'Captain Cuttle,' said Walter,  musing, when  they  stood resting  from
their labours at  the shop-door, looking  down the old  familiar  street; it
being still early  in the morning; 'nothing at all of Uncle Sol, in all that
time!'
     'Nothing at all, my lad,' replied the Captain, shaking his head.
     'Gone in search  of  me, dear,  kind old man,'  said Walter: 'yet never
write to you! But  why not? He says, in effect, in this packet that you gave
me,' taking the paper from his pocket, which had been opened in the presence
of  the enlightened Bunsby,  'that if you never hear from him before opening
it,  you  may believe  him dead. Heaven forbid! But you would have  heard of
him,  even if he were  dead!  Someone would  have  written,  surely, by  his
desire,  if he could not; and have said, "on such a day,  there  died  in my
house," or "under  my  care," or  so forth, "Mr Solomon Gills of London, who
left this last remembrance and this last request to you".'
     The  Captain,  who  had  never  climbed  to  such  a  clear  height  of
probability before, was greatly  impressed by the  wide prospect  it opened,
and answered, with a thoughtful shake of his head,  'Well said, my lad; wery
well said.'
     'I have been thinking of this, or,  at least,'  said Walter, colouring,
'I  have been thinking of  one thing and  another,  all through  a sleepless
night, and I cannot believe,  Captain Cuttle,  but  that my Uncle  Sol (Lord
bless him!) is alive, and will  return. I don't so much  wonder at his going
away,  because,  leaving out of consideration that spice of  the  marvellous
which was  always in his character, and his  great affection for me,  before
which every other consideration of his life became nothing, as no one  ought
to know so well as I who  had  the best of fathers in him,' - Walter's voice
was indistinct  and  husky here, and he looked  away,  along  the  street, -
'leaving that out of consideration, I  say, I  have often  read and heard of
people  who, having some near and  dear  relative,  who  was supposed to  be
shipwrecked at  sea, have  gone  down to live on  that part of the sea-shore
where any tidings of the missing ship  might be  expected to  arrive, though
only an hour or two sooner  than elsewhere, or have even gone upon her track
to  the  place  whither  she was  bound,  as  if  their going  would  create
intelligence. I  think I should do such a thing myself, as soon as  another,
or sooner than many, perhaps. But why my  Uncle shouldn't write to you, when
he so clearly intended to do  so, or  how he should die abroad,  and you not
know it through some other hand, I cannot make out.'
     Captain  Cuttle observed, with a  shake of  his head, that  Jack Bunsby
himself hadn't  made it  out, and  that he was a man as could give  a pretty
taut opinion too.
     'If  my Uncle had  been a heedless young man, likely to be entrapped by
jovial company to some drinking-place, where he was to be got rid of for the
sake of what money he might have about him,' said Walter; 'or if he had been
a reckless sailor, going ashore with two or three months' pay in his pocket,
I could understand his disappearing, and leaving no trace behind. But, being
what he was - and is, I hope - I can't believe it.'
     'Wal'r,  my  lad,'  inquired the  Captain,  wistfully eyeing him  as he
pondered and pondered, 'what do you make of it, then?'
     'Captain Cuttle,' returned Walter, 'I don't know what to make  of it. I
suppose he never has written! There is no doubt about that?'
     'If  so  be  as  Sol   Gills  wrote,  my  lad,'  replied  the  Captain,
argumentatively, 'where's his dispatch?'
     'Say that he entrusted it to some private hand,' suggested Walter, 'and
that it has been  forgotten, or carelessly  thrown aside, or lost. Even that
is more probable to  me, than the other event. In short,  I not  only cannot
bear  to  contemplate that other  event,  Captain Cuttle, but I  can't,  and
won't.'
     'Hope, you  see, Wal'r,' said the Captain,  sagely, 'Hope. It's that as
animates you. Hope  is  a buoy,  for which you overhaul your Little Warbler,
sentimental diwision, but Lord, my lad, like any other buoy, it only floats;
it can't be steered nowhere. Along with the figure-head  of  Hope,' said the
Captain, 'there's a anchor; but what's the good of my having a anchor, if  I
can't find no bottom to let it go in?'
     Captain Cuttle said this rather in his character of a sagacious citizen
and householder, bound to impart a morsel  from his stores  of wisdom  to an
inexperienced  youth,  than  in his own proper person. Indeed,  his face was
quite  luminous  as  he spoke, with  new  hope, caught from Walter;  and  he
appropriately  concluded  by  slapping him on the  back;  and  saying,  with
enthusiasm,  'Hooroar, my lad! Indiwidually, I'm  o'  your opinion.' Walter,
with his cheerful laugh, returned the salutation, and said:
     'Only  one  word more  about  my  Uncle at  present' Captain  Cuttle. I
suppose it  is impossible  that he can have written in the ordinary course -
by mail packet, or ship letter, you understand - '
     'Ay, ay, my lad,' said the Captain approvingly.
     And that you have missed the letter, anyhow?'
     'Why, Wal'r,' said the Captain, turning his  eyes upon him with a faint
approach  to  a severe expression, 'ain't  I been  on  the look-out for  any
tidings  of  that man o' science, old Sol Gills,  your Uncle, day and night,
ever  since I lost him? Ain't my heart been heavy and watchful always, along
of him and you? Sleeping and waking, ain't I been upon my post, and wouldn't
I scorn to quit it while this here Midshipman held together!'
     'Yes, Captain Cuttle,'  replied Walter, grasping his hand, 'I know  you
would, and I know how  faithful and earnest all you  say and feel is.  I  am
sure of it. You don't doubt that I am as sure of it as I am  that my foot is
again upon this door-step, or that I  again have hold of this true  hand. Do
you?'
     'No, no, Wal'r,' returned the Captain, with his beaming
     'I'll  hazard no more conjectures,' said Walter, fervently shaking  the
hard hand of the Captain, who shook his with no less goodwill. 'All  I  will
add is, Heaven forbid  that I  should touch my Uncle's  possessions, Captain
Cuttle! Everything that he left here, shall remain in the care of the truest
of stewards and kindest of  men -  and if his name is  not Cuttle, he has no
name! Now, best of friends, about - Miss Dombey.'
     There was a change in Walter's  manner, as he came to these two  words;
and  when he uttered them, all his confidence and cheerfulness  appeared  to
have deserted him.
     'I thought, before Miss  Dombey stopped me when I spoke of  her  father
last night,' said Walter, ' - you remember how?'
     The Captain well remembered, and shook his head.
     'I thought,' said Walter,  'before that, that we had but  one hard duty
to perform,  and that it was,  to prevail upon her  to communicate with  her
friends, and to return home.'
     The Captain muttered a feeble 'Awast!' or a 'Stand by!' or something or
other,  equally pertinent to the occasion; but it was rendered  so extremely
feeble by the total discomfiture  with which he received this  announcement,
that what it was, is mere matter of conjecture.
     'But,'  said Walter,  'that is over.  I  think so,  no longer. I  would
sooner be  put back again upon that piece of wreck, on which I have so often
floated, since my preservation,  in my dreams, and there left  to drift, and
drive, and die!'
     'Hooroar, my  lad!' exclaimed the Captain, in a burst of uncontrollable
satisfaction. 'Hooroar! hooroar! hooroar!'
     'To think that she, so young, so good, and beautiful,' said Walter, 'so
delicately brought  up, and  born to such a different fortune, should strive
with the rough world! But we have seen  the  gulf  that cuts off all  behind
her,  though  no  one but herself can  know how  deep it is; and there is no
return.
     Captain Cuttle, without  quite understanding this, greatly  approved of
it, and observed in a tone of strong  corroboration, that the wind was quite
abaft.
     'She  ought not to  be  alone  here; ought  she,  Captain Cuttle?' said
Walter, anxiously.
     'Well,  my  lad,'   replied  the  Captain,  after  a  little  sagacious
consideration.  'I don't know. You being here to keep  her company, you see,
and you two being jintly - '
     'Dear Captain Cuttle!' remonstrated Walter. 'I being here! Miss Dombey,
in her guileless innocent heart, regards me as her adopted brother; but what
would the guile and guilt of my heart be,  if I  pretended to believe that I
had  any  right  to  approach  her, familiarly, in  that  character -  if  I
pretended to forget that I am bound, in honour, not to do it?'
     'Wal'r,  my  lad,'  hinted  the  Captain,  with  some  revival  of  his
discomfiture, 'ain't there no other character as - '
     'Oh!' returned Walter, 'would  you have me  die in her esteem - in such
esteem as  hers  -  and put a veil between myself and  her angel's face  for
ever, by taking advantage  of her being here  for refuge, so trusting and so
unprotected, to endeavour to exalt myself  into  her  lover?  What do I say?
There  is no one in the world  who would be more opposed to me if I could do
so, than you.'
     'Wal'r,  my lad,' said the Captain, drooping more and  more, 'prowiding
as there is any just cause or impediment why two persons should not be jined
together in the house of  bondage, for which you'll  overhaul the  place and
make a note, I hope I  should declare it as promised and wowed in the banns.
So there ain't no other character; ain't there, my lad?'
     Walter briskly waved his hand in the negative.
     'Well, my lad,' growled  the Captain slowly,  'I won't deny but what  I
find myself wery much down by the head, along o' this here, or but what I've
gone  clean about. But as to Lady lass, Wal'r,  mind you,  wot's respect and
duty to her, is respect and duty in my articles, howsumever disapinting; and
therefore  I follows  in your wake, my lad, and feel  as you  are, no doubt,
acting up to  yourself. And there  ain't no  other character, ain't  there?'
said  the Captain,  musing over the ruins of his  fallen castle, with a very
despondent face.
     'Now, Captain Cuttle,' said Walter, starting a fresh point with a gayer
air,  to cheer the Captain up - but nothing could  do that; he  was too much
concerned - 'I think we should exert  ourselves to find someone who would be
a proper attendant for  Miss Dombey while she remains here,  and  who may be
trusted. None of her relations may.  It's clear Miss Dombey feels  that they
are all subservient to her father. What has become of Susan?'
     'The  young woman?' returned  the Captain. 'It's  my belief as  she was
sent away again the will  of  Heart's Delight. I made a signal  for her when
Lady lass first come, and she rated  of her wery high, and said she had been
gone a long time.'
     'Then,' said Walter,  'do you ask  Miss  Dombey  where she's gone,  and
we'll try to find her.  The morning's getting on, and Miss Dombey will  soon
be rising. You are her best friend. Wait for  her upstairs, and leave me  to
take care of all down here.'
     The Captain,  very crest-fallen  indeed, echoed  the  sigh  with  which
Walter said this, and  complied. Florence was delighted with  her new  room,
anxious to see Walter, and overjoyed  at the prospect  of  greeting  her old
friend Susan. But Florence could not say  where  Susan was gone, except that
it was  in Essex, and no one  could say,  she  remembered, unless it were Mr
Toots.
     With  this  information  the melancholy Captain returned to Walter, and
gave him  to understand  that Mr Toots  was the young gentleman whom  he had
encountered on the  door-step, and  that he was a friend of his, and that he
was a  young gentleman  of  property, and  that  he hopelessly  adored  Miss
Dombey. The Captain also related how the  intelligence of Walter's  supposed
fate had first made him acquainted with Mr  Toots, and how there was  solemn
treaty  and compact between them,  that  Mr  Toots should be mute  upon  the
subject of his love.
     The  question  then  was, whether Florence  could trust  Mr Toots;  and
Florence saying,  with a smile, 'Oh, yes, with her  whole heart!' it  became
important  to find out where Mr Toots lived. This, Florence didn't know, and
the Captain had forgotten; and the Captain was telling Walter, in the little
parlour,  that Mr  Toots was  sure to  be there soon, when in came  Mr Toots
himself.
