In an ugly and dark room, an old woman, ugly and dark too, sat listening
to the wind and rain, and crouching over a meagre fire. More constant
to the last-named occupation than the first, she never changed her
attitude, unless, when any stray drops of rain fell hissing on the
smouldering embers, to raise her head with an awakened attention to
the whistling and pattering outside, and gradually to let it fall again
lower and lower and lower as she sunk into a brooding state of thought,
in which the noises of the night were as indistinctly regarded as is
the monotonous rolling of a sea by one who sits in contemplation on its
shore.

There was no light in the room save that which the fire afforded.
Glaring sullenly from time to time like the eye of a fierce beast half
asleep, it revealed no objects that needed to be jealous of a better
display. A heap of rags, a heap of bones, a wretched bed, two or three
mutilated chairs or stools, the black walls and blacker ceiling, were
all its winking brightness shone upon. As the old woman, with a gigantic
and distorted image of herself thrown half upon the wall behind her,
half upon the roof above, sat bending over the few loose bricks within
which it was pent, on the damp hearth of the chimney--for there was no
stove--she looked as if she were watching at some witch's altar for a
favourable token; and but that the movement of her chattering jaws and
trembling chin was too frequent and too fast for the slow flickering of
the fire, it would have seemed an illusion wrought by the light, as
it came and went, upon a face as motionless as the form to which it
belonged.

If Florence could have stood within the room and looked upon the
original of the shadow thrown upon the wall and roof as it cowered thus
over the fire, a glance might have sufficed to recall the figure of
Good Mrs Brown; notwithstanding that her childish recollection of that
terrible old woman was as grotesque and exaggerated a presentment of the
truth, perhaps, as the shadow on the wall. But Florence was not there
to look on; and Good Mrs Brown remained unrecognised, and sat staring at
her fire, unobserved.

Attracted by a louder sputtering than usual, as the rain came hissing
down the chimney in a little stream, the old woman raised her head,
impatiently, to listen afresh. And this time she did not drop it again;
for there was a hand upon the door, and a footstep in the room.

'Who's that?' she said, looking over her shoulder.

'One who brings you news, was the answer, in a woman's voice.

'News? Where from?'

'From abroad.'

'From beyond seas?' cried the old woman, starting up.

'Ay, from beyond seas.'

The old woman raked the fire together, hurriedly, and going close to
her visitor who had entered, and shut the door, and who now stood in the
middle of the room, put her hand upon the drenched cloak, and turned the
unresisting figure, so as to have it in the full light of the fire. She
did not find what she had expected, whatever that might be; for she let
the cloak go again, and uttered a querulous cry of disappointment and
misery.

'What is the matter?' asked her visitor.

'Oho! Oho!' cried the old woman, turning her face upward, with a
terrible howl.

'What is the matter?' asked the visitor again.

'It's not my gal!' cried the old woman, tossing up her arms, and
clasping her hands above her head. 'Where's my Alice? Where's my
handsome daughter? They've been the death of her!'

'They've not been the death of her yet, if your name's Marwood,' said
the visitor.

'Have you seen my gal, then?' cried the old woman. 'Has she wrote to
me?'

'She said you couldn't read,' returned the other.

'No more I can!' exclaimed the old woman, wringing her hands.

'Have you no light here?' said the other, looking round the room.

The old woman, mumbling and shaking her head, and muttering to herself
about her handsome daughter, brought a candle from a cupboard in the
corner, and thrusting it into the fire with a trembling hand, lighted it
with some difficulty and set it on the table. Its dirty wick burnt dimly
at first, being choked in its own grease; and when the bleared eyes and
failing sight of the old woman could distinguish anything by its light,
her visitor was sitting with her arms folded, her eyes turned downwards,
and a handkerchief she had worn upon her head lying on the table by her
side.

'She sent to me by word of mouth then, my gal, Alice?' mumbled the old
woman, after waiting for some moments. 'What did she say?'

'Look,' returned the visitor.

The old woman repeated the word in a scared uncertain way; and, shading
her eyes, looked at the speaker, round the room, and at the speaker once
again.

'Alice said look again, mother;' and the speaker fixed her eyes upon
her.

Again the old woman looked round the room, and at her visitor, and round
the room once more. Hastily seizing the candle, and rising from her
seat, she held it to the visitor's face, uttered a loud cry, set down
the light, and fell upon her neck!

'It's my gal! It's my Alice! It's my handsome daughter, living and
come back!' screamed the old woman, rocking herself to and fro upon the
breast that coldly suffered her embrace. 'It's my gal! It's my Alice!
It's my handsome daughter, living and come back!' she screamed again,
dropping on the floor before her, clasping her knees, laying her head
against them, and still rocking herself to and fro with every frantic
demonstration of which her vitality was capable.

'Yes, mother,' returned Alice, stooping forward for a moment and kissing
her, but endeavouring, even in the act, to disengage herself from her
embrace. 'I am here, at last. Let go, mother; let go. Get up, and sit in
your chair. What good does this do?'

'She's come back harder than she went!' cried the mother, looking up in
her face, and still holding to her knees. 'She don't care for me! after
all these years, and all the wretched life I've led!'

'Why, mother!' said Alice, shaking her ragged skirts to detach the old
woman from them: 'there are two sides to that. There have been years
for me as well as you, and there has been wretchedness for me as well as
you. Get up, get up!'

Her mother rose, and cried, and wrung her hands, and stood at a little
distance gazing on her. Then she took the candle again, and going round
her, surveyed her from head to foot, making a low moaning all the time.
Then she put the candle down, resumed her chair, and beating her hands
together to a kind of weary tune, and rolling herself from side to side,
continued moaning and wailing to herself.

Alice got up, took off her wet cloak, and laid it aside. That done, she
sat down as before, and with her arms folded, and her eyes gazing at the
fire, remained silently listening with a contemptuous face to her old
mother's inarticulate complainings.

'Did you expect to see me return as youthful as I went away, mother?'
she said at length, turning her eyes upon the old woman. 'Did you think
a foreign life, like mine, was good for good looks? One would believe
so, to hear you!'

'It ain't that!' cried the mother. 'She knows it!'

'What is it then?' returned the daughter. 'It had best be something that
don't last, mother, or my way out is easier than my way in.'

'Hear that!' exclaimed the mother. 'After all these years she threatens
to desert me in the moment of her coming back again!'

'I tell you, mother, for the second time, there have been years for me
as well as you,' said Alice. 'Come back harder? Of course I have come
back harder. What else did you expect?'

'Harder to me! To her own dear mother!' cried the old woman

'I don't know who began to harden me, if my own dear mother didn't,'
she returned, sitting with her folded arms, and knitted brows, and
compressed lips as if she were bent on excluding, by force, every
softer feeling from her breast. 'Listen, mother, to a word or two. If
we understand each other now, we shall not fall out any more, perhaps.
I went away a girl, and have come back a woman. I went away undutiful
enough, and have come back no better, you may swear. But have you been
very dutiful to me?'

'I!' cried the old woman. 'To my gal! A mother dutiful to her own
child!'

'It sounds unnatural, don't it?' returned the daughter, looking coldly
on her with her stern, regardless, hardy, beautiful face; 'but I have
thought of it sometimes, in the course of my lone years, till I have got
used to it. I have heard some talk about duty first and last; but it has
always been of my duty to other people. I have wondered now and then--to
pass away the time--whether no one ever owed any duty to me.'

Her mother sat mowing, and mumbling, and shaking her head, but
whether angrily or remorsefully, or in denial, or only in her physical
infirmity, did not appear.

'There was a child called Alice Marwood,' said the daughter, with a
laugh, and looking down at herself in terrible derision of herself,
'born, among poverty and neglect, and nursed in it. Nobody taught her,
nobody stepped forward to help her, nobody cared for her.'

'Nobody!' echoed the mother, pointing to herself, and striking her
breast.

'The only care she knew,' returned the daughter, 'was to be beaten, and
stinted, and abused sometimes; and she might have done better without
that. She lived in homes like this, and in the streets, with a crowd of
little wretches like herself; and yet she brought good looks out of this
childhood. So much the worse for her. She had better have been hunted
and worried to death for ugliness.'

'Go on! go on!' exclaimed the mother.

'I am going on,' returned the daughter. 'There was a girl called Alice
Marwood. She was handsome. She was taught too late, and taught all
wrong. She was too well cared for, too well trained, too well helped on,
too much looked after. You were very fond of her--you were better off
then. What came to that girl comes to thousands every year. It was only
ruin, and she was born to it.'

'After all these years!' whined the old woman. 'My gal begins with
this.'

'She'll soon have ended,' said the daughter. 'There was a criminal
called Alice Marwood--a girl still, but deserted and an outcast. And
she was tried, and she was sentenced. And lord, how the gentlemen in the
Court talked about it! and how grave the judge was on her duty, and on
her having perverted the gifts of nature--as if he didn't know better
than anybody there, that they had been made curses to her!--and how he
preached about the strong arm of the Law--so very strong to save her,
when she was an innocent and helpless little wretch!--and how solemn and
religious it all was! I have thought of that, many times since, to be
sure!'

She folded her arms tightly on her breast, and laughed in a tone that
made the howl of the old woman musical.

