It was not in the nature of things that a man of Mr Dombey's mood,
opposed to such a spirit as he had raised against himself, should be
softened in the imperious asperity of his temper; or that the cold hard
armour of pride in which he lived encased, should be made more flexible
by constant collision with haughty scorn and defiance. It is the curse
of such a nature--it is a main part of the heavy retribution on itself
it bears within itself--that while deference and concession swell
its evil qualities, and are the food it grows upon, resistance and a
questioning of its exacting claims, foster it too, no less. The evil
that is in it finds equally its means of growth and propagation in
opposites. It draws support and life from sweets and bitters; bowed down
before, or unacknowledged, it still enslaves the breast in which it
has its throne; and, worshipped or rejected, is as hard a master as the
Devil in dark fables.

Towards his first wife, Mr Dombey, in his cold and lofty arrogance, had
borne himself like the removed Being he almost conceived himself to be.
He had been 'Mr Dombey' with her when she first saw him, and he was 'Mr
Dombey' when she died. He had asserted his greatness during their whole
married life, and she had meekly recognised it. He had kept his distant
seat of state on the top of his throne, and she her humble station on
its lowest step; and much good it had done him, so to live in solitary
bondage to his one idea. He had imagined that the proud character of his
second wife would have been added to his own--would have merged into it,
and exalted his greatness. He had pictured himself haughtier than ever,
with Edith's haughtiness subservient to his. He had never entertained
the possibility of its arraying itself against him. And now, when he
found it rising in his path at every step and turn of his daily life,
fixing its cold, defiant, and contemptuous face upon him, this pride of
his, instead of withering, or hanging down its head beneath the shock,
put forth new shoots, became more concentrated and intense, more gloomy,
sullen, irksome, and unyielding, than it had ever been before.

Who wears such armour, too, bears with him ever another heavy
retribution. It is of proof against conciliation, love, and confidence;
against all gentle sympathy from without, all trust, all tenderness, all
soft emotion; but to deep stabs in the self-love, it is as vulnerable as
the bare breast to steel; and such tormenting festers rankle there,
as follow on no other wounds, no, though dealt with the mailed hand of
Pride itself, on weaker pride, disarmed and thrown down.

Such wounds were his. He felt them sharply, in the solitude of his
old rooms; whither he now began often to retire again, and pass long
solitary hours. It seemed his fate to be ever proud and powerful; ever
humbled and powerless where he would be most strong. Who seemed fated to
work out that doom?

Who? Who was it who could win his wife as she had won his boy? Who was
it who had shown him that new victory, as he sat in the dark corner? Who
was it whose least word did what his utmost means could not? Who was it
who, unaided by his love, regard or notice, thrived and grew beautiful
when those so aided died? Who could it be, but the same child at whom
he had often glanced uneasily in her motherless infancy, with a kind of
dread, lest he might come to hate her; and of whom his foreboding was
fulfilled, for he DID hate her in his heart?

Yes, and he would have it hatred, and he made it hatred, though some
sparkles of the light in which she had appeared before him on the
memorable night of his return home with his Bride, occasionally hung
about her still. He knew now that she was beautiful; he did not dispute
that she was graceful and winning, and that in the bright dawn of her
womanhood she had come upon him, a surprise. But he turned even this
against her. In his sullen and unwholesome brooding, the unhappy man,
with a dull perception of his alienation from all hearts, and a vague
yearning for what he had all his life repelled, made a distorted picture
of his rights and wrongs, and justified himself with it against her. The
worthier she promised to be of him, the greater claim he was disposed to
antedate upon her duty and submission. When had she ever shown him duty
and submission? Did she grace his life--or Edith's? Had her attractions
been manifested first to him--or Edith? Why, he and she had never been,
from her birth, like father and child! They had always been estranged.
She had crossed him every way and everywhere. She was leagued against
him now. Her very beauty softened natures that were obdurate to him, and
insulted him with an unnatural triumph.

It may have been that in all this there were mutterings of an awakened
feeling in his breast, however selfishly aroused by his position of
disadvantage, in comparison with what she might have made his life. But
he silenced the distant thunder with the rolling of his sea of pride.
He would bear nothing but his pride. And in his pride, a heap of
inconsistency, and misery, and self-inflicted torment, he hated her.

To the moody, stubborn, sullen demon, that possessed him, his wife
opposed her different pride in its full force. They never could have led
a happy life together; but nothing could have made it more unhappy, than
the wilful and determined warfare of such elements. His pride was set
upon maintaining his magnificent supremacy, and forcing recognition of
it from her. She would have been racked to death, and turned but her
haughty glance of calm inflexible disdain upon him, to the last. Such
recognition from Edith! He little knew through what a storm and struggle
she had been driven onward to the crowning honour of his hand. He little
knew how much she thought she had conceded, when she suffered him to
call her wife.

Mr Dombey was resolved to show her that he was supreme. There must be no
will but his. Proud he desired that she should be, but she must be proud
for, not against him. As he sat alone, hardening, he would often hear
her go out and come home, treading the round of London life with no more
heed of his liking or disliking, pleasure or displeasure, than if he
had been her groom. Her cold supreme indifference--his own unquestioned
attribute usurped--stung him more than any other kind of treatment could
have done; and he determined to bend her to his magnificent and stately
will.

He had been long communing with these thoughts, when one night he sought
her in her own apartment, after he had heard her return home late. She
was alone, in her brilliant dress, and had but that moment come from her
mother's room. Her face was melancholy and pensive, when he came upon
her; but it marked him at the door; for, glancing at the mirror before
it, he saw immediately, as in a picture-frame, the knitted brow, and
darkened beauty that he knew so well.

'Mrs Dombey,' he said, entering, 'I must beg leave to have a few words
with you.'

'To-morrow,' she replied.

'There is no time like the present, Madam,' he returned. 'You mistake
your position. I am used to choose my own times; not to have them chosen
for me. I think you scarcely understand who and what I am, Mrs Dombey.'

'I think,' she answered, 'that I understand you very well.'

She looked upon him as she said so, and folding her white arms,
sparkling with gold and gems, upon her swelling breast, turned away her
eyes.

If she had been less handsome, and less stately in her cold composure,
she might not have had the power of impressing him with the sense of
disadvantage that penetrated through his utmost pride. But she had the
power, and he felt it keenly. He glanced round the room: saw how the
splendid means of personal adornment, and the luxuries of dress, were
scattered here and there, and disregarded; not in mere caprice and
carelessness (or so he thought), but in a steadfast haughty disregard of
costly things: and felt it more and more. Chaplets of flowers, plumes of
feathers, jewels, laces, silks and satins; look where he would, he
saw riches, despised, poured out, and made of no account. The very
diamonds--a marriage gift--that rose and fell impatiently upon her
bosom, seemed to pant to break the chain that clasped them round her
neck, and roll down on the floor where she might tread upon them.

He felt his disadvantage, and he showed it. Solemn and strange among
this wealth of colour and voluptuous glitter, strange and constrained
towards its haughty mistress, whose repellent beauty it repeated, and
presented all around him, as in so many fragments of a mirror, he was
conscious of embarrassment and awkwardness. Nothing that ministered
to her disdainful self-possession could fail to gall him. Galled and
irritated with himself, he sat down, and went on, in no improved humour:

'Mrs Dombey, it is very necessary that there should be some
understanding arrived at between us. Your conduct does not please me,
Madam.'

