Чарльз Диккенс
Dombey and Son
‘But I am afraid I trouble you too much,’ said Mr Dombey.
‘By no means. Where would you wish it taken from?’ she answered, turning to him with the same enforced attention as before.
Mr Dombey, with another bow, which cracked the starch in his cravat, would beg to leave that to the Artist.
‘I would rather you chose for yourself,’ said Edith.
‘Suppose then,’ said Mr Dombey, ‘we say from here. It appears a good spot for the purpose, or – Carker, what do you think?’
There happened to be in the foreground, at some little distance, a grove of trees, not unlike that in which Mr Carker had made his chain of footsteps in the morning, and with a seat under one tree, greatly resembling, in the general character of its situation, the point where his chain had broken.
‘Might I venture to suggest to Mrs Granger,’ said Carker, ‘that that is an interesting – almost a curious – point of view?’
She followed the direction of his riding-whip with her eyes, and raised them quickly to his face. It was the second glance they had exchanged since their introduction; and would have been exactly like the first, but that its expression was plainer.
‘Will you like that?’ said Edith to Mr Dombey.
‘I shall be charmed,’ said Mr Dombey to Edith.
Therefore the carriage was driven to the spot where Mr Dombey was to be charmed; and Edith, without moving from her seat, and opening her sketch-book with her usual proud indifference, began to sketch.
‘My pencils are all pointless,’ she said, stopping and turning them over.
‘Pray allow me,’ said Mr Dombey. ‘Or Carker will do it better, as he understands these things. Carker, have the goodness to see to these pencils for Mrs Granger.’
Mr Carker rode up close to the carriage-door on Mrs Granger’s side, and letting the rein fall on his horse’s neck, took the pencils from her hand with a smile and a bow, and sat in the saddle leisurely mending them. Having done so, he begged to be allowed to hold them, and to hand them to her as they were required; and thus Mr Carker, with many commendations of Mrs Granger’s extraordinary skill – especially in trees – remained – close at her side, looking over the drawing as she made it. Mr Dombey in the meantime stood bolt upright in the carriage like a highly respectable ghost, looking on too; while Cleopatra and the Major dallied as two ancient doves might do.
‘Are you satisfied with that, or shall I finish it a little more?’ said Edith, showing the sketch to Mr Dombey.
Mr Dombey begged that it might not be touched; it was perfection.
‘It is most extraordinary,’ said Carker, bringing every one of his red gums to bear upon his praise. ‘I was not prepared for anything so beautiful, and so unusual altogether.’
This might have applied to the sketcher no less than to the sketch; but Mr Carker’s manner was openness itself – not as to his mouth alone, but as to his whole spirit. So it continued to be while the drawing was laid aside for Mr Dombey, and while the sketching materials were put up; then he handed in the pencils (which were received with a distant acknowledgment of his help, but without a look), and tightening his rein, fell back, and followed the carriage again.
Thinking, perhaps, as he rode, that even this trivial sketch had been made and delivered to its owner, as if it had been bargained for and bought. Thinking, perhaps, that although she had assented with such perfect readiness to his request, her haughty face, bent over the drawing, or glancing at the distant objects represented in it, had been the face of a proud woman, engaged in a sordid and miserable transaction. Thinking, perhaps, of such things: but smiling certainly, and while he seemed to look about him freely, in enjoyment of the air and exercise, keeping always that sharp corner of his eye upon the carriage.
A stroll among the haunted ruins of Kenilworth, and more rides to more points of view: most of which, Mrs Skewton reminded Mr Dombey, Edith had already sketched, as he had seen in looking over her drawings: brought the day’s expedition to a close. Mrs Skewton and Edith were driven to their own lodgings; Mr Carker was graciously invited by Cleopatra to return thither with Mr Dombey and the Major, in the evening, to hear some of Edith’s music; and the three gentlemen repaired to their hotel to dinner.