'So Alice Marwood was transported, mother,' she pursued, 'and was sent
to learn her duty, where there was twenty times less duty, and more
wickedness, and wrong, and infamy, than here. And Alice Marwood is come
back a woman. Such a woman as she ought to be, after all this. In good
time, there will be more solemnity, and more fine talk, and more strong
arm, most likely, and there will be an end of her; but the gentlemen
needn't be afraid of being thrown out of work. There's crowds of little
wretches, boy and girl, growing up in any of the streets they live in,
that'll keep them to it till they've made their fortunes.'

The old woman leaned her elbows on the table, and resting her face upon
her two hands, made a show of being in great distress--or really was,
perhaps.

'There! I have done, mother,' said the daughter, with a motion of her
head, as if in dismissal of the subject. 'I have said enough. Don't let
you and I talk of being dutiful, whatever we do. Your childhood was like
mine, I suppose. So much the worse for both of us. I don't want to blame
you, or to defend myself; why should I? That's all over long ago. But
I am a woman--not a girl, now--and you and I needn't make a show of our
history, like the gentlemen in the Court. We know all about it, well
enough.'

Lost and degraded as she was, there was a beauty in her, both of
face and form, which, even in its worst expression, could not but be
recognised as such by anyone regarding her with the least attention. As
she subsided into silence, and her face which had been harshly agitated,
quieted down; while her dark eyes, fixed upon the fire, exchanged the
reckless light that had animated them, for one that was softened by
something like sorrow; there shone through all her wayworn misery and
fatigue, a ray of the departed radiance of the fallen angel.

Her mother, after watching her for some time without speaking, ventured
to steal her withered hand a little nearer to her across the table; and
finding that she permitted this, to touch her face, and smooth her hair.
With the feeling, as it seemed, that the old woman was at least sincere
in this show of interest, Alice made no movement to check her; so,
advancing by degrees, she bound up her daughter's hair afresh, took off
her wet shoes, if they deserved the name, spread something dry upon her
shoulders, and hovered humbly about her, muttering to herself, as she
recognised her old features and expression more and more.

'You are very poor, mother, I see,' said Alice, looking round, when she
had sat thus for some time.

'Bitter poor, my deary,' replied the old woman.

She admired her daughter, and was afraid of her. Perhaps her admiration,
such as it was, had originated long ago, when she first found anything
that was beautiful appearing in the midst of the squalid fight of
her existence. Perhaps her fear was referable, in some sort, to the
retrospect she had so lately heard. Be this as it might, she stood,
submissively and deferentially, before her child, and inclined her head,
as if in a pitiful entreaty to be spared any further reproach.

'How have you lived?'

'By begging, my deary.

'And pilfering, mother?'

'Sometimes, Ally--in a very small way. I am old and timid. I have taken
trifles from children now and then, my deary, but not often. I have
tramped about the country, pet, and I know what I know. I have watched.'

'Watched?' returned the daughter, looking at her.

'I have hung about a family, my deary,' said the mother, even more
humbly and submissively than before.

'What family?'

'Hush, darling. Don't be angry with me. I did it for the love of you. In
memory of my poor gal beyond seas.' She put out her hand deprecatingly,
and drawing it back again, laid it on her lips.

'Years ago, my deary,' she pursued, glancing timidly at the attentive
and stem face opposed to her, 'I came across his little child, by
chance.'

'Whose child?'

'Not his, Alice deary; don't look at me like that; not his. How could it
be his? You know he has none.'

'Whose then?' returned the daughter. 'You said his.'

'Hush, Ally; you frighten me, deary. Mr Dombey's--only Mr Dombey's.
Since then, darling, I have seen them often. I have seen him.'

In uttering this last word, the old woman shrunk and recoiled, as if
with sudden fear that her daughter would strike her. But though the
daughter's face was fixed upon her, and expressed the most vehement
passion, she remained still: except that she clenched her arms tighter
and tighter within each other, on her bosom, as if to restrain them
by that means from doing an injury to herself, or someone else, in the
blind fury of the wrath that suddenly possessed her.

'Little he thought who I was!' said the old woman, shaking her clenched
hand.

'And little he cared!' muttered her daughter, between her teeth.

'But there we were, said the old woman, 'face to face. I spoke to him,
and he spoke to me. I sat and watched him as he went away down a long
grove of trees: and at every step he took, I cursed him soul and body.'

'He will thrive in spite of that,' returned the daughter disdainfully.

'Ay, he is thriving,' said the mother.

She held her peace; for the face and form before her were unshaped
by rage. It seemed as if the bosom would burst with the emotions that
strove within it. The effort that constrained and held it pent up, was
no less formidable than the rage itself: no less bespeaking the violent
and dangerous character of the woman who made it. But it succeeded, and
she asked, after a silence:

'Is he married?'

'No, deary,' said the mother.

'Going to be?'

'Not that I know of, deary. But his master and friend is married. Oh, we
may give him joy! We may give 'em all joy!' cried the old woman, hugging
herself with her lean arms in her exultation. 'Nothing but joy to us
will come of that marriage. Mind me!'

The daughter looked at her for an explanation.

'But you are wet and tired; hungry and thirsty,' said the old woman,
hobbling to the cupboard; 'and there's little here, and little'--diving
down into her pocket, and jingling a few half--pence on the
table--'little here. Have you any money, Alice, deary?'

The covetous, sharp, eager face, with which she asked the question and
looked on, as her daughter took out of her bosom the little gift she had
so lately received, told almost as much of the history of this parent
and child as the child herself had told in words.

'Is that all?' said the mother.

'I have no more. I should not have this, but for charity.'

'But for charity, eh, deary?' said the old woman, bending greedily over
the table to look at the money, which she appeared distrustful of her
daughter's still retaining in her hand, and gazing on. 'Humph! six and
six is twelve, and six eighteen--so--we must make the most of it. I'll
go buy something to eat and drink.'

With greater alacrity than might have been expected in one of her
appearance--for age and misery seemed to have made her as decrepit as
ugly--she began to occupy her trembling hands in tying an old bonnet on
her head, and folding a torn shawl about herself: still eyeing the money
in her daughter's hand, with the same sharp desire.

'What joy is to come to us of this marriage, mother?' asked the
daughter. 'You have not told me that.'

'The joy,' she replied, attiring herself, with fumbling fingers, 'of no
love at all, and much pride and hate, my deary. The joy of confusion and
strife among 'em, proud as they are, and of danger--danger, Alice!'

'What danger?'

'I have seen what I have seen. I know what I know!' chuckled the mother.
'Let some look to it. Let some be upon their guard. My gal may keep good
company yet!'

Then, seeing that in the wondering earnestness with which her daughter
regarded her, her hand involuntarily closed upon the money, the old
woman made more speed to secure it, and hurriedly added, 'but I'll go
buy something; I'll go buy something.'

As she stood with her hand stretched out before her daughter, her
daughter, glancing again at the money, put it to her lips before parting
with it.

'What, Ally! Do you kiss it?' chuckled the old woman. 'That's like me--I
often do. Oh, it's so good to us!' squeezing her own tarnished halfpence
up to her bag of a throat, 'so good to us in everything but not coming
in heaps!'

'I kiss it, mother,' said the daughter, 'or I did then--I don't know
that I ever did before--for the giver's sake.'

'The giver, eh, deary?' retorted the old woman, whose dimmed eyes
glistened as she took it. 'Ay! I'll kiss it for the giver's sake, too,
when the giver can make it go farther. But I'll go spend it, deary. I'll
be back directly.'

'You seem to say you know a great deal, mother,' said the daughter,
following her to the door with her eyes. 'You have grown very wise since
we parted.'

'Know!' croaked the old woman, coming back a step or two, 'I know more
than you think I know more than he thinks, deary, as I'll tell you by
and bye. I know all.'

The daughter smiled incredulously.

'I know of his brother, Alice,' said the old woman, stretching out her
neck with a leer of malice absolutely frightful, 'who might have been
where you have been--for stealing money--and who lives with his sister,
over yonder, by the north road out of London.'

'Where?'

'By the north road out of London, deary. You shall see the house if you
like. It ain't much to boast of, genteel as his own is. No, no, no,'
cried the old woman, shaking her head and laughing; for her daughter had
started up, 'not now; it's too far off; it's by the milestone, where the
stones are heaped;--to-morrow, deary, if it's fine, and you are in the
humour. But I'll go spend--'

'Stop!' and the daughter flung herself upon her, with her former passion
raging like a fire. 'The sister is a fair-faced Devil, with brown hair?'

The old woman, amazed and terrified, nodded her head.

'I see the shadow of him in her face! It's a red house standing by
itself. Before the door there is a small green porch.'

Again the old woman nodded.

'In which I sat to-day! Give me back the money.'

'Alice! Deary!'

'Give me back the money, or you'll be hurt.'

She forced it from the old woman's hand as she spoke, and utterly
indifferent to her complainings and entreaties, threw on the garments
she had taken off, and hurried out, with headlong speed.

The mother followed, limping after her as she could, and expostulating
with no more effect upon her than upon the wind and rain and darkness
that encompassed them. Obdurate and fierce in her own purpose, and
indifferent to all besides, the daughter defied the weather and the
distance, as if she had known no travel or fatigue, and made for the
house where she had been relieved. After some quarter of an hour's
walking, the old woman, spent and out of breath, ventured to hold by
her skirts; but she ventured no more, and they travelled on in silence
through the wet and gloom. If the mother now and then uttered a word of
complaint, she stifled it lest her daughter should break away from her
and leave her behind; and the daughter was dumb.

