Paul's Progress and Christening
Little Paul, suffering no contamination from the blood of the Toodles, grew stouter and stronger every day. Every day, too, he was more and more ardently cherished by Miss Tox, whose devotion was so far appreciated by Mr Dombey that he began to regard her as a woman of great natural good sense, whose feelings did her credit and deserved encouragement. He was so lavish of this condescension, that he not only bowed to her, in a particular manner, on several occasions, but even entrusted such stately recognitions of her to his sister as 'pray tell your friend, Louisa, that she is very good,' or 'mention to Miss Tox, Louisa, that I am obliged to her;'specialities which made a deep impression on the lady thus distinguished.
Whether Miss Tox conceived that having been selected by the Fates to welcome the little Dombey before he was born, in Kirby, Beard and Kirby's Best Mixed Pins, it therefore naturally devolved upon her to greet him with all other forms of welcome in all other early stages of his existence - or whether her overflowing goodness induced her to volunteer into the domestic militia as a substitute in some sort for his deceased Mama - or whether she was conscious of any other motives - are questions which in this stage of the Firm's history herself only could have solved. Nor have they much bearing on the fact (of which there is no doubt), that Miss Tox's constancy and zeal were a heavy discouragement to Richards, who lost flesh hourly under her patronage, and was in some danger of being superintended to death.
Miss Tox was often in the habit of assuring Mrs Chick, that nothing could exceed her interest in all connected with the development of that sweet child;' and an observer of Miss Tox's proceedings might have inferred so much without declaratory confirmation. She would preside over the innocent repasts of the young heir, with ineffable satisfaction, almost with an air of joint proprietorship with Richards in the entertainment. At the little ceremonies of the bath and toilette, she assisted with enthusiasm. The administration of infantine doses of physic awakened all the active sympathy of her character; and being on one occasion secreted in a cupboard (whither she had fled in modesty), when Mr Dombey was introduced into the nursery by his sister, to behold his son, in the course of preparation for bed, taking a short walk uphill over Richards's gown, in a short and airy linen jacket, Miss Tox was so transported beyond the ignorant present as to be unable to refrain from crying out, 'Is he not beautiful Mr Dombey! Is he not a Cupid, Sir!' and then almost sinking behind the closet door with confusion and blushes.
'Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, one day, to his sister, 'I really think I must present your friend with some little token, on the occasion of Paul's christening. She has exerted herself so warmly in the child's behalf from the first, and seems to understand her position so thoroughly (a very rare merit in this world, I am sorry to say), that it would really be agreeable to me to notice her.'
Let it be no detraction from the merits of Miss Tox, to hint that in Mr Dombey's eyes, as in some others that occasionally see the light, they only achieved that mighty piece of knowledge, the understanding of their own position, who showed a fitting reverence for his. It was not so much their merit that they knew themselves, as that they knew him, and bowed low before him.
'My dear Paul,' returned his sister, 'you do Miss Tox but justice, as a man of your penetration was sure, I knew, to do. I believe if there are three words in the English language for which she has a respect amounting almost to veneration, those words are, Dombey and Son.'
'Well,' said Mr Dombey, 'I believe it. It does Miss Tox credit.'
'And as to anything in the shape of a token, my dear Paul,' pursued his sister, 'all I can say is that anything you give Miss Tox will be hoarded and prized, I am sure, like a relic. But there is a way, my dear Paul, of showing your sense of Miss Tox's friendliness in a still more flattering and acceptable manner, if you should be so inclined.'
'How is that?' asked Mr Dombey.
'Godfathers, of course,' continued Mrs Chick, 'are important in point of connexion and influence.'
'I don't know why they should be, to my son, said Mr Dombey, coldly.
'Very true, my dear Paul,' retorted Mrs Chick, with an extraordinary show of animation, to cover the suddenness of her conversion; 'and spoken like yourself. I might have expected nothing else from you. I might have known that such would have been your opinion. Perhaps;' here Mrs Chick faltered again, as not quite comfortably feeling her way; 'perhaps that is a reason why you might have the less objection to allowing Miss Tox to be godmother to the dear thing, if it were only as deputy and proxy for someone else. That it would be received as a great honour and distinction, Paul, I need not say.
'Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, after a short pause, 'it is not to be supposed - '
'Certainly not,' cried Mrs Chick, hastening to anticipate a refusal, 'I never thought it was.'
Mr Dombey looked at her impatiently.
'Don't flurry me, my dear Paul,' said his sister; 'for that destroys me. I am far from strong. I have not been quite myself, since poor dear Fanny departed.'
Mr Dombey glanced at the pocket-handkerchief which his sister applied to her eyes, and resumed:
'It is not be supposed, I say 'And I say,' murmured Mrs Chick, 'that I never thought it was.'
'Good Heaven, Louisa!' said Mr Dombey.
'No, my dear Paul,' she remonstrated with tearful dignity, 'I must really be allowed to speak. I am not so clever, or so reasoning, or so eloquent, or so anything, as you are. I know that very well. So much the worse for me. But if they were the last words I had to utter - and last words should be very solemn to you and me, Paul, after poor dear Fanny - I would still say I never thought it was. And what is more,' added Mrs Chick with increased dignity, as if she had withheld her crushing argument until now, 'I never did think it was.' Mr Dombey walked to the window and back again.
'It is not to be supposed, Louisa,' he said (Mrs Chick had nailed her colours to the mast, and repeated 'I know it isn't,' but he took no notice of it), 'but that there are many persons who, supposing that I recognised any claim at all in such a case, have a claim upon me superior to Miss Tox's. But I do not. I recognise no such thing. Paul and myself will be able, when the time comes, to hold our own - the House, in other words, will be able to hold its own, and maintain its own, and hand down its own of itself, and without any such common-place aids. The kind of foreign help which people usually seek for their children, I can afford to despise; being above it, I hope. So that Paul's infancy and childhood pass away well, and I see him becoming qualified without waste of time for the career on which he is destined to enter, I am satisfied. He will make what powerful friends he pleases in after-life, when he is actively maintaining - and extending, if that is possible - the dignity and credit of the Firm. Until then, I am enough for him, perhaps, and all in all. I have no wish that people should step in between us. I would much rather show my sense of the obliging conduct of a deserving person like your friend. Therefore let it be so; and your husband and myself will do well enough for the other sponsors, I daresay.'
In the course of these remarks, delivered with great majesty and grandeur, Mr Dombey had truly revealed the secret feelings of his breast. An indescribable distrust of anybody stepping in between himself and his son; a haughty dread of having any rival or partner in the boy's respect and deference; a sharp misgiving, recently acquired, that he was not infallible in his power of bending and binding human wills; as sharp a jealousy of any second check or cross; these were, at that time the master keys of his soul. In all his life, he had never made a friend. His cold and distant nature had neither sought one, nor found one. And now, when that nature concentrated its whole force so strongly on a partial scheme of parental interest and ambition, it seemed as if its icy current, instead of being released by this influence, and running clear and free, had thawed for but an instant to admit its burden, and then frozen with it into one unyielding block.
Elevated thus to the godmothership of little Paul, in virtue of her insignificance, Miss Tox was from that hour chosen and appointed to office; and Mr Dombey further signified his pleasure that the ceremony, already long delayed, should take place without further postponement. His sister, who had been far from anticipating so signal a success, withdrew as soon as she could, to communicate it to her best of friends; and Mr Dombey was left alone in his library. He had already laid his hand upon the bellrope to convey his usual summons to Richards, when his eye fell upon a writing-desk, belonging to his deceased wife, which had been taken, among other things, from a cabinet in her chamber. It was not the first time that his eye had lighted on it He carried the key in his pocket; and he brought it to his table and opened it now - having previously locked the room door - with a well-accustomed hand.
From beneath a leaf of torn and cancelled scraps of paper, he took one letter that remained entire. Involuntarily holding his breath as he opened this document, and 'bating in the stealthy action something of his arrogant demeanour, he s at down, resting his head upon one hand, and read it through.
He read it slowly and attentively, and with a nice particularity to every syllable. Otherwise than as his great deliberation seemed unnatural, and perhaps the result of an effort equally great, he allowed no sign of emotion to escape him. When he had read it through, he folded and refolded it slowly several times, and tore it carefully into fragments. Checking his hand in the act of throwing these away, he put them in his pocket, as if unwilling to trust them even to the chances of being re-united and deciphered; and instead of ringing, as usual, for little Paul, he sat solitary, all the evening, in his cheerless room.