The dinner was the counterpart of yesterday’s, except that the Major was twenty-four hours more triumphant and less mysterious. Edith was toasted again. Mr Dombey was again agreeably embarrassed. And Mr Carker was full of interest and praise.
There were no other visitors at Mrs Skewton’s. Edith’s drawings were strewn about the room, a little more abundantly than usual perhaps; and Withers, the wan page, handed round a little stronger tea. The harp was there; the piano was there; and Edith sang and played. But even the music was played by Edith to Mr Dombey’s order, as it were, in the same uncompromising way. As thus.
‘Edith, my dearest love,’ said Mrs Skewton, half an hour after tea, ‘Mr Dombey is dying to hear you, I know.’
‘Mr Dombey has life enough left to say so for himself, Mama, I have no doubt.’
‘I shall be immensely obliged,’ said Mr Dombey.
‘What do you wish?’
‘Piano?’ hesitated Mr Dombey.
‘Whatever you please. You have only to choose.’
Accordingly, she began with the piano. It was the same with the harp; the same with her singing; the same with the selection of the pieces that she sang and played. Such frigid and constrained, yet prompt and pointed acquiescence with the wishes he imposed upon her, and on no one else, was sufficiently remarkable to penetrate through all the mysteries of picquet, and impress itself on Mr Carker’s keen attention. Nor did he lose sight of the fact that Mr Dombey was evidently proud of his power, and liked to show it.
Nevertheless, Mr Carker played so well – some games with the Major, and some with Cleopatra, whose vigilance of eye in respect of Mr Dombey and Edith no lynx could have surpassed – that he even heightened his position in the lady-mother’s good graces; and when on taking leave he regretted that he would be obliged to return to London next morning, Cleopatra trusted: community of feeling not being met with every day: that it was far from being the last time they would meet.
‘I hope so,’ said Mr Carker, with an expressive look at the couple in the distance, as he drew towards the door, following the Major. ‘I think so.’
Mr Dombey, who had taken a stately leave of Edith, bent, or made some approach to a bend, over Cleopatra’s couch, and said, in a low voice:
‘I have requested Mrs Granger’s permission to call on her to-morrow morning – for a purpose – and she has appointed twelve o’clock. May I hope to have the pleasure of finding you at home, Madam, afterwards?’
Cleopatra was so much fluttered and moved, by hearing this, of course, incomprehensible speech, that she could only shut her eyes, and shake her head, and give Mr Dombey her hand; which Mr Dombey, not exactly knowing what to do with, dropped.
‘Dombey, come along!’ cried the Major, looking in at the door. ‘Damme, Sir, old Joe has a great mind to propose an alteration in the name of the Royal Hotel, and that it should be called the Three Jolly Bachelors, in honour of ourselves and Carker.’ With this, the Major slapped Mr Dombey on the back, and winking over his shoulder at the ladies, with a frightful tendency of blood to the head, carried him off.
Mrs Skewton reposed on her sofa, and Edith sat apart, by her harp, in silence. The mother, trifling with her fan, looked stealthily at the daughter more than once, but the daughter, brooding gloomily with downcast eyes, was not to be disturbed.
Thus they remained for a long hour, without a word, until Mrs Skewton’s maid appeared, according to custom, to prepare her gradually for night. At night, she should have been a skeleton, with dart and hour-glass, rather than a woman, this attendant; for her touch was as the touch of Death. The painted object shrivelled underneath her hand; the form collapsed, the hair dropped off, the arched dark eyebrows changed to scanty tufts of grey; the pale lips shrunk, the skin became cadaverous and loose; an old, worn, yellow, nodding woman, with red eyes, alone remained in Cleopatra’s place, huddled up, like a slovenly bundle, in a greasy flannel gown.
The very voice was changed, as it addressed Edith, when they were alone again.
‘Why don’t you tell me,’ it said sharply, ‘that he is coming here to-morrow by appointment?’