It was within an hour or so of midnight, when they left the regular
streets behind them, and entered on the deeper gloom of that neutral
ground where the house was situated. The town lay in the distance, lurid
and lowering; the bleak wind howled over the open space; all around was
black, wild, desolate.

'This is a fit place for me!' said the daughter, stopping to look back.
'I thought so, when I was here before, to-day.'

'Alice, my deary,' cried the mother, pulling her gently by the skirt.
'Alice!'

'What now, mother?'

'Don't give the money back, my darling; please don't. We can't afford
it. We want supper, deary. Money is money, whoever gives it. Say what
you will, but keep the money.'

'See there!' was all the daughter's answer. 'That is the house I mean.
Is that it?'

The old woman nodded in the affirmative; and a few more paces brought
them to the threshold. There was the light of fire and candle in the
room where Alice had sat to dry her clothes; and on her knocking at the
door, John Carker appeared from that room.

He was surprised to see such visitors at such an hour, and asked Alice
what she wanted.

'I want your sister,' she said. 'The woman who gave me money to-day.'

At the sound of her raised voice, Harriet came out.

'Oh!' said Alice. 'You are here! Do you remember me?'

'Yes,' she answered, wondering.

The face that had humbled itself before her, looked on her now with such
invincible hatred and defiance; and the hand that had gently touched
her arm, was clenched with such a show of evil purpose, as if it would
gladly strangle her; that she drew close to her brother for protection.

'That I could speak with you, and not know you! That I could come near
you, and not feel what blood was running in your veins, by the tingling
of my own!' said Alice, with a menacing gesture.

'What do you mean? What have I done?'

'Done!' returned the other. 'You have sat me by your fire; you have
given me food and money; you have bestowed your compassion on me! You!
whose name I spit upon!'

The old woman, with a malevolence that made her ugliness quite awful,
shook her withered hand at the brother and sister in confirmation of her
daughter, but plucked her by the skirts again, nevertheless, imploring
her to keep the money.

'If I dropped a tear upon your hand, may it wither it up! If I spoke a
gentle word in your hearing, may it deafen you! If I touched you with my
lips, may the touch be poison to you! A curse upon this roof that gave
me shelter! Sorrow and shame upon your head! Ruin upon all belonging to
you!'

As she said the words, she threw the money down upon the ground, and
spurned it with her foot.

'I tread it in the dust: I wouldn't take it if it paved my way to
Heaven! I would the bleeding foot that brought me here to-day, had
rotted off, before it led me to your house!'

Harriet, pale and trembling, restrained her brother, and suffered her to
go on uninterrupted.

'It was well that I should be pitied and forgiven by you, or anyone of
your name, in the first hour of my return! It was well that you should
act the kind good lady to me! I'll thank you when I die; I'll pray for
you, and all your race, you may be sure!'

With a fierce action of her hand, as if she sprinkled hatred on
the ground, and with it devoted those who were standing there to
destruction, she looked up once at the black sky, and strode out into
the wild night.

The mother, who had plucked at her skirts again and again in vain, and
had eyed the money lying on the threshold with an absorbing greed that
seemed to concentrate her faculties upon it, would have prowled about,
until the house was dark, and then groped in the mire on the chance of
repossessing herself of it. But the daughter drew her away, and they
set forth, straight, on their return to their dwelling; the old woman
whimpering and bemoaning their loss upon the road, and fretfully
bewailing, as openly as she dared, the undutiful conduct of her handsome
girl in depriving her of a supper, on the very first night of their
reunion.

Supperless to bed she went, saving for a few coarse fragments; and
those she sat mumbling and munching over a scrap of fire, long after her
undutiful daughter lay asleep.

Were this miserable mother, and this miserable daughter, only the
reduction to their lowest grade, of certain social vices sometimes
prevailing higher up? In this round world of many circles within
circles, do we make a weary journey from the high grade to the low, to
find at last that they lie close together, that the two extremes touch,
and that our journey's end is but our starting-place? Allowing for great
difference of stuff and texture, was the pattern of this woof repeated
among gentle blood at all?

Say, Edith Dombey! And Cleopatra, best of mothers, let us have your
testimony!

In a dilapidated home, old Mrs. Brown is shocked by the return of her daughter Alice Marwood. Alice makes it clear that she is bitter about her childhood neglect and the fact that she was taught to be vain about her good looks, falling into ruin and eventually a career as a prostitute and thief. She was arrested and sentenced to deportation. The experience hardened her, and she now takes a cynical view of the world. Mrs. Brown explains that in her daughter's absence she has survived by begging and theft, and that she has also been observing the Dombey family closely. She mentions an unnamed "he" who is close to the Dombey family, and who is clearly hated by both Alice and her mother. Mrs. Brown says that Dombey's recent marriage will give them an opportunity to create strife. She continues to demonstrate her knowledge by explaining that she knows about the siblings of "him"-clearly Mr. Carker. Alice realizes with horror that the woman who helped her and gave her money was Carker's sister. She hurries back to the house, accompanied by her mother. John Carker is now at home and both he and Harriet are surprised to see Alice reappear. Alice returns the money, vehemently cursing everything associated with the Carker family. She and her mother then return to their miserable dwelling


The dark blot on the street is gone. Mr Dombey's mansion, if it be a gap
among the other houses any longer, is only so because it is not to be
vied with in its brightness, and haughtily casts them off. The saying
is, that home is home, be it never so homely. If it hold good in the
opposite contingency, and home is home be it never so stately, what an
altar to the Household Gods is raised up here!

Lights are sparkling in the windows this evening, and the ruddy glow
of fires is warm and bright upon the hangings and soft carpets, and the
dinner waits to be served, and the dinner-table is handsomely set forth,
though only for four persons, and the side board is cumbrous with plate.
It is the first time that the house has been arranged for occupation
since its late changes, and the happy pair are looked for every minute.

Only second to the wedding morning, in the interest and expectation it
engenders among the household, is this evening of the coming home.
Mrs Perch is in the kitchen taking tea; and has made the tour of
the establishment, and priced the silks and damasks by the yard, and
exhausted every interjection in the dictionary and out of it expressive
of admiration and wonder. The upholsterer's foreman, who has left
his hat, with a pocket-handkerchief in it, both smelling strongly
of varnish, under a chair in the hall, lurks about the house, gazing
upwards at the cornices, and downward at the carpets, and occasionally,
in a silent transport of enjoyment, taking a rule out of his pocket, and
skirmishingly measuring expensive objects, with unutterable feelings.
Cook is in high spirits, and says give her a place where there's plenty
of company (as she'll bet you sixpence there will be now), for she is
of a lively disposition, and she always was from a child, and she don't
mind who knows it; which sentiment elicits from the breast of Mrs Perch
a responsive murmur of support and approbation. All the housemaid hopes
is, happiness for 'em--but marriage is a lottery, and the more she
thinks about it, the more she feels the independence and the safety of
a single life. Mr Towlinson is saturnine and grim, and says that's his
opinion too, and give him War besides, and down with the French--for
this young man has a general impression that every foreigner is a
Frenchman, and must be by the laws of nature.

At each new sound of wheels, they all stop, whatever they are saying,
and listen; and more than once there is a general starting up and a cry
of 'Here they are!' But here they are not yet; and Cook begins to mourn
over the dinner, which has been put back twice, and the upholsterer's
foreman still goes lurking about the rooms, undisturbed in his blissful
reverie!

Florence is ready to receive her father and her new Mama Whether the
emotions that are throbbing in her breast originate in pleasure or in
pain, she hardly knows. But the fluttering heart sends added colour to
her cheeks, and brightness to her eyes; and they say downstairs, drawing
their heads together--for they always speak softly when they speak of
her--how beautiful Miss Florence looks to-night, and what a sweet young
lady she has grown, poor dear! A pause succeeds; and then Cook, feeling,
as president, that her sentiments are waited for, wonders whether--and
there stops. The housemaid wonders too, and so does Mrs Perch, who has
the happy social faculty of always wondering when other people wonder,
without being at all particular what she wonders at. Mr Towlinson, who
now descries an opportunity of bringing down the spirits of the ladies
to his own level, says wait and see; he wishes some people were well
out of this. Cook leads a sigh then, and a murmur of 'Ah, it's a
strange world, it is indeed!' and when it has gone round the table, adds
persuasively, 'but Miss Florence can't well be the worse for any change,
Tom.' Mr Towlinson's rejoinder, pregnant with frightful meaning, is 'Oh,
can't she though!' and sensible that a mere man can scarcely be more
prophetic, or improve upon that, he holds his peace.

Mrs Skewton, prepared to greet her darling daughter and dear son-in-law
with open arms, is appropriately attired for that purpose in a very
youthful costume, with short sleeves. At present, however, her ripe
charms are blooming in the shade of her own apartments, whence she had
not emerged since she took possession of them a few hours ago, and where
she is fast growing fretful, on account of the postponement of dinner.
The maid who ought to be a skeleton, but is in truth a buxom damsel, is,
on the other hand, in a most amiable state: considering her quarterly
stipend much safer than heretofore, and foreseeing a great improvement
in her board and lodging.

Where are the happy pair, for whom this brave home is waiting? Do
steam, tide, wind, and horses, all abate their speed, to linger on such
happiness? Does the swarm of loves and graces hovering about them retard
their progress by its numbers? Are there so many flowers in their
happy path, that they can scarcely move along, without entanglement in
thornless roses, and sweetest briar?