There was anything but solitude in the nursery; for there, Mrs Chick and Miss Tox were enjoying a social evening, so much to the disgust of Miss Susan Nipper, that that young lady embraced every opportunity of making wry faces behind the door. Her feelings were so much excited on the occasion, that she found it indispensable to afford them this relief, even without having the comfort of any audience or sympathy whatever. As the knight-errants of old relieved their minds by carving their mistress's names in deserts, and wildernesses, and other savage places where there was no probability of there ever being anybody to read them, so did Miss Susan Nipper curl her snub nose into drawers and wardrobes, put away winks of disparagement in cupboards, shed derisive squints into stone pitchers, and contradict and call names out in the passage.
The two interlopers, however, blissfully unconscious of the young lady's sentiments, saw little Paul safe through all the stages of undressing, airy exercise, supper and bed; and then sat down to tea before the fire. The two children now lay, through the good offices of Polly, in one room; and it was not until the ladies were established at their tea-table that, happening to look towards the little beds, they thought of Florence.
'How sound she sleeps!' said Miss Tox.
'Why, you know, my dear, she takes a great deal of exercise in the course of the day,' returned Mrs Chick, 'playing about little Paul so much.'
'She is a curious child,' said Miss Tox.
'My dear,' retorted Mrs Chick, in a low voice: 'Her Mama, all over!'
'In deed!' said Miss Tox. 'Ah dear me!'
A tone of most extraordinary compassion Miss Tox said it in, though she had no distinct idea why, except that it was expected of her.
'Florence will never, never, never be a Dombey,'said Mrs Chick, 'not if she lives to be a thousand years old.'
Miss Tox elevated her eyebrows, and was again full of
commiseration.
'I quite fret and worry myself about her,' said Mrs Chick, with a sigh of modest merit. 'I really don't see what is to become of her when she grows older, or what position she is to take. She don't gain on her Papa in the least. How can one expect she should, when she is so very unlike a Dombey?'
Miss Tox looked as if she saw no way out of such a cogent argument as that, at all.
'And the child, you see,' said Mrs Chick, in deep confidence, 'has poor dear Fanny's nature. She'll never make an effort in after-life, I'll venture to say. Never! She'll never wind and twine herself about her Papa's heart like - '
'Like the ivy?' suggested Miss Tox.
'Like the ivy,' Mrs Chick assented. 'Never! She'll never glide and nestle into the bosom of her Papa's affections like - the - '
'Startled fawn?' suggested Miss Tox.
'Like the startled fawn,' said Mrs Chick. 'Never! Poor Fanny! Yet, how I loved her!'
'You must not distress yourself, my dear,' said Miss Tox, in a soothing voice. 'Now really! You have too much feeling.'
'We have all our faults,' said Mrs Chick, weeping and shaking her head. 'I daresay we have. I never was blind to hers. I never said I was. Far from it. Yet how I loved her!'
What a satisfaction it was to Mrs Chick - a common-place piece of folly enough, compared with whom her sister-in-law had been a very angel of womanly intelligence and gentleness - to patronise and be tender to the memory of that lady: in exact pursuance of her conduct to her in her lifetime: and to thoroughly believe herself, and take herself in, and make herself uncommonly comfortable on the strength of her toleration! What a mighty pleasant virtue toleration should be when we are right, to be so very pleasant when we are wrong, and quite unable to demonstrate how we come to be invested with the privilege of exercising it!
Mrs Chick was yet drying her eyes and shaking her head, when Richards made bold to caution her that Miss Florence was awake and sitting in her bed. She had risen, as the nurse said, and the lashes of her eyes were wet with tears. But no one saw them glistening save Polly. No one else leant over her, and whispered soothing words to her, or was near enough to hear the flutter of her beating heart.
'Oh! dear nurse!' said the child, looking earnestly up in her face, 'let me lie by my brother!'
'Why, my pet?' said Richards.
'Oh! I think he loves me,' cried the child wildly. 'Let me lie by him. Pray do!'
Mrs Chick interposed with some motherly words about going to sleep like a dear, but Florence repeated her supplication, with a frightened look, and in a voice broken by sobs and tears.
'I'll not wake him,' she said, covering her face and hanging down her head. 'I'll only touch him with my hand, and go to sleep. Oh, pray, pray, let me lie by my brother to-night, for I believe he's fond of me!'
Richards took her without a word, and carrying her to the little bed in which the infant was sleeping, laid her down by his side. She crept as near him as she could without disturbing his rest; and stretching out one arm so that it timidly embraced his neck, and hiding her face on the other, over which her damp and scattered hair fell loose, lay motionless.
'Poor little thing,' said Miss Tox; 'she has been dreaming, I daresay.'
Dreaming, perhaps, of loving tones for ever silent, of loving eyes for ever closed, of loving arms again wound round her, and relaxing in that dream within the dam which no tongue can relate. Seeking, perhaps - in dreams - some natural comfort for a heart, deeply and sorely wounded, though so young a child's: and finding it, perhaps, in dreams, if not in waking, cold, substantial truth. This trivial incident had so interrupted the current of conversation, that it was difficult of resumption; and Mrs Chick moreover had been so affected by the contemplation of her own tolerant nature, that she was not in spirits. The two friends accordingly soon made an end of their tea, and a servant was despatched to fetch a hackney cabriolet for Miss Tox. Miss Tox had great experience in hackney cabs, and her starting in one was generally a work of time, as she was systematic in the preparatory arrangements.
'Have the goodness, if you please, Towlinson,' said Miss Tox, 'first of all, to carry out a pen and ink and take his number legibly.'
'Yes, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'Then, if you please, Towlinson,'said Miss Tox, 'have the goodness
to turn the cushion. Which,' said Miss Tox apart to Mrs Chick, 'is generally damp, my dear.'
'Yes, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'I'll trouble you also, if you please, Towlinson,' said Miss Tox, 'with this card and this shilling. He's to drive to the card, and is to understand that he will not on any account have more than the shilling.'
'No, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'And - I'm sorry to give you so much trouble, Towlinson,' said Miss Tox, looking at him pensively.
'Not at all, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'Mention to the man, then, if you please, Towlinson,' said Miss Tox, 'that the lady's uncle is a magistrate, and that if he gives her any of his impertinence he will be punished terribly. You can pretend to say that, if you please, Towlinson, in a friendly way, and because you know it was done to another man, who died.'
'Certainly, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'And now good-night to my sweet, sweet, sweet, godson,' said Miss Tox, with a soft shower of kisses at each repetition of the adjective; 'and Louisa, my dear friend, promise me to take a little something warm before you go to bed, and not to distress yourself!'
It was with extreme difficulty that Nipper, the black-eyed, who looked on steadfastly, contained herself at this crisis, and until the subsequent departure of Mrs Chick. But the nursery being at length free of visitors, she made herself some recompense for her late restraint.
'You might keep me in a strait-waistcoat for six weeks,' said Nipper, 'and when I got it off I'd only be more aggravated, who ever heard the like of them two Griffins, Mrs Richards?'
'And then to talk of having been dreaming, poor dear!' said Polly.
'Oh you beauties!' cried Susan Nipper, affecting to salute the door by which the ladies had departed. 'Never be a Dombey won't she? It's to be hoped she won't, we don't want any more such, one's enough.'
'Don't wake the children, Susan dear,' said Polly.
'I'm very much beholden to you, Mrs Richards,' said Susan, who was not by any means discriminating in her wrath, 'and really feel it as a honour to receive your commands, being a black slave and a mulotter. Mrs Richards, if there's any other orders, you can give me, pray mention 'em.'
'Nonsense; orders,' said Polly.
'Oh! bless your heart, Mrs Richards,' cried Susan, 'temporaries always orders permanencies here, didn't you know that, why wherever was you born, Mrs Richards? But wherever you was born, Mrs Richards,' pursued Spitfire, shaking her head resolutely, 'and whenever, and however (which is best known to yourself), you may bear in mind, please, that it's one thing to give orders, and quite another thing to take 'em. A person may tell a person to dive off a bridge head foremost into five-and-forty feet of water, Mrs Richards, but a person may be very far from diving.'
'There now,' said Polly, 'you're angry because you're a good little thing, and fond of Miss Florence; and yet you turn round on me, because there's nobody else.'
