks dispersed after holding a little dinner of condolence among
themselves, which was enlivened by comic singing, and went off
admirably. Some took places abroad, and some engaged in other Houses at
home; some looked up relations in the country, for whom they suddenly
remembered they had a particular affection; and some advertised for
employment in the newspapers. Mr Perch alone remained of all the late
establishment, sitting on his bracket looking at the accountants, or
starting off it, to propitiate the head accountant, who was to get him
into the Fire Office. The Counting House soon got to be dirty and
neglected. The principal slipper and dogs’ collar seller, at the corner
of the court, would have doubted the propriety of throwing up his
forefinger to the brim of his hat, any more, if Mr Dombey had appeared
there now; and the ticket porter, with his hands under his white apron,
moralised good sound morality about ambition, which (he observed) was
not, in his opinion, made to rhyme to perdition, for nothing.
Mr Morfin, the hazel-eyed bachelor, with the hair and whiskers
sprinkled with grey, was perhaps the only person within the atmosphere
of the House—its head, of course, excepted—who was heartily and deeply
affected by the disaster that had befallen it. He had treated Mr Dombey
with due respect and deference through many years, but he had never
disguised his natural character, or meanly truckled to him, or pampered
his master passion for the advancement of his own purposes. He had,
therefore, no self-disrespect to avenge; no long-tightened springs to
release with a quick recoil. He worked early and late to unravel
whatever was complicated or difficult in the records of the
transactions of the House; was always in attendance to explain whatever
required explanation; sat in his old room sometimes very late at night,
studying points by his mastery of which he could spare Mr Dombey the
pain of being personally referred to; and then would go home to
Islington, and calm his mind by producing the most dismal and forlorn
sounds out of his violoncello before going to bed.
He was solacing himself with this melodious grumbler one evening, and,
having been much dispirited by the proceedings of the day, was scraping
consolation out of its deepest notes, when his landlady (who was
fortunately deaf, and had no other consciousness of these performances
than a sensation of something rumbling in her bones) announced a lady.
“In mourning,” she said.
The violoncello stopped immediately; and the performer, laying it on
the sofa with great tenderness and care, made a sign that the lady was
to come in. He followed directly, and met Harriet Carker on the stair.
“Alone!” he said, “and John here this morning! Is there anything the
matter, my dear? But no,” he added, “your face tells quite another
story.”
“I am afraid it is a selfish revelation that you see there, then,” she
answered.
“It is a very pleasant one,” said he; “and, if selfish, a novelty too,
worth seeing in you. But I don’t believe that.”
He had placed a chair for her by this time, and sat down opposite; the
violoncello lying snugly on the sofa between them.
“You will not be surprised at my coming alone, or at John’s not having
told you I was coming,” said Harriet; “and you will believe that, when
I tell you why I have come. May I do so now?”
“You can do nothing better.”
“You were not busy?”
He pointed to the violoncello lying on the sofa, and said “I have been,
all day. Here’s my witness. I have been confiding all my cares to it. I
wish I had none but my own to tell.”
“Is the House at an end?” said Harriet, earnestly.
“Completely at an end.”
“Will it never be resumed?”
“Never.”
The bright expression of her face was not overshadowed as her lips
silently repeated the word. He seemed to observe this with some little
involuntary surprise: and said again:
“Never. You remember what I told you. It has been, all along,
impossible to convince him; impossible to reason with him; sometimes,
impossible even to approach him. The worst has happened; and the House
has fallen, never to be built up any more.”
“And Mr Dombey, is he personally ruined?”
“Ruined.”
“Will he have no private fortune left? Nothing?”