She merely glanced at him again, and again averted her eyes; but she
might have spoken for an hour, and expressed less.

'I repeat, Mrs Dombey, does not please me. I have already taken occasion
to request that it may be corrected. I now insist upon it.'

'You chose a fitting occasion for your first remonstrance, Sir, and you
adopt a fitting manner, and a fitting word for your second. You insist!
To me!'

'Madam,' said Mr Dombey, with his most offensive air of state, 'I have
made you my wife. You bear my name. You are associated with my position
and my reputation. I will not say that the world in general may be
disposed to think you honoured by that association; but I will say that
I am accustomed to "insist," to my connexions and dependents.'

'Which may you be pleased to consider me? she asked.

'Possibly I may think that my wife should partake--or does partake, and
cannot help herself--of both characters, Mrs Dombey.'

She bent her eyes upon him steadily, and set her trembling lips. He
saw her bosom throb, and saw her face flush and turn white. All this he
could know, and did: but he could not know that one word was whispering
in the deep recesses of her heart, to keep her quiet; and that the word
was Florence.

Blind idiot, rushing to a precipice! He thought she stood in awe of him.

'You are too expensive, Madam,' said Mr Dombey. 'You are extravagant.
You waste a great deal of money--or what would be a great deal in the
pockets of most gentlemen--in cultivating a kind of society that is
useless to me, and, indeed, that upon the whole is disagreeable to me. I
have to insist upon a total change in all these respects. I know that in
the novelty of possessing a tithe of such means as Fortune has placed
at your disposal, ladies are apt to run into a sudden extreme. There
has been more than enough of that extreme. I beg that Mrs Granger's very
different experiences may now come to the instruction of Mrs Dombey.'

Still the fixed look, the trembling lips, the throbbing breast, the
face now crimson and now white; and still the deep whisper Florence,
Florence, speaking to her in the beating of her heart.

His insolence of self-importance dilated as he saw this alteration in
her. Swollen no less by her past scorn of him, and his so recent feeling
of disadvantage, than by her present submission (as he took it to be),
it became too mighty for his breast, and burst all bounds. Why, who
could long resist his lofty will and pleasure! He had resolved to
conquer her, and look here!

'You will further please, Madam,' said Mr Dombey, in a tone of sovereign
command, 'to understand distinctly, that I am to be deferred to and
obeyed. That I must have a positive show and confession of deference
before the world, Madam. I am used to this. I require it as my right.
In short I will have it. I consider it no unreasonable return for the
worldly advancement that has befallen you; and I believe nobody will
be surprised, either at its being required from you, or at your making
it.--To Me--To Me!' he added, with emphasis.

No word from her. No change in her. Her eyes upon him.

'I have learnt from your mother, Mrs Dombey,' said Mr Dombey, with
magisterial importance, 'what no doubt you know, namely, that Brighton is
recommended for her health. Mr Carker has been so good.'

She changed suddenly. Her face and bosom glowed as if the red light of
an angry sunset had been flung upon them. Not unobservant of the change,
and putting his own interpretation upon it, Mr Dombey resumed:

'Mr Carker has been so good as to go down and secure a house there, for
a time. On the return of the establishment to London, I shall take such
steps for its better management as I consider necessary. One of these,
will be the engagement at Brighton (if it is to be effected), of a very
respectable reduced person there, a Mrs Pipchin, formerly employed in a
situation of trust in my family, to act as housekeeper. An establishment
like this, presided over but nominally, Mrs Dombey, requires a competent
head.'

She had changed her attitude before he arrived at these words, and now
sat--still looking at him fixedly--turning a bracelet round and round
upon her arm; not winding it about with a light, womanly touch, but
pressing and dragging it over the smooth skin, until the white limb
showed a bar of red.

'I observed,' said Mr Dombey--'and this concludes what I deem it
necessary to say to you at present, Mrs Dombey--I observed a moment ago,
Madam, that my allusion to Mr Carker was received in a peculiar manner.
On the occasion of my happening to point out to you, before that
confidential agent, the objection I had to your mode of receiving my
visitors, you were pleased to object to his presence. You will have to
get the better of that objection, Madam, and to accustom yourself to
it very probably on many similar occasions; unless you adopt the remedy
which is in your own hands, of giving me no cause of complaint. Mr
Carker,' said Mr Dombey, who, after the emotion he had just seen,
set great store by this means of reducing his proud wife, and who was
perhaps sufficiently willing to exhibit his power to that gentleman in
a new and triumphant aspect, 'Mr Carker being in my confidence, Mrs
Dombey, may very well be in yours to such an extent. I hope, Mrs
Dombey,' he continued, after a few moments, during which, in his
increasing haughtiness, he had improved on his idea, 'I may not find
it necessary ever to entrust Mr Carker with any message of objection or
remonstrance to you; but as it would be derogatory to my position and
reputation to be frequently holding trivial disputes with a lady upon
whom I have conferred the highest distinction that it is in my power
to bestow, I shall not scruple to avail myself of his services if I see
occasion.'

'And now,' he thought, rising in his moral magnificence, and rising
a stiffer and more impenetrable man than ever, 'she knows me and my
resolution.'

The hand that had so pressed the bracelet was laid heavily upon her
breast, but she looked at him still, with an unaltered face, and said in
a low voice:

'Wait! For God's sake! I must speak to you.'

Why did she not, and what was the inward struggle that rendered her
incapable of doing so, for minutes, while, in the strong constraint she
put upon her face, it was as fixed as any statue's--looking upon him
with neither yielding nor unyielding, liking nor hatred, pride not
humility: nothing but a searching gaze?

'Did I ever tempt you to seek my hand? Did I ever use any art to win
you? Was I ever more conciliating to you when you pursued me, than I
have been since our marriage? Was I ever other to you than I am?'

'It is wholly unnecessary, Madam,' said Mr Dombey, 'to enter upon such
discussions.'

'Did you think I loved you? Did you know I did not? Did you ever care,
Man! for my heart, or propose to yourself to win the worthless thing?
Was there any poor pretence of any in our bargain? Upon your side, or on
mine?'

'These questions,' said Mr Dombey, 'are all wide of the purpose, Madam.'

She moved between him and the door to prevent his going away, and
drawing her majestic figure to its height, looked steadily upon him
still.

'You answer each of them. You answer me before I speak, I see. How can
you help it; you who know the miserable truth as well as I? Now, tell
me. If I loved you to devotion, could I do more than render up my whole
will and being to you, as you have just demanded? If my heart were pure
and all untried, and you its idol, could you ask more; could you have
more?'

'Possibly not, Madam,' he returned coolly.

'You know how different I am. You see me looking on you now, and you can
read the warmth of passion for you that is breathing in my face.' Not a
curl of the proud lip, not a flash of the dark eye, nothing but the same
intent and searching look, accompanied these words. 'You know my general
history. You have spoken of my mother. Do you think you can degrade, or
bend or break, me to submission and obedience?'

Mr Dombey smiled, as he might have smiled at an inquiry whether he
thought he could raise ten thousand pounds.