'It's very easy for some to keep their tempers, and be soft-spoken, Mrs Richards,' returned Susan, slightly mollified, 'when their child's made as much of as a prince, and is petted and patted till it wishes its friends further, but when a sweet young pretty innocent, that never ought to have a cross word spoken to or of it, is rundown, the case is very different indeed. My goodness gracious me, Miss Floy, you naughty, sinful child, if you don't shut your eyes this minute, I'll call in them hobgoblins that lives in the cock-loft to come and eat you up alive!'
Here Miss Nipper made a horrible lowing, supposed to issue from a conscientious goblin of the bull species, impatient to discharge the severe duty of his position. Having further composed her young charge by covering her head with the bedclothes, and making three or four angry dabs at the pillow, she folded her arms, and screwed up her mouth, and sat looking at the fire for the rest of the evening.
Though little Paul was said, in nursery phrase, 'to take a deal of notice for his age,' he took as little notice of all this as of the preparations for his christening on the next day but one; which nevertheless went on about him, as to his personal apparel, and that of his sister and the two nurses, with great activity. Neither did he, on the arrival of the appointed morning, show any sense of its importance; being, on the contrary, unusually inclined to sleep, and unusually inclined to take it ill in his attendants that they dressed him to go out.
It happened to be an iron-grey autumnal day, with a shrewd east wind blowing - a day in keeping with the proceedings. Mr Dombey represented in himself the wind, the shade, and the autumn of the christening. He stood in his library to receive the company, as hard and cold as the weather; and when he looked out through the glass room, at the trees in the little garden, their brown and yellow leaves came fluttering down, as if he blighted them.
Ugh! They were black, cold rooms; and seemed to be in mourning, like the inmates of the house. The books precisely matched as to size, and drawn up in line, like soldiers, looked in their cold, hard, slippery uniforms, as if they had but one idea among them, and that was a freezer. The bookcase, glazed and locked, repudiated all familiarities. Mr Pitt, in bronze, on the top, with no trace of his celestial origin' about him, guarded the unattainable treasure like an enchanted Moor. A dusty urn at each high corner, dug up from an ancient tomb, preached desolation and decay, as from two pulpits; and the chimney-glass, reflecting Mr Dombey and his portrait at one blow, seemed fraught with melancholy meditations.
The stiff and stark fire-irons appeared to claim a nearer relationship than anything else there to Mr Dombey, with his buttoned coat, his white cravat, his heavy gold watch-chain, and his creaking boots.
But this was before the arrival of Mr and Mrs Chick, his lawful relatives, who soon presented themselves.
'My dear Paul,' Mrs Chick murmured, as she embraced him, 'the beginning, I hope, of many joyful days!'
'Thank you, Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, grimly. 'How do you do, Mr John?'
'How do you do, Sir?' said Chick.
He gave Mr Dombey his hand, as if he feared it might electrify him. Mr Dombey tool: it as if it were a fish, or seaweed, or some such clammy substance, and immediately returned it to him with exalted politeness.
'Perhaps, Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, slightly turning his head in his cravat, as if it were a socket, 'you would have preferred a fire?'
'Oh, my dear Paul, no,' said Mrs Chick, who had much ado to keep her teeth from chattering; 'not for me.'
'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, 'you are not sensible of any chill?'
Mr John, who had already got both his hands in his pockets over the wrists, and was on the very threshold of that same canine chorus which had given Mrs Chick so much offence on a former occasion, protested that he was perfectly comfortable.
He added in a low voice, 'With my tiddle tol toor rul' - when he was providentially stopped by Towlinson, who announced:
'Miss Tox!'
And enter that fair enslaver, with a blue nose and indescribably frosty face, referable to her being very thinly clad in a maze of fluttering odds and ends, to do honour to the ceremony.
'How do you do, Miss Tox?' said Mr Dombey.
Miss Tox, in the midst of her spreading gauzes, went down altogether like an opera-glass shutting-up; she curtseyed so low, in acknowledgment of Mr Dombey's advancing a step or two to meet her.
'I can never forget this occasion, Sir,' said Miss Tox, softly. ''Tis impossible. My dear Louisa, I can hardly believe the evidence of my senses.'
If Miss Tox could believe the evidence of one of her senses, it was a very cold day. That was quite clear. She took an early opportunity of promoting the circulation in the tip of her nose by secretly chafing it with her pocket handkerchief, lest, by its very low temperature, it should disagreeably astonish the baby when she came to kiss it.
The baby soon appeared, carried in great glory by Richards; while Florence, in custody of that active young constable, Susan Nipper, brought up the rear. Though the whole nursery party were dressed by this time in lighter mourning than at first, there was enough in the appearance of the bereaved children to make the day no brighter. The baby too - it might have been Miss Tox's nose - began to cry. Thereby, as it happened, preventing Mr Chick from the awkward fulfilment of a very honest purpose he had; which was, to make much of Florence. For this gentleman, insensible to the superior claims of a perfect Dombey (perhaps on account of having the honour to be united to a Dombey himself, and being familiar with excellence), really liked her, and showed that he liked her, and was about to show it in his own way now, when Paul cried, and his helpmate stopped him short
'Now Florence, child!' said her aunt, briskly, 'what are you doing, love? Show yourself to him. Engage his attention, my dear!'
The atmosphere became or might have become colder and colder, when Mr Dombey stood frigidly watching his little daughter, who, clapping her hands, and standing On tip-toe before the throne of his son and heir, lured him to bend down from his high estate, and look at her. Some honest act of Richards's may have aided the effect, but he did look down, and held his peace. As his sister hid behind her nurse, he followed her with his eyes; and when she peeped out with a merry cry to him, he sprang up and crowed lustily - laughing outright when she ran in upon him; and seeming to fondle her curls with his tiny hands, while she smothered him with kisses.
Was Mr Dombey pleased to see this? He testified no pleasure by the relaxation of a nerve; but outward tokens of any kind of feeling were unusual with him. If any sunbeam stole into the room to light the children at their play, it never reached his face. He looked on so fixedly and coldly, that the warm light vanished even from the laughing eyes of little Florence, when, at last, they happened to meet his.
It was a dull, grey, autumn day indeed, and in a minute's pause and silence that took place, the leaves fell sorrowfully.
'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, referring to his watch, and assuming his hat and gloves. 'Take my sister, if you please: my arm today is Miss Tox's. You had better go first with Master Paul, Richards. Be very careful.'
In Mr Dombey's carriage, Dombey and Son, Miss Tox, Mrs Chick, Richards, and Florence. In a little carriage following it, Susan Nipper and the owner Mr Chick. Susan looking out of window, without intermission, as a relief from the embarrassment of confronting the large face of that gentleman, and thinking whenever anything rattled that he was putting up in paper an appropriate pecuniary compliment for herself.
Once upon the road to church, Mr Dombey clapped his hands for the amusement of his son. At which instance of parental enthusiasm Miss Tox was enchanted. But exclusive of this incident, the chief difference between the christening party and a party in a mourning coach consisted in the colours of the carriage and horses.
Arrived at the church steps, they were received by a portentous beadle.' Mr Dombey dismounting first to help the ladies out, and standing near him at the church door, looked like another beadle. A beadle less gorgeous but more dreadful; the beadle of private life; the beadle of our business and our bosoms.
Miss Tox's hand trembled as she slipped it through Mr Dombey's arm, and felt herself escorted up the steps, preceded by a cocked hat and a Babylonian collar. It seemed for a moment like that other solemn institution, 'Wilt thou have this man, Lucretia?' 'Yes, I will.'
'Please to bring the child in quick out of the air there,' whispered the beadle, holding open the inner door of the church.
Little Paul might have asked with Hamlet 'into my grave?' so chill and earthy was the place. The tall shrouded pulpit and reading desk; the dreary perspective of empty pews stretching away under the galleries, and empty benches mounting to the roof and lost in the shadow of the great grim organ; the dusty matting and cold stone slabs; the grisly free seats' in the aisles; and the damp corner by the bell-rope, where the black trestles used for funerals were stowed away, along with some shovels and baskets, and a coil or two of deadly-looking rope; the strange, unusual, uncomfortable smell, and the cadaverous light; were all in unison. It was a cold and dismal scene.
'There's a wedding just on, Sir,' said the beadle, 'but it'll be over directly, if you'll walk into the westry here.