A certain eagerness in her voice, and something that was almost joyful
in her look, seemed to surprise him more and more; to disappoint him
too, and jar discordantly against his own emotions. He drummed with the
fingers of one hand on the table, looking wistfully at her, and shaking
his head, said, after a pause:
“The extent of Mr Dombey’s resources is not accurately within my
knowledge; but though they are doubtless very large, his obligations
are enormous. He is a gentleman of high honour and integrity. Any man
in his position could, and many a man in his position would, have saved
himself, by making terms which would have very slightly, almost
insensibly, increased the losses of those who had had dealings with
him, and left him a remnant to live upon. But he is resolved on payment
to the last farthing of his means. His own words are, that they will
clear, or nearly clear, the House, and that no one can lose much. Ah,
Miss Harriet, it would do us no harm to remember oftener than we do,
that vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess! His pride
shows well in this.”
She heard him with little or no change in her expression, and with a
divided attention that showed her to be busy with something in her own
mind. When he was silent, she asked him hurriedly:
“Have you seen him lately?”
“No one sees him. When this crisis of his affairs renders it necessary
for him to come out of his house, he comes out for the occasion, and
again goes home, and shuts himself up, and will see no one. He has
written me a letter, acknowledging our past connexion in higher terms
than it deserved, and parting from me. I am delicate of obtruding
myself upon him now, never having had much intercourse with him in
better times; but I have tried to do so. I have written, gone there,
entreated. Quite in vain.”
He watched her, as in the hope that she would testify some greater
concern than she had yet shown; and spoke gravely and feelingly, as if
to impress her the more; but there was no change in her.
“Well, well, Miss Harriet,” he said, with a disappointed air, “this is
not to the purpose. You have not come here to hear this. Some other and
pleasanter theme is in your mind. Let it be in mine, too, and we shall
talk upon more equal terms. Come!”
“No, it is the same theme,” returned Harriet, with frank and quick
surprise. “Is it not likely that it should be? Is it not natural that
John and I should have been thinking and speaking very much of late of
these great changes? Mr Dombey, whom he served so many years—you know
upon what terms—reduced, as you describe; and we quite rich!”
Good, true face, as that face of hers was, and pleasant as it had been
to him, Mr Morfin, the hazel-eyed bachelor, since the first time he had
ever looked upon it, it pleased him less at that moment, lighted with a
ray of exultation, than it had ever pleased him before.
“I need not remind you,” said Harriet, casting down her eyes upon her
black dress, “through what means our circumstances changed. You have
not forgotten that our brother James, upon that dreadful day, left no
will, no relations but ourselves.”
The face was pleasanter to him now, though it was pale and melancholy,
than it had been a moment since. He seemed to breathe more cheerily.
“You know,” she said, “our history, the history of both my brothers, in
connexion with the unfortunate, unhappy gentleman, of whom you have
spoken so truly. You know how few our wants are—John’s and mine—and
what little use we have for money, after the life we have led together
for so many years; and now that he is earning an income that is ample
for us, through your kindness. You are not unprepared to hear what
favour I have come to ask of you?”
“I hardly know. I was, a minute ago. Now, I think, I am not.”
“Of my dead brother I say nothing. If the dead know what we do—but you
understand me. Of my living brother I could say much; but what need I
say more, than that this act of duty, in which I have come to ask your
indispensable assistance, is his own, and that he cannot rest until it
is performed!”
She raised her eyes again; and the light of exultation in her face
began to appear beautiful, in the observant eyes that watched her.
“Dear Sir,” she went on to say, “it must be done very quietly and
secretly. Your experience and knowledge will point out a way of doing
it. Mr Dombey may, perhaps, be led to believe that it is something
saved, unexpectedly, from the wreck of his fortunes; or that it is a
voluntary tribute to his honourable and upright character, from some of
those with whom he has had great dealings; or that it is some old lost
debt repaid. There must be many ways of doing it. I know you will
choose the best. The favour I have come to ask is, that you will do it
for us in your own kind, generous, considerate manner. That you will
never speak of it to John, whose chief happiness in this act of
restitution is to do it secretly, unknown, and unapproved of: that only
a very small part of the inheritance may be reserved to us, until Mr
Dombey shall have possessed the interest of the rest for the remainder
of his life; that you will keep our secret, faithfully—but that I am
sure you will; and that, from this time, it may seldom be whispered,
even between you and me, but may live in my thoughts only as a new
reason for thankfulness to Heaven, and joy and pride in my brother.”