'If there is anything unusual here,' she said, with a slight motion of
her hand before her brow, which did not for a moment flinch from its
immovable and otherwise expressionless gaze, 'as I know there are
unusual feelings here,' raising the hand she pressed upon her bosom, and
heavily returning it, 'consider that there is no common meaning in the
appeal I am going to make you. Yes, for I am going;' she said it as in
prompt reply to something in his face; 'to appeal to you.'

Mr Dombey, with a slightly condescending bend of his chin that rustled
and crackled his stiff cravat, sat down on a sofa that was near him, to
hear the appeal.

'If you can believe that I am of such a nature now,'--he fancied he saw
tears glistening in her eyes, and he thought, complacently, that he had
forced them from her, though none fell on her cheek, and she regarded
him as steadily as ever,--'as would make what I now say almost
incredible to myself, said to any man who had become my husband, but,
above all, said to you, you may, perhaps, attach the greater weight to
it. In the dark end to which we are tending, and may come, we shall not
involve ourselves alone (that might not be much) but others.'

Others! He knew at whom that word pointed, and frowned heavily.

'I speak to you for the sake of others. Also your own sake; and for
mine. Since our marriage, you have been arrogant to me; and I have
repaid you in kind. You have shown to me and everyone around us, every
day and hour, that you think I am graced and distinguished by your
alliance. I do not think so, and have shown that too. It seems you do
not understand, or (so far as your power can go) intend that each of us
shall take a separate course; and you expect from me instead, a homage
you will never have.'

Although her face was still the same, there was emphatic confirmation of
this 'Never' in the very breath she drew.

'I feel no tenderness towards you; that you know. You would care nothing
for it, if I did or could. I know as well that you feel none towards
me. But we are linked together; and in the knot that ties us, as I have
said, others are bound up. We must both die; we are both connected with
the dead already, each by a little child. Let us forbear.'

Mr Dombey took a long respiration, as if he would have said, Oh! was
this all!

'There is no wealth,' she went on, turning paler as she watched him,
while her eyes grew yet more lustrous in their earnestness, 'that could
buy these words of me, and the meaning that belongs to them. Once cast
away as idle breath, no wealth or power can bring them back. I mean
them; I have weighed them; and I will be true to what I undertake. If
you will promise to forbear on your part, I will promise to forbear on
mine. We are a most unhappy pair, in whom, from different causes, every
sentiment that blesses marriage, or justifies it, is rooted out; but in
the course of time, some friendship, or some fitness for each other, may
arise between us. I will try to hope so, if you will make the endeavour
too; and I will look forward to a better and a happier use of age than I
have made of youth or prime.'

Throughout she had spoken in a low plain voice, that neither rose nor
fell; ceasing, she dropped the hand with which she had enforced herself
to be so passionless and distinct, but not the eyes with which she had
so steadily observed him.

'Madam,' said Mr Dombey, with his utmost dignity, 'I cannot entertain
any proposal of this extraordinary nature.'

She looked at him yet, without the least change.

'I cannot,' said Mr Dombey, rising as he spoke, 'consent to temporise
or treat with you, Mrs Dombey, upon a subject as to which you are in
possession of my opinions and expectations. I have stated my ultimatum,
Madam, and have only to request your very serious attention to it.'

To see the face change to its old expression, deepened in intensity!
To see the eyes droop as from some mean and odious object! To see the
lighting of the haughty brow! To see scorn, anger, indignation, and
abhorrence starting into sight, and the pale blank earnestness vanish
like a mist! He could not choose but look, although he looked to his
dismay.

'Go, Sir!' she said, pointing with an imperious hand towards the
door. 'Our first and last confidence is at an end. Nothing can make us
stranger to each other than we are henceforth.'

'I shall take my rightful course, Madam,' said Mr Dombey, 'undeterred,
you may be sure, by any general declamation.'

She turned her back upon him, and, without reply, sat down before her
glass.

'I place my reliance on your improved sense of duty, and more correct
feeling, and better reflection, Madam,' said Mr Dombey.

She answered not one word. He saw no more expression of any heed of
him, in the mirror, than if he had been an unseen spider on the wall,
or beetle on the floor, or rather, than if he had been the one or other,
seen and crushed when she last turned from him, and forgotten among the
ignominious and dead vermin of the ground.

He looked back, as he went out at the door, upon the well-lighted
and luxurious room, the beautiful and glittering objects everywhere
displayed, the shape of Edith in its rich dress seated before her glass,
and the face of Edith as the glass presented it to him; and betook
himself to his old chamber of cogitation, carrying away with him a
vivid picture in his mind of all these things, and a rambling and
unaccountable speculation (such as sometimes comes into a man's head)
how they would all look when he saw them next.

For the rest, Mr Dombey was very taciturn, and very dignified, and very
confident of carrying out his purpose; and remained so.

He did not design accompanying the family to Brighton; but he graciously
informed Cleopatra at breakfast, on the morning of departure, which
arrived a day or two afterwards, that he might be expected down,
soon. There was no time to be lost in getting Cleopatra to any place
recommended as being salutary; for, indeed, she seemed upon the wane,
and turning of the earth, earthy.

Without having undergone any decided second attack of her malady, the
old woman seemed to have crawled backward in her recovery from the
first. She was more lean and shrunken, more uncertain in her imbecility,
and made stranger confusions in her mind and memory. Among other
symptoms of this last affliction, she fell into the habit of confounding
the names of her two sons-in-law, the living and the deceased; and
in general called Mr Dombey, either 'Grangeby,' or 'Domber,' or
indifferently, both.

But she was youthful, very youthful still; and in her youthfulness
appeared at breakfast, before going away, in a new bonnet made express,
and a travelling robe that was embroidered and braided like an old
baby's. It was not easy to put her into a fly-away bonnet now, or to
keep the bonnet in its place on the back of her poor nodding head, when
it was got on. In this instance, it had not only the extraneous effect
of being always on one side, but of being perpetually tapped on the
crown by Flowers the maid, who attended in the background during
breakfast to perform that duty.

'Now, my dearest Grangeby,' said Mrs Skewton, 'you must posively prom,'
she cut some of her words short, and cut out others altogether, 'come
down very soon.'

'I said just now, Madam,' returned Mr Dombey, loudly and laboriously,
'that I am coming in a day or two.'

'Bless you, Domber!'

Here the Major, who was come to take leave of the ladies, and who was
staring through his apoplectic eyes at Mrs Skewton's face with the
disinterested composure of an immortal being, said:

'Begad, Ma'am, you don't ask old Joe to come!'

'Sterious wretch, who's he?' lisped Cleopatra. But a tap on the bonnet
from Flowers seeming to jog her memory, she added, 'Oh! You mean
yourself, you naughty creature!'

'Devilish queer, Sir,' whispered the Major to Mr Dombey. 'Bad case.
Never did wrap up enough;' the Major being buttoned to the chin.
'Why who should J. B. mean by Joe, but old Joe Bagstock--Joseph--your
slave--Joe, Ma'am? Here! Here's the man! Here are the Bagstock bellows,
Ma'am!' cried the Major, striking himself a sounding blow on the chest.

'My dearest Edith--Grangeby--it's most trordinry thing,' said Cleopatra,
pettishly, 'that Major--'

'Bagstock! J. B.!' cried the Major, seeing that she faltered for his
name.

'Well, it don't matter,' said Cleopatra. 'Edith, my love, you know I
never could remember names--what was it? oh!--most trordinry thing that
so many people want to come down to see me. I'm not going for long. I'm
coming back. Surely they can wait, till I come back!'