Before he turned again to lead the way, he gave Mr Dombey a bow and a half smile of recognition, importing that he (the beadle) remembered to have had the pleasure of attending on him when he buried his wife, and hoped he had enjoyed himself since.
The very wedding looked dismal as they passed in front of the altar. The bride was too old and the bridegroom too young, and a superannuated beau with one eye and an eyeglass stuck in its blank companion, was giving away the lady, while the friends were shivering. In the vestry the fire was smoking; and an over-aged and over-worked and under-paid attorney's clerk, 'making a search,' was running his forefinger down the parchment pages of an immense register (one of a long series of similar volumes) gorged with burials. Over the fireplace was a ground-plan of the vaults underneath the church; and Mr Chick, skimming the literary portion of it aloud, by way of enlivening the company, read the reference to Mrs Dombey's tomb in full, before he could stop himself.
After another cold interval, a wheezy little pew-opener afflicted with an asthma, appropriate to the churchyard, if not to the church, summoned them to the font - a rigid marble basin which seemed to have been playing a churchyard game at cup and ball with its matter of fact pedestal, and to have been just that moment caught on the top of it. Here they waited some little time while the marriage party enrolled themselves; and meanwhile the wheezy little pew-opener - partly in consequence of her infirmity, and partly that the marriage party might not forget her - went about the building coughing like a grampus.
Presently the clerk (the only cheerful-looking object there, and he was an undertaker) came up with a jug of warm water, and said something, as he poured it into the font, about taking the chill off; which millions of gallons boiling hot could not have done for the occasion. Then the clergyman, an amiable and mild-looking young curate, but obviously afraid of the baby, appeared like the principal character in a ghost-story, 'a tall figure all in white;' at sight of whom Paul rent the air with his cries, and never left off again till he was taken out black in the face.
Even when that event had happened, to the great relief of everybody, he was heard under the portico, during the rest of the ceremony, now fainter, now louder, now hushed, now bursting forth again with an irrepressible sense of his wrongs. This so distracted the attention of the two ladies, that Mrs Chick was constantly deploying into the centre aisle, to send out messages by the pew-opener, while Miss Tox kept her Prayer-book open at the Gunpowder Plot, and occasionally read responses from that service.
During the whole of these proceedings, Mr Dombey remained as impassive and gentlemanly as ever, and perhaps assisted in making it so cold, that the young curate smoked at the mouth as he read. The only time that he unbent his visage in the least, was when the clergyman, in delivering (very unaffectedly and simply) the closing exhortation, relative to the future examination of the child by the sponsors, happened to rest his eye on Mr Chick; and then Mr Dombey might have been seen to express by a majestic look, that he would like to catch him at it.
It might have been well for Mr Dombey, if he had thought of his own dignity a little less; and had thought of the great origin and purpose of the ceremony in which he took so formal and so stiff a part, a little more. His arrogance contrasted strangely with its history.
When it was all over, he again gave his arm to Miss Tox, and conducted her to the vestry, where he informed the clergyman how much pleasure it would have given him to have solicited the honour of his company at dinner, but for the unfortunate state of his household affairs. The register signed, and the fees paid, and the pew-opener (whose cough was very bad again) remembered, and the beadle gratified, and the sexton (who was accidentally on the doorsteps, looking with great interest at the weather) not forgotten, they got into the carriage again, and drove home in the same bleak fellowship.
There they found Mr Pitt turning up his nose at a cold collation, set forth in a cold pomp of glass and silver, and looking more like a dead dinner lying in state than a social refreshment. On their arrival Miss Tox produced a mug for her godson, and Mr Chick a knife and fork and spoon in a case. Mr Dombey also produced a bracelet for Miss Tox; and, on the receipt of this token, Miss Tox was tenderly affected.
'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, 'will you take the bottom of the table, if you please? What have you got there, Mr John?'
'I have got a cold fillet of veal here, Sir,' replied Mr Chick, rubbing his numbed hands hard together. 'What have you got there, Sir?'
'This,' returned Mr Dombey, 'is some cold preparation of calf's head, I think. I see cold fowls - ham - patties - salad - lobster. Miss Tox will do me the honour of taking some wine? Champagne to Miss Tox.'
There was a toothache in everything. The wine was so bitter cold that it forced a little scream from Miss Tox, which she had great difficulty in turning into a 'Hem!' The veal had come from such an airy pantry, that the first taste of it had struck a sensation as of cold lead to Mr Chick's extremities. Mr Dombey alone remained unmoved. He might have been hung up for sale at a Russian fair as a specimen of a frozen gentleman.
The prevailing influence was too much even for his sister. She made no effort at flattery or small talk, and directed all her efforts to looking as warm as she could.
'Well, Sir,' said Mr Chick, making a desperate plunge, after a long silence, and filling a glass of sherry; 'I shall drink this, if you'll allow me, Sir, to little Paul.'
'Bless him!' murmured Miss Tox, taking a sip of wine.
'Dear little Dombey!' murmured Mrs Chick.
'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, with severe gravity, 'my son would feel and express himself obliged to you, I have no doubt, if he could appreciate the favour you have done him. He will prove, in time to come, I trust, equal to any responsibility that the obliging disposition of his relations and friends, in private, or the onerous nature of our position, in public, may impose upon him.'
The tone in which this was said admitting of nothing more, Mr Chick relapsed into low spirits and silence. Not so Miss Tox, who, having listened to Mr Dombey with even a more emphatic attention than usual, and with a more expressive tendency of her head to one side, now leant across the table, and said to Mrs Chick softly:
'Louisa!'
'My dear,' said Mrs Chick.
'Onerous nature of our position in public may - I have forgotten
the exact term.'
'Expose him to,' said Mrs Chick.
'Pardon me, my dear,' returned Miss Tox, 'I think not. It was more rounded and flowing. Obliging disposition of relations and friends in private, or onerous nature of position in public - may - impose upon him!'
'Impose upon him, to be sure,' said Mrs Chick.
Miss Tox struck her delicate hands together lightly, in triumph; and added, casting up her eyes, 'eloquence indeed!'
Mr Dombey, in the meanwhile, had issued orders for the attendance of Richards, who now entered curtseying, but without the baby; Paul being asleep after the fatigues of the morning. Mr Dombey, having delivered a glass of wine to this vassal, addressed her in the following words: Miss Tox previously settling her head on one side, and making other little arrangements for engraving them on her heart.
'During the six months or so, Richards, which have seen you an inmate of this house, you have done your duty. Desiring to connect some little service to you with this occasion, I considered how I could best effect that object, and I also advised with my sister, Mrs - '
'Chick,' interposed the gentleman of that name.
'Oh, hush if you please!' said Miss Tox.
'I was about to say to you, Richards,' resumed Mr Dombey, with an appalling glance at Mr John, 'that I was further assisted in my decision, by the recollection of a conversation I held with your husband in this room, on the occasion of your being hired, when he disclosed to me the melancholy fact that your family, himself at the head, were sunk and steeped in ignorance.
Richards quailed under the magnificence of the reproof.
'I am far from being friendly,' pursued Mr Dombey, 'to what is called by persons of levelling sentiments, general education. But it is necessary that the inferior classes should continue to be taught to know their position, and to conduct themselves properly. So far I approve of schools. Having the power of nominating a child on the foundation of an ancient establishment, called (from a worshipful company) the Charitable Grinders; where not only is a wholesome education bestowed upon the scholars, but where a dress and badge is likewise provided for them; I have (first communicating, through Mrs Chick, with your family) nominated your eldest son to an existing vacancy; and he has this day, I am informed, assumed the habit. The number of her son, I believe,' said Mr Dombey, turning to his sister and speaking of the child as if he were a hackney-coach, is one hundred and forty-seven. Louisa, you can tell her.'
'One hundred and forty-seven,' said Mrs Chick 'The dress, Richards, is a nice, warm, blue baize tailed coat and cap, turned up with orange coloured binding; red worsted stockings; and very strong leather small-clothes. One might wear the articles one's self,' said Mrs Chick, with enthusiasm, 'and be grateful.'
'There, Richards!' said Miss Tox. 'Now, indeed, you may be proud. The Charitable Grinders!'
