Чарльз Диккенс
Dombey and Son
‘I am afraid you have scarcely been a favourite with Papa,’ she said, timidly.
‘There is no reason,’ replied Walter, smiling, ‘why I should be.’
‘No reason, Walter!’
‘There was no reason,’ said Walter, understanding what she meant. ‘There are many people employed in the House. Between Mr Dombey and a young man like me, there’s a wide space of separation. If I do my duty, I do what I ought, and do no more than all the rest.’
Had Florence any misgiving of which she was hardly conscious: any misgiving that had sprung into an indistinct and undefined existence since that recent night when she had gone down to her father’s room: that Walter’s accidental interest in her, and early knowledge of her, might have involved him in that powerful displeasure and dislike? Had Walter any such idea, or any sudden thought that it was in her mind at that moment? Neither of them hinted at it. Neither of them spoke at all, for some short time. Susan, walking on the other side of Walter, eyed them both sharply; and certainly Miss Nipper’s thoughts travelled in that direction, and very confidently too.
‘You may come back very soon,’ said Florence, ‘perhaps, Walter.’
‘I may come back,’ said Walter, ‘an old man, and find you an old lady. But I hope for better things.’
‘Papa,’ said Florence, after a moment, ‘will – will recover from his grief, and – speak more freely to me one day, perhaps; and if he should, I will tell him how much I wish to see you back again, and ask him to recall you for my sake.’
There was a touching modulation in these words about her father, that Walter understood too well.
The coach being close at hand, he would have left her without speaking, for now he felt what parting was; but Florence held his hand when she was seated, and then he found there was a little packet in her own.
‘Walter,’ she said, looking full upon him with her affectionate eyes, ‘like you, I hope for better things. I will pray for them, and believe that they will arrive. I made this little gift for Paul. Pray take it with my love, and do not look at it until you are gone away. And now, God bless you, Walter! never forget me. You are my brother, dear!’
He was glad that Susan Nipper came between them, or he might have left her with a sorrowful remembrance of him. He was glad too that she did not look out of the coach again, but waved the little hand to him instead, as long as he could see it.
In spite of her request, he could not help opening the packet that night when he went to bed. It was a little purse: and there was money in it.
Bright rose the sun next morning, from his absence in strange countries and up rose Walter with it to receive the Captain, who was already at the door: having turned out earlier than was necessary, in order to get under weigh while Mrs MacStinger was still slumbering. The Captain pretended to be in tip-top spirits, and brought a very smoky tongue in one of the pockets of the broad blue coat for breakfast.
‘And, Wal’r,’ said the Captain, when they took their seats at table, if your Uncle’s the man I think him, he’ll bring out the last bottle of the Madeira on the present occasion.’
‘No, no, Ned,’ returned the old man. ‘No! That shall be opened when Walter comes home again.’
‘Well said!’ cried the Captain. ‘Hear him!’
‘There it lies,’ said Sol Gills, ‘down in the little cellar, covered with dirt and cobwebs. There may be dirt and cobwebs over you and me perhaps, Ned, before it sees the light.’
‘Hear him!’ cried the Captain. ‘Good morality! Wal’r, my lad. Train up a fig-tree in the way it should go, and when you are old sit under the shade on it. Overhaul the – Well,’ said the Captain on second thoughts, ‘I ain’t quite certain where that’s to be found, but when found, make a note of. Sol Gills, heave ahead again!’
‘But there or somewhere, it shall lie, Ned, until Wally comes back to claim it,’ said the old man. ‘That’s all I meant to say.’
‘And well said too,’ returned the Captain; ‘and if we three don’t crack that bottle in company, I’ll give you two leave to.’