Cleopatra looked all round the table as she said it, and appeared very
uneasy.

'I won't have visitors--really don't want visitors,' she said; 'little
repose--and all that sort of thing--is what I quire. No odious brutes
must proach me till I've shaken off this numbness;' and in a grisly
resumption of her coquettish ways, she made a dab at the Major with her
fan, but overset Mr Dombey's breakfast cup instead, which was in quite a
different direction.

Then she called for Withers, and charged him to see particularly that
word was left about some trivial alterations in her room, which must be
all made before she came back, and which must be set about immediately,
as there was no saying how soon she might come back; for she had a great
many engagements, and all sorts of people to call upon. Withers received
these directions with becoming deference, and gave his guarantee for
their execution; but when he withdrew a pace or two behind her, it
appeared as if he couldn't help looking strangely at the Major, who
couldn't help looking strangely at Mr Dombey, who couldn't help looking
strangely at Cleopatra, who couldn't help nodding her bonnet over one
eye, and rattling her knife and fork upon her plate in using them, as if
she were playing castanets.

Edith alone never lifted her eyes to any face at the table, and never
seemed dismayed by anything her mother said or did. She listened to
her disjointed talk, or at least, turned her head towards her when
addressed; replied in a few low words when necessary; and sometimes
stopped her when she was rambling, or brought her thoughts back with
a monosyllable, to the point from which they had strayed. The mother,
however unsteady in other things, was constant in this--that she was
always observant of her. She would look at the beautiful face, in its
marble stillness and severity, now with a kind of fearful admiration;
now in a giggling foolish effort to move it to a smile; now with
capricious tears and jealous shakings of her head, as imagining herself
neglected by it; always with an attraction towards it, that never
fluctuated like her other ideas, but had constant possession of her.
From Edith she would sometimes look at Florence, and back again at
Edith, in a manner that was wild enough; and sometimes she would try to
look elsewhere, as if to escape from her daughter's face; but back to it
she seemed forced to come, although it never sought hers unless sought,
or troubled her with one single glance.

The breakfast concluded, Mrs Skewton, affecting to lean girlishly upon
the Major's arm, but heavily supported on the other side by Flowers the
maid, and propped up behind by Withers the page, was conducted to the
carriage, which was to take her, Florence, and Edith to Brighton.

'And is Joseph absolutely banished?' said the Major, thrusting in his
purple face over the steps. 'Damme, Ma'am, is Cleopatra so hard-hearted
as to forbid her faithful Antony Bagstock to approach the presence?'

'Go along!' said Cleopatra, 'I can't bear you. You shall see me when I
come back, if you are very good.'

'Tell Joseph, he may live in hope, Ma'am,' said the Major; 'or he'll die
in despair.'

Cleopatra shuddered, and leaned back. 'Edith, my dear,' she said. 'Tell
him--'

'What?'

'Such dreadful words,' said Cleopatra. 'He uses such dreadful words!'

Edith signed to him to retire, gave the word to go on, and left the
objectionable Major to Mr Dombey. To whom he returned, whistling.

'I'll tell you what, Sir,' said the Major, with his hands behind him,
and his legs very wide asunder, 'a fair friend of ours has removed to
Queer Street.'

'What do you mean, Major?' inquired Mr Dombey.

'I mean to say, Dombey,' returned the Major, 'that you'll soon be an
orphan-in-law.'

Mr Dombey appeared to relish this waggish description of himself so very
little, that the Major wound up with the horse's cough, as an expression
of gravity.

'Damme, Sir,' said the Major, 'there is no use in disguising a fact. Joe
is blunt, Sir. That's his nature. If you take old Josh at all, you
take him as you find him; and a devilish rusty, old rasper, of a
close-toothed, J. B. file, you do find him. Dombey,' said the Major,
'your wife's mother is on the move, Sir.'

'I fear,' returned Mr Dombey, with much philosophy, 'that Mrs Skewton is
shaken.'

'Shaken, Dombey!' said the Major. 'Smashed!'

'Change, however,' pursued Mr Dombey, 'and attention, may do much yet.'

'Don't believe it, Sir,' returned the Major. 'Damme, Sir, she never
wrapped up enough. If a man don't wrap up,' said the Major, taking in
another button of his buff waistcoat, 'he has nothing to fall back upon.
But some people will die. They will do it. Damme, they will. They're
obstinate. I tell you what, Dombey, it may not be ornamental; it may not
be refined; it may be rough and tough; but a little of the genuine old
English Bagstock stamina, Sir, would do all the good in the world to the
human breed.'

After imparting this precious piece of information, the Major, who
was certainly true-blue, whatever other endowments he may have had or
wanted, coming within the 'genuine old English' classification, which
has never been exactly ascertained, took his lobster-eyes and his
apoplexy to the club, and choked there all day.

Cleopatra, at one time fretful, at another self-complacent, sometimes
awake, sometimes asleep, and at all times juvenile, reached Brighton the
same night, fell to pieces as usual, and was put away in bed; where a
gloomy fancy might have pictured a more potent skeleton than the maid,
who should have been one, watching at the rose-coloured curtains, which
were carried down to shed their bloom upon her.

It was settled in high council of medical authority that she should take
a carriage airing every day, and that it was important she should
get out every day, and walk if she could. Edith was ready to attend
her--always ready to attend her, with the same mechanical attention and
immovable beauty--and they drove out alone; for Edith had an uneasiness
in the presence of Florence, now that her mother was worse, and told
Florence, with a kiss, that she would rather they two went alone.

Mrs Skewton, on one particular day, was in the irresolute, exacting,
jealous temper that had developed itself on her recovery from her first
attack. After sitting silent in the carriage watching Edith for some
time, she took her hand and kissed it passionately. The hand was neither
given nor withdrawn, but simply yielded to her raising of it, and being
released, dropped down again, almost as if it were insensible. At this
she began to whimper and moan, and say what a mother she had been, and
how she was forgotten! This she continued to do at capricious intervals,
even when they had alighted: when she herself was halting along with the
joint support of Withers and a stick, and Edith was walking by her side,
and the carriage slowly following at a little distance.

It was a bleak, lowering, windy day, and they were out upon the Downs
with nothing but a bare sweep of land between them and the sky. The
mother, with a querulous satisfaction in the monotony of her complaint,
was still repeating it in a low voice from time to time, and the proud
form of her daughter moved beside her slowly, when there came advancing
over a dark ridge before them, two other figures, which in the distance,
were so like an exaggerated imitation of their own, that Edith stopped.

Almost as she stopped, the two figures stopped; and that one which to
Edith's thinking was like a distorted shadow of her mother, spoke to the
other, earnestly, and with a pointing hand towards them. That one seemed
inclined to turn back, but the other, in which Edith recognised enough
that was like herself to strike her with an unusual feeling, not quite
free from fear, came on; and then they came on together.

The greater part of this observation, she made while walking towards
them, for her stoppage had been momentary. Nearer observation showed her
that they were poorly dressed, as wanderers about the country; that the
younger woman carried knitted work or some such goods for sale; and that
the old one toiled on empty-handed.