‘Because you know it,’ returned Edith, ‘Mother.’
The mocking emphasis she laid on that one word!
‘You know he has bought me,’ she resumed. ‘Or that he will, to-morrow. He has considered of his bargain; he has shown it to his friend; he is even rather proud of it; he thinks that it will suit him, and may be had sufficiently cheap; and he will buy to-morrow. God, that I have lived for this, and that I feel it!’
Compress into one handsome face the conscious self-abasement, and the burning indignation of a hundred women, strong in passion and in pride; and there it hid itself with two white shuddering arms.
‘What do you mean?’ returned the angry mother. ‘Haven’t you from a child – ’
‘A child!’ said Edith, looking at her, ‘when was I a child? What childhood did you ever leave to me? I was a woman – artful, designing, mercenary, laying snares for men – before I knew myself, or you, or even understood the base and wretched aim of every new display I learnt You gave birth to a woman. Look upon her. She is in her pride tonight.’
And as she spoke, she struck her hand upon her beautiful bosom, as though she would have beaten down herself.
‘Look at me,’ she said, ‘who have never known what it is to have an honest heart, and love. Look at me, taught to scheme and plot when children play; and married in my youth – an old age of design – to one for whom I had no feeling but indifference. Look at me, whom he left a widow, dying before his inheritance descended to him – a judgment on you! well deserved! – and tell me what has been my life for ten years since.’
‘We have been making every effort to endeavour to secure to you a good establishment,’ rejoined her mother. ‘That has been your life. And now you have got it.’
‘There is no slave in a market: there is no horse in a fair: so shown and offered and examined and paraded, Mother, as I have been, for ten shameful years,’ cried Edith, with a burning brow, and the same bitter emphasis on the one word. ‘Is it not so? Have I been made the bye-word of all kinds of men? Have fools, have profligates, have boys, have dotards, dangled after me, and one by one rejected me, and fallen off, because you were too plain with all your cunning: yes, and too true, with all those false pretences: until we have almost come to be notorious? The licence of look and touch,’ she said, with flashing eyes, ‘have I submitted to it, in half the places of resort upon the map of England? Have I been hawked and vended here and there, until the last grain of self-respect is dead within me, and I loathe myself? Has been my late childhood? I had none before. Do not tell me that I had, tonight of all nights in my life!’
‘You might have been well married,’ said her mother, ‘twenty times at least, Edith, if you had given encouragement enough.’
‘No! Who takes me, refuse that I am, and as I well deserve to be,’ she answered, raising her head, and trembling in her energy of shame and stormy pride, ‘shall take me, as this man does, with no art of mine put forth to lure him. He sees me at the auction, and he thinks it well to buy me. Let him! When he came to view me – perhaps to bid – he required to see the roll of my accomplishments. I gave it to him. When he would have me show one of them, to justify his purchase to his men, I require of him to say which he demands, and I exhibit it. I will do no more. He makes the purchase of his own will, and with his own sense of its worth, and the power of his money; and I hope it may never disappoint him. I have not vaunted and pressed the bargain; neither have you, so far as I have been able to prevent you.
‘You talk strangely to-night, Edith, to your own Mother.’
‘It seems so to me; stranger to me than you,’ said Edith. ‘But my education was completed long ago. I am too old now, and have fallen too low, by degrees, to take a new course, and to stop yours, and to help myself. The germ of all that purifies a woman’s breast, and makes it true and good, has never stirred in mine, and I have nothing else to sustain me when I despise myself.’ There had been a touching sadness in her voice, but it was gone, when she went on to say, with a curled lip, ‘So, as we are genteel and poor, I am content that we should be made rich by these means; all I say is, I have kept the only purpose I have had the strength to form – I had almost said the power, with you at my side, Mother – and have not tempted this man on.’
‘This man! You speak,’ said her mother, ‘as if you hated him.’