Notwithstanding the Captain’s excessive joviality, he made but a poor hand at the smoky tongue, though he tried very hard, when anybody looked at him, to appear as if he were eating with a vast appetite. He was terribly afraid, likewise, of being left alone with either Uncle or nephew; appearing to consider that his only chance of safety as to keeping up appearances, was in there being always three together. This terror on the part of the Captain, reduced him to such ingenious evasions as running to the door, when Solomon went to put his coat on, under pretence of having seen an extraordinary hackney-coach pass: and darting out into the road when Walter went upstairs to take leave of the lodgers, on a feint of smelling fire in a neighbouring chimney. These artifices Captain Cuttle deemed inscrutable by any uninspired observer.
Walter was coming down from his parting expedition upstairs, and was crossing the shop to go back to the little parlour, when he saw a faded face he knew, looking in at the door, and darted towards it.
‘Mr Carker!’ cried Walter, pressing the hand of John Carker the Junior. ‘Pray come in! This is kind of you, to be here so early to say good-bye to me. You knew how glad it would make me to shake hands with you, once, before going away. I cannot say how glad I am to have this opportunity. Pray come in.’
‘It is not likely that we may ever meet again, Walter,’ returned the other, gently resisting his invitation, ‘and I am glad of this opportunity too. I may venture to speak to you, and to take you by the hand, on the eve of separation. I shall not have to resist your frank approaches, Walter, any more.’
There was a melancholy in his smile as he said it, that showed he had found some company and friendship for his thoughts even in that.
‘Ah, Mr Carker!’ returned Walter. ‘Why did you resist them? You could have done me nothing but good, I am very sure.’
He shook his head. ‘If there were any good,’ he said, ‘I could do on this earth, I would do it, Walter, for you. The sight of you from day to day, has been at once happiness and remorse to me. But the pleasure has outweighed the pain. I know that, now, by knowing what I lose.’
‘Come in, Mr Carker, and make acquaintance with my good old Uncle,’ urged Walter. ‘I have often talked to him about you, and he will be glad to tell you all he hears from me. I have not,’ said Walter, noticing his hesitation, and speaking with embarrassment himself: ‘I have not told him anything about our last conversation, Mr Carker; not even him, believe me.
The grey Junior pressed his hand, and tears rose in his eyes.
‘If I ever make acquaintance with him, Walter,’ he returned, ‘it will be that I may hear tidings of you. Rely on my not wronging your forbearance and consideration. It would be to wrong it, not to tell him all the truth, before I sought a word of confidence from him. But I have no friend or acquaintance except you: and even for your sake, am little likely to make any.’
‘I wish,’ said Walter, ‘you had suffered me to be your friend indeed. I always wished it, Mr Carker, as you know; but never half so much as now, when we are going to part.’
‘It is enough,’ replied the other, ‘that you have been the friend of my own breast, and that when I have avoided you most, my heart inclined the most towards you, and was fullest of you. Walter, good-bye!’
‘Good-bye, Mr Carker. Heaven be with you, Sir!’ cried Walter with emotion.
‘If,’ said the other, retaining his hand while he spoke; ‘if when you come back, you miss me from my old corner, and should hear from anyone where I am lying, come and look upon my grave. Think that I might have been as honest and as happy as you! And let me think, when I know time is coming on, that some one like my former self may stand there, for a moment, and remember me with pity and forgiveness! Walter, good-bye!’
His figure crept like a shadow down the bright, sun-lighted street, so cheerful yet so solemn in the early summer morning; and slowly passed away.
The relentless chronometer at last announced that Walter must turn his back upon the wooden Midshipman: and away they went, himself, his Uncle, and the Captain, in a hackney-coach to a wharf, where they were to take steam-boat for some Reach down the river, the name of which, as the Captain gave it out, was a hopeless mystery to the ears of landsmen. Arrived at this Reach (whither the ship had repaired by last night’s tide), they were boarded by various excited watermen, and among others by a dirty Cyclops of the Captain’s acquaintance, who, with his one eye, had made the Captain out some mile and a half off, and had been exchanging unintelligible roars with him ever since. Becoming the lawful prize of this personage, who was frightfully hoarse and constitutionally in want of shaving, they were all three put aboard the Son and Heir. And the Son and Heir was in a pretty state of confusion, with sails lying all bedraggled on the wet decks, loose ropes tripping people up, men in red shirts running barefoot to and fro, casks blockading every foot of space, and, in the thickest of the fray, a black cook in a black caboose up to his eyes in vegetables and blinded with smoke.