'I am sure I am very much obliged, Sir,' returned Richards faintly, 'and take it very kind that you should remember my little ones.' At the same time a vision of Biler as a Charitable Grinder, with his very small legs encased in the serviceable clothing described by Mrs Chick, swam before Richards's eyes, and made them water.
'I am very glad to see you have so much feeling, Richards,' said Miss Tox.
'It makes one almost hope, it really does,' said Mrs Chick, who prided herself on taking trustful views of human nature, 'that there may yet be some faint spark of gratitude and right feeling in the world.'
Richards deferred to these compliments by curtseying and murmuring
her thanks; but finding it quite impossible to recover her spirits from the disorder into which they had been thrown by the image of her son in his precocious nether garments, she gradually approached the door and was heartily relieved to escape by it.
Such temporary indications of a partial thaw that had appeared with her, vanished with her; and the frost set in again, as cold and hard as ever. Mr Chick was twice heard to hum a tune at the bottom of the table, but on both occasions it was a fragment of the Dead March in Saul. The party seemed to get colder and colder, and to be gradually resolving itself into a congealed and solid state, like the collation round which it was assembled. At length Mrs Chick looked at Miss Tox, and Miss Tox returned the look, and they both rose and said it was really time to go. Mr Dombey receiving this announcement with perfect equanimity, they took leave of that gentleman, and presently departed under the protection of Mr Chick; who, when they had turned their backs upon the house and left its master in his usual solitary state, put his hands in his pockets, threw himself back in the carriage, and whistled 'With a hey ho chevy!' all through; conveying into his face as he did so, an expression of such gloomy and terrible defiance, that Mrs Chick dared not protest, or in any way molest him.
Richards, though she had little Paul on her lap, could not forget her own first-born. She felt it was ungrateful; but the influence of the day fell even on the Charitable Grinders, and she could hardly help regarding his pewter badge, number one hundred and forty-seven, as, somehow, a part of its formality and sternness. She spoke, too, in the nursery, of his 'blessed legs,' and was again troubled by his spectre in uniform.
'I don't know what I wouldn't give,' said Polly, 'to see the poor little dear before he gets used to 'em.'
'Why, then, I tell you what, Mrs Richards,' retorted Nipper, who had been admitted to her confidence, 'see him and make your mind easy.'
'Mr Dombey wouldn't like it,' said Polly.
'Oh, wouldn't he, Mrs Richards!' retorted Nipper, 'he'd like it very much, I think when he was asked.'
'You wouldn't ask him, I suppose, at all?' said Polly.
'No, Mrs Richards, quite contrairy,' returned Susan, 'and them two inspectors Tox and Chick, not intending to be on duty tomorrow, as I heard 'em say, me and Mid Floy will go along with you tomorrow morning, and welcome, Mrs Richards, if you like, for we may as well walk there as up and down a street, and better too.'
Polly rejected the idea pretty stoutly at first; but by little and little she began to entertain it, as she entertained more and more distinctly the forbidden pictures of her children, and her own home. At length, arguing that there could be no great harm in calling for a moment at the door, she yielded to the Nipper proposition.
The matter being settled thus, little Paul began to cry most piteously, as if he had a foreboding that no good would come of it.
'What's the matter with the child?' asked Susan.
'He's cold, I think,' said Polly, walking with him to and fro, and hushing him.
It was a bleak autumnal afternoon indeed; and as she walked, and hushed, and, glancing through the dreary windows, pressed the little fellow closer to her breast, the withered leaves came showering down.
小保羅從圖德爾的血液中沒有受到污染，每天長得愈來愈結(jié)實，愈來愈強壯。托克斯小姐每天也愈來愈熱心地愛護(hù)他；董貝先生對她的忠誠十分贊賞，開始把她看作是一位天性善良、十分明白事理的女人；她的感情為她增光，應(yīng)當(dāng)?shù)玫焦膭睢Ｋ幌Ъu尊降貴，向她充分表示好感。不僅好幾次特別有禮地向她鞠躬，甚至還通過她的妹妹鄭重地轉(zhuǎn)達(dá)他對她的謝意?！罢埜嬖V你的朋友，路易莎，她很好，”或者“請跟托克斯小姐說，路易莎，我謝謝她?！彼麑@位女士這樣刮目相看，這給她留下了深刻的印象。