‘And you thought I loved him, did you not?’ she answered, stopping on her way across the room, and looking round. ‘Shall I tell you,’ she continued, with her eyes fixed on her mother, ‘who already knows us thoroughly, and reads us right, and before whom I have even less of self-respect or confidence than before my own inward self; being so much degraded by his knowledge of me?’
‘This is an attack, I suppose,’ returned her mother coldly, ‘on poor, unfortunate what’s-his-name – Mr Carker! Your want of self-respect and confidence, my dear, in reference to that person (who is very agreeable, it strikes me), is not likely to have much effect on your establishment. Why do you look at me so hard? Are you ill?’
Edith suddenly let fall her face, as if it had been stung, and while she pressed her hands upon it, a terrible tremble crept over her whole frame. It was quickly gone; and with her usual step, she passed out of the room.
The maid who should have been a skeleton, then reappeared, and giving one arm to her mistress, who appeared to have taken off her manner with her charms, and to have put on paralysis with her flannel gown, collected the ashes of Cleopatra, and carried them away in the other, ready for tomorrow’s revivification.
CHAPTER 28. Alterations
So the day has come at length, Susan,’ said Florence to the excellent Nipper, ‘when we are going back to our quiet home!’
Susan drew in her breath with an amount of expression not easily described, further relieving her feelings with a smart cough, answered, ‘Very quiet indeed, Miss Floy, no doubt. Excessive so.’
‘When I was a child,’ said Florence, thoughtfully, and after musing for some moments, ‘did you ever see that gentleman who has taken the trouble to ride down here to speak to me, now three times – three times, I think, Susan?’
‘Three times, Miss,’ returned the Nipper. ‘Once when you was out a walking with them Sket – ’
Florence gently looked at her, and Miss Nipper checked herself.
‘With Sir Barnet and his lady, I mean to say, Miss, and the young gentleman. And two evenings since then.’
‘When I was a child, and when company used to come to visit Papa, did you ever see that gentleman at home, Susan?’ asked Florence.
‘Well, Miss,’ returned her maid, after considering, ‘I really couldn’t say I ever did. When your poor dear Ma died, Miss Floy, I was very new in the family, you see, and my element:’ the Nipper bridled, as opining that her merits had been always designedly extinguished by Mr Dombey: ‘was the floor below the attics.’
‘To be sure,’ said Florence, still thoughtfully; ‘you are not likely to have known who came to the house. I quite forgot.’
‘Not, Miss, but what we talked about the family and visitors,’ said Susan, ‘and but what I heard much said, although the nurse before Mrs Richards make unpleasant remarks when I was in company, and hint at little Pitchers, but that could only be attributed, poor thing,’ observed Susan, with composed forbearance, ‘to habits of intoxication, for which she was required to leave, and did.’
Florence, who was seated at her chamber window, with her face resting on her hand, sat looking out, and hardly seemed to hear what Susan said, she was so lost in thought.
‘At all events, Miss,’ said Susan, ‘I remember very well that this same gentleman, Mr Carker, was almost, if not quite, as great a gentleman with your Papa then, as he is now. It used to be said in the house then, Miss, that he was at the head of all your Pa’s affairs in the City, and managed the whole, and that your Pa minded him more than anybody, which, begging your pardon, Miss Floy, he might easy do, for he never minded anybody else. I knew that, Pitcher as I might have been.’
Susan Nipper, with an injured remembrance of the nurse before Mrs Richards, emphasised ‘Pitcher’ strongly.
‘And that Mr Carker has not fallen off, Miss,’ she pursued, ‘but has stood his ground, and kept his credit with your Pa, I know from what is always said among our people by that Perch, whenever he comes to the house; and though he’s the weakest weed in the world, Miss Floy, and no one can have a moment’s patience with the man, he knows what goes on in the City tolerable well, and says that your Pa does nothing without Mr Carker, and leaves all to Mr Carker, and acts according to Mr Carker, and has Mr Carker always at his elbow, and I do believe that he believes (that washiest of Perches!) that after your Pa, the Emperor of India is the child unborn to Mr Carker.’