The Captain immediately drew Walter into a corner, and with a great effort, that made his face very red, pulled up the silver watch, which was so big, and so tight in his pocket, that it came out like a bung.
‘Wal’r,’ said the Captain, handing it over, and shaking him heartily by the hand, ‘a parting gift, my lad. Put it back half an hour every morning, and about another quarter towards the arternoon, and it’s a watch that’ll do you credit.’
‘Captain Cuttle! I couldn’t think of it!’ cried Walter, detaining him, for he was running away. ‘Pray take it back. I have one already.’
‘Then, Wal’r,’ said the Captain, suddenly diving into one of his pockets and bringing up the two teaspoons and the sugar-tongs, with which he had armed himself to meet such an objection, ‘take this here trifle of plate, instead.’
‘No, no, I couldn’t indeed!’ cried Walter, ‘a thousand thanks! Don’t throw them away, Captain Cuttle!’ for the Captain was about to jerk them overboard. ‘They’ll be of much more use to you than me. Give me your stick. I have often thought I should like to have it. There! Good-bye, Captain Cuttle! Take care of my Uncle! Uncle Sol, God bless you!’
They were over the side in the confusion, before Walter caught another glimpse of either; and when he ran up to the stern, and looked after them, he saw his Uncle hanging down his head in the boat, and Captain Cuttle rapping him on the back with the great silver watch (it must have been very painful), and gesticulating hopefully with the teaspoons and sugar-tongs. Catching sight of Walter, Captain Cuttle dropped the property into the bottom of the boat with perfect unconcern, being evidently oblivious of its existence, and pulling off the glazed hat hailed him lustily. The glazed hat made quite a show in the sun with its glistening, and the Captain continued to wave it until he could be seen no longer. Then the confusion on board, which had been rapidly increasing, reached its height; two or three other boats went away with a cheer; the sails shone bright and full above, as Walter watched them spread their surface to the favourable breeze; the water flew in sparkles from the prow; and off upon her voyage went the Son and Heir, as hopefully and trippingly as many another son and heir, gone down, had started on his way before her.
Day after day, old Sol and Captain Cuttle kept her reckoning in the little back parlour and worked out her course, with the chart spread before them on the round table. At night, when old Sol climbed upstairs, so lonely, to the attic where it sometimes blew great guns, he looked up at the stars and listened to the wind, and kept a longer watch than would have fallen to his lot on board the ship. The last bottle of the old Madeira, which had had its cruising days, and known its dangers of the deep, lay silently beneath its dust and cobwebs, in the meanwhile, undisturbed.
CHAPTER 20. Mr Dombey goes upon a Journey
M r Dombey, Sir,’ said Major Bagstock, ‘Joey’ B. is not in general a man of sentiment, for Joseph is tough. But Joe has his feelings, Sir, and when they are awakened – Damme, Mr Dombey,’ cried the Major with sudden ferocity, ‘this is weakness, and I won’t submit to it!’
Major Bagstock delivered himself of these expressions on receiving Mr Dombey as his guest at the head of his own staircase in Princess’s Place. Mr Dombey had come to breakfast with the Major, previous to their setting forth on their trip; and the ill-starved Native had already undergone a world of misery arising out of the muffins, while, in connexion with the general question of boiled eggs, life was a burden to him.
‘It is not for an old soldier of the Bagstock breed,’ observed the Major, relapsing into a mild state, ‘to deliver himself up, a prey to his own emotions; but – damme, Sir,’ cried the Major, in another spasm of ferocity, ‘I condole with you!’