     'Captain  Gills,' said Mr Toots, rushing  into the parlour without  any
ceremony, 'I'm in a state of mind bordering on distraction!'
     Mr  Toots  had discharged  those words,  as  from  a mortar, before  he
observed Walter, whom he recognised with what  may be described as a chuckle
of misery.
     'You'll  excuse me, Sir,' said Mr Toots, holding his forehead, 'but I'm
at present  in that state that my brain is  going, if not gone, and anything
approaching to politeness  in  an individual  so situated would be  a hollow
mockery. Captain Gills, I beg to request the favour of a private interview.'
     'Why, Brother,' returned the Captain, taking him by  the hand, 'you are
the man as we was on the look-out for.'
     'Oh,  Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots, 'what a look-out that  must be, of
which I am the object!  I haven't dared to shave, I'm  in that rash state. I
haven't  had  my  clothes  brushed. My  hair is matted together. I  told the
Chicken  that  if he offered to  clean  my boots, I'd stretch  him a  Corpse
before me!'
     All these indications of a  disordered mind were verified in Mr Toots's
appearance, which was wild and savage.
     'See  here,  Brother,' said the Captain. 'This here's  old Sol  Gills's
nevy Wal'r. Him as was supposed to have perished at sea'
     Mr Toots took his hand from his forehead, and stared at Walter.
     'Good gracious me!' stammered Mr Toots. 'What a complication of misery!
How-de-do? I -  I - I'm afraid you must have got  very  wet.  Captain Gills,
will you allow me a word in the shop?'
     He took the Captain by the coat, and going out with him whispered:
     'That then, Captain  Gills,  is the party you spoke  of, when you  said
that he and Miss Dombey were made for one another?'
     'Why, ay,  my lad,' replied  the  disconsolate Captain;  'I was of that
mind once.'
     'And at this time!' exclaimed Mr Toots, with his hand  to his  forehead
again.  'Of all others! - a hated  rival! At least, he ain't a hated rival,'
said Mr Toots, stopping short, on second thoughts, and taking away his hand;
'what  should  I  hate   him  for?  No.  If  my  affection  has  been  truly
disinterested, Captain Gills, let me prove it now!'
     Mr Toots shot back abruptly into the parlour, and said, wringing Walter
by the hand:
     'How-de-do? I hope you didn't take  any cold. I - I shall  be very glad
if  you'll give me the pleasure of your acquaintance. I  wish you many happy
returns of the day. Upon my  word  and honour,' said Mr Toots, warming as he
became  better acquainted with Walter's  face and figure, 'I'm very glad  to
see you!'
     'Thank  you, heartily,' said Walter. 'I  couldn't desire a more genuine
and genial welcome.'
     'Couldn't you, though?' said  Mr Toots, still shaking  his  hand. 'It's
very kind  of you.  I'm much  obliged to  you.  How-de-do?  I hope  you left
everybody quite well over the - that is, upon the - I mean wherever you came
from last, you know.'
     All these  good wishes,  and  better  intentions, Walter  responded  to
manfully.
     'Captain  Gills,'  said  Mr  Toots,  'I  should  wish  to  be  strictly
honourable; but I trust I may be allowed now, to allude to a certain subject
that - '
     'Ay, ay, my lad,' returned the Captain. 'Freely, freely.'
     'Then, Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots, 'and Lieutenant Walters - are you
aware that  the  most  dreadful circumstances  have  been  happening  at  Mr
Dombey's house, and that Miss Dombey herself has left her father, who, in my
opinion,' said Mr Toots,  with great excitement,  'is a Brute, that it would
be  a flattery to call a -  a marble monument, or a bird of prey, - and that
she is not to be found, and has gone no one knows where?'
     'May I ask how you heard this?' inquired Walter.
     'Lieutenant  Walters,'   said  Mr  Toots,  who  had   arrived  at  that
appellation by a  process  peculiar to himself; probably by jumbling  up his
Christian   name  with  the  seafaring   profession,  and   supposing   some
relationship between him and the Captain, which would extend, as a matter of
course, to  their titles; 'Lieutenant Walters, I can  have  no objection  to
make a straightforward reply. The fact is, that feeling extremely interested
in everything  that  relates  to  Miss Dombey - not for any selfish  reason,
Lieutenant Walters, for I  am well aware that the most able thing I could do
for all parties would  be to put an end to my existence,  which can  only be
regarded as an inconvenience  -  I  have been in the  habit of  bestowing  a
trifle  now and then  upon a footman; a most  respectable  young man, of the
name of  Towlinson,  who has lived in the  family some  time;  and Towlinson
informed  me, yesterday evening,  that this was the  state of  things. Since
which,  Captain  Gills - and  Lieutenant  Walters -  I  have been  perfectly
frantic,  and  have  been  lying down  on the  sofa all  night, the Ruin you
behold.'
     'Mr Toots,'  said Walter, 'I am happy to be able to relieve  your mind.
Pray calm yourself. Miss Dombey is safe and well.'
     'Sir!' cried Mr  Toots, starting from his chair  and shaking hands with
him anew, 'the relief is so excessive, and unspeakable, that if you  were to
tell me now that Miss Dombey was married even, I could smile.  Yes,  Captain
Gills,' said  Mr Toots, appealing to  him, 'upon my soul and  body, I really
think, whatever I  might do to myself immediately  afterwards,  that I could
smile, I am so relieved.'
     'It will be a greater relief and delight still, to such a generous mind
as yours,' said Walter, not  at all slow in returning his greeting, 'to find
that you can  render service to Miss Dombey. Captain Cuttle,  will  you have
the kindness to take Mr Toots upstairs?'
     The Captain  beckoned to Mr Toots,  who followed  him with a bewildered
countenance, and, ascending to the top of the house, was introduced, without
a word of preparation from his conductor, into Florence's new retreat.
     Poor Mr  Toots's amazement and pleasure at sight of her were such, that
they could find a vent in nothing but extravagance. He ran up to her, seized
her  hand, kissed it, dropped  it, seized it again, fell upon one knee, shed
tears, chuckled, and was quite regardless of his danger of  being  pinned by
Diogenes, who, inspired  by the belief that there  was something hostile  to
his mistress in these demonstrations, worked round and round him, as if only
undecided  at  what particular point to  go  in  for the assault,  but quite
resolved to do him a fearful mischief.
     'Oh Di, you bad, forgetful dog! Dear Mr Toots, I am so rejoiced to  see
you!'
     'Thankee,' said Mr  Toots, 'I am pretty well,  I'm much obliged to you,
Miss Dombey. I hope all the family are the same.'
     Mr  Toots  said  this without  the least notion  of what he was talking
about,  and  sat down on  a chair,  staring at  Florence with the  liveliest
contention of delight and despair  going on  in his face that any face could
exhibit.
     'Captain  Gills  and Lieutenant  Walters have mentioned, Miss  Dombey,'
gasped Mr Toots, 'that  I can do you some  service. If I could by  any means
wash out the remembrance of that day  at Brighton, when I conducted myself -
much more like  a Parricide than a person of independent  property,' said Mr
Toots, with severe self-accusation, 'I should sink into the silent tomb with
a gleam of joy.'
     'Pray, Mr Toots,' said Florence, 'do not wish me  to forget anything in
our acquaintance. I  never can, believe me. You have been far too  kind  and
good to me always.'
     'Miss  Dombey,' returned Mr Toots,  'your consideration for my feelings
is a part of  your angelic character. Thank you a thousand times. It's of no
consequence at all.'
     'What  we  thought  of  asking  you,'  said Florence, 'is, whether  you
remember  where Susan,  whom  you  were  so  kind as  to  accompany  to  the
coach-office when she left me, is to be found.'
     'Why I do not  certainly, Miss Dombey,' said Mr Toots,  after a  little
consideration,  'remember the exact name of the place that was on the coach;
and I do recollect that she said she was not going  to stop  there, but  was
going farther on. But, Miss Dombey,  if  your object is to find  her, and to
have  her here, myself  and the Chicken will produce her with every dispatch
that devotion  on my  part, and  great  intelligence  on the Chicken's,  can
ensure.
     Mr Toots  was  so  manifestly  delighted and revived by the prospect of
being  useful, and  the  disinterested  sincerity of  his  devotion  was  so
unquestionable, that it would have been cruel to refuse  him. Florence, with
an instinctive delicacy, forbore to urge the least  obstacle, though she did
not  forbear  to  overpower him  with thanks; and Mr Toots proudly took  the
commission upon himself for immediate execution.
     'Miss Dombey,' said Mr Toots, touching  her proffered hand, with a pang
of hopeless love visibly shooting through him, and flashing out in his face,
'Good-bye!  Allow  me to take the liberty of saying, that  your  misfortunes
make me perfectly wretched, and that you may trust me, next to Captain Gills
himself. I am quite aware, Miss Dombey, of my own deficiencies - they're not
of the least consequence, thank you - but I am entirely to be relied upon, I
do assure you, Miss Dombey.'
     With  that  Mr  Toots came  out of the room,  again accompanied by  the
Captain, who, standing at a  little distance, holding his hat  under his arm
and arranging his scattered locks with his hook, had been a not uninterested
witness  of what passed. And when the  door closed behind them, the light of
Mr Toots's life was darkly clouded again.
     'Captain  Gills,' said that gentleman, stopping near the  bottom of the
stairs, and  turning round, 'to tell you the truth, I am not in  a frame  of
mind  at the present moment,  in  which  I could see Lieutenant Walters with
that  entirely friendly feeling towards him that I should wish to harbour in
my  breast. We  cannot always command  our  feelings,  Captain Gills, and  I
should  take  it as a particular favour if you'd let  me out at  the private
door.'
     'Brother,'  returned  the  Captain, 'you  shall  shape your own course.
Wotever course you take, is plain and seamanlike, I'm wery sure.
     'Captain  Gills,'  said  Mr  Toots, 'you're extremely  kind. Your  good
opinion is a consolation to me. There is one thing,' said Mr Toots, standing
in the passage, behind  the  half-opened door, 'that  I hope you'll bear  in
mind,  Captain  Gills, and that I should wish Lieutenant Walters to be  made
acquainted with. I have quite come into my property now, you know, and - and
I don't know what  to do with it. If I could be at all useful in a pecuniary
point  of  view,  I  should  glide  into  the  silent  tomb  with  ease  and
smoothness.'
     Mr Toots said no more, but  slipped out quietly and shut the  door upon
himself, to cut the Captain off from any reply.
     Florence thought of  this good  creature, long after  he had  left her,
with  mingled  emotions  of  pain   and  pleasure.  He  was  so  honest  and
warm-hearted, that to  see him again and be assured of his truth  to her  in
her distress, was a joy  and comfort beyond  all  price; but  for that  very
reason, it  was  so  affecting to  think  that  she  caused  him a  moment's
unhappiness, or ruffled, by a breath, the harmless current of his life, that
her eyes  filled  with tears,  and  her bosom  overflowed with pity. Captain
Cuttle,  in his different  way,  thought much of  Mr Toots too; and  so  did
Walter; and when  the evening came, and they were  all  sitting  together in
Florence's  new room, Walter  praised him in a most impassioned  manner, and
told  Florence what he  had  said on leaving  the house, with every graceful
setting-off in the way of comment and appreciation that  his own honesty and
sympathy could surround it with.
     Mr Toots did not return upon the next day, or the  next, or for several
days;  and  in the meanwhile Florence, without any new  alarm, lived  like a
quiet  bird in a  cage, at  the top of the old Instrument-maker's house. But
Florence drooped and hung her head more  and more  plainly, as the days went
on; and the expression that had been seen in the face of the dead child, was
often turned to the sky from her high window, as if it sought his angel out,
on the bright shore of which he had spoken: lying on his little bed.
     Florence  had been weak and delicate of late, and the agitation she had
undergone was not without its influences on her health. But it was no bodily
illness that affected her now. She was distressed in mind;  and the cause of
her distress was Walter.