Not a word of this was lost on Florence, who, with an awakened interest in Susan’s speech, no longer gazed abstractedly on the prospect without, but looked at her, and listened with attention.
‘Yes, Susan,’ she said, when that young lady had concluded. ‘He is in Papa’s confidence, and is his friend, I am sure.’
Florence’s mind ran high on this theme, and had done for some days. Mr Carker, in the two visits with which he had followed up his first one, had assumed a confidence between himself and her – a right on his part to be mysterious and stealthy, in telling her that the ship was still unheard of – a kind of mildly restrained power and authority over her – that made her wonder, and caused her great uneasiness. She had no means of repelling it, or of freeing herself from the web he was gradually winding about her; for that would have required some art and knowledge of the world, opposed to such address as his; and Florence had none. True, he had said no more to her than that there was no news of the ship, and that he feared the worst; but how he came to know that she was interested in the ship, and why he had the right to signify his knowledge to her, so insidiously and darkly, troubled Florence very much.
This conduct on the part of Mr Carker, and her habit of often considering it with wonder and uneasiness, began to invest him with an uncomfortable fascination in Florence’s thoughts. A more distinct remembrance of his features, voice, and manner: which she sometimes courted, as a means of reducing him to the level of a real personage, capable of exerting no greater charm over her than another: did not remove the vague impression. And yet he never frowned, or looked upon her with an air of dislike or animosity, but was always smiling and serene.
Again, Florence, in pursuit of her strong purpose with reference to her father, and her steady resolution to believe that she was herself unwittingly to blame for their so cold and distant relations, would recall to mind that this gentleman was his confidential friend, and would think, with an anxious heart, could her struggling tendency to dislike and fear him be a part of that misfortune in her, which had turned her father’s love adrift, and left her so alone? She dreaded that it might be; sometimes believed it was: then she resolved that she would try to conquer this wrong feeling; persuaded herself that she was honoured and encouraged by the notice of her father’s friend; and hoped that patient observation of him and trust in him would lead her bleeding feet along that stony road which ended in her father’s heart.
Thus, with no one to advise her – for she could advise with no one without seeming to complain against him – gentle Florence tossed on an uneasy sea of doubt and hope; and Mr Carker, like a scaly monster of the deep, swam down below, and kept his shining eye upon her.
Florence had a new reason in all this for wishing to be at home again. Her lonely life was better suited to her course of timid hope and doubt; and she feared sometimes, that in her absence she might miss some hopeful chance of testifying her affection for her father. Heaven knows, she might have set her mind at rest, poor child! on this last point; but her slighted love was fluttering within her, and, even in her sleep, it flew away in dreams, and nestled, like a wandering bird come home, upon her father’s neck.
Of Walter she thought often. Ah! how often, when the night was gloomy, and the wind was blowing round the house! But hope was strong in her breast. It is so difficult for the young and ardent, even with such experience as hers, to imagine youth and ardour quenched like a weak flame, and the bright day of life merging into night, at noon, that hope was strong yet. Her tears fell frequently for Walter’s sufferings; but rarely for his supposed death, and never long.
She had written to the old Instrument-maker, but had received no answer to her note: which indeed required none. Thus matters stood with Florence on the morning when she was going home, gladly, to her old secluded life.
Doctor and Mrs Blimber, accompanied (much against his will) by their valued charge, Master Barnet, were already gone back to Brighton, where that young gentleman and his fellow-pilgrims to Parnassus were then, no doubt, in the continual resumption of their studies. The holiday time was past and over; most of the juvenile guests at the villa had taken their departure; and Florence’s long visit was come to an end.