The Major’s purple visage deepened in its hue, and the Major’s lobster eyes stood out in bolder relief, as he shook Mr Dombey by the hand, imparting to that peaceful action as defiant a character as if it had been the prelude to his immediately boxing Mr Dombey for a thousand pounds a side and the championship of England. With a rotatory motion of his head, and a wheeze very like the cough of a horse, the Major then conducted his visitor to the sitting-room, and there welcomed him (having now composed his feelings) with the freedom and frankness of a travelling companion.
‘Dombey,’ said the Major, ‘I’m glad to see you. I’m proud to see you. There are not many men in Europe to whom J. Bagstock would say that – for Josh is blunt. Sir: it’s his nature – but Joey B. is proud to see you, Dombey.’
‘Major,’ returned Mr Dombey, ‘you are very obliging.’
‘No, Sir,’ said the Major, ‘Devil a bit! That’s not my character. If that had been Joe’s character, Joe might have been, by this time, Lieutenant-General Sir Joseph Bagstock, K.C.B., and might have received you in very different quarters. You don’t know old Joe yet, I find. But this occasion, being special, is a source of pride to me. By the Lord, Sir,’ said the Major resolutely, ‘it’s an honour to me!’
Mr Dombey, in his estimation of himself and his money, felt that this was very true, and therefore did not dispute the point. But the instinctive recognition of such a truth by the Major, and his plain avowal of it, were very able. It was a confirmation to Mr Dombey, if he had required any, of his not being mistaken in the Major. It was an assurance to him that his power extended beyond his own immediate sphere; and that the Major, as an officer and a gentleman, had a no less becoming sense of it, than the beadle of the Royal Exchange.
And if it were ever consolatory to know this, or the like of this, it was consolatory then, when the impotence of his will, the instability of his hopes, the feebleness of wealth, had been so direfully impressed upon him. What could it do, his boy had asked him. Sometimes, thinking of the baby question, he could hardly forbear inquiring, himself, what could it do indeed: what had it done?
But these were lonely thoughts, bred late at night in the sullen despondency and gloom of his retirement, and pride easily found its reassurance in many testimonies to the truth, as unimpeachable and precious as the Major’s. Mr Dombey, in his friendlessness, inclined to the Major. It cannot be said that he warmed towards him, but he thawed a little, The Major had had some part – and not too much – in the days by the seaside. He was a man of the world, and knew some great people. He talked much, and told stories; and Mr Dombey was disposed to regard him as a choice spirit who shone in society, and who had not that poisonous ingredient of poverty with which choice spirits in general are too much adulterated. His station was undeniable. Altogether the Major was a creditable companion, well accustomed to a life of leisure, and to such places as that they were about to visit, and having an air of gentlemanly ease about him that mixed well enough with his own City character, and did not compete with it at all. If Mr Dombey had any lingering idea that the Major, as a man accustomed, in the way of his calling, to make light of the ruthless hand that had lately crushed his hopes, might unconsciously impart some useful philosophy to him, and scare away his weak regrets, he hid it from himself, and left it lying at the bottom of his pride, unexamined.
‘Where is my scoundrel?’ said the Major, looking wrathfully round the room.
The Native, who had no particular name, but answered to any vituperative epithet, presented himself instantly at the door and ventured to come no nearer.
‘You villain!’ said the choleric Major, ‘where’s the breakfast?’
The dark servant disappeared in search of it, and was quickly heard reascending the stairs in such a tremulous state, that the plates and dishes on the tray he carried, trembling sympathetically as he came, rattled again, all the way up.
‘Dombey,’ said the Major, glancing at the Native as he arranged the table, and encouraging him with an awful shake of his fist when he upset a spoon, ‘here is a devilled grill, a savoury pie, a dish of kidneys, and so forth. Pray sit down. Old Joe can give you nothing but camp fare, you see.’
‘Very excellent fare, Major,’ replied his guest; and not in mere politeness either; for the Major always took the best possible care of himself, and indeed ate rather more of rich meats than was good for him, insomuch that his Imperial complexion was mainly referred by the faculty to that circumstance.