托克斯小姐時常讓奇克夫人放心，對她說，跟那位可愛的嬰孩的發(fā)育成長有關(guān)的一切事情，是她最感興趣的，沒有什么能超過它的了。她這樣講，已經(jīng)成了一種習(xí)慣。觀察托克斯小姐活動的人不需要取得確鑿肯定的證詞就可以得出同樣的結(jié)論。她會懷著難以形容的滿意心情主持這位年輕繼承人的天真的用餐，那副神態(tài)就幾乎像在這個款待中她跟理查茲共同享有所有權(quán)似的。在洗澡與穿著打扮這些小小的活動中，她熱情地進(jìn)行幫助。給孩子服用藥物，喚起了她生性具有的強烈的同情心。有一次董貝先生被他的妹妹領(lǐng)到育兒室里來看他的兒子；托克斯小姐由于謙虛，急忙跑到一個碗柜里去躲避；這時候孩子正準(zhǔn)備睡覺，穿著一件輕薄的亞麻短上衣，沿著理查茲的長外衣向上短時間地爬了一會兒；托克斯小姐在毫無所知的客人背后欣喜若狂，忍不住喊道，“他不是很漂亮嗎，董貝先生，他不就是個丘比德①嗎，先生？”然后神情慌亂，滿臉通紅，在柜子的門后幾乎都要倒下去了。
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①丘比德（Cupid）：羅馬神話中的愛神，他的形象是一個背生雙翼、手持弓箭的美童；因此，美麗的兒童或美少年常被稱為丘比德。
“路易莎，”董貝先生有一次對他的妹妹說道，“我確實覺得應(yīng)該在給保羅施洗禮的時候，給你的朋友送一點兒小小的紀(jì)念品。她從一開始就那么熱心地為孩子操心出力，而且似乎完全明白自己的身份（我很遺憾地說，在這個世界上這是難能可貴的一種美德），我真愿意向她表示一點謝意?！?BR> 我們在這里并不是想要貶損托克斯小姐的美德，但需要提一下，在董貝先生的眼中——就像在那些有時能體察事理的其他人的眼中一樣——，只有對他的地位表示適當(dāng)尊敬的人，才能稱得上具有明白自己身份的那份非凡的理解力。他們了解自己的美德并不比他們了解他在他面前卑躬屈節(jié)的美德更為重要。
“我親愛的保羅，”他的妹妹回答道，“你對待托克斯小姐完全公道；我知道，像你這樣洞察一切的人一定會這樣做。我相信，在我國的語言中，如有四個字她尊敬得幾乎達(dá)到了崇拜的地步的話，那么這四個字就是董貝父子。”
“唔，”董貝先生說道，“我相信這一點。這會給托克斯小姐增光?！?BR> “至于說到紀(jì)念品，我親愛的保羅，”他的妹妹繼續(xù)說道，“我只想說一句話，就是，你給托克斯小姐不論什么東西，我相信她都會把它當(dāng)作圣物一樣珍視和收藏起來的。不過，親愛的保羅，如果你愿意的話，那么你還可以用一種更使她高興、更使她滿意的方式來表示你對托克斯小姐的友好情誼的謝意?！?BR> “什么方式？”董貝先生問道。
“就關(guān)系與影響來說，”奇克夫人繼續(xù)說道，“選擇教父自然是重要的?！?BR> “我不知道為什么他們對我的兒子是重要的，”董貝先生冷若冰霜地說道。
“完全正確，我親愛的保羅，”奇克夫人回答道；為了掩蓋她突然改變主意，她就顯示出異乎尋常的活潑；“這正是你應(yīng)該說的。我原來就料想你不會說別的。我原先就知道這就是你的意見。”奇克夫人這時又奉承起來，一邊沒有很大把握地摸索著前進(jìn)；“也許正因為這樣，如果讓托克斯小姐僅僅作為其他什么人的代表和替身，來充當(dāng)可愛的孩子的教母，那么你可能是不會反對的。不用說，保羅，她將會把這看作是極為體面、極為光榮的事情來接受的?！?BR> “路易莎，”董貝先生沉默了一會兒，說道，“不應(yīng)該認(rèn)為——”
“當(dāng)然不應(yīng)該，”奇克夫人急忙防止會遭到拒絕，“我從來不曾認(rèn)為那是應(yīng)該的?！?BR> 董貝先生不耐煩地看著她。
“別把我的心攪亂了，我親愛的保羅，”他的妹妹說道，“因為這會毀了我。我的身體很不好。自從可憐的親愛的范妮離開我們以后，我就一直覺得不舒服。”
董貝先生向他妹妹掏出來擦眼淚的手絹看了一眼，繼續(xù)說道：
“我說，不應(yīng)該認(rèn)為?！?BR> “我說，”奇克夫人嘟噥著說道，“我從來不曾想過那是應(yīng)該的?！?BR> “我的天，路易莎！”董貝先生說道。
“不，我親愛的保羅，”她眼淚汪汪、尊嚴(yán)地抗辯道，“你確實應(yīng)當(dāng)允許我說話。我不像你那么聰明，那么能推理，那么能言善辯，等等。這一點我很明白。對我來說，這就更糟?？墒侨绻冶仨氄f最后幾句話的話——保羅，在可憐的親愛的范妮逝世以后，這最后幾句話對你和我都必須是很莊嚴(yán)的——，我仍然要說，我從來不曾認(rèn)為那是應(yīng)該的。而且，”奇克夫人以愈益尊嚴(yán)的語氣補充說道，仿佛她直到現(xiàn)在才把她最能把別人駁得一敗涂地、無言以對的論據(jù)拿出來似的?！拔摇ご_·實從來不曾想過那是應(yīng)該的?！?BR> 董貝先生走到窗子前面，又走回來。
“不應(yīng)該認(rèn)為，路易莎，”他說道（奇克夫人堅持到底，決不服，不斷重復(fù)說道，“我知道不應(yīng)該”，但是他沒有理會），“沒有好多人以為，誰擔(dān)任了教父教母，我就會承認(rèn)他（她）對我有什么權(quán)利，因此他們就會比托克斯小姐對我提出更多的權(quán)利。可是我不承認(rèn)這種權(quán)利。我不承認(rèn)任何這類事情。當(dāng)時間到來的時候，保羅和我本人將有能力保持我們自己的財產(chǎn)；換句話說，公司將有能力保持它自己的財產(chǎn)，維護(hù)它自己的財產(chǎn)，把它的財產(chǎn)傳給后代，并不需要任何這類平凡無奇的幫助。人們通常為他們的子女尋求那一類不相干的幫助，我卻能夠蔑視它；因為我希望我超越它。因此當(dāng)保羅順利地度過他的嬰兒時代與孩童時代，當(dāng)我看到他沒有虛度光陰，將能勝任·他預(yù)定要擔(dān)當(dāng)?shù)氖聵I(yè)的時候，我就將稱心滿意了。他在以后的生涯中，當(dāng)他積極地維護(hù)著公司的尊嚴(yán)與榮譽，并且，如果可能的話，加以擴展的時候，他將會結(jié)交他愿意結(jié)交的有權(quán)有勢的朋友。在那時候來到之前，對他來說，也許有我就已經(jīng)足夠了，而且我就是他的一切。總而言之，我不希望有什么人介入我們之間。我寧愿向一位像你的朋友那樣值得感謝的人表示我對她的勞務(wù)的謝意。因此，就讓這件事這樣辦吧，我想，你的丈夫與我本人來充當(dāng)教父，我們將會當(dāng)?shù)煤芎谩！?BR> 在這極為莊嚴(yán)、極為鄭重的談話過程中，董貝先生真實地透露了他心中秘密的感情。他對介入他與他兒子之間的任何人都懷著難以形容的不信任。他傲慢地害怕有任何一個人與他爭奪或與他分享孩子的尊敬與服從；他最近產(chǎn)生出一種深深的憂慮，就是他在改變和約束人們的意志方面并沒有無限的能力；他同樣強烈猜疑的是，他會遭遇到新的挫折與不幸；這些就是在這段時間中支配他心靈的主要思想感情。在他的這一生中，他從沒有結(jié)交過一位朋友。他那對人冷淡、與人疏遠(yuǎn)的性格既沒有尋求過一位朋友，也沒有找到過一位朋友。現(xiàn)在，當(dāng)這性格把它的全部力量有力地集中在體現(xiàn)父親的關(guān)懷與野心的一部分計劃上的時候，看來它那冰流仿佛并沒有在這種影響下完全解凍，清澈地、自由地奔流，而只是融化了一會兒，以便容納它的重荷，然后連它一起凍結(jié)成一個堅硬的大冰塊。
托克斯小姐憑著她低微的身份被這樣提升為小保羅的教母，從這個時候起就被選定并任命就職；董貝先生還進(jìn)一步表示了他的愿望：這個拖延已久的儀式應(yīng)該很快舉行，不再推遲。他的妹妹原先沒有指望能取得這樣輝煌的成功，于是趕快離開，把這個消息告訴給她的朋友；董貝先生則獨自留在他的圖書室中。
育兒室里一點也不寂寞，因為奇克夫人與托克斯小姐正在那里親密愉快地一起度過那個晚上；她們使蘇珊·尼珀姑娘感到極為討厭，因此這姑娘一有機會就在門后撇嘴做怪臉。在這個場合下她的感情是十分激動的，所以她覺得有必要采用這種方法使它們輕松一下，即使沒有任何觀眾在場，她得不到任何同情的安慰也罷。就像古代的游俠騎士把他們情人的名字刻寫在沙漠、曠野和沒有任何人可能讀到它們的其他荒野的地方來安慰心中的懸念一樣，蘇珊·尼珀向柜子和衣櫥皺皺獅子鼻，向碗柜輕蔑地眨眨眼睛，向有柄的大石水罐嘲笑地斜眼瞅一瞅，并在走廊里反駁和謾罵。
不過，那兩位侵犯他人權(quán)利的人卻很有福氣，對這位姑娘的情緒一無所知；她們看著小保羅被脫掉衣服，到戶外散步，吃晚飯，上床睡覺，平安順利地經(jīng)過了所有這些階段，然后在壁爐前面坐下來喝茶。由于波利作出善意努力的結(jié)果，兩個孩子現(xiàn)在睡在同一個房間里；兩位女士坐著喝茶的桌子正巧面對著兩張小床，所以直到這時候她們才想起了弗洛倫斯。
“她睡得多熟??！”托克斯小姐說道。
“是呀，您知道，我親愛的，這一整天她搞了那么多的活動，”奇克夫人回答道，“一直在小保羅身邊玩耍?！?BR> “她是個奇怪的孩子，”托克斯小姐說道。
“我親愛的，”奇克夫人低聲回答道，“跟她媽媽一模一樣！”
“真的嗎？”托克斯小姐說道，“哎呀！”
托克斯小姐是用一種非常憐憫的聲調(diào)說的，雖然她并不清楚為什么要用這樣的聲調(diào)，她只知道奇克夫人期望她這樣說。
“弗洛倫斯永遠(yuǎn)、永遠(yuǎn)、永遠(yuǎn)也不會像董貝家里的人，”奇克夫人說道，“即使她活一千歲，也不會?！?BR> 托克斯小姐揚起眉毛，再次充滿了憐憫。