They are here at last! The noise of wheels is heard, grows louder, and
a carriage drives up to the door! A thundering knock from the obnoxious
foreigner anticipates the rush of Mr Towlinson and party to open it; and
Mr Dombey and his bride alight, and walk in arm in arm.

'My sweetest Edith!' cries an agitated voice upon the stairs. 'My
dearest Dombey!' and the short sleeves wreath themselves about the happy
couple in turn, and embrace them.

Florence had come down to the hall too, but did not advance: reserving
her timid welcome until these nearer and dearer transports should
subside. But the eyes of Edith sought her out, upon the threshold; and
dismissing her sensitive parent with a slight kiss on the cheek, she
hurried on to Florence and embraced her.

'How do you do, Florence?' said Mr Dombey, putting out his hand.

As Florence, trembling, raised it to her lips, she met his glance. The
look was cold and distant enough, but it stirred her heart to think that
she observed in it something more of interest than he had ever
shown before. It even expressed a kind of faint surprise, and not a
disagreeable surprise, at sight of her. She dared not raise her eyes
to his any more; but she felt that he looked at her once again, and not
less favourably. Oh what a thrill of joy shot through her, awakened
by even this intangible and baseless confirmation of her hope that she
would learn to win him, through her new and beautiful Mama!

'You will not be long dressing, Mrs Dombey, I presume?' said Mr Dombey.

'I shall be ready immediately.'

'Let them send up dinner in a quarter of an hour.'

With that Mr Dombey stalked away to his own dressing-room, and Mrs
Dombey went upstairs to hers. Mrs Skewton and Florence repaired to the
drawing-room, where that excellent mother considered it incumbent on her
to shed a few irrepressible tears, supposed to be forced from her by her
daughter's felicity; and which she was still drying, very gingerly, with
a laced corner of her pocket-handkerchief, when her son-in-law appeared.

'And how, my dearest Dombey, did you find that delightfullest of cities,
Paris?' she asked, subduing her emotion.

'It was cold,' returned Mr Dombey.

'Gay as ever,' said Mrs Skewton, 'of course.

'Not particularly. I thought it dull,' said Mr Dombey.

'Fie, my dearest Dombey!' archly; 'dull!'

'It made that impression upon me, Madam,' said Mr Dombey, with grave
politeness. 'I believe Mrs Dombey found it dull too. She mentioned once
or twice that she thought it so.'

'Why, you naughty girl!' cried Mrs Skewton, rallying her dear child,
who now entered, 'what dreadfully heretical things have you been saying
about Paris?'

Edith raised her eyebrows with an air of weariness; and passing the
folding-doors which were thrown open to display the suite of rooms in
their new and handsome garniture, and barely glancing at them as she
passed, sat down by Florence.

'My dear Dombey,' said Mrs Skewton, 'how charmingly these people have
carried out every idea that we hinted. They have made a perfect palace
of the house, positively.'

'It is handsome,' said Mr Dombey, looking round. 'I directed that no
expense should be spared; and all that money could do, has been done, I
believe.'

'And what can it not do, dear Dombey?' observed Cleopatra.

'It is powerful, Madam,' said Mr Dombey.

He looked in his solemn way towards his wife, but not a word said she.

'I hope, Mrs Dombey,' addressing her after a moment's silence, with
especial distinctness; 'that these alterations meet with your approval?'

'They are as handsome as they can be,' she returned, with haughty
carelessness. 'They should be so, of course. And I suppose they are.'

An expression of scorn was habitual to the proud face, and seemed
inseparable from it; but the contempt with which it received any appeal
to admiration, respect, or consideration on the ground of his riches,
no matter how slight or ordinary in itself, was a new and different
expression, unequalled in intensity by any other of which it was
capable. Whether Mr Dombey, wrapped in his own greatness, was at all
aware of this, or no, there had not been wanting opportunities already
for his complete enlightenment; and at that moment it might have been
effected by the one glance of the dark eye that lighted on him, after it
had rapidly and scornfully surveyed the theme of his self-glorification.
He might have read in that one glance that nothing that his wealth could
do, though it were increased ten thousand fold, could win him for its
own sake, one look of softened recognition from the defiant woman,
linked to him, but arrayed with her whole soul against him. He might
have read in that one glance that even for its sordid and mercenary
influence upon herself, she spurned it, while she claimed its utmost
power as her right, her bargain--as the base and worthless recompense
for which she had become his wife. He might have read in it that, ever
baring her own head for the lightning of her own contempt and pride to
strike, the most innocent allusion to the power of his riches degraded
her anew, sunk her deeper in her own respect, and made the blight and
waste within her more complete.

But dinner was announced, and Mr Dombey led down Cleopatra; Edith and
his daughter following. Sweeping past the gold and silver demonstration
on the sideboard as if it were heaped-up dirt, and deigning to bestow no
look upon the elegancies around her, she took her place at his board for
the first time, and sat, like a statue, at the feast.

Mr Dombey, being a good deal in the statue way himself, was well enough
pleased to see his handsome wife immovable and proud and cold. Her
deportment being always elegant and graceful, this as a general
behaviour was agreeable and congenial to him. Presiding, therefore, with
his accustomed dignity, and not at all reflecting on his wife by any
warmth or hilarity of his own, he performed his share of the honours of
the table with a cool satisfaction; and the installation dinner, though
not regarded downstairs as a great success, or very promising beginning,
passed off, above, in a sufficiently polite, genteel, and frosty manner.

Soon after tea, Mrs Skewton, who affected to be quite overcome and worn
out by her emotions of happiness, arising in the contemplation of her
dear child united to the man of her heart, but who, there is reason to
suppose, found this family party somewhat dull, as she yawned for one
hour continually behind her fan, retired to bed. Edith, also, silently
withdrew and came back no more. Thus, it happened that Florence, who
had been upstairs to have some conversation with Diogenes, returning to
the drawing-room with her little work-basket, found no one there but her
father, who was walking to and fro, in dreary magnificence.

'I beg your pardon. Shall I go away, Papa?' said Florence faintly,
hesitating at the door.

'No,' returned Mr Dombey, looking round over his shoulder; 'you can come
and go here, Florence, as you please. This is not my private room.'

Florence entered, and sat down at a distant little table with her work:
finding herself for the first time in her life--for the very first time
within her memory from her infancy to that hour--alone with her father,
as his companion. She, his natural companion, his only child, who in her
lonely life and grief had known the suffering of a breaking heart; who,
in her rejected love, had never breathed his name to God at night, but
with a tearful blessing, heavier on him than a curse; who had prayed
to die young, so she might only die in his arms; who had, all through,
repaid the agony of slight and coldness, and dislike, with patient
unexacting love, excusing him, and pleading for him, like his better
angel!

She trembled, and her eyes were dim. His figure seemed to grow in height
and bulk before her as he paced the room: now it was all blurred and
indistinct; now clear again, and plain; and now she seemed to think that
this had happened, just the same, a multitude of years ago. She yearned
towards him, and yet shrunk from his approach. Unnatural emotion in a
child, innocent of wrong! Unnatural the hand that had directed the sharp
plough, which furrowed up her gentle nature for the sowing of its seeds!

Bent upon not distressing or offending him by her distress, Florence
controlled herself, and sat quietly at her work. After a few more turns
across and across the room, he left off pacing it; and withdrawing
into a shadowy corner at some distance, where there was an easy chair,
covered his head with a handkerchief, and composed himself to sleep.

It was enough for Florence to sit there watching him; turning her eyes
towards his chair from time to time; watching him with her thoughts,
when her face was intent upon her work; and sorrowfully glad to think
that he could sleep, while she was there, and that he was not made
restless by her strange and long-forbidden presence.

What would have been her thoughts if she had known that he was steadily
regarding her; that the veil upon his face, by accident or by design,
was so adjusted that his sight was free, and that it never wandered
from her face face an instant. That when she looked towards him, in the
obscure dark corner, her speaking eyes, more earnest and pathetic
in their voiceless speech than all the orators of all the world, and
impeaching him more nearly in their mute address, met his, and did not
know it! That when she bent her head again over her work, he drew
his breath more easily, but with the same attention looked upon her
still--upon her white brow and her falling hair, and busy hands; and
once attracted, seemed to have no power to turn his eyes away!

And what were his thoughts meanwhile? With what emotions did he prolong
the attentive gaze covertly directed on his unknown daughter? Was there
reproach to him in the quiet figure and the mild eyes? Had he begun to
her disregarded claims and did they touch him home at last, and waken
him to some sense of his cruel injustice?

There are yielding moments in the lives of the sternest and harshest
men, though such men often keep their secret well. The sight of her in
her beauty, almost changed into a woman without his knowledge, may have
struck out some such moments even in his life of pride. Some passing
thought that he had had a happy home within his reach--had had a
household spirit bending at has feet--had overlooked it in his
stiffnecked sullen arrogance, and wandered away and lost himself, may
have engendered them. Some simple eloquence distinctly heard, though
only uttered in her eyes, unconscious that he read them as 'By the
death-beds I have tended, by the childhood I have suffered, by our
meeting in this dreary house at midnight, by the cry wrung from me in
the anguish of my heart, oh, father, turn to me and seek a refuge in my
love before it is too late!' may have arrested them. Meaner and lower
thoughts, as that his dead boy was now superseded by new ties, and he
could forgive the having been supplanted in his affection, may have
occasioned them. The mere association of her as an ornament, with all
the ornament and pomp about him, may have been sufficient. But as he
looked, he softened to her, more and more. As he looked, she became
blended with the child he had loved, and he could hardly separate the
two. As he looked, he saw her for an instant by a clearer and a brighter
light, not bending over that child's pillow as his rival--monstrous
thought--but as the spirit of his home, and in the action tending
himself no less, as he sat once more with his bowed-down head upon his
hand at the foot of the little bed. He felt inclined to speak to her,
and call her to him. The words 'Florence, come here!' were rising to his
lips--but slowly and with difficulty, they were so very strange--when
they were checked and stifled by a footstep on the stair.