     Interested in her, anxious  for her, proud and  glad to  serve her, and
showing all this with the  enthusiasm and  ardour of his character, Florence
saw that he avoided her. All the long day through, he  seldom approached her
room. If she asked for him, he came, again for the  moment as earnest and as
bright  as she  remembered  him  when she was a  lost  child in  the staring
streets; but  he  soon  became  constrained -  her quick  affection was  too
watchful not to know it - and  uneasy, and soon left her. Unsought, he never
came, all day,  between the morning and  the night. When the  evening closed
in, he  was always there, and that was her happiest time, for then  she half
believed  that the old  Walter of her childhood was not  changed.  But, even
then, some trivial word, look, or circumstance would show her that there was
an indefinable division between them which could not be passed.
     And  she could  not but see that these revealings of a great alteration
in  Walter  manifested themselves  in despite of  his utmost efforts to hide
them. In his  consideration for her, she thought, and in the  earnestness of
his  desire to spare  her  any wound  from  his kind hand,  he  resorted  to
innumerable little artifices  and  disguises. So much  the more did Florence
feel the greatness of the  alteration in him; so  much  the oftener did  she
weep at this estrangement of her brother.
     The good Captain - her untiring, tender, ever zealous friend  - saw it,
too, Florence thought, and it pained him. He  was less  cheerful and hopeful
than  he  had  been at  first, and would  steal looks at her and Walter,  by
turns,  when they were all  three  together of an evening,  with quite a sad
face.
     Florence  resolved, at last,  to speak to Walter. She believed she knew
now what the  cause of his estrangement was,  and she thought it would be  a
relief  to her full heart, and would set him more at ease,  if she told  him
she had found it out, and quite submitted to it, and did not reproach him.
     It  was  on  a  certain  Sunday  afternoon,  that  Florence  took  this
resolution. The faithful Captain, in an amazing shirt-collar, was sitting by
her, reading with his spectacles on, and she asked him where Walter was.
     'I think he's down below, my lady lass,' returned the Captain.
     'I should like to speak to him,'  said Florence, rising hurriedly as if
to go downstairs.
     'I'll rouse him up here, Beauty,' said the Captain, 'in a trice.'
     Thereupon the Captain, with much alacrity, shouldered his book - for he
made it  a point of  duty to read none  but very large books on a Sunday, as
having  a  more  staid appearance:  and  had  bargained,  years  ago, for  a
prodigious volume  at a book-stall, five lines of which  utterly  confounded
him at any time, insomuch that he had not yet ascertained of what subject it
treated - and withdrew. Walter soon appeared.
     'Captain Cuttle tells me, Miss Dombey,' he eagerly began on coming in -
but stopped when he saw her face.
     'You  are  not  so  well  to-day. You  look  distressed.  You have been
weeping.'
     He spoke so kindly,  and with such a fervent tremor in his voice,  that
the tears gushed into her eyes at the sound of his words.
     'Walter,' said Florence, gently, 'I am not  quite well, and I have been
weeping. I want to speak to you.'
     He  sat  down opposite to her, looking  at her  beautiful and  innocent
face; and his own turned pale, and his lips trembled.
     'You said, upon the night  when  I knew that you were saved  - and  oh!
dear Walter, what I felt that night, and what I hoped!' - '
     He put his trembling hand upon  the table between them, and sat looking
at her.
     -  'that  I was changed. I  was  surprised  to  hear you  say so, but I
understand, now,  that I am. Don't be angry with me, Walter. I was  too much
overjoyed to think of it, then.'
     She  seemed  a  child to  him again. It was  the  ingenuous, confiding,
loving child he saw and heard. Not  the dear woman, at whose feet  he  would
have laid the riches of the earth.
     'You remember the last time I saw you, Walter, before you went away?'
     He put his hand into his breast, and took out a little purse.
     'I have always worn it  round  my neck! If I had gone down in the deep,
it would have been with me at the bottom of the sea.'
     'And you will wear it still, Walter, for my old sake?'
     'Until I die!'
     She laid her hand on his, as fearlessly and simply, as if not a day had
intervened since she gave him the little token of remembrance.
     'I  am glad of that. I shall be always glad to think so, Walter. Do you
recollect that a thought of this change seemed to come into our minds at the
same time that evening, when we were talking together?'
     'No!' he answered, in a wondering tone.
     'Yes, Walter. I had been the means of injuring your hopes and prospects
even then. I feared  to think so, then, but I know it now. If you were able,
then, in your generosity, to hide from me that  you knew it  too, you cannot
do so now, although you try as generously as before. You do. I thank you for
it, Walter,  deeply, truly; but you  cannot succeed.  You have  suffered too
much in your own hardships, and in those of your dearest  relation, quite to
overlook  the  innocent  cause of  all the  peril  and  affliction that  has
befallen you. You cannot quite forget  me in that  character,  and we can be
brother and sister no longer. But, dear Walter, do not think that I complain
of you in this. I might have known it - ought  to have known it - but forgot
it  in my joy. All I hope is that you  may think of  me less  irksomely when
this feeling is no more a secret one; and all I ask  is, Walter, in the name
of the poor child who was your sister once, that you will not struggle  with
yourself, and pain yourself, for my sake, now that I know all!'
     Walter had looked upon her while she said this,  with a face so full of
wonder and  amazement, that  it had room for  nothing else. Now he caught up
the hand that touched his, so entreatingly, and held it between his own.
     'Oh, Miss Dombey,' he said,  'is  it possible that  while  I have  been
suffering so much, in striving with my sense of what is due to you, and must
be rendered to  you, I have  made you suffer what your words disclose to me?
Never, never, before Heaven,  have  I thought  of  you  but  as  the single,
bright, pure, blessed  recollection of my boyhood and my youth. Never have I
from the first, and never shall I to the last,  regard your part in my life,
but  as something sacred, never  to  be  lightly thought  of,  never  to  be
esteemed enough, never, until death, to be forgotten. Again to see you look,
and hear you speak, as you did on that night when we parted, is happiness to
me  that there are no words to utter;  and  to be loved  and trusted as your
brother, is the next gift I could receive and prize!'
     'Walter,' said Florence, looking at  him earnestly, but with a changing
face, 'what is that which is due to me,  and must be rendered  to me, at the
sacrifice of all this?'
     'Respect,' said Walter, in a low tone. 'Reverence.
     The  colour dawned  in  her  face,  and  she timidly  and  thoughtfully
withdrew her hand; still looking at him with unabated earnestness.
     'I have not a brother's right,' said  Walter. 'I  have  not a brother's
claim. I left a child. I find a woman.'
     The colour  overspread her face.  She  made a gesture as if of entreaty
that he would say no more, and her face dropped upon her hands.
     They were both silent for a time; she weeping.
     'I owe it  to a heart so trusting, pure, and  good,' said Walter, 'even
to  tear  myself  from  it, though  I rend my  own.  How dare I say it is my
sister's!'
     She was weeping still.
     'If you had  been  happy;  surrounded as you  should be  by loving  and
admiring friends, and  by  all that  makes  the  station  you  were born  to
enviable,'  said  Walter; 'and  if you had called me  brother, then, in your
affectionate remembrance of the past, I could have answered to the name from
my  distant place, with  no  inward assurance  that I wronged your  spotless
truth by doing so. But here - and now!'
     'Oh thank  you,  thank you, Walter! Forgive my having  wronged  you  so
much. I had no one to advise me. I am quite alone.'
     'Florence!' said Walter, passionately. 'I  am hurried on to say, what I
thought, but a few moments ago, nothing could have forced from my lips. If I
had been  prosperous; if I had any  means or hope of being  one day able  to
restore you to a station near your own; I would have told you that there was
one name you might bestow upon  - me - a right above all others,  to protect
and cherish you  - that  I  was worthy of in nothing but the love and honour
that I bore  you, and  in my whole heart being yours. I would have told  you
that it was the only claim that you could give me  to defend and guard  you,
which I dare accept  and dare assert; but that if I had  that right, I would
regard it as a trust so precious and so priceless,  that the undivided truth
and fervour of my life would poorly acknowledge its worth.'
     The head  was still bent down, the  tears still  falling, and the bosom
swelling with its sobs.
     'Dear  Florence! Dearest Florence!  whom  I  called  so in my  thoughts
before I could consider how presumptuous and  wild it was. One last time let
me call you by your own  dear  name, and touch this gentle hand  in token of
your sisterly forgetfulness of what I have said.'
     She raised her  head, and spoke to him with such a solemn sweetness  in
her eyes; with such a calm, bright, placid  smile shining on him through her
tears;  with such  a  low, soft  tremble  in her frame  and  voice; that the
innermost  chords  of his heart were  touched, and  his sight was  dim as he
listened.
     'No, Walter, I cannot forget it. I  would not forget it, for the world.
Are you - are you very poor?'
     'I am but a wanderer,' said Walter, 'making voyages to live, across the
sea. That is my calling now.
     'Are you soon going away again, Walter?'
     'Very soon.
     She sat  looking at him  for a moment;  then timidly  put her trembling
hand in his.
     'If you will take  me for your wife, Walter, I will love you dearly. If
you will let  me go with you, Walter, I  will go to the world's end  without
fear. I can give up nothing  for you - I have nothing to  resign, and no one
to forsake; but  all my love and life  shall be devoted to you, and  with my
last  breath I will  breathe your  name  to God if I have sense  and  memory
left.'
     He  caught  her  to his heart, and  laid her cheek against his own, and
now,  no more repulsed, no more forlorn, she wept indeed, upon the breast of
her dear lover.
     Blessed  Sunday Bells, ringing  so  tranquilly  in  their entranced and
happy ears! Blessed Sunday peace and quiet, harmonising with the calmness in
their souls, and making holy air around them! Blessed twilight  stealing on,
and  shading her so soothingly and gravely,  as  she  falls  asleep,  like a
hushed child, upon the bosom she has clung to!
     Oh load of love and trustfulness that lies to  lightly  there! Ay, look
down on the closed eyes, Walter, with a proudly  tender gaze; for in all the
wide wide world they seek but thee now - only thee!

     The Captain remained in the little parlour  until it was quite dark. He
took  the chair  on  which  Walter  had been sitting, and looked up  at  the
skylight, until  the day, by  little and little, faded  away,  and the stars
peeped down. He lighted  a  candle,  lighted  a pipe,  smoked  it  out,  and
wondered  what on  earth was going on upstairs, and why they didn't call him
to tea.
     Florence came to his side while he was in the height of his wonderment.
     'Ay! lady lass!' cried the Captain. 'Why, you and Wal'r have had a long
spell o' talk, my beauty.'
     Florence  put her  little hand  round one of the great  buttons of  his
coat, and said, looking down into his face:
     'Dear Captain, I want to tell you something, if you please.
     The Captain raised his  head  pretty  smartly,  to hear  what  it  was.
Catching by this means  a more distinct view of Florence, he pushed back his
chair, and himself with it, as far as they could go.
     'What!  Heart's  Delight!' cried the Captain,  suddenly elated,  'Is it
that?'
     'Yes!' said Florence, eagerly.
     'Wal'r!  Husband! THAT?' roared the Captain, tossing  up his glazed hat
into the skylight.
     'Yes!' cried Florence, laughing and crying together.
     The Captain immediately hugged her; and then, picking up the glazed hat
and  putting it  on, drew  her arm  through  his, and conducted her upstairs
again; where he felt that the great joke of his life was now to be made.
     'What, Wal'r  my lad!' said  the Captain, looking in at the  door, with
his face  like an  amiable warming-pan. 'So there  ain't NO other character,
ain't there?'