Such a look of exultation there may be on Angels’ faces when the one
repentant sinner enters Heaven, among ninety-nine just men. It was not
dimmed or tarnished by the joyful tears that filled her eyes, but was
the brighter for them.
“My dear Harriet,” said Mr Morfin, after a silence, “I was not prepared
for this. Do I understand you that you wish to make your own part in
the inheritance available for your good purpose, as well as John’s?”
“Oh, yes,” she returned “When we have shared everything together for so
long a time, and have had no care, hope, or purpose apart, could I bear
to be excluded from my share in this? May I not urge a claim to be my
brother’s partner and companion to the last?”
“Heaven forbid that I should dispute it!” he replied.
“We may rely on your friendly help?” she said. “I knew we might!”
“I should be a worse man than,—than I hope I am, or would willingly
believe myself, if I could not give you that assurance from my heart
and soul. You may, implicitly. Upon my honour, I will keep your secret.
And if it should be found that Mr Dombey is so reduced as I fear he
will be, acting on a determination that there seem to be no means of
influencing, I will assist you to accomplish the design, on which you
and John are jointly resolved.”
She gave him her hand, and thanked him with a cordial, happy face.
“Harriet,” he said, detaining it in his. “To speak to you of the worth
of any sacrifice that you can make now—above all, of any sacrifice of
mere money—would be idle and presumptuous. To put before you any appeal
to reconsider your purpose or to set narrow limits to it, would be, I
feel, not less so. I have no right to mar the great end of a great
history, by any obtrusion of my own weak self. I have every right to
bend my head before what you confide to me, satisfied that it comes
from a higher and better source of inspiration than my poor worldly
knowledge. I will say only this: I am your faithful steward; and I
would rather be so, and your chosen friend, than I would be anybody in
the world, except yourself.”
She thanked him again, cordially, and wished him good-night.
“Are you going home?” he said. “Let me go with you.”
“Not tonight. I am not going home now; I have a visit to make alone.
Will you come to-morrow?”
“Well, well,” said he, “I’ll come to-morrow. In the meantime, I’ll
think of this, and how we can best proceed. And perhaps I’ll think of
it, dear Harriet, and—and—think of me a little in connexion with it.”
He handed her down to a coach she had in waiting at the door; and if
his landlady had not been deaf, she would have heard him muttering as
he went back upstairs, when the coach had driven off, that we were
creatures of habit, and it was a sorrowful habit to be an old bachelor.
The violoncello lying on the sofa between the two chairs, he took it
up, without putting away the vacant chair, and sat droning on it, and
slowly shaking his head at the vacant chair, for a long, long time. The
expression he communicated to the instrument at first, though
monstrously pathetic and bland, was nothing to the expression he
communicated to his own face, and bestowed upon the empty chair: which
was so sincere, that he was obliged to have recourse to Captain
Cuttle’s remedy more than once, and to rub his face with his sleeve. By
degrees, however, the violoncello, in unison with his own frame of
mind, glided melodiously into the Harmonious Blacksmith, which he
played over and over again, until his ruddy and serene face gleamed
like true metal on the anvil of a veritable blacksmith. In fine, the
violoncello and the empty chair were the companions of his bachelorhood
until nearly midnight; and when he took his supper, the violoncello set
up on end in the sofa corner, big with the latent harmony of a whole
foundry full of harmonious blacksmiths, seemed to ogle the empty chair
out of its crooked eyes, with unutterable intelligence.
When Harriet left the house, the driver of her hired coach, taking a
course that was evidently no new one to him, went in and out by
bye-ways, through that part of the suburbs, until he arrived at some
open ground, where there were a few quiet little old houses standing
among gardens. At the garden-gate of one of these he stopped, and
Harriet alighted.