“我為她感到很焦急，很煩惱，”奇克夫人端莊、賢惠地嘆了一口氣，說道，“我實在不知道她長大了會變成一個什么樣的人，或者她將會有什么樣的地位。她絲毫沒能使她爸爸喜歡她。她這樣不像董貝家里的人，誰又能指望她能使她爸爸喜歡她呢？”
托克斯小姐表露出一副神情，仿佛她覺得根本無法反駁這樣令人信服的論斷似的。
“您知道，這孩子的性格跟可憐的范妮一樣，”奇克夫人滿有信心地說道，“我敢說，她在今后的生活中永遠(yuǎn)也不會作出努力。永遠(yuǎn)不會！她永遠(yuǎn)不會曲曲彎彎，纏繞住她爸爸的心，就像那——”
“就像那常春藤一樣？”托克斯小姐提示道。
“就像那常春藤一樣，”奇克夫人同意道，“永遠(yuǎn)不會！她永遠(yuǎn)不會悄悄地藏到她爸爸慈愛的心窩中，安臥在那里，就像那——”
“就像那受驚的小鹿一樣？”托克斯小姐提示道。
“就像那受驚的小鹿一樣，”奇克夫人說道，“永遠(yuǎn)不會！
可憐的范妮！可是，我是多么愛她??！”
“您自己可別太傷心了，我親愛的，”托克斯小姐用安慰的聲調(diào)說道?！斑恚媸沁@樣的！您太富于感情了！”
“我們?nèi)巳硕加凶约旱娜秉c，”奇克夫人哭泣著，搖著頭，說道，“我敢說，我們?nèi)巳硕加小Ｎ覜Q不能看不到她的缺點。我決不能說我沒有看到。遠(yuǎn)不是這樣。可是我是多么愛她?。 ?BR> 奇克夫人是一位平庸的、愚蠢的女人；與她相比，她的嫂子倒是一位具有女性智慧與溫柔的天使；當(dāng)奇克夫人回憶起那位夫人的時候，她采取了保護(hù)的、親切的態(tài)度——與她生前時她對待她的態(tài)度完全一樣——，并且完全相信她自己，欺騙她自己；由于寬大為懷而讓她自己感到異常愉快，對她來說，這是多么使她感到滿意的事啊！當(dāng)我們是正確的時候，寬容是多么非凡愉快的美德！當(dāng)我們是錯誤，而又完全不能證明我們是如何取得行使寬容的權(quán)利的時候，寬容也是使人很愉快的呀！
當(dāng)奇克夫人還正在擦眼淚、搖著頭的時候，理查茲大膽地提醒她注意，弗洛倫斯小姐醒來了，正坐在床上。這位奶媽說，她起來了，眼睫毛都被淚水沾濕了。但是除了波利以外，沒有其他任何人看到它們正閃著光。沒有其他任何人向她彎下身去，低聲地對她說些安慰的話，或跟她挨得很近，可以聽到她顫動的心房正在怦怦地跳動。
“??！親愛的奶媽！”孩子懇切地仰望著她的臉，說道，“讓我躺在弟弟的身旁吧！”
“為什么，我的寶貝？”理查茲問道。
“??！我覺得他愛我，”女孩子放聲大哭起來?！白屛姨稍谒纳砼园?。求求您！”
奇克夫人插進(jìn)來，說了些像母親般的話，要她像乖孩子那樣去睡覺；可是弗洛倫斯還是露出受驚的神色，一遍又一遍地懇求著；她的聲音不時被抽泣與眼淚所打斷。
“我不會鬧醒他，”她捂著臉，低著頭，說道?！拔抑挥梦业氖置缓笏?。啊，我求求你們，求求你們，讓我今天躺在弟弟身旁吧，因為我相信他愛我！”
理查茲沒有說一句話，把她抱起來，抱到那個嬰孩睡覺的小床上，讓她在他的身旁躺下。她盡量爬過去挨近他，不去打攪他的安息；然后她伸出一只胳膊，畏畏縮縮地?fù)е牟弊?，用另一只胳膊捂住她的臉；她那潮濕的、散亂的頭發(fā)松散地落在她的臉上，她就這樣一動不動地躺在那里。
“可憐的小東西，”托克斯小姐說道，“我想，她一定夢見什么了?！?BR> 這件小事破壞了談話的頭緒，很難使它恢復(fù)了；加上奇克夫人又沉思她自己那寬容的性格，心神分散，這時情緒不高。因此兩位朋友很快就結(jié)束了喝茶，派遣一位仆人為托克斯小姐雇用一輛出租的單馬篷車。托克斯小姐在雇用出租馬車方面是有豐富經(jīng)驗的，她在動身的時候通?？傄加煤枚鄷r間，因為她事先要有條不紊地做好準(zhǔn)備性的安排。
“勞駕您，托林森，”托克斯小姐說道，“首先請帶上一支筆和墨水，把他的號碼清楚地記下來。”
“一定照辦，小姐，”托林森說道。
“然后，勞駕您，托林森，”托克斯小姐說道，“把椅墊翻過來?！蓖锌怂剐〗戕D(zhuǎn)過身去單獨對奇克夫人說道，“它通常是潮濕的，我親愛的?！?BR> “一定照辦，小姐，”托林森說道。
“我還得麻煩您帶上這張名片和一個先令，”托克斯小姐說道，“他必須把我送到名片上列出的地址，而且還必須明白，除了這個先令之外，他無論如何也不能要求我給更多的錢了?！?BR> “一定照辦，小姐，”托林森說道。
“還有，我很抱歉，給您添了這么多麻煩，托林森，”托克斯小姐若有所思地看著他。
“一點也不，小姐，”托林森說道。
“那么，勞駕您，托林森，請跟車夫說，”托克斯小姐說道，“這位夫人的舅舅是一位治安法庭的法官，如果他要對她稍有一點無禮的話，那么他就會受到嚴(yán)厲的懲罰。如果您愿意的話，托林森，您可以假裝用一種友好的口吻對他說這件事，因為您知道，過去曾經(jīng)這樣處治過另一位車夫，他已經(jīng)死了?！?BR> “毫無問題，一定照辦，”托林森說道。
“好啦，現(xiàn)在我祝我親愛的，親愛的，親愛的教子晚安，再見了，”托克斯小姐說道，她每當(dāng)重復(fù)說一次那個形容詞的時候，都要伴送出一陣陣溫柔的吻?！斑€有，路易莎，我親愛的朋友，請答應(yīng)我，在睡覺前喝點兒溫暖的東西，同時自己別太傷心了！”
在奇克夫人隨后離開之前，一直在密切注視著黑眼睛的尼珀，在這關(guān)鍵性的時刻，她很困難地克制著自己。但是當(dāng)育兒室終于擺脫了這兩位來客之后，她對自己剛才所受的壓抑多少進(jìn)行了一些補償。
“你可以讓我穿緊身衣①穿上六個星期，”尼珀說道，“而當(dāng)我把它脫掉的時候，我只會更加發(fā)怒。理查茲大嫂，有誰聽說過有像她們這兩個格里芬②一樣的嗎？”
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①緊身衣（stait－waistcoat）：是管制瘋?cè)撕颓舴傅囊环N衣服。
②格里芬（Griffin）：希臘神話中的鷲頭飛獅。這里指怪物。
“還說一定夢見什么了，可憐的乖乖！”波利說道。
“哼，您們這兩位美人！”蘇珊·尼珀向兩位女士離開的那扇門故意敬了一個禮，喊道，“她永遠(yuǎn)也不會像董貝家里的人，是不是？希望她不會。一位已足夠了，我們不想再要這樣的人了?！?BR> “別把孩子吵醒了，親愛的蘇珊，”波利說道。
“我對您十分感謝，理查茲大嫂，”蘇珊說道，她在憤怒之中是不分青紅皂白的，“我是一個黑奴，是一個白人與黑人所生的混血兒，接受您的命令我真感到榮幸。理查茲大嫂，如果還有什么其他命令您可以向我下達(dá)的，那就請說吧！”
“胡說！哪里是什么命令！”波利說道。
“?。∩系郾Ｓ幽男?，理查茲大嫂，”蘇珊喊道，“干臨時性活的人在這里總是命令干長期性活的人，難道您這一點也不知道嗎？那么說您是在什么地方出生的呢，理查茲大嫂？可是，不論您是在什么地方出生的，理查茲大嫂，”噴火器堅決地?fù)u著頭，繼續(xù)說道，“也不論您是在什么時候出生的和怎樣出生的（這一點您自己最清楚了），請您記住，下達(dá)命令是一回事，接受命令又是另外一回事。一個人可以告訴另一個人頭朝下，從橋上往下跳，跳到四十五英尺深的水里去，理查茲大嫂，但是這另一個人可能根本就不想跳水。”
“您看，”波利說道，“您生氣了，因為您是一位善良的小人兒，而且喜愛弗洛倫斯小姐；但是由于這里沒有別的人，您就沖著我出氣了。”
“對有些人來說，捺住性子，說話溫柔，是一件很容易的事，理查茲大嫂，”蘇珊氣有些消了，回答道，“因為這時候她們的孩子受到了像王子一樣的對待，被寵愛，被愛撫，直到孩子希望有別的朋友為止?？墒且晃豢蓯鄣摹⑵恋摹⑻煺娴男∨⒆?，本來不應(yīng)當(dāng)當(dāng)面對她說一句壞話，也不應(yīng)當(dāng)在背后議論她一句壞話的，卻受到了不正當(dāng)?shù)闹肛?zé)，這情況確實是大不相同的了。哎呀，我的天哪！弗洛伊小姐，您這淘氣的、造孽的孩子，要是您不在這1分鐘內(nèi)閉上您的眼睛的話，那么我就要把住在頂樓里的妖魔叫進(jìn)來，把您活活地吃掉啦！”
這時
Little Paul, suffering no contamination from the blood of the Toodles, grew stouter and stronger every day. Every day, too, he was more and more ardently cherished by Miss Tox, whose devotion was so far appreciated by Mr Dombey that he began to regard her as a woman of great natural good sense, whose feelings did her credit and deserved encouragement. He was so lavish of this condescension, that he not only bowed to her, in a particular manner, on several occasions, but even entrusted such stately recognitions of her to his sister as 'pray tell your friend, Louisa, that she is very good,' or 'mention to Miss Tox, Louisa, that I am obliged to her;'specialities which made a deep impression on the lady thus distinguished.