     He had like  to  have suffocated himself with this pleasantry, which he
repeated at least forty times during  tea;  polishing his  radiant face with
the  sleeve  of  his  coat,   and   dabbing  his  head  all  over  with  his
pocket-handkerchief, in  the  intervals.  But  he  was not  without a graver
source of  enjoyment  to fall  back upon,  when  so  disposed,  for  he  was
repeatedly heard to say in an undertone, as he looked with ineffable delight
at Walter and Florence:
     'Ed'ard Cuttle, my lad, you never  shaped a better course in your life,
than when you made that there little property over, jintly!'

        CHAPTER 51.
     Mr Dombey and the World

     What is the proud man  doing, while the days go by? Does he  ever think
of his  daughter, or wonder where she is gone? Does  he suppose she has come
home, and is leading her old  life in the weary house? No one can answer for
him. He has never uttered her name, since. His household dread  him too much
to approach a subject on  which he is  resolutely dumb;  and the only person
who dares question him, he silences immediately.
     'My dear Paul!' murmurs his sister, sidling into  the room,  on the day
of Florence's departure, 'your wife! that upstart woman! Is it possible that
what  I hear confusedly,  is  true,  and that this is  her  return  for your
unparalleled devotion to her; extending, I am sure, even to the sacrifice of
your own relations, to her caprices and haughtiness? My poor brother!'
     With this speech feelingly  reminiscent of her not having been asked to
dinner  on the day  of the first  party,  Mrs Chick makes  great  use of her
pocket-handkerchief, and falls on Mr  Dombey's neck. But Mr Dombey  frigidly
lifts her off, and hands her to a chair.
     'I thank you, Louisa,' he says, 'for this mark of your  affection;  but
desire that our conversation may refer to  any  other subject. When I bewail
my fate, Louisa, or  express myself as being in want of consolation, you can
offer it, if you will have the goodness.'
     'My dear Paul,' rejoins his sister, with her handkerchief to her  face,
and shaking her head, 'I know your great spirit, and will say no more upon a
theme so painful and revolting;' on the heads of  which  two adjectives, Mrs
Chick visits scathing indignation; 'but pray let me ask you - though I dread
to hear something  that will shock  and distress me - that unfortunate child
Florence -
     'Louisa!'  says  her brother,  sternly, 'silence!  Not  another word of
this!'
     Mrs Chick can only shake  her  head, and use her handkerchief, and moan
over degenerate  Dombeys, who are no Dombeys. But  whether Florence has been
inculpated in the flight of  Edith,  or has  followed her,  or has  done too
much, or too little, or anything, or nothing, she has not the least idea.
     He goes on, without deviation, keeping his thoughts and feelings  close
within his  own breast, and imparting them to no one. He makes no search for
his daughter. He may think that she is with his sister, or that she is under
his own roof. He may think of  her constantly, or  he may never think  about
her. It is all one for any sign he makes.
     But this is sure; he  does  not  think that he has  lost her. He has no
suspicion  of  the truth. He  has lived too long  shut  up  in his  towering
supremacy, seeing her, a patient  gentle  creature, in the path below it, to
have  any  fear  of  that. Shaken as he is  by his disgrace,  he  is not yet
humbled to the level earth. The root is broad and deep, and in the course of
years  its  fibres have spread out and gathered nourishment from  everything
around it. The tree is struck, but not down.
     Though he hide the world within him from the world  without - which  he
believes  has but  one purpose  for the time, and that, to watch him eagerly
wherever he goes -  he cannot hide those rebel traces of it, which escape in
hollow eyes and  cheeks,  a haggard forehead,  and  a moody,  brooding  air.
Impenetrable as  before, he  is still an altered man; and, proud as ever, he
is humbled, or those marks would not be there.
     The world. What the world  thinks of him,  how it looks at him, what it
sees in him, and what it says - this is the haunting demon of his  mind.  It
is everywhere where he is; and, worse  than that, it is everywhere  where he
is not.  It comes out  with  him among his  servants,  and yet  he leaves it
whispering  behind;  he sees  it  pointing after him  in  the street; it  is
waiting for him in his counting-house; it leers over the shoulders  of  rich
men among the merchants; it goes beckoning and babbling among the  crowd; it
always anticipates  him, in  every place; and is  always busiest,  he knows,
when he has gone away. When he is shut up in his room at night, it is in his
house, outside it, audible  in footsteps on the pavement,  visible  in print
upon the table, steaming to and fro  on railroads and in ships; restless and
busy everywhere, with nothing else but him.
     It  is not  a phantom of  his  imagination. It  is  as active in  other
people's minds as in his. Witness Cousin Feenix, who comes from Baden-Baden,
purposely to  talk to him. Witness Major  Bagstock, who  accompanies  Cousin
Feenix on that friendly mission.
     Mr Dombey receives them with his  usual  dignity, and stands erect,  in
his old attitude, before the fire. He feels that the world is looking at him
out  of their eyes.  That it is in the stare of  the pictures. That Mr Pitt,
upon  the bookcase,  represents  it.  That  there are  eyes  in its own map,
hanging on the wall.
     'An unusually cold spring,' says Mr Dombey - to deceive the world.
     'Damme,  Sir,'  says the Major, in  the  warmth of friendship,  'Joseph
Bagstock is a  bad hand at  a counterfeit. If you want  to hold your friends
off, Dombey, and to  give them the cold shoulder, J.  B. is not the man  for
your  purpose. Joe is rough and  tough, Sir; blunt, Sir,  blunt, is Joe. His
Royal Highness the late Duke of York did me the honour to say, deservedly or
undeservedly - never mind that - "If there is a man in the service on whom I
can depend for coming to the point, that man is Joe - Joe Bagstock."'
     Mr Dombey intimates his acquiescence.
     'Now, Dombey,' says  the Major,  'I am  a  man of the world. Our friend
Feenix - if I may presume to - '
     'Honoured, I am sure,' says Cousin Feenix.
     ' - is,' proceeds the Major, with a wag of his head, 'also a man of the
world. Dombey, you are a  man of the world. Now, when three men of the world
meet together,  and are friends - as I believe - ' again appealing to Cousin
Feenix.
     'I am sure,' says Cousin Feenix, 'most friendly.'
     '  - and are friends,' resumes the  Major, 'Old Joe's opinion is (I may
be wrong), that the opinion of the world  on any particular subject, is very
easily got at.
     'Undoubtedly,'  says Cousin  Feenix.  'In point of  fact, it's quite  a
self-evident sort of thing. I  am extremely anxious,  Major, that  my friend
Dombey should hear me express my very great astonishment and regret, that my
lovely and accomplished relative,  who was possessed  of every qualification
to make a man happy, should have so far forgotten what was due to - in point
of fact,  to the  world - as to commit herself in such a very  extraordinary
manner. I have been in a devilish state of depression  ever since; and  said
indeed to  Long  Saxby last night - man of six foot ten, with whom my friend
Dombey  is probably acquainted  - that it had upset me in a  confounded way,
and made  me bilious. It  induces  a  man  to reflect,  this  kind of  fatal
catastrophe,'  says  Cousin  Feenix,  'that  events  do  occur  in  quite  a
providential manner; for if my Aunt had been living at the time, I think the
effect  upon  a  devilish   lively  woman  like  herself,  would  have  been
prostration, and that she would have fallen, in point of fact, a victim.'
     'Now,  Dombey!  -  ' says the Major, resuming  his discourse with great
energy.
     'I beg  your pardon,' interposes Cousin Feenix. 'Allow me another word.
My friend Dombey will permit me to say, that if any  circumstance could have
added to  the  most infernal state of pain in which  I find  myself  on this
occasion, it would be the  natural amazement of the  world at  my lovely and
accomplished relative (as I must still beg leave to call her) being supposed
to have so committed herself with a person - man with  white teeth, in point
of fact - of very inferior station  to her husband. But while I must, rather
peremptorily,  request  my  friend Dombey  not  to  criminate my  lovely and
accomplished relative until  her criminality is perfectly established, I beg
to  assure  my friend Dombey that  the family I represent, and which is  now
almost extinct  (devilish  sad  reflection  for  a man), will  interpose  no
obstacle in his way, and will be happy to assent to any honourable course of
proceeding, with  a  view to the future, that he may point out.  I trust  my
friend Dombey will give me credit for the intentions by which I am  animated
in this very  melancholy affair, and - a - in point of fact, I  am not aware
that I need trouble my friend Dombey with any further observations.'
     Mr Dombey bows, without raising his eyes, and is silent.
     'Now, Dombey,'  says  the  Major,  'our friend Feenix  having,  with an
amount of eloquence that Old Joe B.  has never heard surpassed - no, by  the
Lord,  Sir! never!' -  says the  Major, very blue, indeed,  and grasping his
cane in the middle  - 'stated the case  as regards the lady, I shall presume
upon our friendship, Dombey,  to offer a word on another aspect of it. Sir,'
says the Major, with  the horse's  cough, 'the  world  in  these things  has
opinions, which must be satisfied.'
     'I know it,' rejoins Mr Dombey.
     'Of  course you know  it, Dombey,' says the Major, 'Damme, Sir,  I know
you know it. A man of your calibre is not likely to be ignorant of it.'
     'I hope not,' replies Mr Dombey.
     'Dombey!'  says  the Major, 'you  will guess  the rest. I speak  out  -
prematurely, perhaps -  because  the Bagstock breed  have  always spoke out.
Little, Sir, have they ever got by doing it; but it's in the Bagstock blood.
A shot is to be  taken at this man.  You have J. B. at your elbow. He claims
the name of friend. God bless you!'
     'Major,' returns  Mr Dombey, 'I am  obliged. I shall put myself in your
hands when the time comes. The time not being come, I have forborne to speak
to you.'
     'Where is  the  fellow, Dombey?' inquires the Major,  after gasping and
looking at him, for a minute.
     'I don't know.'
     'Any intelligence of him?' asks the Major.
     'Yes.'
     'Dombey, I am rejoiced  to hear  it,' says the  Major. 'I  congratulate
you.'
     'You will excuse  -  even  you, Major,' replies Mr Dombey, 'my entering
into any further detail at  present. The intelligence is of a singular kind,
and singularly obtained. It may turn out to be valueless; it may turn out to
be true; I cannot say at present. My explanation must stop here.'
     Although this  is but a dry reply to the Major's purple enthusiasm, the
Major receives it graciously, and is delighted to think that  the world  has
such a  fair  prospect  of  soon  receiving its due.  Cousin Feenix  is then
presented  with his meed of acknowledgment by the husband of  his lovely and
accomplished  relative, and Cousin Feenix and Major Bagstock retire, leaving
that  husband  to  the  world  again,  and  to ponder  at  leisure  on their
representation of  its state of mind concerning his affairs, and on its just
and reasonable expectations.
     But who  sits in the housekeeper's room, shedding tears, and talking to
Mrs Pipchin  in a low tone, with uplifted hands? It is a lady with her  face
concealed in a very close  black bonnet, which appears not to belong to her.
It  is Miss Tox, who has borrowed this disguise from her servant,  and comes
from Princess's Place, thus secretly, to  revive her  old acquaintance  with
Mrs Pipchin, in order to get certain information of the state of Mr Dombey.
     'How does he bear it, my dear creature?' asks Miss Tox.
     'Well,' says  Mrs  Pipchin, in her snappish way,  'he's pretty  much as
usual.'
     'Externally,' suggests Miss Tox 'But what he feels within!'
     Mrs Pipchin's  hard grey eye  looks  doubtful as she  answers, in three
distinct jerks, 'Ah! Perhaps. I suppose so.'
     'To tell you my mind, Lucretia,' says Mrs Pipchin; she still calls Miss
Tox  Lucretia,  on  account  of  having  made her  first  experiments in the
child-quelling line of business on that lady, when an unfortunate and weazen
little girl of tender years; 'to tell you my  mind, Lucretia, I think it's a
good riddance. I don't want any of your brazen faces here, myself!'