Her gentle ringing at the bell was responded to by a dolorous-looking
woman, of light complexion, with raised eyebrows, and head drooping on
one side, who curtseyed at sight of her, and conducted her across the
garden to the house.
“How is your patient, nurse, tonight?” said Harriet.
“In a poor way, Miss, I am afraid. Oh how she do remind me, sometimes,
of my Uncle’s Betsey Jane!” returned the woman of the light complexion,
in a sort of doleful rapture.
“In what respect?” asked Harriet.
“Miss, in all respects,” replied the other, “except that she’s grown
up, and Betsey Jane, when at death’s door, was but a child.”
“But you have told me she recovered,” observed Harriet mildly; “so
there is the more reason for hope, Mrs Wickam.”
“Ah, Miss, hope is an excellent thing for such as has the spirits to
bear it!” said Mrs Wickam, shaking her head. “My own spirits is not
equal to it, but I don’t owe it any grudge. I envys them that is so
blest!”
“You should try to be more cheerful,” remarked Harriet.
“Thank you, Miss, I’m sure,” said Mrs Wickam grimly. “If I was so
inclined, the loneliness of this situation—you’ll excuse my speaking so
free—would put it out of my power, in four and twenty hours; but I
ain’t at all. I’d rather not. The little spirits that I ever had, I was
bereaved of at Brighton some few years ago, and I think I feel myself
the better for it.”
In truth, this was the very Mrs Wickam who had superseded Mrs Richards
as the nurse of little Paul, and who considered herself to have gained
the loss in question, under the roof of the amiable Pipchin. The
excellent and thoughtful old system, hallowed by long prescription,
which has usually picked out from the rest of mankind the most dreary
and uncomfortable people that could possibly be laid hold of, to act as
instructors of youth, finger-posts to the virtues, matrons, monitors,
attendants on sick beds, and the like, had established Mrs Wickam in
very good business as a nurse, and had led to her serious qualities
being particularly commended by an admiring and numerous connexion.
Mrs Wickam, with her eyebrows elevated, and her head on one side,
lighted the way upstairs to a clean, neat chamber, opening on another
chamber dimly lighted, where there was a bed. In the first room, an old
woman sat mechanically staring out at the open window, on the darkness.
In the second, stretched upon the bed, lay the shadow of a figure that
had spurned the wind and rain, one wintry night; hardly to be
recognised now, but by the long black hair that showed so very black
against the colourless face, and all the white things about it.
Oh, the strong eyes, and the weak frame! The eyes that turned so
eagerly and brightly to the door when Harriet came in; the feeble head
that could not raise itself, and moved so slowly round upon its pillow!
“Alice!” said the visitor’s mild voice, “am I late tonight?”
“You always seem late, but are always early.”
Harriet had sat down by the bedside now, and put her hand upon the thin
hand lying there.
“You are better?”
Mrs Wickam, standing at the foot of the bed, like a disconsolate
spectre, most decidedly and forcibly shook her head to negative this
position.
“It matters very little!” said Alice, with a faint smile. “Better or
worse today, is but a day’s difference—perhaps not so much.”
Mrs Wickam, as a serious character, expressed her approval with a
groan; and having made some cold dabs at the bottom of the bedclothes,
as feeling for the patient’s feet and expecting to find them stony;
went clinking among the medicine bottles on the table, as who should
say, “while we are here, let us repeat the mixture as before.”
“No,” said Alice, whispering to her visitor, “evil courses, and
remorse, travel, want, and weather, storm within, and storm without,
have worn my life away. It will not last much longer.
She drew the hand up as she spoke, and laid her face against it.
“I lie here, sometimes, thinking I should like to live until I had had
a little time to show you how grateful I could be! It is a weakness,
and soon passes. Better for you as it is. Better for me!”