And yet, however far removed she was in dress, in dignity, in beauty,
Edith could not but compare the younger woman with herself, still. It
may have been that she saw upon her face some traces which she knew were
lingering in her own soul, if not yet written on that index; but, as
the woman came on, returning her gaze, fixing her shining eyes upon
her, undoubtedly presenting something of her own air and stature, and
appearing to reciprocate her own thoughts, she felt a chill creep over
her, as if the day were darkening, and the wind were colder.

They had now come up. The old woman, holding out her hand importunately,
stopped to beg of Mrs Skewton. The younger one stopped too, and she and
Edith looked in one another's eyes.

'What is it that you have to sell?' said Edith.

'Only this,' returned the woman, holding out her wares, without looking
at them. 'I sold myself long ago.'

'My Lady, don't believe her,' croaked the old woman to Mrs Skewton;
'don't believe what she says. She loves to talk like that. She's my
handsome and undutiful daughter. She gives me nothing but reproaches,
my Lady, for all I have done for her. Look at her now, my Lady, how she
turns upon her poor old mother with her looks.'

As Mrs Skewton drew her purse out with a trembling hand, and eagerly
fumbled for some money, which the other old woman greedily watched
for--their heads all but touching, in their hurry and decrepitude--Edith
interposed:

'I have seen you,' addressing the old woman, 'before.'

'Yes, my Lady,' with a curtsey. 'Down in Warwickshire. The morning among
the trees. When you wouldn't give me nothing. But the gentleman, he give
me something! Oh, bless him, bless him!' mumbled the old woman, holding
up her skinny hand, and grinning frightfully at her daughter.

'It's of no use attempting to stay me, Edith!' said Mrs Skewton, angrily
anticipating an objection from her. 'You know nothing about it. I won't
be dissuaded. I am sure this is an excellent woman, and a good mother.'

'Yes, my Lady, yes,' chattered the old woman, holding out her avaricious
hand. 'Thankee, my Lady. Lord bless you, my Lady. Sixpence more, my
pretty Lady, as a good mother yourself.'

'And treated undutifully enough, too, my good old creature, sometimes, I
assure you,' said Mrs Skewton, whimpering. 'There! Shake hands with me.
You're a very good old creature--full of what's-his-name--and all that.
You're all affection and et cetera, ain't you?'

'Oh, yes, my Lady!'

'Yes, I'm sure you are; and so's that gentlemanly creature Grangeby. I
must really shake hands with you again. And now you can go, you know;
and I hope,' addressing the daughter, 'that you'll show more gratitude,
and natural what's-its-name, and all the rest of it--but I never
remember names--for there never was a better mother than the good old
creature's been to you. Come, Edith!'

As the ruin of Cleopatra tottered off whimpering, and wiping its eyes
with a gingerly remembrance of rouge in their neighbourhood, the old
woman hobbled another way, mumbling and counting her money. Not one word
more, nor one other gesture, had been exchanged between Edith and the
younger woman, but neither had removed her eyes from the other for a
moment. They had remained confronted until now, when Edith, as awakening
from a dream, passed slowly on.

'You're a handsome woman,' muttered her shadow, looking after her; 'but
good looks won't save us. And you're a proud woman; but pride won't save
us. We had need to know each other when we meet again!'

Dombey and Edith's marriage continues to deteriorate. One night, he arrogantly informs her that he is not pleased with the way she is behaving: he wants her to spend less money and behave more deferentially to him. He notices that she seems agitated when he mentions Carker and threatens her with the humiliating possibility of having Carker deliver his rebukes to her if she does not alter her behavior. He also mentions that he is making arrangements for Mrs. Skewton to go to Brighton, as recommended for her health, and to be cared for by Mrs. Pipchin. Edith responds that she knows they are unsuited for each other, do not love each other, and will never enjoy a happy marriage, but that in order to make life bearable and minimize the harm to others, she thinks that they should try to lead separate lives and tolerate each other. Mr. Dombey refuses, insisting that he expects the deference and respect he has the right to demand. The next day, Mrs. Skewton, Florence, and Edith leave for Brighton. One day, while Edith and her mother are out for a walk, they encounter the haggard Mrs. Brown and Alice. Edith is struck by the resemblance between herself and Alice, and also realizes that Mrs. Brown was the gypsy woman she had met at Leamington prior to her marriage

This section is perhaps the darkest in the novel. It unflinchingly addresses the dark possibilities that have been implied from the beginning: are there situations in which there is no hope? Will individuals remain stubbornly incapable of recognizing the error of their perspectives? While Mrs. Skewton is a relatively minor character, her death adds a bleak note to the novel in that she dies without ever realizing the tragic impact her actions have had, or coming to understand that her toxic view of the world was wrong. Her death therefore endorses the possibility that characters may not be capable of reform, change, or growth. This possibility looms even larger as Dombey and Edith's marriage disintegrates. While Edith can be spiteful in her behavior towards him, she proposes a number of possibilities meant to allow them to live in relative peace. She is also very concerned that Florence not be impacted by their antagonism. Dombey, however, rejects all of her attempts at trying to make conditions in the household more bearable. In his interactions with his wife, Dombey shows even more explicit coldness and cruelty than what he has demonstrated to his daughter. He demands subservience from Edith, clearly believing that his position as a man entitles him to dictate the terms of their marriage. He also uses his intelligence to maximize damage: since he can tell that she dislikes Carker, he knows it will be especially humiliating for her to have Carker be involved in the intimate details of their life. Dombey shows that he has no compassion in what he is willing to do to make it clear that he is superior to others. Carker also demonstrates his ability to cruelly manipulate people. He knows that Florence is Edith's weak spot, and he uses this knowledge to blackmail Edith and push her into situations she would not otherwise agree to. Edith's helpless position between the two men, both of whom only want to break her to their will and don't care for her well-being, helps to create sympathy for her, which is especially important given that, in the eyes of a Victorian audience, her decision to leave her husband for another man would be shocking and highly immoral. Her wildness in her interaction with Florence is also important in that it demonstrates she is not taking her decision lightly, and would not resort to this drastic step if she had any other options. Her disgust with the valuable luxuries Dombey has given her also provides a kind of moral redemption: she is unwilling to sacrifice her integrity just so that she can enjoy costly clothes and jewelry. Florence is perpetually put in the middle of conflicts between her father and stepmother, and when Edith leaves, she attempts to comfort her father. While his reaction speaks to the grief and rage he is experiencing, it is a devastating blow to Florence. Years of psychological violence are finally manifested in a physical strike. There is also the indication of how their relationship has only soured further as Florence has matured from child into woman. Dombey's misogynistic rage at the realization that his wife has betrayed him extends to Florence as well. Dickens carefully omits the language Dombey uses in this critical scene but he implies that Dombey presumably uses a sexualized slur against Edith, perhaps explicitly making the connection to the implied references to prostitution. To use this kind of language in front of his young, sheltered daughter would be hugely taboo and constitute another kind of violence, confirming for Florence that her father has no respect for her well-being.


All is going on as it was wont. The waves are hoarse with repetition of
their mystery; the dust lies piled upon the shore; the sea-birds soar
and hover; the winds and clouds go forth upon their trackless flight;
the white arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far
away.