     'Brazen indeed!  Well may you  say brazen, Mrs Pipchin!'  returned Miss
Tox.  'To  leave him!  Such  a noble figure of a man!' And  here Miss Tox is
overcome.
     'I  don't know about noble, I'm sure,'  observes Mrs Pipchin; irascibly
rubbing her nose. 'But I know this - that when people meet with trials, they
must bear  'em. Hoity, toity! I have had enough to bear myself, in my  time!
What  a  fuss  there is!  She's  gone, and well got rid of. Nobody wants her
back, I should  think!' This  hint of the Peruvian Mines, causes Miss Tox to
rise to go away; when  Mrs Pipchin rings  the bell for Towlinson to show her
out, Mr Towlinson, not having seen Miss Tox for ages, grins, and hopes she's
well; observing that he didn't know her at first, in that bonnet.
     'Pretty well, Towlinson, I  thank you,' says  Miss  Tox. 'I  beg you'll
have the goodness,  when you happen to  see  me here, not to mention  it. My
visits are merely to Mrs Pipchin.'
     'Very good, Miss,' says Towlinson.
     'Shocking circumstances occur, Towlinson,' says Miss Tox.
     'Very much so indeed, Miss,' rejoins Towlinson.
     'I  hope,  Towlinson,'  says  Miss Tox,  who, in her instruction of the
Toodle family, has acquired  an admonitorial  tone, and a habit of improving
passing occasions,  'that what  has happened here, will be a warning to you,
Towlinson.'
     'Thank you, Miss, I'm sure,' says Towlinson.
     He  appears  to be falling into a consideration  of the manner in which
this warning ought  to operate in his particular case, when the vinegary Mrs
Pipchin,  suddenly stirring him up with a 'What are you doing? Why don't you
show  the lady to the  door?' he ushers  Miss  Tox forth.  As she  passes Mr
Dombey's room,  she shrinks into the inmost depths of  the black bonnet, and
walks, on tip-toe;  and there is not  another atom in the world which haunts
him  so,  that feels such sorrow and solicitude about him, as Miss Tox takes
out under the black bonnet into the street, and tries to carry home shadowed
it from the newly-lighted lamps
     But Miss Tox is not a  part of  Mr Dombey's world. She comes back every
evening at  dusk; adding clogs and  an umbrella to the bonnet on wet nights;
and bears the grins of Towlinson, and the huffs and rebuffs  of Mrs Pipchin,
and all to  ask how he  does, and how he bears  his misfortune:  but she has
nothing to  do  with Mr Dombey's  world. Exacting and harassing as  ever, it
goes on without her; and she, a by no means bright or particular star, moves
in her  little  orbit in the corner of  another system, and knows  it  quite
well, and comes, and cries, and goes away, and is satisfied. Verily Miss Tox
is easier of satisfaction than the world that troubles Mr Dombey so much!
     At the Counting House, the clerks discuss the great disaster in all its
lights  and shades, but chiefly wonder  who will get Mr Carker's place. They
are  generally of opinion that it will be  shorn of some of its  emoluments,
and  made  uncomfortable by newly-devised checks and restrictions; and those
who are beyond all hope of it are quite sure  they would rather not have it,
and  don't at  all envy the person  for  whom  it may prove to  be reserved.
Nothing like the  prevailing sensation has existed  in  the  Counting  House
since Mr Dombey's little son died; but  all such  excitements there  take  a
social,  not  to  say a jovial turn,  and  lead to the  cultivation of  good
fellowship.  A reconciliation is established  on  this  propitious  occasion
between the acknowledged  wit of the Counting  House  and an aspiring rival,
with whom he has been at deadly feud  for months; and a little dinner  being
proposed, in commemoration of their happily restored amity, takes place at a
neighbouring   tavern;  the   wit   in   the  chair;  the  rival  acting  as
Vice-President. The orations  following the removal of the cloth are  opened
by the Chair, who says, Gentlemen,  he can't disguise from himself that this
is not  a time for private dissensions. Recent occurrences to which he  need
not more particularly allude, but  which  have not  been  altogether without
notice  in some Sunday Papers,' and in a daily paper which he need not  name
(here every other member of the company names it in an audible murmur), have
caused him to reflect;  and he  feels that for him and Robinson to have  any
personal differences at such a moment, would be  for ever to deny  that good
feeling in the general cause, for which he has reason to think and hope that
the  gentlemen in Dombey's  House have  always been  distinguished. Robinson
replies to this like a man  and a brother; and one gentleman who has been in
the office three  years, under continual notice to quit on account of lapses
in his arithmetic, appears in a perfectly new light, suddenly  bursting  out
with a thrilling speech, in which he  says, May their  respected chief never
again know the desolation which has fallen on  his hearth! and  says a great
variety of things, beginning with  'May he never again,'  which are received
with thunders  of applause. In  short,  a most delightful evening is passed,
only interrupted by a difference between two juniors, who, quarrelling about
the probable amount of Mr Carker's  late receipts per annum, defy each other
with decanters, and are taken out greatly excited.  Soda water is in general
request at  the  office next  day, and most  of the party deem  the  bill an
imposition.
     As to Perch,  the  messenger, he is in a fair  way of  being ruined for
life. He  finds  himself again constantly  in bars  of  public-houses, being
treated and lying  dreadfully. It appears that he met everybody concerned in
the late  transaction, everywhere, and  said to them,  'Sir,' or 'Madam,' as
the case  was, 'why do you  look so pale?' at which each shuddered from head
to foot, and said, 'Oh, Perch!'  and ran away.  Either  the consciousness of
these enormities, or the reaction  consequent on liquor, reduces Mr Perch to
an extreme state of low  spirits at that hour of the evening when he usually
seeks consolation  in the society of Mrs Perch at Balls Pond;  and Mrs Perch
frets a good deal,  for she fears his confidence in woman is shaken now, and
that he half expects on coming home at night to find  her gone off with some
Viscount - 'which,'  as  she observes to an intimate female friend, 'is what
these wretches in the form  of woman have to answer for, Mrs P. It ain't the
harm they  do themselves so  much as what they reflect upon us, Ma'am; and I
see it in Perch's eye.
     Mr Dombey's servants  are becoming, at the same time, quite dissipated,
and unfit for other service. They have hot suppers every night, and 'talk it
over' with smoking  drinks  upon the  board. Mr  Towlinson is always maudlin
after half-past ten, and frequently begs  to know whether he didn't say that
no good would ever come of living in a corner house? They whisper about Miss
Florence, and wonder where she is; but agree that if Mr  Dombey  don't know,
Mrs Dombey does. This brings them to the latter, of whom Cook  says, She had
a stately way though, hadn't she? But she was  too high! They all agree that
she was too high, and Mr  Towlinson's old  flame, the housemaid (who is very
virtuous), entreats that  you  will never talk to  her any more about people
who hold their heads up, as if the ground wasn't good enough for 'em.
     Everything that is said and done about it, except by Mr Dombey, is done
in chorus. Mr Dombey and the world are alone together.

        CHAPTER 52.
     Secret Intelligence

     Good Mrs Brown and her daughter Alice kept silent company  together, in
their own dwelling. It was early in the evening, and late in the spring. But
a few days  had elapsed  since Mr  Dombey had  told  Major  Bagstock  of his
singular  intelligence, singularly obtained, which  might  turn  out  to  be
valueless, and might turn  out  to  be true; and the world was not satisfied
yet.
     The mother and  daughter sat  for a long time  without  interchanging a
word: almost without  motion.  The old woman's face was shrewdly anxious and
expectant;  that  of  her daughter  was  expectant too, but in  a less sharp
degree, and sometimes it darkened, as if  with gathering disappointment  and
incredulity. The old woman, without heeding these changes in its expression,
though her eyes were often turned towards it, sat mumbling and munching, and
listening confidently.
     Their abode, though poor and miserable,  was not so utterly wretched as
in  the  days when only Good Mrs Brown  inhabited  it. Some  few attempts at
cleanliness and order were  manifest, though made in a  reckless, gipsy way,
that  might have connected them,  at a glance, with the  younger woman.  The
shades of evening thickened and deepened as the two kept  silence, until the
blackened walls were nearly lost in the prevailing gloom.
     Then Alice broke the silence which had lasted so long, and said:
     'You may give him up, mother. He'll not come here.'
     'Death give him up!' returned the old woman, impatiently. 'He will come
here.'
     'We shall see,' said Alice.
     'We shall see him,' returned her mother.
     'And doomsday,' said the daughter.
     'You think I'm  in my second childhood, I know!' croaked the old woman.
'That's  the respect and duty that I get from my own gal, but I'm wiser than
you  take me  for.  He'll come. T'other day when  I touched his  coat in the
street, he looked round as if I was a toad. But Lord, to see him when I said
their names, and asked him if he'd like to find out where they was!'
     'Was it so angry?' asked her daughter, roused to interest in a moment.
     'Angry? ask if it was bloody. That's more like the word. Angry? Ha, ha!
To call that  only angry!' said the old woman, hobbling to the cupboard, and
lighting  a  candle,  which  displayed  the workings  of  her mouth  to ugly
advantage, as she brought it  to the  table. 'I might as well call your face
only angry, when you think or talk about 'em.'
     It was something different from that, truly, as she  sat as still as  a
crouched tigress, with her kindling eyes.
     'Hark!' said the old woman, triumphantly. 'I hear a  step coming.  It's
not the tread of anyone that lives about here, or comes this  way often.  We
don't  walk like that.  We should grow proud on such neighbours! Do you hear
him?'
     'I believe you are right, mother,'  replied  Alice,  in  a  low  voice.
'Peace! open the door.'
     As she drew herself within her shawl,  and gathered it  about  her, the
old woman  complied; and peering  out, and beckoning,  gave  admission to Mr
Dombey,  who  stopped  when he had set  his foot within the door, and looked
distrustfully around.
     'It's a poor  place  for a great gentleman like your worship,' said the
old woman, curtseying and chattering. 'I told you so, but there's no harm in
it.'
     'Who is that?' asked Mr Dombey, looking at her companion.
     'That's my handsome daughter,' said the  old woman. 'Your worship won't
mind her. She knows all about it.'
     A shadow fell  upon his face not less expressive than if he had groaned
aloud, 'Who does not know all about it!'  but he looked at her steadily, and
she, without any acknowledgment of  his presence, looked at him. The  shadow
on his face was  darker when he turned  his glance away from her;  and  even
then  it wandered back again, furtively, as if he were  haunted by her  bold
eyes, and some remembrance they inspired.
     'Woman,' said Mr Dombey to the  old witch who was chucKling and leering
close at  his  elbow,  and  who,  when  he  turned to  address  her, pointed
stealthily at her daughter, and rubbed her hands, and pointed again, 'Woman!
I believe that I am weak and forgetful of my station in coming here, but you
know why I come, and what you offered when  you stopped me in the street the
other  day. What  is it that you have to tell  me concerning  what I want to
know; and  how does it happen that I can  find voluntary intelligence  in  a
hovel like this,' with a disdainful glance about him,  'when  I have exerted
my power and means to obtain it in  vain? I do not think,' he said, after  a
moment's  pause, during which he had observed her, sternly, 'that you are so
audacious  as to mean to trifle with me, or endeavour to impose upon me. But
if  you  have  that purpose,  you had better stop on the threshold  of  your
scheme.  My humour is  not a trifling one,  and my  acknowledgment  will  be
severe.'
     'Oh a proud, hard gentleman!' chuckled the old woman, shaking her head,
and  rubbing her shrivelled hands, 'oh  hard, hard, hard!  But  your worship
shall  see with your  own eyes and hear with your own ears;  not with ours -
and if  your worship's put upon their track, you won't mind paying something
for it, will you, honourable deary?'