How different her hold upon the hand, from what it had been when she
took it by the fireside on the bleak winter evening! Scorn, rage,
defiance, recklessness, look here! This is the end.
Mrs Wickam having clinked sufficiently among the bottles, now produced
the mixture. Mrs Wickam looked hard at her patient in the act of
drinking, screwed her mouth up tight, her eyebrows also, and shook her
head, expressing that tortures shouldn’t make her say it was a hopeless
case. Mrs Wickam then sprinkled a little cooling-stuff about the room,
with the air of a female grave-digger, who was strewing ashes on ashes,
dust on dust—for she was a serious character—and withdrew to partake of
certain funeral baked meats downstairs.
“How long is it,” asked Alice, “since I went to you and told you what I
had done, and when you were advised it was too late for anyone to
follow?”
“It is a year and more,” said Harriet.
“A year and more,” said Alice, thoughtfully intent upon her face.
“Months upon months since you brought me here!”
Harriet answered “Yes.”
“Brought me here, by force of gentleness and kindness. Me!” said Alice,
shrinking with her face behind her hand, “and made me human by woman’s
looks and words, and angel’s deeds!”
Harriet bending over her, composed and soothed her. By and bye, Alice
lying as before, with the hand against her face, asked to have her
mother called.
Harriet called to her more than once, but the old woman was so absorbed
looking out at the open window on the darkness, that she did not hear.
It was not until Harriet went to her and touched her, that she rose up,
and came.
“Mother,” said Alice, taking the hand again, and fixing her lustrous
eyes lovingly upon her visitor, while she merely addressed a motion of
her finger to the old woman, “tell her what you know.”
“Tonight, my deary?”
“Ay, mother,” answered Alice, faintly and solemnly, “tonight!”
The old woman, whose wits appeared disorderly by alarm, remorse, or
grief, came creeping along the side of the bed, opposite to that on
which Harriet sat; and kneeling down, so as to bring her withered face
upon a level with the coverlet, and stretching out her hand, so as to
touch her daughter’s arm, began:
“My handsome gal—”
Heaven, what a cry was that, with which she stopped there, gazing at
the poor form lying on the bed!
“Changed, long ago, mother! Withered, long ago,” said Alice, without
looking at her. “Don’t grieve for that now.”
“—My daughter,” faltered the old woman, “my gal who’ll soon get better,
and shame ’em all with her good looks.”
Alice smiled mournfully at Harriet, and fondled her hand a little
closer, but said nothing.
“Who’ll soon get better, I say,” repeated the old woman, menacing the
vacant air with her shrivelled fist, “and who’ll shame ’em all with her
good looks—she will. I say she will! she shall!”—as if she were in
passionate contention with some unseen opponent at the bedside, who
contradicted her—“my daughter has been turned away from, and cast out,
but she could boast relationship to proud folks too, if she chose. Ah!
To proud folks! There’s relationship without your clergy and your
wedding rings—they may make it, but they can’t break it—and my
daughter’s well related. Show me Mrs Dombey, and I’ll show you my
Alice’s first cousin.”
Harriet glanced from the old woman to the lustrous eyes intent upon her
face, and derived corroboration from them.
“What!” cried the old woman, her nodding head bridling with a ghastly
vanity. “Though I am old and ugly now,—much older by life and habit
than years though,—I was once as young as any. Ah! as pretty too, as
many! I was a fresh country wench in my time, darling,” stretching out
her arm to Harriet, across the bed, “and looked it, too. Down in my
country, Mrs Dombey’s father and his brother were the gayest gentlemen
and the best-liked that came a visiting from London—they have long been
dead, though! Lord, Lord, this long while! The brother, who was my
Ally’s father, longest of the two.”
She raised her head a little, and peered at her daughter’s face; as if
from the remembrance of her own youth, she had flown to the remembrance
of her child’s. Then, suddenly, she laid her face down on the bed, and
shut her head up in her hands and arms.