With a tender melancholy pleasure, Florence finds herself again on the
old ground so sadly trodden, yet so happily, and thinks of him in
the quiet place, where he and she have many and many a time conversed
together, with the water welling up about his couch. And now, as she
sits pensive there, she hears in the wild low murmur of the sea, his
little story told again, his very words repeated; and finds that all
her life and hopes, and griefs, since--in the solitary house, and in
the pageant it has changed to--have a portion in the burden of the
marvellous song.

And gentle Mr Toots, who wanders at a distance, looking wistfully
towards the figure that he dotes upon, and has followed there, but
cannot in his delicacy disturb at such a time, likewise hears the
requiem of little Dombey on the waters, rising and falling in the lulls
of their eternal madrigal in praise of Florence. Yes! and he faintly
understands, poor Mr Toots, that they are saying something of a time
when he was sensible of being brighter and not addle-brained; and the
tears rising in his eyes when he fears that he is dull and stupid now,
and good for little but to be laughed at, diminish his satisfaction in
their soothing reminder that he is relieved from present responsibility
to the Chicken, by the absence of that game head of poultry in the
country, training (at Toots's cost) for his great mill with the Larkey
Boy.

But Mr Toots takes courage, when they whisper a kind thought to him;
and by slow degrees and with many indecisive stoppages on the way,
approaches Florence. Stammering and blushing, Mr Toots affects amazement
when he comes near her, and says (having followed close on the carriage
in which she travelled, every inch of the way from London, loving even
to be choked by the dust of its wheels) that he never was so surprised
in all his life.

'And you've brought Diogenes, too, Miss Dombey!' says Mr Toots, thrilled
through and through by the touch of the small hand so pleasantly and
frankly given him.

No doubt Diogenes is there, and no doubt Mr Toots has reason to observe
him, for he comes straightway at Mr Toots's legs, and tumbles over
himself in the desperation with which he makes at him, like a very dog
of Montargis. But he is checked by his sweet mistress.

'Down, Di, down. Don't you remember who first made us friends, Di? For
shame!'

Oh! Well may Di lay his loving cheek against her hand, and run off, and
run back, and run round her, barking, and run headlong at anybody coming
by, to show his devotion. Mr Toots would run headlong at anybody, too.
A military gentleman goes past, and Mr Toots would like nothing better
than to run at him, full tilt.

'Diogenes is quite in his native air, isn't he, Miss Dombey?' says Mr
Toots.

Florence assents, with a grateful smile.

'Miss Dombey,' says Mr Toots, 'beg your pardon, but if you would like to
walk to Blimber's, I--I'm going there.'

Florence puts her arm in that of Mr Toots without a word, and they walk
away together, with Diogenes going on before. Mr Toots's legs shake
under him; and though he is splendidly dressed, he feels misfits, and
sees wrinkles, in the masterpieces of Burgess and Co., and wishes he had
put on that brightest pair of boots.

Doctor Blimber's house, outside, has as scholastic and studious an air
as ever; and up there is the window where she used to look for the pale
face, and where the pale face brightened when it saw her, and the wasted
little hand waved kisses as she passed. The door is opened by the same
weak-eyed young man, whose imbecility of grin at sight of Mr Toots is
feebleness of character personified. They are shown into the Doctor's
study, where blind Homer and Minerva give them audience as of yore, to
the sober ticking of the great clock in the hall; and where the globes
stand still in their accustomed places, as if the world were stationary
too, and nothing in it ever perished in obedience to the universal law,
that, while it keeps it on the roll, calls everything to earth.

And here is Doctor Blimber, with his learned legs; and here is Mrs
Blimber, with her sky-blue cap; and here Cornelia, with her sandy little
row of curls, and her bright spectacles, still working like a sexton in
the graves of languages. Here is the table upon which he sat forlorn
and strange, the 'new boy' of the school; and hither comes the distant
cooing of the old boys, at their old lives in the old room on the old
principle!

'Toots,' says Doctor Blimber, 'I am very glad to see you, Toots.'

Mr Toots chuckles in reply.

'Also to see you, Toots, in such good company,' says Doctor Blimber.

Mr Toots, with a scarlet visage, explains that he has met Miss Dombey
by accident, and that Miss Dombey wishing, like himself, to see the old
place, they have come together.

'You will like,' says Doctor Blimber, 'to step among our young friends,
Miss Dombey, no doubt. All fellow-students of yours, Toots, once. I
think we have no new disciples in our little portico, my dear,' says
Doctor Blimber to Cornelia, 'since Mr Toots left us.'

'Except Bitherstone,' returns Cornelia.

'Ay, truly,' says the Doctor. 'Bitherstone is new to Mr Toots.'

New to Florence, too, almost; for, in the schoolroom, Bitherstone--no
longer Master Bitherstone of Mrs Pipchin's--shows in collars and a
neckcloth, and wears a watch. But Bitherstone, born beneath some
Bengal star of ill-omen, is extremely inky; and his Lexicon has got so
dropsical from constant reference, that it won't shut, and yawns as
if it really could not bear to be so bothered. So does Bitherstone its
master, forced at Doctor Blimber's highest pressure; but in the yawn of
Bitherstone there is malice and snarl, and he has been heard to say that
he wishes he could catch 'old Blimber' in India. He'd precious soon find
himself carried up the country by a few of his (Bitherstone's) Coolies,
and handed over to the Thugs; he can tell him that.

Briggs is still grinding in the mill of knowledge; and Tozer, too;
and Johnson, too; and all the rest; the older pupils being principally
engaged in forgetting, with prodigious labour, everything they knew
when they were younger. All are as polite and as pale as ever; and among
them, Mr Feeder, B.A., with his bony hand and bristly head, is still
hard at it; with his Herodotus stop on just at present, and his other
barrels on a shelf behind him.

A mighty sensation is created, even among these grave young gentlemen,
by a visit from the emancipated Toots; who is regarded with a kind of
awe, as one who has passed the Rubicon, and is pledged never to come
back, and concerning the cut of whose clothes, and fashion of whose
jewellery, whispers go about, behind hands; the bilious Bitherstone,
who is not of Mr Toots's time, affecting to despise the latter to the
smaller boys, and saying he knows better, and that he should like to
see him coming that sort of thing in Bengal, where his mother had got an
emerald belonging to him that was taken out of the footstool of a Rajah.
Come now!

Bewildering emotions are awakened also by the sight of Florence, with
whom every young gentleman immediately falls in love, again; except,
as aforesaid, the bilious Bitherstone, who declines to do so, out of
contradiction. Black jealousies of Mr Toots arise, and Briggs is of
opinion that he ain't so very old after all. But this disparaging
insinuation is speedily made nought by Mr Toots saying aloud to Mr
Feeder, B.A., 'How are you, Feeder?' and asking him to come and dine
with him to-day at the Bedford; in right of which feats he might set up
as Old Parr, if he chose, unquestioned.

There is much shaking of hands, and much bowing, and a great desire on
the part of each young gentleman to take Toots down in Miss Dombey's
good graces; and then, Mr Toots having bestowed a chuckle on his old
desk, Florence and he withdraw with Mrs Blimber and Cornelia; and Doctor
Blimber is heard to observe behind them as he comes out last, and shuts
the door, 'Gentlemen, we will now resume our studies,' For that and
little else is what the Doctor hears the sea say, or has heard it saying
all his life.