     'Money,' returned  Mr Dombey,  apparently relieved, and assured by this
inquiry, 'will bring about unlikely things, I know.  It  may turn even means
as unexpected and unpromising  as  these, to account. Yes. For any  reliable
information  I receive,  I will pay. But I must have the  information first,
and judge for myself of its value.'
     'Do  you know  nothing  more  powerful than  money?'  asked the younger
woman, without rising, or altering her attitude.
     'Not here, I should imagine,' said Mr Dombey.
     'You should know of something  that  is more  powerful elsewhere, as  I
judge,' she returned. 'Do you know nothing of a woman's anger?'
     'You have a saucy tongue, Jade,' said Mr Dombey.
     'Not  usually,' she answered, without any show of emotion:  'I speak to
you now, that you  may understand us better, and rely more on  us. A woman's
anger  is pretty  much the same here,  as in your fine house.  I am angry. I
have been so, many years. I have as good cause for my anger as you have  for
yours, and its object is the same man.'
     He started, in spite of himself, and looked at her with
     astonishment.
     'Yes,' she said, with a kind  of laugh. 'Wide as the distance  may seem
between us, it  is  so. How it is  so, is no matter; that is my story, and I
keep my story to myself. I would bring you and him together, because  I have
a rage against him. My mother there, is  avaricious and poor; and she  would
sell any  tidings she could glean, or anything, or anybody, for money. It is
fair  enough, perhaps, that you  should pay her some, if she can help you to
what you want to know. But  that is not my motive. I have told you what mine
is, and  it would be as strong and all-sufficient with me if you haggled and
bargained  with  her for a  sixpence. I  have done. My saucy  tongue says no
more, if you wait here till sunrise tomorrow.'
     The old woman, who had shown great uneasiness during this speech, which
had a tendency  to depreciate her expected gains, pulled Mr Dombey softly by
the sleeve, and whispered to him not to mind her. He glared at them both, by
turns, with a haggard look, and said, in a  deeper voice than was usual with
him:
     'Go on - what do you know?'
     'Oh, not so fast, your worship! we must wait for someone,' answered the
old woman. 'It's to  be got from  someone  else - wormed out  -  screwed and
twisted from him.'
     'What do you mean?' said Mr Dombey.
     'Patience,' she croaked, laying her  hand, like  a  claw, upon his arm.
'Patience. I'll get at it. I know I can! If he was to hold it back from me,'
said Good Mrs Brown, crooking her ten fingers, 'I'd tear it out of him!'
     Mr Dombey  followed her with his eyes as  she hobbled to the door,  and
looked out again: and then his glance sought her daughter;  but she remained
impassive, silent, and regardless of him.
     'Do you tell me,  woman,' he said, when  the  bent figure of  Mrs Brown
came back, shaking its head and chattering to itself, 'that there is another
person expected here?'
     'Yes!' said the old woman, looking up into his face, and nodding.
     'From whom you are to  exact  the intelligence  that is to be useful to
me?'
     'Yes,' said the old woman, nodding again.
     'A stranger?'
     'Chut!' said the old woman, with a shrill laugh. 'What signifies! Well,
well; no. No stranger  to your worship. But he won't see you. He'd be afraid
of you, and wouldn't talk. You'll stand behind that door, and judge  him for
yourself. We don't ask to be believed on trust What! Your worship doubts the
room behind the door? Oh the suspicion of you rich gentlefolks! Look  at it,
then.'
     Her sharp eye had detected an involuntary expression of this feeling on
his   part,  which  was  not   unreasonable   under  the  circumstances.  In
satisfaction of  it she  now took  the  candle to the door she spoke  of. Mr
Dombey looked in; assured himself  that  it was  an empty, crazy  room;  and
signed to her to put the light back in its place.
     'How long,' he asked, 'before this person comes?'
     'Not long,'  she  answered. 'Would your worship sit down for a few  odd
minutes?'
     He made no answer; but began pacing the room with an irresolute air, as
if he were  undecided whether  to remain or depart,  and as if  he  had some
quarrel with himself for being there at all. But soon his tread grew  slower
and heavier, and his face more sternly thoughtful!; as the object with which
he had come, fixed itself in his mind, and dilated there again.
     While  he  thus walked up and  down with his  eyes  on the ground,  Mrs
Brown, in  the chair  from which she had risen to receive him, sat listening
anew. The monotony of his step, or the  uncertainty of age, made her so slow
of hearing, that a  footfall without had sounded in her daughter's ears  for
some moments,  and she  had looked up  hastily  to warn  her  mother of  its
approach, before the  old woman was roused  by it. But then she started from
her seat,  and  whispering 'Here he is!' hurried her visitor to his place of
observation, and put a  bottle and glass upon the table, with such alacrity,
as  to be ready to fling her  arms  round the neck of Rob the Grinder on his
appearance at the door.
     'And  here's my bonny boy,'  cried Mrs  Brown,  'at last!  - oho,  oho!
You're like my own son, Robby!'
     'Oh! Misses Brown!' remonstrated the Grinder. 'Don't! Can't you be fond
of  a  cove  without  squeedging and throttling  of him?  Take  care  of the
birdcage in my hand, will you?'
     'Thinks of a birdcage, afore me!'  cried  the old woman, apostrophizing
the ceiling. 'Me that feels more than a mother for him!'
     'Well,  I'm sure I'm very much  obliged to you, Misses Brown,' said the
unfortunate youth, greatly aggravated; 'but you're so jealous of a cove. I'm
very fond of you myself,  and all that, of course; but I  don't smother you,
do I, Misses Brown?'
     He looked  and spoke as  if he wOuld have been far from objecting to do
so, however, on a favourable occasion.
     'And to talk about birdcages, too!' whimpered the Grinder. 'As  If that
was a crime! Why, look'ee here! Do you know who this belongs to?'
     'To Master, dear?' said the old woman with a grin.
     'Ah!' replied the Grinder, lifting  a  large cage tied up in a wrapper,
on the  table, and untying it  with his  teeth and  hands. 'It's our parrot,
this is.'
     'Mr Carker's parrot, Rob?'
     'Will you hold your tongue, Misses Brown?' returned the goaded Grinder.
'What  do you go naming names  for? I'm  blest,' said  Rob, pulling his hair
with both hands in the exasperation of his feelings, 'if she ain't enough to
make a cove run wild!'
     'What! Do you snub me, thankless boy!' cried  the old woman, with ready
vehemence.
     'Good gracious, Misses Brown, no!' returned  the Grinder, with tears in
his eyes. 'Was there ever such a - ! Don't I dote upon you, Misses Brown?'
     'Do you, sweet Rob? Do you truly,  chickabiddy?'  With that, Mrs  Brown
held him in her fond embrace once more; and did not release him until he had
made several violent and ineffectual struggles with  his legs,  and his hair
was standing on end all over his head.
     'Oh!' returned the Grinder, 'what a thing it is to be perfectly pitched
into with  affection like this  here.  I wish she was  - How  have you been,
Misses Brown?'
     'Ah! Not here since this night week!' said the old woman, contemplating
him with a look of reproach.
     'Good gracious, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder, 'I  said tonight's
a week, that I'd come tonight, didn't  I? And here I am. How you do go on! I
wish you'd be a little rational, Misses Brown. I'm hoarse with saying things
in my defence, and  my very face is  shiny with being hugged!'  He rubbed it
hard with his sleeve, as if to remove the tender polish in question.
     'Drink a  little drop  to comfort you,  my  Robin,' said the old woman,
filling the glass from the bottle and giving it to him.
     'Thank'ee,  Misses  Brown,' returned the  Grinder. 'Here's your health.
And long may you - et ceterer.' Which, to judge from the expression  of  his
face,  did  not include any very choice blessings. 'And  here's her health,'
said the  Grinder,  glancing at Alice, who  sat with her eyes fixed,  as  it
seemed to him, on the wall behind him, but in reality on Mr Dombey's face at
the door, 'and wishing her the same and many of 'em!'
     He drained the glass to these two sentiments, and set it down.
     'Well, I  say, Misses Brown!' he proceeded. 'To go on a little rational
now. You're a judge of birds, and up to their ways, as I know to my cost.'
     'Cost!' repeated Mrs Brown.
     'Satisfaction,  I mean,' returned  the Grinder. 'How  you do take  up a
cove, Misses Brown! You've put it all out of my head again.'
     'Judge of birds, Robby,' suggested the old woman.
     'Ah!' said  the Grinder. 'Well, I've got to  take care of this parrot -
certain things being sold, and a certain establishment broke up -  and as  I
don't want no notice took at present, I wish  you'd attend to her for a week
or so, and give  her board and  lodging, will you? If I must come  backwards
and forwards,' mused the Grinder with a dejected  face, 'I may  as well have
something to come for.'
     'Something to come for?' screamed the old woman.
     'Besides you, I mean, Misses Brown,' returned the craven Rob. 'Not that
I want any  inducement  but yourself,  Misses Brown,  I'm  sure. Don't begin
again, for goodness' sake.'
     'He don't care for me! He don't care for me, as I care  for him!' cried
Mrs Brown, lifting up her skinny hands. 'But I'll take care of his bird.'
     'Take good care of it too, you know, Mrs Brown,' said Rob,  shaking his
head.  'If  you was so much as  to stroke its feathers once the wrong way, I
believe it would be found out.'
     'Ah, so sharp as that, Rob?' said Mrs Brown, quickly.
     'Sharp,  Misses  Brown!'  repeated  Rob. 'But this is  not to be talked
about.'
     Checking himself abruptly, and not without a fearful glance across  the
room,  Rob filled the glass again, and having slowly  emptied it, shook  his
head, and began  to draw  his  fingers across  and across the wires  of  the
parrot's cage by way  of a diversion from  the dangerous theme that had just
been broached.
     The old  woman eyed  him slily, and hitching her chair nearer his,  and
looking in  at the parrot, who  came down from the gilded  dome at her call,
said:
     'Out of place now, Robby?'
     'Never you mind, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder, shortly.
     'Board wages, perhaps, Rob?' said Mrs Brown.
     'Pretty Polly!' said the Grinder.
     The old woman darted a  glance at him  that  might have  warned him  to
consider his ears in danger, but it was his turn to  look  in at the  parrot
now, and however expressive his imagination may have  made her angry  scowl,
it was unseen by his bodily eyes.
     'I wonder Master didn't take you with him, Rob,' said the old woman, in
a wheedling voice, but with increased malignity of aspect.
     Rob was so absorbed in contemplation of the parrot, and in trolling his
forefinger on the wires, that he made no answer.
     The old woman had  her clutch within a hair's breadth of  his shock  of
hair as it stooped over the table; but she restrained her fingers, and said,
in a voice that choked with its efforts to be coaxing:
     'Robby, my child.'
     'Well, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder.
     'I say I wonder Master didn't take you with him, dear.'
     'Never you mind, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder.
     Mrs Brown instantly directed the  clutch of her right hand at his hair,
and the clutch of her left hand at  his throat, and held on to the object of
her  fond affection  with such extraordinary fury,  that  his  face began to
blacken in a moment.
     'Misses Brown!' exclaimed the Grinder, 'let go, will  you? What are you
doing of? Help, young woman! Misses Brow- Brow- !'
     The young woman, however,  equally unmoved by his direct appeal to her,
and  by his  inarticulate utterance,  remained  quite neutral,  until, after
struggling  with his assailant  into a  corner, Rob disengaged himself,  and
stood  there panting and  fenced in by his  own elbows, while the old woman,
panting too, and stamping with rage and eagerness, appeared to be collecting
her energies for another swoop upon him. At this crisis Alice interposed her
voice, but not in the Grinder's favour, by saying,
     'Well done, mother. Tear him to pieces!'
     'What, young woman!' blubbered Rob; 'are you  against me too? What have
I been and done? What  am I to be tore to pieces for, I should like to know?