‘You have been looking over the way, Sir,’ observed the Major. ‘Have you seen our friend?’
‘You mean Miss Tox,’ retorted Mr Dombey. ‘No.’
‘Charming woman, Sir,’ said the Major, with a fat laugh rising in his short throat, and nearly suffocating him.
‘Miss Tox is a very good sort of person, I believe,’ replied Mr Dombey.
The haughty coldness of the reply seemed to afford Major Bagstock infinite delight. He swelled and swelled, exceedingly: and even laid down his knife and fork for a moment, to rub his hands.
‘Old Joe, Sir,’ said the Major, ‘was a bit of a favourite in that quarter once. But Joe has had his day. J. Bagstock is extinguished – outrivalled – floored, Sir.’
‘I should have supposed,’ Mr Dombey replied, ‘that the lady’s day for favourites was over: but perhaps you are jesting, Major.’
‘Perhaps you are jesting, Dombey?’ was the Major’s rejoinder.
There never was a more unlikely possibility. It was so clearly expressed in Mr Dombey’s face, that the Major apologised.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘I see you are in earnest. I tell you what, Dombey.’ The Major paused in his eating, and looked mysteriously indignant. ‘That’s a de-vilish ambitious woman, Sir.’
Mr Dombey said ‘Indeed?’ with frigid indifference: mingled perhaps with some contemptuous incredulity as to Miss Tox having the presumption to harbour such a superior quality.
‘That woman, Sir,’ said the Major, ‘is, in her way, a Lucifer. Joey B. has had his day, Sir, but he keeps his eyes. He sees, does Joe. His Royal Highness the late Duke of York observed of Joey, at a levee, that he saw.’
The Major accompanied this with such a look, and, between eating, drinking, hot tea, devilled grill, muffins, and meaning, was altogether so swollen and inflamed about the head, that even Mr Dombey showed some anxiety for him.
‘That ridiculous old spectacle, Sir,’ pursued the Major, ‘aspires. She aspires sky-high, Sir. Matrimonially, Dombey.’
‘I am sorry for her,’ said Mr Dombey.
‘Don’t say that, Dombey,’ returned the Major in a warning voice.
‘Why should I not, Major?’ said Mr Dombey.
The Major gave no answer but the horse’s cough, and went on eating vigorously.
‘She has taken an interest in your household,’ said the Major, stopping short again, ‘and has been a frequent visitor at your house for some time now.’
‘Yes,’ replied Mr Dombey with great stateliness, ‘Miss Tox was originally received there, at the time of Mrs Dombey’s death, as a friend of my sister’s; and being a well-behaved person, and showing a liking for the poor infant, she was permitted – may I say encouraged – to repeat her visits with my sister, and gradually to occupy a kind of footing of familiarity in the family. I have,’ said Mr Dombey, in the tone of a man who was making a great and valuable concession, ‘I have a respect for Miss Tox. She his been so obliging as to render many little services in my house: trifling and insignificant services perhaps, Major, but not to be disparaged on that account: and I hope I have had the good fortune to be enabled to acknowledge them by such attention and notice as it has been in my power to bestow. I hold myself indebted to Miss Tox, Major,’ added Mr Dombey, with a slight wave of his hand, ‘for the pleasure of your acquaintance.’
‘Dombey,’ said the Major, warmly: ‘no! No, Sir! Joseph Bagstock can never permit that assertion to pass uncontradicted. Your knowledge of old Joe, Sir, such as he is, and old Joe’s knowledge of you, Sir, had its origin in a noble fellow, Sir – in a great creature, Sir. Dombey!’ said the Major, with a struggle which it was not very difficult to parade, his whole life being a struggle against all kinds of apoplectic symptoms, ‘we knew each other through your boy.’
Mr Dombey seemed touched, as it is not improbable the Major designed he should be, by this allusion. He looked down and sighed: and the Major, rousing himself fiercely, again said, in reference to the state of mind into which he felt himself in danger of falling, that this was weakness, and nothing should induce him to submit to it.