It was his wife's. She had exchanged her dinner dress for a loose robe,
and unbound her hair, which fell freely about her neck. But this was not
the change in her that startled him.

'Florence, dear,' she said, 'I have been looking for you everywhere.'

As she sat down by the side of Florence, she stooped and kissed her
hand. He hardly knew his wife. She was so changed. It was not merely
that her smile was new to him--though that he had never seen; but her
manner, the tone of her voice, the light of her eyes, the interest, and
confidence, and winning wish to please, expressed in all-this was not
Edith.

'Softly, dear Mama. Papa is asleep.'

It was Edith now. She looked towards the corner where he was, and he
knew that face and manner very well.

'I scarcely thought you could be here, Florence.'

Again, how altered and how softened, in an instant!

'I left here early,' pursued Edith, 'purposely to sit upstairs and talk
with you. But, going to your room, I found my bird was flown, and I have
been waiting there ever since, expecting its return.

If it had been a bird, indeed, she could not have taken it more tenderly
and gently to her breast, than she did Florence.

'Come, dear!'

'Papa will not expect to find me, I suppose, when he wakes,' hesitated
Florence.

'Do you think he will, Florence?' said Edith, looking full upon her.

Florence drooped her head, and rose, and put up her work-basket Edith
drew her hand through her arm, and they went out of the room like
sisters. Her very step was different and new to him, Mr Dombey thought,
as his eyes followed her to the door.

He sat in his shadowy corner so long, that the church clocks struck the
hour three times before he moved that night. All that while his face was
still intent upon the spot where Florence had been seated. The room grew
darker, as the candles waned and went out; but a darkness gathered on
his face, exceeding any that the night could cast, and rested there.

Florence and Edith, seated before the fire in the remote room where
little Paul had died, talked together for a long time. Diogenes, who was
of the party, had at first objected to the admission of Edith, and,
even in deference to his mistress's wish, had only permitted it under
growling protest. But, emerging by little and little from the ante-room,
whither he had retired in dudgeon, he soon appeared to comprehend, that
with the most amiable intentions he had made one of those mistakes which
will occasionally arise in the best-regulated dogs' minds; as a friendly
apology for which he stuck himself up on end between the two, in a very
hot place in front of the fire, and sat panting at it, with his tongue
out, and a most imbecile expression of countenance, listening to the
conversation.

It turned, at first, on Florence's books and favourite pursuits, and on
the manner in which she had beguiled the interval since the marriage.
The last theme opened up to her a subject which lay very near her heart,
and she said, with the tears starting to her eyes:

'Oh, Mama! I have had a great sorrow since that day.'

'You a great sorrow, Florence!'

'Yes. Poor Walter is drowned.'

Florence spread her hands before her face, and wept with all her heart.
Many as were the secret tears which Walter's fate had cost her, they
flowed yet, when she thought or spoke of him.

'But tell me, dear,' said Edith, soothing her. 'Who was Walter? What was
he to you?'

'He was my brother, Mama. After dear Paul died, we said we would be
brother and sister. I had known him a long time--from a little child. He
knew Paul, who liked him very much; Paul said, almost at the last, "Take
care of Walter, dear Papa! I was fond of him!" Walter had been brought
in to see him, and was there then--in this room.'

'And did he take care of Walter?' inquired Edith, sternly.

'Papa? He appointed him to go abroad. He was drowned in shipwreck on his
voyage,' said Florence, sobbing.

'Does he know that he is dead?' asked Edith.

'I cannot tell, Mama. I have no means of knowing. Dear Mama!' cried
Florence, clinging to her as for help, and hiding her face upon her
bosom, 'I know that you have seen--'

'Stay! Stop, Florence.' Edith turned so pale, and spoke so earnestly,
that Florence did not need her restraining hand upon her lips. 'Tell me
all about Walter first; let me understand this history all through.'

Florence related it, and everything belonging to it, even down to the
friendship of Mr Toots, of whom she could hardly speak in her distress
without a tearful smile, although she was deeply grateful to him. When
she had concluded her account, to the whole of which Edith, holding her
hand, listened with close attention, and when a silence had succeeded,
Edith said:

'What is it that you know I have seen, Florence?'

'That I am not,' said Florence, with the same mute appeal, and the same
quick concealment of her face as before, 'that I am not a favourite
child, Mama. I never have been. I have never known how to be. I have
missed the way, and had no one to show it to me. Oh, let me learn from
you how to become dearer to Papa Teach me! you, who can so well!' and
clinging closer to her, with some broken fervent words of gratitude and
endearment, Florence, relieved of her sad secret, wept long, but not as
painfully as of yore, within the encircling arms of her new mother.

Pale even to her lips, and with a face that strove for composure until
its proud beauty was as fixed as death, Edith looked down upon the
weeping girl, and once kissed her. Then gradually disengaging herself,
and putting Florence away, she said, stately, and quiet as a marble
image, and in a voice that deepened as she spoke, but had no other token
of emotion in it:

'Florence, you do not know me! Heaven forbid that you should learn from
me!'

'Not learn from you?' repeated Florence, in surprise.

'That I should teach you how to love, or be loved, Heaven forbid!' said
Edith. 'If you could teach me, that were better; but it is too late. You
are dear to me, Florence. I did not think that anything could ever be so
dear to me, as you are in this little time.'

She saw that Florence would have spoken here, so checked her with her
hand, and went on.

'I will be your true friend always. I will cherish you, as much, if not
as well as anyone in this world could. You may trust in me--I know it
and I say it, dear,--with the whole confidence even of your pure heart.
There are hosts of women whom he might have married, better and truer in
all other respects than I am, Florence; but there is not one who could
come here, his wife, whose heart could beat with greater truth to you
than mine does.'

'I know it, dear Mama!' cried Florence. 'From that first most happy day
I have known it.'

'Most happy day!' Edith seemed to repeat the words involuntarily, and
went on. 'Though the merit is not mine, for I thought little of you
until I saw you, let the undeserved reward be mine in your trust and
love. And in this--in this, Florence; on the first night of my taking up
my abode here; I am led on as it is best I should be, to say it for the
first and last time.'

Florence, without knowing why, felt almost afraid to hear her proceed,
but kept her eyes riveted on the beautiful face so fixed upon her own.

'Never seek to find in me,' said Edith, laying her hand upon her breast,
'what is not here. Never if you can help it, Florence, fall off from me
because it is not here. Little by little you will know me better, and
the time will come when you will know me, as I know myself. Then, be as
lenient to me as you can, and do not turn to bitterness the only sweet
remembrance I shall have.'

The tears that were visible in her eyes as she kept them fixed on
Florence, showed that the composed face was but as a handsome mask; but
she preserved it, and continued:

'I have seen what you say, and know how true it is. But believe me--you
will soon, if you cannot now--there is no one on this earth less
qualified to set it right or help you, Florence, than I. Never ask me
why, or speak to me about it or of my husband, more. There should be, so
far, a division, and a silence between us two, like the grave itself.'

She sat for some time silent; Florence scarcely venturing to breathe
meanwhile, as dim and imperfect shadows of the truth, and all its daily
consequences, chased each other through her terrified, yet incredulous
imagination. Almost as soon as she had ceased to speak, Edith's face
began to subside from its set composure to that quieter and more
relenting aspect, which it usually wore when she and Florence were alone
together. She shaded it, after this change, with her hands; and when she
arose, and with an affectionate embrace bade Florence good-night, went
quickly, and without looking round.

But when Florence was in bed, and the room was dark except for the glow
of the fire, Edith returned, and saying that she could not sleep, and
that her dressing-room was lonely, drew a chair upon the hearth, and
watched the embers as they died away. Florence watched them too from
her bed, until they, and the noble figure before them, crowned with its
flowing hair, and in its thoughtful eyes reflecting back their light,
became confused and indistinct, and finally were lost in slumber.

In her sleep, however, Florence could not lose an undefined impression
of what had so recently passed. It formed the subject of her dreams, and
haunted her; now in one shape, now in another; but always oppressively;
and with a sense of fear. She dreamed of seeking her father in
wildernesses, of following his track up fearful heights, and down into
deep mines and caverns; of being charged with something that would
release him from extraordinary suffering--she knew not what, or why--yet
never being able to attain the goal and set him free. Then she saw him
dead, upon that very bed, and in that very room, and knew that he had
never loved her to the last, and fell upon his cold breast, passionately
weeping. Then a prospect opened, and a river flowed, and a plaintive
voice she knew, cried, 'It is running on, Floy! It has never stopped!
You are moving with it!' And she saw him at a distance stretching out
his arms towards her, while a figure such as Walter's used to be, stood
near him, awfully serene and still. In every vision, Edith came and
went, sometimes to her joy, sometimes to her sorrow, until they were
alone upon the brink of a dark grave, and Edith pointing down, she
looked and saw--what!--another Edith lying at the bottom.