“They were as like,” said the old woman, without looking up, as you
could see two brothers, so near an age—there wasn’t much more than a
year between them, as I recollect—and if you could have seen my gal, as
I have seen her once, side by side with the other’s daughter, you’d
have seen, for all the difference of dress and life, that they were
like each other. Oh! is the likeness gone, and is it my gal—only my
gal—that’s to change so!”
“We shall all change, mother, in our turn,” said Alice.
“Turn!” cried the old woman, “but why not hers as soon as my gal’s! The
mother must have changed—she looked as old as me, and full as wrinkled
through her paint—but she was handsome. What have I done, I, what have
I done worse than her, that only my gal is to lie there fading!”
With another of those wild cries, she went running out into the room
from which she had come; but immediately, in her uncertain mood,
returned, and creeping up to Harriet, said:
“That’s what Alice bade me tell you, deary. That’s all. I found it out
when I began to ask who she was, and all about her, away in
Warwickshire there, one summer-time. Such relations was no good to me,
then. They wouldn’t have owned me, and had nothing to give me. I should
have asked ’em, maybe, for a little money, afterwards, if it hadn’t
been for my Alice; she’d a’most have killed me, if I had, I think. She
was as proud as t’other in her way,” said the old woman, touching the
face of her daughter fearfully, and withdrawing her hand, “for all
she’s so quiet now; but she’ll shame ’em with her good looks yet. Ha,
ha! She’ll shame ’em, will my handsome daughter!”
Her laugh, as she retreated, was worse than her cry; worse than the
burst of imbecile lamentation in which it ended; worse than the doting
air with which she sat down in her old seat, and stared out at the
darkness.
The eyes of Alice had all this time been fixed on Harriet, whose hand
she had never released. She said now:
“I have felt, lying here, that I should like you to know this. It might
explain, I have thought, something that used to help to harden me. I
had heard so much, in my wrongdoing, of my neglected duty, that I took
up with the belief that duty had not been done to me, and that as the
seed was sown, the harvest grew. I somehow made it out that when ladies
had bad homes and mothers, they went wrong in their way, too; but that
their way was not so foul a one as mine, and they had need to bless God
for it. That is all past. It is like a dream, now, which I cannot quite
remember or understand. It has been more and more like a dream, every
day, since you began to sit here, and to read to me. I only tell it
you, as I can recollect it. Will you read to me a little more?”
Harriet was withdrawing her hand to open the book, when Alice detained
it for a moment.
“You will not forget my mother? I forgive her, if I have any cause. I
know that she forgives me, and is sorry in her heart. You will not
forget her?”
“Never, Alice!”
“A moment yet. Lay your head so, dear, that as you read I may see the
words in your kind face.”
Harriet complied and read—read the eternal book for all the weary, and
the heavy-laden; for all the wretched, fallen, and neglected of this
earth—read the blessed history, in which the blind lame palsied beggar,
the criminal, the woman stained with shame, the shunned of all our
dainty clay, has each a portion, that no human pride, indifference, or
sophistry, through all the ages that this world shall last, can take
away, or by the thousandth atom of a grain reduce—read the ministry of
Him who, through the round of human life, and all its hopes and griefs,
from birth to death, from infancy to age, had sweet compassion for, and
interest in, its every scene and stage, its every suffering and sorrow.
“I shall come,” said Harriet, when she shut the book, “very early in
the morning.”
The lustrous eyes, yet fixed upon her face, closed for a moment, then
opened; and Alice kissed and blest her.
The same eyes followed her to the door; and in their light, and on the
tranquil face, there was a smile when it was closed.
They never turned away. She laid her hand upon her breast, murmuring
the sacred name that had been read to her; and life passed from her
face, like light removed.
Nothing lay there, any longer, but the ruin of the mortal house on
which the rain had beaten, and the black hair that had fluttered in the
wintry wind.