‘Our friend had a remote connexion with that event,’ said the Major, ‘and all the credit that belongs to her, J. B. is willing to give her, Sir. Notwithstanding which, Ma’am,’ he added, raising his eyes from his plate, and casting them across Princess’s Place, to where Miss Tox was at that moment visible at her window watering her flowers, ‘you’re a scheming jade, Ma’am, and your ambition is a piece of monstrous impudence. If it only made yourself ridiculous, Ma’am,’ said the Major, rolling his head at the unconscious Miss Tox, while his starting eyes appeared to make a leap towards her, ‘you might do that to your heart’s content, Ma’am, without any objection, I assure you, on the part of Bagstock.’ Here the Major laughed frightfully up in the tips of his ears and in the veins of his head. ‘But when, Ma’am,’ said the Major, ‘you compromise other people, and generous, unsuspicious people too, as a repayment for their condescension, you stir the blood of old Joe in his body.’
‘Major,’ said Mr Dombey, reddening, ‘I hope you do not hint at anything so absurd on the part of Miss Tox as – ’
‘Dombey,’ returned the Major, ‘I hint at nothing. But Joey B. has lived in the world, Sir: lived in the world with his eyes open, Sir, and his ears cocked: and Joe tells you, Dombey, that there’s a devilish artful and ambitious woman over the way.’
Mr Dombey involuntarily glanced over the way; and an angry glance he sent in that direction, too.
‘That’s all on such a subject that shall pass the lips of Joseph Bagstock,’ said the Major firmly. ‘Joe is not a tale-bearer, but there are times when he must speak, when he will speak! – confound your arts, Ma’am,’ cried the Major, again apostrophising his fair neighbour, with great ire, – ‘when the provocation is too strong to admit of his remaining silent.’
The emotion of this outbreak threw the Major into a paroxysm of horse’s coughs, which held him for a long time. On recovering he added:
‘And now, Dombey, as you have invited Joe – old Joe, who has no other merit, Sir, but that he is tough and hearty – to be your guest and guide at Leamington, command him in any way you please, and he is wholly yours. I don’t know, Sir,’ said the Major, wagging his double chin with a jocose air, ‘what it is you people see in Joe to make you hold him in such great request, all of you; but this I know, Sir, that if he wasn’t pretty tough, and obstinate in his refusals, you’d kill him among you with your invitations and so forth, in double-quick time.’
Mr Dombey, in a few words, expressed his sense of the preference he received over those other distinguished members of society who were clamouring for the possession of Major Bagstock. But the Major cut him short by giving him to understand that he followed his own inclinations, and that they had risen up in a body and said with one accord, ‘J. B., Dombey is the man for you to choose as a friend.’
The Major being by this time in a state of repletion, with essence of savoury pie oozing out at the corners of his eyes, and devilled grill and kidneys tightening his cravat: and the time moreover approaching for the departure of the railway train to Birmingham, by which they were to leave town: the Native got him into his great-coat with immense difficulty, and buttoned him up until his face looked staring and gasping, over the top of that garment, as if he were in a barrel. The Native then handed him separately, and with a decent interval between each supply, his washleather gloves, his thick stick, and his hat; which latter article the Major wore with a rakish air on one side of his head, by way of toning down his remarkable visage. The Native had previously packed, in all possible and impossible parts of Mr Dombey’s chariot, which was in waiting, an unusual quantity of carpet-bags and small portmanteaus, no less apoplectic in appearance than the Major himself: and having filled his own pockets with Seltzer water, East India sherry, sandwiches, shawls, telescopes, maps, and newspapers, any or all of which light baggage the Major might require at any instant of the journey, he announced that everything was ready. To complete the equipment of this unfortunate foreigner (currently believed to be a prince in his own country), when he took his seat in the rumble by the side of Mr Towlinson, a pile of the Major’s cloaks and great-coats was hurled upon him by the landlord, who aimed at him from the pavement with those great missiles like a Titan, and so covered him up, that he proceeded, in a living tomb, to the railroad station.