In the terror of this dream, she cried out and awoke, she thought. A
soft voice seemed to whisper in her ear, 'Florence, dear Florence, it
is nothing but a dream!' and stretching out her arms, she returned the
caress of her new Mama, who then went out at the door in the light of
the grey morning. In a moment, Florence sat up wondering whether this
had really taken place or not; but she was only certain that it was grey
morning indeed, and that the blackened ashes of the fire were on the
hearth, and that she was alone.

So passed the night on which the happy pair came home.

Edith and Mr. Dombey return from their trip, and are greeted by Florence and Mrs. Skewton. Mr. Dombey begins to feel softened towards Florence, but before he can reach out to her, he notices the close relationship between her and Edith, and feels alienated and jealous. Florence, alone with Edith, confides her sorrow about Walter's death, explaining that her father had been the one to send him away. Florence also expresses her hope that Edith will teach her how to earn her father's love, but Edith firmly tells her that, while she will always love Florence herself, she cannot do anything to mend the relationship between Florence and her father

This section plays with the theme of both failed and rekindled hopes. On the one hand, it seems increasingly clear that Walter's ship has been wrecked, and he has perished. However, the uncertain nature of there being no body to offer confirmation of his death makes this series of events difficult for others to accept, and the question of whether hope should be held out for his return haunts Cuttle. Moreover, Cuttle's basic hope and trust in human nature receives a serious blow: when he realizes that Carker lied to him and manipulated him, he is forced to confront the reality that not everyone can be trusted. The impact of that blow is clearly seen in the isolation Cuttle experiences. At the same time, however, he is unwilling to accept that Sol is also lost, and stubbornly nurses hope of his friend's return. In a parallel fashion, Miss Tox has very good reason to accept that her relations with the Dombey family are over, and yet she stubbornly clings to the hope of knowing what is happening with the family, initiating a relationship with the Toodle family for this purpose. In a novel with many characters and various plots, Dickens often uses these types of parallel experiences to highlight a shared, communal similarity between otherwise very different individuals. At the same time, Florence's initially bright hopes for a new family dynamic are challenged. It is clear that the relationship between her father and Edith is not a loving one, and shows few signs of improving. Not only will it not help Florence to draw closer to her father, but it also seems that she will be caught up in the middle, and used as a kind of pawn. The introduction of another plot develops the themes of disappointed hopes and bad parenting, as well as offering additional support for Carker's villainy. Alice Marwood serves as a foil character to Edith: like Edith, a greedy mother corrupted her in her youth. However, Alice's experiences have been much harsher for two reasons: she has explicitly transgressed against Victorian sexual norms, first by living as Carker's mistress, and then by working as a prostitute. While Edith may be ashamed of her behavior, she has still always behaved in ways that are socially sanctioned, and even encouraged. The key to this difference, as Alice makes clear, is the difference in their social standing. Because of their aristocratic heritage, Edith may be bought and sold, but it will be as a wife, ensuring she has legal rights and protections. For a poor woman like Alice, the best to hope for was an illicit position as a mistress; therefore, when Carker discarded her, she had no recourse. Alice's storyline also highlights the idea of vengeance and eventual consequences. Although it seems like Carker is profiting from his schemes as he draws ever more intimately into the Dombey family, Alice and her mother's hatred and desire to punish him shows that his past may still catch up with him. By extension, this also suggests that Dombey may eventually face consequences for the way he cruelly discards people around him.


Many succeeding days passed in like manner; except that there were
numerous visits received and paid, and that Mrs Skewton held little
levees in her own apartments, at which Major Bagstock was a frequent
attendant, and that Florence encountered no second look from her father,
although she saw him every day. Nor had she much communication in words
with her new Mama, who was imperious and proud to all the house but
her--Florence could not but observe that--and who, although she always
sent for her or went to her when she came home from visiting, and would
always go into her room at night, before retiring to rest, however late
the hour, and never lost an opportunity of being with her, was often her
silent and thoughtful companion for a long time together.

Florence, who had hoped for so much from this marriage, could not help
sometimes comparing the bright house with the faded dreary place out of
which it had arisen, and wondering when, in any shape, it would begin to
be a home; for that it was no home then, for anyone, though everything
went on luxuriously and regularly, she had always a secret misgiving.
Many an hour of sorrowful reflection by day and night, and many a tear
of blighted hope, Florence bestowed upon the assurance her new Mama had
given her so strongly, that there was no one on the earth more powerless
than herself to teach her how to win her father's heart. And soon
Florence began to think--resolved to think would be the truer
phrase--that as no one knew so well, how hopeless of being subdued or
changed her father's coldness to her was, so she had given her this
warning, and forbidden the subject in very compassion. Unselfish here,
as in her every act and fancy, Florence preferred to bear the pain of
this new wound, rather than encourage any faint foreshadowings of the
truth as it concerned her father; tender of him, even in her wandering
thoughts. As for his home, she hoped it would become a better one, when
its state of novelty and transition should be over; and for herself,
thought little and lamented less.

If none of the new family were particularly at home in private, it was
resolved that Mrs Dombey at least should be at home in public, without
delay. A series of entertainments in celebration of the late nuptials,
and in cultivation of society, were arranged, chiefly by Mr Dombey and
Mrs Skewton; and it was settled that the festive proceedings should
commence by Mrs Dombey's being at home upon a certain evening, and by
Mr and Mrs Dombey's requesting the honour of the company of a great many
incongruous people to dinner on the same day.

Accordingly, Mr Dombey produced a list of sundry eastern magnates who
were to be bidden to this feast on his behalf; to which Mrs Skewton,
acting for her dearest child, who was haughtily careless on the subject,
subjoined a western list, comprising Cousin Feenix, not yet returned
to Baden-Baden, greatly to the detriment of his personal estate; and a
variety of moths of various degrees and ages, who had, at various times,
fluttered round the light of her fair daughter, or herself, without any
lasting injury to their wings. Florence was enrolled as a member of
the dinner-party, by Edith's command--elicited by a moment's doubt and
hesitation on the part of Mrs Skewton; and Florence, with a wondering
heart, and with a quick instinctive sense of everything that grated on
her father in the least, took her silent share in the proceedings of the
day.

The proceedings commenced by Mr Dombey, in a cravat of extraordinary
height and stiffness, walking restlessly about the drawing-room
until the hour appointed for dinner; punctual to which, an East India
Director, of immense wealth, in a waistcoat apparently constructed in
serviceable deal by some plain carpenter, but really engendered in the
tailor's art, and composed of the material called nankeen, arrived and
was received by Mr Dombey alone. The next stage of the proceedings
was Mr Dombey's sending his compliments to Mrs Dombey, with a correct
statement of the time; and the next, the East India Director's falling
prostrate, in a conversational point of view, and as Mr Dombey was not
the man to pick him up, staring at the fire until rescue appeared in the
shape of Mrs Skewton; whom the director, as a pleasant start in life for
the evening, mistook for Mrs Dombey, and greeted with enthusiasm.

The next arrival was a Bank Director, reputed to be able to buy up
anything--human Nature generally, if he should take it in his head to
influence the money market in that direction--but who was a wonderfully
modest-spoken man, almost boastfully so, and mentioned his 'little
place' at Kingston-upon-Thames, and its just being barely equal to
giving Dombey a bed and a chop, if he would come and visit it. Ladies,
he said, it was not for a man who lived in his quiet way to take upon
himself to invite--but if Mrs Skewton and her daughter, Mrs Dombey,
should ever find themselves in that direction, and would do him the
honour to look at a little bit of a shrubbery they would find there, and
a poor little flower-bed or so, and a humble apology for a pinery, and
two or three little attempts of that sort without any pretension,
they would distinguish him very much. Carrying out his character,
this gentleman was very plainly dressed, in a wisp of cambric for a
neckcloth, big shoes, a coat that was too loose for him, and a pair of
trousers that were too spare; and mention being made of the Opera by Mrs
Skewton, he said he very seldom went there, for he couldn't afford it.
It seemed greatly to delight and exhilarate him to say so: and he beamed
on his audience afterwards, with his hands in his pockets, and excessive
satisfaction twinkling in his eyes.

Now Mrs Dombey appeared, beautiful and proud, and as disdainful and
defiant of them all as if the bridal wreath upon her head had been a
garland of steel spikes put on to force concession from her which she
would die sooner than yield. With her was Florence. When they entered
together, the shadow of the night of the return again darkened Mr
Dombey's face. But unobserved; for Florence did not venture to raise her
eyes to his, and Edith's indifference was too supreme to take the least
heed of him.

The arrivals quickly became numerous. More directors, chairmen of public
companies, elderly ladies carrying burdens on their heads for full
dress, Cousin Feenix, Major Bagstock, friends of Mrs Skewton, with the
same bright bloom on their complexion, and very precious necklaces on
very withered necks. Among these, a young lady of sixty-five, remarkably
coolly dressed as to her back and shoulders, who spoke with an engaging
lisp, and whose eyelids wouldn't keep up well, without a great deal of
trouble on her part, and whose manners had that indefinable charm which
so frequently attaches to the giddiness of youth. As the greater part of
Mr Dombey's list were disposed to be taciturn, and the greater part
of Mrs Dombey's list were disposed to be talkative, and there was no
sympathy between them, Mrs Dombey's list, by magnetic agreement, entered
into a bond of union against Mr Dombey's list, who, wandering about
the rooms in a desolate manner, or seeking refuge in corners, entangled
themselves with company coming in, and became barricaded behind sofas,
and had doors opened smartly from without against their heads, and
underwent every sort of discomfiture.