There was one guest, however, albeit not resident within the house, who had been very constant in his attentions to the family, and who still remained devoted to them. This was Mr Toots, who after renewing, some weeks ago, the acquaintance he had had the happiness of forming with Skettles Junior, on the night when he burst the Blimberian bonds and soared into freedom with his ring on, called regularly every other day, and left a perfect pack of cards at the hall-door; so many indeed, that the ceremony was quite a deal on the part of Mr Toots, and a hand at whist on the part of the servant.
Mr Toots, likewise, with the bold and happy idea of preventing the family from forgetting him (but there is reason to suppose that this expedient originated in the teeming brain of the Chicken), had established a six-oared cutter, manned by aquatic friends of the Chicken’s and steered by that illustrious character in person, who wore a bright red fireman’s coat for the purpose, and concealed the perpetual black eye with which he was afflicted, beneath a green shade. Previous to the institution of this equipage, Mr Toots sounded the Chicken on a hypothetical case, as, supposing the Chicken to be enamoured of a young lady named Mary, and to have conceived the intention of starting a boat of his own, what would he call that boat? The Chicken replied, with divers strong asseverations, that he would either christen it Poll or The Chicken’s Delight. Improving on this idea, Mr Toots, after deep study and the exercise of much invention, resolved to call his boat The Toots’s Joy, as a delicate compliment to Florence, of which no man knowing the parties, could possibly miss the appreciation.
Stretched on a crimson cushion in his gallant bark, with his shoes in the air, Mr Toots, in the exercise of his project, had come up the river, day after day, and week after week, and had flitted to and fro, near Sir Barnet’s garden, and had caused his crew to cut across and across the river at sharp angles, for his better exhibition to any lookers-out from Sir Barnet’s windows, and had had such evolutions performed by the Toots’s Joy as had filled all the neighbouring part of the water-side with astonishment. But whenever he saw anyone in Sir Barnet’s garden on the brink of the river, Mr Toots always feigned to be passing there, by a combination of coincidences of the most singular and unlikely description.
‘How are you, Toots?’ Sir Barnet would say, waving his hand from the lawn, while the artful Chicken steered close in shore.
‘How de do, Sir Barnet?’ Mr Toots would answer, ‘What a surprising thing that I should see you here!’
Mr Toots, in his sagacity, always said this, as if, instead of that being Sir Barnet’s house, it were some deserted edifice on the banks of the Nile, or Ganges.
‘I never was so surprised!’ Mr Toots would exclaim. – ‘Is Miss Dombey there?’
Whereupon Florence would appear, perhaps.
‘Oh, Diogenes is quite well, Miss Dombey,’ Toots would cry. ‘I called to ask this morning.’
‘Thank you very much!’ the pleasant voice of Florence would reply.
‘Won’t you come ashore, Toots?’ Sir Barnet would say then. ‘Come! you’re in no hurry. Come and see us.’
‘Oh, it’s of no consequence, thank you!’ Mr Toots would blushingly rejoin. ‘I thought Miss Dombey might like to know, that’s all. Good-bye!’ And poor Mr Toots, who was dying to accept the invitation, but hadn’t the courage to do it, signed to the Chicken, with an aching heart, and away went the Joy, cleaving the water like an arrow.
The Joy was lying in a state of extraordinary splendour, at the garden steps, on the morning of Florence’s departure. When she went downstairs to take leave, after her talk with Susan, she found Mr Toots awaiting her in the drawing-room.
‘Oh, how de do, Miss Dombey?’ said the stricken Toots, always dreadfully disconcerted when the desire of his heart was gained, and he was speaking to her; ‘thank you, I’m very well indeed, I hope you’re the same, so was Diogenes yesterday.’
‘You are very kind,’ said Florence.
‘Thank you, it’s of no consequence,’ retorted Mr Toots. ‘I thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind, in this fine weather, coming home by water, Miss Dombey. There’s plenty of room in the boat for your maid.’
‘I am very much obliged to you,’ said Florence, hesitating. ‘I really am – but I would rather not.’