Why do you take and choke a cove who has never done you any harm, neither of
you?  Call  yourselves  females,  too!'  said the  frightened  and afflicted
Grinder, with his coat-cuff at his eye. 'I'm surprised at  you! Where's your
feminine tenderness?'
     'You thankless dog!' gasped Mrs Brown. 'You impudent insulting dog!'
     'What have I been and done to  go and  give you offence, Misses Brown?'
retorted the fearful Rob. 'You was very much attached to me a minute ago.'
     'To cut me off with  his  short answers and his sulky  words,' said the
old  woman. 'Me!  Because I  happen to  be curious to  have a  little bit of
gossip about Master and the lady, to dare to play at fast and loose with me!
But I'll talk to you no more, my lad. Now go!'
     'I'm  sure,  Misses  Brown,'  returned  the  abject Grinder,  'I  never
Insiniwated that I wished to  go. Don't talk like that, Misses Brown, if you
please.'
     'I  won't talk at all,' said  Mrs Brown, with an action of  her crooked
fingers that  made  him shrink into half his  natural compass in the corner.
'Not another word with him shall pass my lips. He's an  ungrateful  hound. I
cast him off. Now let him go! And I'll slip those  after him that shall talk
too  much; that won't be shook  away; that'll  hang to him like leeches, and
slink arter  him  like foxes. What! He knows 'em. He knows his old games and
his old ways.  If  he's forgotten 'em, they'll  soon remind him. Now let him
go, and see how he'll do Master's business,  and keep Master's secrets, with
such company always following him up and down. Ha, ha, ha! He'll find 'em  a
different sort  from you and  me, Ally;  Close as he is with you and me. Now
let him go, now let him go!'
     The old woman, to the  unspeakable  dismay  of the Grinder,  walked her
twisted figure round  and  round, in  a ring of  some four feet in diameter,
constantly repeating these words, and shaking her fist  above  her head, and
working her mouth about.
     'Misses Brown,'  pleaded  Rob, coming a little out of his corner,  'I'm
sure  you wouldn't  injure a cove,  on second thoughts, and  in cold  blood,
would you?'
     'Don't talk  to  me,'  said Mrs  Brown, still  wrathfully  pursuing her
circle. 'Now let him go, now let him go!'
     'Misses Brown,'  urged the  tormented Grinder, 'I didn't  mean to - Oh,
what a thing it is for a cove to get  into such a line as this! - I was only
careful of  talking, Misses  Brown,  because I always am, on  account of his
being up to everything; but I  might  have known it  wouldn't  have gone any
further.  I'm sure  I'm  quite  agreeable,'  with  a wretched face, 'for any
little  bit of  gossip, Misses Brown. Don't go on like this, if  you please.
Oh, couldn't you  have the goodness to put in a word  for a miserable  cove,
here?' said the Grinder, appealing in desperation to the daughter.
     'Come,  mother,  you hear what he says,' she  interposed, in her  stern
voice, and with an impatient  action of her head; 'try him once more, and if
you fall out with him again, ruin him, if you like, and have done with him.'
     Mrs  Brown,  moved  as  it  seemed  by  this  very  tender exhortation,
presently began  to  howl;  and softening by  degrees, took  the  apologetic
Grinder to  her arms, who embraced  her with a face of unutterable woe,  and
like a victim as he was, resumed his former seat,  close by the  side of his
venerable friend,  whom he suffered, not without  much constrained sweetness
of countenance, combating very expressive physiognomical revelations  of  an
opposite character to draw his arm through hers, and keep it there.
     'And how's  Master, deary dear?' said Mrs Brown,  when, sitting in this
amicable posture, they had pledged each other.
     'Hush! If you'd be so good, Misses Brown, as to speak a  little lower,'
Rob implored. 'Why, he's pretty well, thank'ee, I suppose.'
     'You're not out of place, Robby?' said Mrs Brown, in a wheedling tone.
     'Why,  I'm  not exactly out of place,  nor in,' faltered Rob. 'I -  I'm
still in pay, Misses Brown.'
     'And nothing to do, Rob?'
     'Nothing particular to do just now, Misses Brown, but to - keep my eyes
open, said the Grinder, rolling them in a forlorn way.
     'Master abroad, Rob?'
     'Oh,  for goodness' sake, Misses Brown, couldn't you gossip with a cove
about anything else?' cried the Grinder, in a burst of despair.
     The impetuous Mrs Brown  rising directly, the tortured Grinder detained
her,  stammering 'Ye-es,  Misses Brown,  I believe he's abroad.  What's  she
staring  at?' he added, in allusion  to the daughter, whose  eyes were fixed
upon the face that now again looked out behind
     'Don't  mind  her,  lad,' said  the  old woman, holding him  closer  to
prevent his  turning round. 'It's her way - her  way. Tell me, Rob. Did  you
ever see the lady, deary?'
     'Oh, Misses Brown,  what lady?'  cried the Grinder in a tone of piteous
supplication.
     'What lady?' she retorted. 'The lady; Mrs Dombey.'
     'Yes, I believe I see her once,' replied Rob.
     'The night she went away, Robby,  eh?' said the old woman  in his  ear,
and  taking note  of  every  change in  his  face. 'Aha!  I know it was that
night.'
     'Well, if you know it was that night, you know, Misses  Brown,' replied
Rob, 'it's no use putting pinchers into a cove to make him say so.
     'Where did  they go  that night, Rob?  Straight  away? How did they go?
Where did you see her? Did she  laugh? Did she cry? Tell  me  all about it,'
cried the  old hag, holding him closer yet, patting the hand that was  drawn
through his arm against her other hand, and searching every line in his face
with her  bleared eyes. 'Come! Begin!  I want to be told all about it. What,
Rob, boy!  You and  me can keep a secret together, eh? We've done so  before
now. Where did they go first, Rob?'
     The wretched Grinder made a gasp, and a pause.
     'Are you dumb?' said the old woman, angrily.
     'Lord, Misses  Brown, no! You expect a cove to be a flash of lightning.
I wish I was  the electric fluency,' muttered  the bewildered Grinder.  'I'd
have a shock at somebody, that would settle their business.'
     'What do you say?' asked the old woman, with a grin.
     'I'm  wishing my  love  to you, Misses  Brown,' returned the false Rob,
seeking consolation in  the glass. 'Where did they go to  first was  it? Him
and her, do you mean?'
     'Ah!' said the old woman, eagerly. 'Them two.'
     'Why, they didn't go nowhere - not together, I mean,' answered Rob.
     The old woman looked at  him, as though she had  a strong  impulse upon
her to make  another clutch at his  head and throat, but was restrained by a
certain dogged mystery in his face.
     'That was the  art of it,' said the reluctant Grinder;  'that's the way
nobody  saw  'em  go, or has been  able  to say  how they did  go. They went
different ways, I tell you Misses Brown.
     'Ay, ay, ay! To meet at an  appointed place,'  chuckled the  old woman,
after a moment's silent and keen scrutiny of his face.
     'Why, if they weren't a going to meet somewhere, I  suppose  they might
as well  have stayed at home, mightn't they, Brown?' returned the  unwilling
Grinder.
     'Well, Rob?  Well?'  said the  old woman,  drawing his  arm yet tighter
through her own,  as if, in  her eagerness,  she were afraid of his slipping
away.
     'What, haven't  we  talked  enough  yet,  Misses  Brown?'  returned the
Grinder, who, between his  sense of injury, his sense  of  liquor,  and  his
sense  of being  on the rack, had become so lachrymose, that at almost every
answer he scooped his coats into one or  other  of his eyes, and  uttered an
unavailing whine  of remonstrance. 'Did she laugh that night, was it? Didn't
you ask if she laughed, Misses Brown?'
     'Or cried?' added the old woman, nodding assent.
     'Neither,' said the Grinder. 'She kept as steady when  she and me - oh,
I see you  will have it  out of me, Misses Brown!  But take your solemn oath
now, that you'll never tell anybody.'
     This Mrs Brown very readily did: being naturally Jesuitical; and having
no other intention in the matter than that her concealed visitor should hear
for himself.
     'She kept  as steady, then, when she and me went down  to Southampton,'
said the Grinder, 'as a image. In the morning she  was just the same, Misses
Brown. And when she went away in the packet before daylight, by herself - me
pretending to be her servant, and seeing her safe aboard -  she was just the
same. Now, are you contented, Misses Brown?'
     'No, Rob. Not yet,' answered Mrs Brown, decisively.
     'Oh, here's a woman for you!' cried the unfortunate Rob, in an outburst
of feeble lamentation over his own helplessness.
     'What did you wish to know next, Misses Brown?'
     'What became of Master? Where did  he go?' she  inquired, still holding
hIm tight, and looking close into his face, with her sharp eyes.
     'Upon my soul, I don't know, Misses Brown,' answered Rob.
     'Upon my soul I don't know what he did, nor where he went, nor anything
about  him I only know what  he said to me as  a caution  to hold my tongue,
when we parted; and I tell you this, Misses  Brown, as a friend, that sooner
than ever repeat  a word of what we're saying now,  you had  better take and
shoot yourself, or shut  yourself up in this house, and  set it  a-fire, for
there's nothing he wouldn't do, to be revenged  upon you. You don't know him
half as well as I do, Misses Brown. You're never safe from him, I tell you.'
     'Haven't I taken  an  oath,' retorted the  old woman, 'and won't I keep
it?'
     'Well, I'm sure I hope you will, Misses  Brown,' returned Rob, somewhat
doubtfully, and not without a  latent threatening in his  manner. 'For  your
own sake, quite as much as mine'
     He  looked at her as he gave her  this friendly caution, and emphasized
it with a nodding of his head; but finding it uncomfortable to encounter the
yellow face with its  grotesque action, and the ferret  eyes with their keen
old  wintry gaze, so close  to  his  own, he looked down  uneasily  and  sat
skulking  in  his chair,  as if he were  trying to bring hImself to a sullen
declaration  that he would answer  no more questions.  The old woman,  still
holding  him  as before, took this opportunity of raising the  forefinger of
her right hand, in  the air,  as a stealthy signal to the concealed observer
to give particular attention to what was about to follow.
     'Rob,' she said, in her most coaxing tone.
     'Good  gracious, Misses  Brown,  what's the  matter now?'  returned the
exasperated Grinder.
     'Rob! where did the lady and Master appoint to meet?'
     Rob shuffled more  and more, and looked up and looked down, and bit his
thumb, and dried it on his waistcoat, and finally said, eyeing his tormentor
askance, 'How should I know, Misses Brown?'
     The old woman held up her finger again, as before, and replying, 'Come,
lad! It's no use leading me to  that, and  there leaving me. I want to know'
waited for his  answer. Rob, after  a discomfited pause, suddenly broke  out
with, 'How can I pronounce the names of foreign places,  Mrs Brown?  What an
unreasonable woman you are!'
     'But you have heard it said, Robby,' she retorted firmly, 'and you know
what it sounded like. Come!'
     'I never heard it said, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder.
     'Then,' retorted the old woman quickly,  'you have seen it written, and
you can spell it.'
     Rob, with a petulant exclamation between laughing  and crying - for  he
was  penetrated  with some admiration of Mrs  Brown's cunning,  even through
this persecution -  after  some reluctant  fumbling in his waistcoat pocket,
produced from it a little piece of chalk. The old woman's eyes sparkled when
she saw it between his thumb and finger, and hastily clearing a space on the
deal  table, that  he might  write the  word there, she once  more  made her
signal with a shaking hand.
     'Now I tell you beforehand what  it is, Misses Brown,' said  Rob, 'it's
no use asking me  anything else. I won't answer anything else; I  can't. How
long it was to be  before they met, or whose plan it was that they was to go
away  alone, I don't know no more than you do. I don't  know any  more about
it. If  I was to tell  you how I  found out  this word, you'd believe  that.
Shall I tell you, Misses Brown?'
     'Yes, Rob.'