When dinner was announced, Mr Dombey took down an old lady like a
crimson velvet pincushion stuffed with bank notes, who might have been
the identical old lady of Threadneedle Street, she was so rich, and
looked so unaccommodating; Cousin Feenix took down Mrs Dombey; Major
Bagstock took down Mrs Skewton; the young thing with the shoulders was
bestowed, as an extinguisher, upon the East India Director; and the
remaining ladies were left on view in the drawing-room by the remaining
gentlemen, until a forlorn hope volunteered to conduct them downstairs,
and those brave spirits with their captives blocked up the dining-room
door, shutting out seven mild men in the stony-hearted hall. When
all the rest were got in and were seated, one of these mild men still
appeared, in smiling confusion, totally destitute and unprovided for,
and, escorted by the butler, made the complete circuit of the table
twice before his chair could be found, which it finally was, on Mrs
Dombey's left hand; after which the mild man never held up his head
again.

Now, the spacious dining-room, with the company seated round the
glittering table, busy with their glittering spoons, and knives and
forks, and plates, might have been taken for a grown-up exposition
of Tom Tiddler's ground, where children pick up gold and silver. Mr
Dombey, as Tiddler, looked his character to admiration; and the long
plateau of precious metal frosted, separating him from Mrs Dombey,
whereon frosted Cupids offered scentless flowers to each of them, was
allegorical to see.

Cousin Feenix was in great force, and looked astonishingly young. But
he was sometimes thoughtless in his good humour--his memory occasionally
wandering like his legs--and on this occasion caused the company to
shudder. It happened thus. The young lady with the back, who regarded
Cousin Feenix with sentiments of tenderness, had entrapped the East
India Director into leading her to the chair next him; in return for
which good office, she immediately abandoned the Director, who, being
shaded on the other side by a gloomy black velvet hat surmounting a bony
and speechless female with a fan, yielded to a depression of spirits and
withdrew into himself. Cousin Feenix and the young lady were very lively
and humorous, and the young lady laughed so much at something Cousin
Feenix related to her, that Major Bagstock begged leave to inquire on
behalf of Mrs Skewton (they were sitting opposite, a little lower down),
whether that might not be considered public property.

'Why, upon my life,' said Cousin Feenix, 'there's nothing in it; it
really is not worth repeating: in point of fact, it's merely an anecdote
of Jack Adams. I dare say my friend Dombey;' for the general attention
was concentrated on Cousin Feenix; 'may remember Jack Adams, Jack Adams,
not Joe; that was his brother. Jack--little Jack--man with a cast in
his eye, and slight impediment in his speech--man who sat for somebody's
borough. We used to call him in my parliamentary time W. P. Adams, in
consequence of his being Warming Pan for a young fellow who was in his
minority. Perhaps my friend Dombey may have known the man?'

Mr Dombey, who was as likely to have known Guy Fawkes, replied in
the negative. But one of the seven mild men unexpectedly leaped into
distinction, by saying he had known him, and adding--'always wore
Hessian boots!'

'Exactly,' said Cousin Feenix, bending forward to see the mild man, and
smile encouragement at him down the table. 'That was Jack. Joe wore--'

'Tops!' cried the mild man, rising in public estimation every Instant.

'Of course,' said Cousin Feenix, 'you were intimate with em?'

'I knew them both,' said the mild man. With whom Mr Dombey immediately
took wine.

'Devilish good fellow, Jack!' said Cousin Feenix, again bending forward,
and smiling.

'Excellent,' returned the mild man, becoming bold on his success. 'One
of the best fellows I ever knew.'

'No doubt you have heard the story?' said Cousin Feenix.

'I shall know,' replied the bold mild man, 'when I have heard your
Ludship tell it.' With that, he leaned back in his chair and smiled at
the ceiling, as knowing it by heart, and being already tickled.

'In point of fact, it's nothing of a story in itself,' said Cousin
Feenix, addressing the table with a smile, and a gay shake of his head,
'and not worth a word of preface. But it's illustrative of the
neatness of Jack's humour. The fact is, that Jack was invited down to a
marriage--which I think took place in Berkshire?'

'Shropshire,' said the bold mild man, finding himself appealed to.

'Was it? Well! In point of fact it might have been in any shire,' said
Cousin Feenix. 'So my friend being invited down to this marriage in
Anyshire,' with a pleasant sense of the readiness of this joke, 'goes.
Just as some of us, having had the honour of being invited to the
marriage of my lovely and accomplished relative with my friend Dombey,
didn't require to be asked twice, and were devilish glad to be present
on so interesting an occasion.--Goes--Jack goes. Now, this marriage was,
in point of fact, the marriage of an uncommonly fine girl with a man for
whom she didn't care a button, but whom she accepted on account of
his property, which was immense. When Jack returned to town, after
the nuptials, a man he knew, meeting him in the lobby of the House
of Commons, says, "Well, Jack, how are the ill-matched couple?"
"Ill-matched," says Jack "Not at all. It's a perfectly and equal
transaction. She is regularly bought, and you may take your oath he is
as regularly sold!"'

In his full enjoyment of this culminating point of his story, the
shudder, which had gone all round the table like an electric spark,
struck Cousin Feenix, and he stopped. Not a smile occasioned by the only
general topic of conversation broached that day, appeared on any face.
A profound silence ensued; and the wretched mild man, who had been as
innocent of any real foreknowledge of the story as the child unborn, had
the exquisite misery of reading in every eye that he was regarded as the
prime mover of the mischief.

Mr Dombey's face was not a changeful one, and being cast in its mould of
state that day, showed little other apprehension of the story, if any,
than that which he expressed when he said solemnly, amidst the silence,
that it was 'Very good.' There was a rapid glance from Edith towards
Florence, but otherwise she remained, externally, impassive and
unconscious.

Through the various stages of rich meats and wines, continual gold and
silver, dainties of earth, air, fire, and water, heaped-up fruits, and
that unnecessary article in Mr Dombey's banquets--ice--the dinner slowly
made its way: the later stages being achieved to the sonorous music
of incessant double knocks, announcing the arrival of visitors, whose
portion of the feast was limited to the smell thereof. When Mrs Dombey
rose, it was a sight to see her lord, with stiff throat and erect head,
hold the door open for the withdrawal of the ladies; and to see how she
swept past him with his daughter on her arm.

Mr Dombey was a grave sight, behind the decanters, in a state of
dignity; and the East India Director was a forlorn sight near the
unoccupied end of the table, in a state of solitude; and the Major was a
military sight, relating stories of the Duke of York to six of the seven
mild men (the ambitious one was utterly quenched); and the Bank Director
was a lowly sight, making a plan of his little attempt at a pinery,
with dessert-knives, for a group of admirers; and Cousin Feenix was
a thoughtful sight, as he smoothed his long wristbands and stealthily
adjusted his wig. But all these sights were of short duration, being
speedily broken up by coffee, and the desertion of the room.

There was a throng in the state-rooms upstairs, increasing every minute;
but still Mr Dombey's list of visitors appeared to have some native
impossibility of amalgamation with Mrs Dombey's list, and no one could
have doubted which was which. The single exception to this rule perhaps
was Mr Carker, who now smiled among the company, and who, as he stood in
the circle that was gathered about Mrs Dombey--watchful of her, of
them, his chief, Cleopatra and the Major, Florence, and everything
around--appeared at ease with both divisions of guests, and not marked
as exclusively belonging to either.

Florence had a dread of him, which made his presence in the room a
nightmare to her. She could not avoid the recollection of it, for her
eyes were drawn towards him every now and then, by an attraction of
dislike and distrust that she could not resist. Yet her thoughts were
busy with other things; for as she sat apart--not unadmired or unsought,
but in the gentleness of her quiet spirit--she felt how little part her
father had in what was going on, and saw, with pain, how ill at ease he
seemed to be, and how little regarded he was as he lingered about
near the door, for those visitors whom he wished to distinguish with
particular attention, and took them up to introduce them to his wife,
who received them with proud coldness, but showed no interest or wish to
please, and never, after the bare ceremony of reception, in consultation
of his wishes, or in welcome of his friends, opened her lips. It was
not the less perplexing or painful to Florence, that she who acted thus,
treated her so kindly and with such loving consideration, that it almost
seemed an ungrateful return on her part even to know of what was passing
before her eyes.

Happy Florence would have been, might she have ventured to bear her
father company, by so much as a look; and happy Florence was, in little
suspecting the main cause of his uneasiness. But afraid of seeming
to know that he was placed at any disadvantage, lest he should be
resentful of that knowledge; and divided between her impulse towards
him, and her grateful affection for Edith; she scarcely dared to raise
her eyes towards either. Anxious and unhappy for them both, the thought
stole on her through the crowd, that it might have been better for them
if this noise of tongues and tread of feet had never come there,--if
the old dulness and decay had never been replaced by novelty and
splendour,--if the neglected child had found no friend in Edith, but had
lived her solitary life, unpitied and forgotten.

Mrs Chick had some such thoughts too, but they were not so quietly
developed in her mind. This good matron had been outraged in the first
instance by not receiving an invitation to dinner. That blow partially
recovered, she had gone to a vast expense to make such a figure before
Mrs Dombey at home, as should dazzle the senses of that lady, and heap
mortification, mountains high, on the head of Mrs Skewton.