‘Oh, it’s of no consequence,’ retorted Mr Toots. ‘Good morning.’
‘Won’t you wait and see Lady Skettles?’ asked Florence, kindly.
‘Oh no, thank you,’ returned Mr Toots, ‘it’s of no consequence at all.’
So shy was Mr Toots on such occasions, and so flurried! But Lady Skettles entering at the moment, Mr Toots was suddenly seized with a passion for asking her how she did, and hoping she was very well; nor could Mr Toots by any possibility leave off shaking hands with her, until Sir Barnet appeared: to whom he immediately clung with the tenacity of desperation.
‘We are losing, today, Toots,’ said Sir Barnet, turning towards Florence, ‘the light of our house, I assure you’
‘Oh, it’s of no conseq – I mean yes, to be sure,’ faltered the embarrassed Mr Toots. ‘Good morning!’
Notwithstanding the emphatic nature of this farewell, Mr Toots, instead of going away, stood leering about him, vacantly. Florence, to relieve him, bade adieu, with many thanks, to Lady Skettles, and gave her arm to Sir Barnet.
‘May I beg of you, my dear Miss Dombey,’ said her host, as he conducted her to the carriage, ‘to present my best compliments to your dear Papa?’
It was distressing to Florence to receive the commission, for she felt as if she were imposing on Sir Barnet by allowing him to believe that a kindness rendered to her, was rendered to her father. As she could not explain, however, she bowed her head and thanked him; and again she thought that the dull home, free from such embarrassments, and such reminders of her sorrow, was her natural and best retreat.
Such of her late friends and companions as were yet remaining at the villa, came running from within, and from the garden, to say good-bye. They were all attached to her, and very earnest in taking leave of her. Even the household were sorry for her going, and the servants came nodding and curtseying round the carriage door. As Florence looked round on the kind faces, and saw among them those of Sir Barnet and his lady, and of Mr Toots, who was chuckling and staring at her from a distance, she was reminded of the night when Paul and she had come from Doctor Blimber’s: and when the carriage drove away, her face was wet with tears.
Sorrowful tears, but tears of consolation, too; for all the softer memories connected with the dull old house to which she was returning made it dear to her, as they rose up. How long it seemed since she had wandered through the silent rooms: since she had last crept, softly and afraid, into those her father occupied: since she had felt the solemn but yet soothing influence of the beloved dead in every action of her daily life! This new farewell reminded her, besides, of her parting with poor Walter: of his looks and words that night: and of the gracious blending she had noticed in him, of tenderness for those he left behind, with courage and high spirit. His little history was associated with the old house too, and gave it a new claim and hold upon her heart.
Even Susan Nipper softened towards the home of so many years, as they were on their way towards it. Gloomy as it was, and rigid justice as she rendered to its gloom, she forgave it a great deal. ‘I shall be glad to see it again, I don’t deny, Miss,’ said the Nipper. ‘There ain’t much in it to boast of, but I wouldn’t have it burnt or pulled down, neither!’
‘You’ll be glad to go through the old rooms, won’t you, Susan?’ said Florence, smiling.
‘Well, Miss,’ returned the Nipper, softening more and more towards the house, as they approached it nearer, ‘I won’t deny but what I shall, though I shall hate ‘em again, to-morrow, very likely.’
Florence felt that, for her, there was greater peace within it than elsewhere. It was better and easier to keep her secret shut up there, among the tall dark walls, than to carry it abroad into the light, and try to hide it from a crowd of happy eyes. It was better to pursue the study of her loving heart, alone, and find no new discouragements in loving hearts about her. It was easier to hope, and pray, and love on, all uncared for, yet with constancy and patience, in the tranquil sanctuary of such remembrances: although it mouldered, rusted, and decayed about her: than in a new scene, let its gaiety be what it would. She welcomed back her old enchanted dream of life, and longed for the old dark door to close upon her, once again.