But before the carriage moved away, and while the Native was in the act of sepulture, Miss Tox appearing at her window, waved a lilywhite handkerchief. Mr Dombey received this parting salutation very coldly – very coldly even for him – and honouring her with the slightest possible inclination of his head, leaned back in the carriage with a very discontented look. His marked behaviour seemed to afford the Major (who was all politeness in his recognition of Miss Tox) unbounded satisfaction; and he sat for a long time afterwards, leering, and choking, like an over-fed Mephistopheles.
During the bustle of preparation at the railway, Mr Dombey and the Major walked up and down the platform side by side; the former taciturn and gloomy, and the latter entertaining him, or entertaining himself, with a variety of anecdotes and reminiscences, in most of which Joe Bagstock was the principal performer. Neither of the two observed that in the course of these walks, they attracted the attention of a working man who was standing near the engine, and who touched his hat every time they passed; for Mr Dombey habitually looked over the vulgar herd, not at them; and the Major was looking, at the time, into the core of one of his stories. At length, however, this man stepped before them as they turned round, and pulling his hat off, and keeping it off, ducked his head to Mr Dombey.
‘Beg your pardon, Sir,’ said the man, ‘but I hope you’re a doin’ pretty well, Sir.’
He was dressed in a canvas suit abundantly besmeared with coal-dust and oil, and had cinders in his whiskers, and a smell of half-slaked ashes all over him. He was not a bad-looking fellow, nor even what could be fairly called a dirty-looking fellow, in spite of this; and, in short, he was Mr Toodle, professionally clothed.
‘I shall have the honour of stokin’ of you down, Sir,’ said Mr Toodle. ‘Beg your pardon, Sir. – I hope you find yourself a coming round?’
Mr Dombey looked at him, in return for his tone of interest, as if a man like that would make his very eyesight dirty.
‘’Scuse the liberty, Sir,’ said Toodle, seeing he was not clearly remembered, ‘but my wife Polly, as was called Richards in your family – ’
A change in Mr Dombey’s face, which seemed to express recollection of him, and so it did, but it expressed in a much stronger degree an angry sense of humiliation, stopped Mr Toodle short.
‘Your wife wants money, I suppose,’ said Mr Dombey, putting his hand in his pocket, and speaking (but that he always did) haughtily.
‘No thank’ee, Sir,’ returned Toodle, ‘I can’t say she does. I don’t.’
Mr Dombey was stopped short now in his turn: and awkwardly: with his hand in his pocket.
‘No, Sir,’ said Toodle, turning his oilskin cap round and round; ‘we’re a doin’ pretty well, Sir; we haven’t no cause to complain in the worldly way, Sir. We’ve had four more since then, Sir, but we rubs on.’
Mr Dombey would have rubbed on to his own carriage, though in so doing he had rubbed the stoker underneath the wheels; but his attention was arrested by something in connexion with the cap still going slowly round and round in the man’s hand.
‘We lost one babby,’ observed Toodle, ‘there’s no denyin’.’
‘Lately,’ added Mr Dombey, looking at the cap.
‘No, Sir, up’ard of three years ago, but all the rest is hearty. And in the matter o readin’, Sir,’ said Toodle, ducking again, as if to remind Mr Dombey of what had passed between them on that subject long ago, ‘them boys o’ mine, they learned me, among ‘em, arter all. They’ve made a wery tolerable scholar of me, Sir, them boys.’
‘Come, Major!’ said Mr Dombey.
‘Beg your pardon, Sir,’ resumed Toodle, taking a step before them and deferentially stopping them again, still cap in hand: ‘I wouldn’t have troubled you with such a pint except as a way of gettin’ in the name of my son Biler – christened Robin – him as you was so good as to make a Charitable Grinder on.’