'But I am made,' said Mrs Chick to Mr Chick, 'of no more account than
Florence! Who takes the smallest notice of me? No one!'

'No one, my dear,' assented Mr Chick, who was seated by the side of Mrs
Chick against the wall, and could console himself, even there, by softly
whistling.

'Does it at all appear as if I was wanted here?' exclaimed Mrs Chick,
with flashing eyes.

'No, my dear, I don't think it does,' said Mr Chick.

'Paul's mad!' said Mrs Chick.

Mr Chick whistled.

'Unless you are a monster, which I sometimes think you are,' said Mrs
Chick with candour, 'don't sit there humming tunes. How anyone with the
most distant feelings of a man, can see that mother-in-law of Paul's,
dressed as she is, going on like that, with Major Bagstock, for whom,
among other precious things, we are indebted to your Lucretia Tox.'

'My Lucretia Tox, my dear!' said Mr Chick, astounded.

'Yes,' retorted Mrs Chick, with great severity, 'your Lucretia Tox--I
say how anybody can see that mother-in-law of Paul's, and that haughty
wife of Paul's, and these indecent old frights with their backs and
shoulders, and in short this at home generally, and hum--' on which
word Mrs Chick laid a scornful emphasis that made Mr Chick start, 'is, I
thank Heaven, a mystery to me!'

Mr Chick screwed his mouth into a form irreconcilable with humming or
whistling, and looked very contemplative.

'But I hope I know what is due to myself,' said Mrs Chick, swelling
with indignation, 'though Paul has forgotten what is due to me. I am not
going to sit here, a member of this family, to be taken no notice of. I
am not the dirt under Mrs Dombey's feet, yet--not quite yet,' said Mrs
Chick, as if she expected to become so, about the day after to-morrow.
'And I shall go. I will not say (whatever I may think) that this affair
has been got up solely to degrade and insult me. I shall merely go. I
shall not be missed!'

Mrs Chick rose erect with these words, and took the arm of Mr Chick, who
escorted her from the room, after half an hour's shady sojourn there.
And it is due to her penetration to observe that she certainly was not
missed at all.

But she was not the only indignant guest; for Mr Dombey's list (still
constantly in difficulties) were, as a body, indignant with Mrs Dombey's
list, for looking at them through eyeglasses, and audibly wondering who
all those people were; while Mrs Dombey's list complained of weariness,
and the young thing with the shoulders, deprived of the attentions of
that gay youth Cousin Feenix (who went away from the dinner-table),
confidentially alleged to thirty or forty friends that she was bored to
death. All the old ladies with the burdens on their heads, had greater
or less cause of complaint against Mr Dombey; and the Directors and
Chairmen coincided in thinking that if Dombey must marry, he had better
have married somebody nearer his own age, not quite so handsome, and
a little better off. The general opinion among this class of gentlemen
was, that it was a weak thing in Dombey, and he'd live to repent it.
Hardly anybody there, except the mild men, stayed, or went away, without
considering himself or herself neglected and aggrieved by Mr Dombey or
Mrs Dombey; and the speechless female in the black velvet hat was found
to have been stricken mute, because the lady in the crimson velvet
had been handed down before her. The nature even of the mild men got
corrupted, either from their curdling it with too much lemonade, or from
the general inoculation that prevailed; and they made sarcastic jokes
to one another, and whispered disparagement on stairs and in bye-places.
The general dissatisfaction and discomfort so diffused itself, that the
assembled footmen in the hall were as well acquainted with it as
the company above. Nay, the very linkmen outside got hold of it, and
compared the party to a funeral out of mourning, with none of the
company remembered in the will.

At last, the guests were all gone, and the linkmen too; and the street,
crowded so long with carriages, was clear; and the dying lights showed no
one in the rooms, but Mr Dombey and Mr Carker, who were talking together
apart, and Mrs Dombey and her mother: the former seated on an ottoman;
the latter reclining in the Cleopatra attitude, awaiting the arrival of
her maid. Mr Dombey having finished his communication to Carker, the
latter advanced obsequiously to take leave.

'I trust,' he said, 'that the fatigues of this delightful evening will
not inconvenience Mrs Dombey to-morrow.'

'Mrs Dombey,' said Mr Dombey, advancing, 'has sufficiently spared
herself fatigue, to relieve you from any anxiety of that kind. I regret
to say, Mrs Dombey, that I could have wished you had fatigued yourself a
little more on this occasion.

She looked at him with a supercilious glance, that it seemed not worth
her while to protract, and turned away her eyes without speaking.

'I am sorry, Madam,' said Mr Dombey, 'that you should not have thought
it your duty--'

She looked at him again.

'Your duty, Madam,' pursued Mr Dombey, 'to have received my friends with
a little more deference. Some of those whom you have been pleased
to slight to-night in a very marked manner, Mrs Dombey, confer a
distinction upon you, I must tell you, in any visit they pay you.'

'Do you know that there is someone here?' she returned, now looking at
him steadily.

'No! Carker! I beg that you do not. I insist that you do not,' cried Mr
Dombey, stopping that noiseless gentleman in his withdrawal. 'Mr Carker,
Madam, as you know, possesses my confidence. He is as well acquainted
as myself with the subject on which I speak. I beg to tell you, for your
information, Mrs Dombey, that I consider these wealthy and important
persons confer a distinction upon me:' and Mr Dombey drew himself up, as
having now rendered them of the highest possible importance.

'I ask you,' she repeated, bending her disdainful, steady gaze upon him,
'do you know that there is someone here, Sir?'

'I must entreat,' said Mr Carker, stepping forward, 'I must beg, I must
demand, to be released. Slight and unimportant as this difference is--'

Mrs Skewton, who had been intent upon her daughter's face, took him up
here.

'My sweetest Edith,' she said, 'and my dearest Dombey; our excellent
friend Mr Carker, for so I am sure I ought to mention him--'

Mr Carker murmured, 'Too much honour.'

'--has used the very words that were in my mind, and that I have
been dying, these ages, for an opportunity of introducing. Slight and
unimportant! My sweetest Edith, and my dearest Dombey, do we not know
that any difference between you two--No, Flowers; not now.'

Flowers was the maid, who, finding gentlemen present, retreated with
precipitation.

'That any difference between you two,' resumed Mrs Skewton, 'with
the Heart you possess in common, and the excessively charming bond of
feeling that there is between you, must be slight and unimportant? What
words could better define the fact? None. Therefore I am glad to take
this slight occasion--this trifling occasion, that is so replete
with Nature, and your individual characters, and all that--so truly
calculated to bring the tears into a parent's eyes--to say that I attach
no importance to them in the least, except as developing these minor
elements of Soul; and that, unlike most Mamas-in-law (that odious
phrase, dear Dombey!) as they have been represented to me to exist in
this I fear too artificial world, I never shall attempt to interpose
between you, at such a time, and never can much regret, after all, such
little flashes of the torch of What's-his-name--not Cupid, but the other
delightful creature.'

There was a sharpness in the good mother's glance at both her
children as she spoke, that may have been expressive of a direct and
well-considered purpose hidden between these rambling words. That
purpose, providently to detach herself in the beginning from all the
clankings of their chain that were to come, and to shelter herself with
the fiction of her innocent belief in their mutual affection, and their
adaptation to each other.

'I have pointed out to Mrs Dombey,' said Mr Dombey, in his most stately
manner, 'that in her conduct thus early in our married life, to which I
object, and which, I request, may be corrected. Carker,' with a nod of
dismissal, 'good-night to you!'

Mr Carker bowed to the imperious form of the Bride, whose sparkling eye
was fixed upon her husband; and stopping at Cleopatra's couch on his
way out, raised to his lips the hand she graciously extended to him, in
lowly and admiring homage.

If his handsome wife had reproached him, or even changed countenance,
or broken the silence in which she remained, by one word, now that they
were alone (for Cleopatra made off with all speed), Mr Dombey would have
been equal to some assertion of his case against her. But the intense,
unutterable, withering scorn, with which, after looking upon him, she
dropped her eyes, as if he were too worthless and indifferent to her to
be challenged with a syllable--the ineffable disdain and haughtiness
in which she sat before him--the cold inflexible resolve with which her
every feature seemed to bear him down, and put him by--these, he had
no resource against; and he left her, with her whole overbearing beauty
concentrated on despising him.

Was he coward enough to watch her, an hour afterwards, on the old well
staircase, where he had once seen Florence in the moonlight, toiling up
with Paul? Or was he in the dark by accident, when, looking up, he saw
her coming, with a light, from the room where Florence lay, and marked
again the face so changed, which he could not subdue?

But it could never alter as his own did. It never, in its uttermost
pride and passion, knew the shadow that had fallen on his, in the dark
corner, on the night of the return; and often since; and which deepened
on it now, as he looked up.

The Dombey household settles into a new routine. They throw a dinner party at which their opulent wealth is clearly displayed, but the tense relationships are as well. After the party is over, Dombey rebukes Edith for not having been more attentive to his guests. Edith points out that Carker is still present while Dombey is making these complaints, and Carker attempts to leave; however, Dombey demands he stay, saying that he feels comfortable with Carker knowing these details. Mrs. Skewton makes an effort to smooth over the disagreement, but it is clear that Edith and Dombey are on bad terms, and that she has no respect or affection for him