Florence then steals away and goes upstairs to the old bedroom with Mrs
Blimber and Cornelia; Mr Toots, who feels that neither he nor anybody
else is wanted there, stands talking to the Doctor at the study-door, or
rather hearing the Doctor talk to him, and wondering how he ever thought
the study a great sanctuary, and the Doctor, with his round turned legs,
like a clerical pianoforte, an awful man. Florence soon comes down and
takes leave; Mr Toots takes leave; and Diogenes, who has been worrying
the weak-eyed young man pitilessly all the time, shoots out at the door,
and barks a glad defiance down the cliff; while Melia, and another of
the Doctor's female domestics, looks out of an upper window, laughing
'at that there Toots,' and saying of Miss Dombey, 'But really though,
now--ain't she like her brother, only prettier?'

Mr Toots, who saw when Florence came down that there were tears upon her
face, is desperately anxious and uneasy, and at first fears that he did
wrong in proposing the visit. But he is soon relieved by her saying
she is very glad to have been there again, and by her talking quite
cheerfully about it all, as they walked on by the sea. What with the
voices there, and her sweet voice, when they come near Mr Dombey's
house, and Mr Toots must leave her, he is so enslaved that he has not
a scrap of free-will left; when she gives him her hand at parting, he
cannot let it go.

'Miss Dombey, I beg your pardon,' says Mr Toots, in a sad fluster, 'but
if you would allow me to--to--'

The smiling and unconscious look of Florence brings him to a dead stop.

'If you would allow me to--if you would not consider it a liberty, Miss
Dombey, if I was to--without any encouragement at all, if I was to hope,
you know,' says Mr Toots.

Florence looks at him inquiringly.

'Miss Dombey,' says Mr Toots, who feels that he is in for it now, 'I
really am in that state of adoration of you that I don't know what to do
with myself. I am the most deplorable wretch. If it wasn't at the corner
of the Square at present, I should go down on my knees, and beg and
entreat of you, without any encouragement at all, just to let me hope
that I may--may think it possible that you--'

'Oh, if you please, don't!' cries Florence, for the moment quite alarmed
and distressed. 'Oh, pray don't, Mr Toots. Stop, if you please. Don't
say any more. As a kindness and a favour to me, don't.'

Mr Toots is dreadfully abashed, and his mouth opens.

'You have been so good to me,' says Florence, 'I am so grateful to you,
I have such reason to like you for being a kind friend to me, and I do
like you so much;' and here the ingenuous face smiles upon him with the
pleasantest look of honesty in the world; 'that I am sure you are only
going to say good-bye!'

'Certainly, Miss Dombey,' says Mr Toots, 'I--I--that's exactly what I
mean. It's of no consequence.'

'Good-bye!' cries Florence.

'Good-bye, Miss Dombey!' stammers Mr Toots. 'I hope you won't think
anything about it. It's--it's of no consequence, thank you. It's not of
the least consequence in the world.'

Poor Mr Toots goes home to his hotel in a state of desperation, locks
himself into his bedroom, flings himself upon his bed, and lies
there for a long time; as if it were of the greatest consequence,
nevertheless. But Mr Feeder, B.A., is coming to dinner, which happens
well for Mr Toots, or there is no knowing when he might get up again.
Mr Toots is obliged to get up to receive him, and to give him hospitable
entertainment.

And the generous influence of that social virtue, hospitality (to make
no mention of wine and good cheer), opens Mr Toots's heart, and warms
him to conversation. He does not tell Mr Feeder, B.A., what passed at
the corner of the Square; but when Mr Feeder asks him 'When it is to
come off?' Mr Toots replies, 'that there are certain subjects'--which
brings Mr Feeder down a peg or two immediately. Mr Toots adds, that he
don't know what right Blimber had to notice his being in Miss Dombey's
company, and that if he thought he meant impudence by it, he'd have him
out, Doctor or no Doctor; but he supposes its only his ignorance. Mr
Feeder says he has no doubt of it.

Mr Feeder, however, as an intimate friend, is not excluded from
the subject. Mr Toots merely requires that it should be mentioned
mysteriously, and with feeling. After a few glasses of wine, he gives
Miss Dombey's health, observing, 'Feeder, you have no idea of the
sentiments with which I propose that toast.' Mr Feeder replies, 'Oh,
yes, I have, my dear Toots; and greatly they redound to your honour, old
boy.' Mr Feeder is then agitated by friendship, and shakes hands; and
says, if ever Toots wants a brother, he knows where to find him, either
by post or parcel. Mr Feeder like-wise says, that if he may advise, he
would recommend Mr Toots to learn the guitar, or, at least the flute;
for women like music, when you are paying your addresses to 'em, and he
has found the advantage of it himself.

This brings Mr Feeder, B.A., to the confession that he has his eye
upon Cornelia Blimber. He informs Mr Toots that he don't object to
spectacles, and that if the Doctor were to do the handsome thing and
give up the business, why, there they are--provided for. He says it's
his opinion that when a man has made a handsome sum by his business, he
is bound to give it up; and that Cornelia would be an assistance in it
which any man might be proud of. Mr Toots replies by launching wildly
out into Miss Dombey's praises, and by insinuations that sometimes he
thinks he should like to blow his brains out. Mr Feeder strongly urges
that it would be a rash attempt, and shows him, as a reconcilement to
existence, Cornelia's portrait, spectacles and all.

Thus these quiet spirits pass the evening; and when it has yielded place
to night, Mr Toots walks home with Mr Feeder, and parts with him at
Doctor Blimber's door. But Mr Feeder only goes up the steps, and when
Mr Toots is gone, comes down again, to stroll upon the beach alone, and
think about his prospects. Mr Feeder plainly hears the waves informing
him, as he loiters along, that Doctor Blimber will give up the business;
and he feels a soft romantic pleasure in looking at the outside of the
house, and thinking that the Doctor will first paint it, and put it into
thorough repair.

Mr Toots is likewise roaming up and down, outside the casket that
contains his jewel; and in a deplorable condition of mind, and not
unsuspected by the police, gazes at a window where he sees a light,
and which he has no doubt is Florence's. But it is not, for that is Mrs
Skewton's room; and while Florence, sleeping in another chamber, dreams
lovingly, in the midst of the old scenes, and their old associations
live again, the figure which in grim reality is substituted for the
patient boy's on the same theatre, once more to connect it--but how
differently!--with decay and death, is stretched there, wakeful and
complaining. Ugly and haggard it lies upon its bed of unrest; and by it,
in the terror of her unimpassioned loveliness--for it has terror in
the sufferer's failing eyes--sits Edith. What do the waves say, in the
stillness of the night, to them?

'Edith, what is that stone arm raised to strike me? Don't you see it?'

'There is nothing, mother, but your fancy.'

'But my fancy! Everything is my fancy. Look! Is it possible that you
don't see it?'

'Indeed, mother, there is nothing. Should I sit unmoved, if there were
any such thing there?'

'Unmoved?' looking wildly at her--'it's gone now--and why are you
so unmoved? That is not my fancy, Edith. It turns me cold to see you
sitting at my side.'

'I am sorry, mother.'

'Sorry! You seem always sorry. But it is not for me!'

With that, she cries; and tossing her restless head from side to side
upon her pillow, runs on about neglect, and the mother she has been, and
the mother the good old creature was, whom they met, and the cold return
the daughters of such mothers make. In the midst of her incoherence,
she stops, looks at her daughter, cries out that her wits are going, and
hides her face upon the bed.