     'Well then,  Misses Brown. The  way - now you won't  ask  any more, you
know?'  said Rob, turning  his eyes, which were now fast getting  drowsy and
stupid, upon her.
     'Not another word,' said Mrs Brown.
     'Well then, the way was this. When a certain person  left the lady with
me, he put  a piece of  paper with a direction written on  it in  the lady's
hand, saying  it was  in  case  she  should  forget.  She  wasn't  afraid of
forgetting, for she tore  it  up as soon as his back was turned, and when  I
put up the carriage steps, I shook out one of the pieces - she sprinkled the
rest  out of the window, I  suppose,  for there was none  there  afterwards,
though  I looked for  'em. There was only one word on it, and that was this,
if you  must and  will know. But remember! You're  upon  your  oath,  Misses
Brown!'
     Mrs Brown knew  that, she said. Rob, having nothing more  to say, began
to chalk, slowly and laboriously, on the table.
     '"D,"' the old woman read aloud, when he had formed the letter.
     'Will you hold your tongue, Misses  Brown?' he  exclaimed, covering  it
with his hand, and turning impatiently upon her. 'I won't  have it read out.
Be quiet, will you!'
     'Then write  large,  Rob,' she returned, repeating  her  secret signal;
'for my eyes are not good, even at print.'
     Muttering to  himself, and returning to his work with  an ill will, Rob
went  on with the  word.  As he bent his  head  down, the  person for  whose
information he so unconsciously laboured, moved from the door behind  him to
within a  short stride of  his  shoulder,  and  looked  eagerly  towards the
creeping track of his hand upon the table. At the same time, Alice, from her
opposite chair, watched it  narrowly as it  shaped the letters, and repeated
each one  on her lips as he made it,  without articulating  it aloud. At the
end of every letter  her eyes and Mr Dombey's met, as if each of them sought
to be confirmed by the other; and thus they both spelt D.I.J.O.N.
     'There!' said the Grinder, moistening the palm of his hand hastily,  to
obliterate  the word; and not  content  with  smearing it  out,  rubbing and
planing all trace of it away with his coat-sleeve,  until the very colour of
the chalk  was gone  from the table. 'Now,  I hope you're  contented, Misses
Brown!'
     The old woman,  in token of  her being so,  released his arm and patted
his back; and the Grinder, overcome with  mortification,  cross-examination,
and  liquor, folded his arms on the table, laid his head upon them, and fell
asleep.
     Not  until  he  had  been heavily asleep  some  time,  and was  snoring
roundly, did  the old woman turn  towards the  door  where Mr  Dombey  stood
concealed, and beckon him to come through the room, and pass out. Even then,
she hovered over Rob, ready  to blind him with her hands, or strike his head
down,  if he should raise it while the secret step was crossing to the door.
But though her glance took sharp cognizance of the sleeper, it was sharp too
for the waking man; and when he  touched her hand with his, and in  spite of
all his caution, made a chinking,  golden sound, it was as bright and greedy
as a raven's.
     The  daughter's dark gaze followed him  to the door, and noted well how
pale he was, and how his hurried tread indicated that the least delay was an
insupportable  restraint upon him, and how he  was burning to be active  and
away. As  he closed the door behind him, she looked round at her mother. The
old woman  trotted  to her; opened her hand to  show  what was within;  and,
tightly closing it again in her jealousy and avarice, whispered:
     'What will he do, Ally?'
     'Mischief,' said the daughter.
     'Murder?' asked the old woman.
     'He's a madman,  in his wounded pride, and may do that, for anything we
can say, or he either.'
     Her glance was brighter  than her  mother's, and the fire that shone in
it was fiercer; but her face was colourless, even to her lips
     They  said no more, but sat apart; the mother communing with her money;
the daughter with her thoughts; the  glance of each, shining in the gloom of
the  feebly lighted room. Rob  slept and snored. The disregarded parrot only
was in  action.  It  twisted and pulled  at the wires of its  cage, with its
crooked beak, and crawled up to the dome, and along its roof like a fly, and
down again head foremost,  and shook, and  bit, and rattled at every slender
bar, as if it knew its master's danger, and was wild to force a passage out,
and fly away to warn him of it.

        CHAPTER 53.
     More Intelligence

     There were two of  the traitor's own blood - his renounced  brother and
sister - on whom the weight of his guilt rested almost more heavily, at this
time, than on the man whom  he had so deeply  injured. Prying and tormenting
as the world was, it did Mr Dombey the service of nerving him to pursuit and
revenge. It roused his passion, stung his pride, twisted the one idea of his
life into a new shape, and made some gratification of  his wrath, the object
into which  his  whole  intellectual  existence  resolved  itself.  All  the
stubbornness and implacability  of his  nature,  all its  hard  impenetrable
quality, all its gloom and moroseness, all its exaggerated sense of personal
importance, all its jealous  disposition  to resent  the  least flaw in  the
ample recognition  of  his importance by  others,  set this  way  like  many
streams  united  into  one,  and bore  him on  upon  their  tide.  The  most
impetuously  passionate and violently impulsive of mankind would have been a
milder  enemy to encounter than the sullen Mr Dombey wrought to this. A wild
beast  would have been  easier  turned or  soothed than the  grave gentleman
without a wrinkle in his starched cravat.
     But  the very intensity of  his purpose became  almost a substitute for
action in it.  While  he  was yet  uninformed of the  traitor's  retreat, it
served to  divert his mind from  his own calamity, and to  entertain it with
another prospect. The  brother and sister of his false favourite had no such
relief; everything in their history, past and present, gave  his delinquency
a more afflicting meaning to them.
     The sister may have  sometimes sadly thought that if  she had  remained
with him, the companion and friend she had been once,  he might have escaped
the  crime into which he had fallen. If she ever  thought so,  it  was still
without regret for what she had done, without the least  doubt of her  duty,
without  any  pricing  or enhancing  of  her  self-devotion.  But  when this
possibility  presented itself to  the erring and  repentant  brother,  as it
sometimes did, it  smote upon his heart with such a keen,  reproachful touch
as he could hardly bear. No idea of retort upon his  cruel brother came into
his  mind. New accusation of himself,  fresh inward lamentings over  his own
unworthiness,  and the ruin in which it was at once his  consolation and his
self-reproach that he did not stand alone, were the sole kind of reflections
to which the discovery gave rise in him.
     It  was on the very same  day whose evening set upon the last  chapter,
and when Mr Dombey's world was busiest  with the elopement of his wife, that
the window  of the room in  which the brother and  sister sat at their early
breakfast, was darkened by  the  unexpected shadow of a man  coming  to  the
little porch: which man was Perch the Messenger.
     'I've  stepped over  from Balls Pond at a early hour,'  said  Mr Perch,
confidentially looking in  at the room door, and stopping on the mat to wipe
his  shoes  all  round,  which  had  no  mud  upon  them,  'agreeable to  my
instructions  last night. They was, to be  sure and bring  a note to you, Mr
Carker, before  you went out in the morning. I should have been  here a good
hour and a half ago,' said Mr Perch, meekly, 'but fOr the state of health of
Mrs P., who I thought I should have lost in the night, I do assure you, five
distinct times.'
     'Is your wife so ill?' asked Harriet.
     'Why, you see,' said Mr Perch, first turning  round to  shut  the  door
carefully, 'she takes what has happened in our House so much to heart, Miss.
Her nerves is so very delicate, you see, and soon unstrung. Not but what the
strongest nerves  had good need to be shook, I'm sure. You feel it very much
yourself, no doubts.
     Harriet repressed a sigh, and glanced at her brother.
     'I'm sure I feel it myself, in my humble way,' Mr Perch went on to say,
with  a shake of his head, 'in a manner I couldn't have believed if I hadn't
been called upon to  undergo. It has almost the  effect of drink upon  me. I
literally feels every morning as if I had been taking more than was good for
me over-night.'
     Mr Perch's appearance corroborated this recital of his symptoms.  There
was an air  of feverish  lassitude about it, that seemed referable to drams;
and, which,  in fact,  might  no doubt  have been traced  to  those numerous
discoveries of  himself in  the  bars of public-houses,  being  treated  and
questioned, which he was in the daily habit of making.
     'Therefore I  can judge,' said Mr Perch, shaking his  head and speaking
in  a  silvery murmur,  'of  the  feelings of such  as is at  all peculiarly
sitiwated in this most painful rewelation.'
     Here Mr Perch  waited to be confided in;  and receiving no  confidence,
coughed behind his hand. This leading to nothing, he coughed behind his hat;
and that leading to nothing, he put his hat on the ground and  sought in his
breast pocket for the letter.
     'If I rightly recollect, there was no  answer,' said  Mr Perch, with an
affable  smile; 'but  perhaps you'll  be so good  as cast your eye  over it,
Sir.'
     John Carker broke the  seal,  which  was  Mr Dombey's,  and  possessing
himself of the contents, which were very brief, replied,
     'No. No answer is expected.'
     'Then I shall  wish you good morning,  Miss,' said Perch, taking a step
toward the door, and hoping, I'm sure, that you'll not permit yourself to be
more reduced in  mind than you can help, by the late painful rewelation. The
Papers,'  said Mr  Perch, taking two  steps back again,  and comprehensively
addressing both the  brother and  sister in  a whisper of increased mystery,
'is more eager for news of it than you'd suppose possible. One of the Sunday
ones,  in a blue cloak  and a white hat, that had previously offered for  to
bribe me - need I  say with what success? - was dodging about our court last
night as late as twenty minutes after eight  o'clock. I see him myself, with
his  eye at the counting-house  keyhole,  which being patent  is impervious.
Another one,' said Mr  Perch, 'with military frogs, is in the parlour of the
King's  Arms all  the blessed day.  I  happened, last week, to let  a little
obserwation fall there, and next morning, which was Sunday, I see  it worked
up in print, in a most surprising manner.'
     Mr Perch resorted to his  breast pocket, as if to produce the paragraph
but receiving no encouragement, pulled out his beaver gloves,  picked up his
hat, and took his  leave; and before it was high noon, Mr Perch  had related
to  several select  audiences at  the  King's Arms and  elsewhere,  how Miss
Carker, bursting into tears, had  caught him by  both hands,  and said, 'Oh!
dear dear Perch, the sight of  you is all the comfort I have left!' and  how
Mr John Carker had said, in an awful voice, 'Perch, I disown him. Never  let
me hear hIm mentioned as a brother more!'
     'Dear John,' said  Harriet, when they were left alone, and had remained
silent for some few moments. 'There are bad tidings in that letter.'
     'Yes. But nothing unexpected,' he replied. 'I saw the writer
     yesterday.'
     'The writer?'
     'Mr  Dombey. He passed  twice through  the Counting House  while I  was
there. I had been able to avoid him before,  but of course could not hope to
do that long. I know how natural it was that he should regard my presence as
something offensive; I felt it must be so, myself.'
     'He did not say so?'
     'No; he  said nothing: but I saw that  his  glance  rested on me  for a
moment, and I was prepared for  what would happen - for what has happened. I
am dismissed!'
     She looked as  little shocked  and as  hopeful as she could, but it was
distressing news, for many reasons.
     '"I need not  tell you"' said John Carker,  reading the  letter,  '"why
your  name would  henceforth have an  unnatural  sound, in however remote  a
connexion with mine, or why the daily sight of anyone who bears it, would be
unendurable to me. I have to notify the cessation of all engagements between
us, from this date, and to request that no renewal of any communication with
me,  or  my  establishment,  be ever  attempted by you."  - Enclosed  is  an
equivalent in money to a generously  long notice, and this is my discharge."
Heaven knows, Harriet, it is a lenient and considerate one, when we remember
all!'
     'If it be lenient and considerate to punish you  at all, John, for  the
misdeed of another,' she replied gently, 'yes.'
     'We have been an ill-omened race  to  him,' said