Edith, in compassion, bends over her and speaks to her. The sick old
woman clutches her round the neck, and says, with a look of horror,

'Edith! we are going home soon; going back. You mean that I shall go
home again?'

'Yes, mother, yes.'

'And what he said--what's-his-name, I never could remember
names--Major--that dreadful word, when we came away--it's not true?
Edith!' with a shriek and a stare, 'it's not that that is the matter
with me.'

Night after night, the lights burn in the window, and the figure lies
upon the bed, and Edith sits beside it, and the restless waves are
calling to them both the whole night long. Night after night, the waves
are hoarse with repetition of their mystery; the dust lies piled upon
the shore; the sea-birds soar and hover; the winds and clouds are on
their trackless flight; the white arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the
invisible country far away.

And still the sick old woman looks into the corner, where the stone
arm--part of a figure of some tomb, she says--is raised to strike her.
At last it falls; and then a dumb old woman lies upon the bed, and
she is crooked and shrunk up, and half of her is dead.

Such is the figure, painted and patched for the sun to mock, that is
drawn slowly through the crowd from day to day; looking, as it goes,
for the good old creature who was such a mother, and making mouths as it
peers among the crowd in vain. Such is the figure that is often wheeled
down to the margin of the sea, and stationed there; but on which no
wind can blow freshness, and for which the murmur of the ocean has no
soothing word. She lies and listens to it by the hour; but its speech
is dark and gloomy to her, and a dread is on her face, and when her
eyes wander over the expanse, they see but a broad stretch of desolation
between earth and heaven.

Florence she seldom sees, and when she does, is angry with and mows at.
Edith is beside her always, and keeps Florence away; and Florence, in
her bed at night, trembles at the thought of death in such a shape, and
often wakes and listens, thinking it has come. No one attends on her
but Edith. It is better that few eyes should see her; and her daughter
watches alone by the bedside.

A shadow even on that shadowed face, a sharpening even of the sharpened
features, and a thickening of the veil before the eyes into a pall that
shuts out the dim world, is come. Her wandering hands upon the coverlet
join feebly palm to palm, and move towards her daughter; and a voice
not like hers, not like any voice that speaks our mortal language--says,
'For I nursed you!'

Edith, without a tear, kneels down to bring her voice closer to the
sinking head, and answers:

'Mother, can you hear me?'

Staring wide, she tries to nod in answer.

'Can you recollect the night before I married?'

The head is motionless, but it expresses somehow that she does.

'I told you then that I forgave your part in it, and prayed God to
forgive my own. I told you that time past was at an end between us. I
say so now, again. Kiss me, mother.'

Edith touches the white lips, and for a moment all is still. A moment
afterwards, her mother, with her girlish laugh, and the skeleton of the
Cleopatra manner, rises in her bed.

Draw the rose-coloured curtains. There is something else upon its flight
besides the wind and clouds. Draw the rose-coloured curtains close!

Intelligence of the event is sent to Mr Dombey in town, who waits upon
Cousin Feenix (not yet able to make up his mind for Baden-Baden), who
has just received it too. A good-natured creature like Cousin Feenix is
the very man for a marriage or a funeral, and his position in the family
renders it right that he should be consulted.

'Dombey,' said Cousin Feenix, 'upon my soul, I am very much shocked to
see you on such a melancholy occasion. My poor aunt! She was a devilish
lively woman.'

Mr Dombey replies, 'Very much so.'

'And made up,' says Cousin Feenix, 'really young, you know, considering.
I am sure, on the day of your marriage, I thought she was good
for another twenty years. In point of fact, I said so to a man at
Brooks's--little Billy Joper--you know him, no doubt--man with a glass
in his eye?'

Mr Dombey bows a negative. 'In reference to the obsequies,' he hints,
'whether there is any suggestion--'

'Well, upon my life,' says Cousin Feenix, stroking his chin, which he
has just enough of hand below his wristbands to do; 'I really don't
know. There's a Mausoleum down at my place, in the park, but I'm afraid
it's in bad repair, and, in point of fact, in a devil of a state. But
for being a little out at elbows, I should have had it put to rights;
but I believe the people come and make pic-nic parties there inside the
iron railings.'

Mr Dombey is clear that this won't do.

'There's an uncommon good church in the village,' says Cousin Feenix,
thoughtfully; 'pure specimen of the Anglo-Norman style, and admirably
well sketched too by Lady Jane Finchbury--woman with tight stays--but
they've spoilt it with whitewash, I understand, and it's a long journey.'

'Perhaps Brighton itself,' Mr Dombey suggests.

'Upon my honour, Dombey, I don't think we could do better,' says Cousin
Feenix. 'It's on the spot, you see, and a very cheerful place.'

'And when,' hints Mr Dombey, 'would it be convenient?'

'I shall make a point,' says Cousin Feenix, 'of pledging myself for any
day you think best. I shall have great pleasure (melancholy pleasure,
of course) in following my poor aunt to the confines of the--in point
of fact, to the grave,' says Cousin Feenix, failing in the other turn of
speech.

'Would Monday do for leaving town?' says Mr Dombey.

'Monday would suit me to perfection,' replies Cousin Feenix. Therefore
Mr Dombey arranges to take Cousin Feenix down on that day, and presently
takes his leave, attended to the stairs by Cousin Feenix, who says, at
parting, 'I'm really excessively sorry, Dombey, that you should have so
much trouble about it;' to which Mr Dombey answers, 'Not at all.'

At the appointed time, Cousin Feenix and Mr Dombey meet, and go down to
Brighton, and representing, in their two selves, all the other mourners
for the deceased lady's loss, attend her remains to their place of rest.
Cousin Feenix, sitting in the mourning-coach, recognises innumerable
acquaintances on the road, but takes no other notice of them, in
decorum, than checking them off aloud, as they go by, for Mr Dombey's
information, as 'Tom Johnson. Man with cork leg, from White's. What,
are you here, Tommy? Foley on a blood mare. The Smalder girls'--and so
forth. At the ceremony Cousin Feenix is depressed, observing, that these
are the occasions to make a man think, in point of fact, that he is
getting shaky; and his eyes are really moistened, when it is over. But
he soon recovers; and so do the rest of Mrs Skewton's relatives and
friends, of whom the Major continually tells the club that she never
did wrap up enough; while the young lady with the back, who has so much
trouble with her eyelids, says, with a little scream, that she must have
been enormously old, and that she died of all kinds of horrors, and you
mustn't mention it.

So Edith's mother lies unmentioned of her dear friends, who are deaf to
the waves that are hoarse with repetition of their mystery, and blind
to the dust that is piled upon the shore, and to the white arms that are
beckoning, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away. But all
goes on, as it was wont, upon the margin of the unknown sea; and Edith
standing there alone, and listening to its waves, has dank weed cast up
at her feet, to strew her path in life withal.

Mr. Toots comes to visit Florence at Brighton and they go to Dr. Blimber's school together. On the walk home, Toots begins to propose, but Florence tactfully cuts him off. That night Toots and Feeder have dinner together; Toots laments his unrequited love for Florence, and Feeder explains that he hopes to court Cornelia. Shortly thereafter, after an anguished illness, Mrs. Skewton dies. Cousin Feenix and Mr. Dombey go to Brighton, where she is buried