Whether Miss Tox conceived that having been selected by the Fates to welcome the little Dombey before he was born, in Kirby, Beard and Kirby's Best Mixed Pins, it therefore naturally devolved upon her to greet him with all other forms of welcome in all other early stages of his existence - or whether her overflowing goodness induced her to volunteer into the domestic militia as a substitute in some sort for his deceased Mama - or whether she was conscious of any other motives - are questions which in this stage of the Firm's history herself only could have solved. Nor have they much bearing on the fact (of which there is no doubt), that Miss Tox's constancy and zeal were a heavy discouragement to Richards, who lost flesh hourly under her patronage, and was in some danger of being superintended to death.
Miss Tox was often in the habit of assuring Mrs Chick, that nothing could exceed her interest in all connected with the development of that sweet child;' and an observer of Miss Tox's proceedings might have inferred so much without declaratory confirmation. She would preside over the innocent repasts of the young heir, with ineffable satisfaction, almost with an air of joint proprietorship with Richards in the entertainment. At the little ceremonies of the bath and toilette, she assisted with enthusiasm. The administration of infantine doses of physic awakened all the active sympathy of her character; and being on one occasion secreted in a cupboard (whither she had fled in modesty), when Mr Dombey was introduced into the nursery by his sister, to behold his son, in the course of preparation for bed, taking a short walk uphill over Richards's gown, in a short and airy linen jacket, Miss Tox was so transported beyond the ignorant present as to be unable to refrain from crying out, 'Is he not beautiful Mr Dombey! Is he not a Cupid, Sir!' and then almost sinking behind the closet door with confusion and blushes.
'Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, one day, to his sister, 'I really think I must present your friend with some little token, on the occasion of Paul's christening. She has exerted herself so warmly in the child's behalf from the first, and seems to understand her position so thoroughly (a very rare merit in this world, I am sorry to say), that it would really be agreeable to me to notice her.'
Let it be no detraction from the merits of Miss Tox, to hint that in Mr Dombey's eyes, as in some others that occasionally see the light, they only achieved that mighty piece of knowledge, the understanding of their own position, who showed a fitting reverence for his. It was not so much their merit that they knew themselves, as that they knew him, and bowed low before him.
'My dear Paul,' returned his sister, 'you do Miss Tox but justice, as a man of your penetration was sure, I knew, to do. I believe if there are three words in the English language for which she has a respect amounting almost to veneration, those words are, Dombey and Son.'
'Well,' said Mr Dombey, 'I believe it. It does Miss Tox credit.'
'And as to anything in the shape of a token, my dear Paul,' pursued his sister, 'all I can say is that anything you give Miss Tox will be hoarded and prized, I am sure, like a relic. But there is a way, my dear Paul, of showing your sense of Miss Tox's friendliness in a still more flattering and acceptable manner, if you should be so inclined.'
'How is that?' asked Mr Dombey.
'Godfathers, of course,' continued Mrs Chick, 'are important in point of connexion and influence.'
'I don't know why they should be, to my son, said Mr Dombey, coldly.
'Very true, my dear Paul,' retorted Mrs Chick, with an extraordinary show of animation, to cover the suddenness of her conversion; 'and spoken like yourself. I might have expected nothing else from you. I might have known that such would have been your opinion. Perhaps;' here Mrs Chick faltered again, as not quite comfortably feeling her way; 'perhaps that is a reason why you might have the less objection to allowing Miss Tox to be godmother to the dear thing, if it were only as deputy and proxy for someone else. That it would be received as a great honour and distinction, Paul, I need not say.
'Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, after a short pause, 'it is not to be supposed - '
'Certainly not,' cried Mrs Chick, hastening to anticipate a refusal, 'I never thought it was.'
Mr Dombey looked at her impatiently.
'Don't flurry me, my dear Paul,' said his sister; 'for that destroys me. I am far from strong. I have not been quite myself, since poor dear Fanny departed.'
Mr Dombey glanced at the pocket-handkerchief which his sister applied to her eyes, and resumed:
'It is not be supposed, I say 'And I say,' murmured Mrs Chick, 'that I never thought it was.'
'Good Heaven, Louisa!' said Mr Dombey.
'No, my dear Paul,' she remonstrated with tearful dignity, 'I must really be allowed to speak. I am not so clever, or so reasoning, or so eloquent, or so anything, as you are. I know that very well. So much the worse for me. But if they were the last words I had to utter - and last words should be very solemn to you and me, Paul, after poor dear Fanny - I would still say I never thought it was. And what is more,' added Mrs Chick with increased dignity, as if she had withheld her crushing argument until now, 'I never did think it was.' Mr Dombey walked to the window and back again.
'It is not to be supposed, Louisa,' he said (Mrs Chick had nailed her colours to the mast, and repeated 'I know it isn't,' but he took no notice of it), 'but that there are many persons who, supposing that I recognised any claim at all in such a case, have a claim upon me superior to Miss Tox's. But I do not. I recognise no such thing. Paul and myself will be able, when the time comes, to hold our own - the House, in other words, will be able to hold its own, and maintain its own, and hand down its own of itself, and without any such common-place aids. The kind of foreign help which people usually seek for their children, I can afford to despise; being above it, I hope. So that Paul's infancy and childhood pass away well, and I see him becoming qualified without waste of time for the career on which he is destined to enter, I am satisfied. He will make what powerful friends he pleases in after-life, when he is actively maintaining - and extending, if that is possible - the dignity and credit of the Firm. Until then, I am enough for him, perhaps, and all in all. I have no wish that people should step in between us. I would much rather show my sense of the obliging conduct of a deserving person like your friend. Therefore let it be so; and your husband and myself will do well enough for the other sponsors, I daresay.'
In the course of these remarks, delivered with great majesty and grandeur, Mr Dombey had truly revealed the secret feelings of his breast. An indescribable distrust of anybody stepping in between himself and his son; a haughty dread of having any rival or partner in the boy's respect and deference; a sharp misgiving, recently acquired, that he was not infallible in his power of bending and binding human wills; as sharp a jealousy of any second check or cross; these were, at that time the master keys of his soul. In all his life, he had never made a friend. His cold and distant nature had neither sought one, nor found one. And now, when that nature concentrated its whole force so strongly on a partial scheme of parental interest and ambition, it seemed as if its icy current, instead of being released by this influence, and running clear and free, had thawed for but an instant to admit its burden, and then frozen with it into one unyielding block.
Elevated thus to the godmothership of little Paul, in virtue of her insignificance, Miss Tox was from that hour chosen and appointed to office; and Mr Dombey further signified his pleasure that the ceremony, already long delayed, should take place without further postponement. His sister, who had been far from anticipating so signal a success, withdrew as soon as she could, to communicate it to her best of friends; and Mr Dombey was left alone in his library. He had already laid his hand upon the bellrope to convey his usual summons to Richards, when his eye fell upon a writing-desk, belonging to his deceased wife, which had been taken, among other things, from a cabinet in her chamber. It was not the first time that his eye had lighted on it He carried the key in his pocket; and he brought it to his table and opened it now - having previously locked the room door - with a well-accustomed hand.
From beneath a leaf of torn and cancelled scraps of paper, he took one letter that remained entire. Involuntarily holding his breath as he opened this document, and 'bating in the stealthy action something of his arrogant demeanour, he s at down, resting his head upon one hand, and read it through.
He read it slowly and attentively, and with a nice particularity to every syllable. Otherwise than as his great deliberation seemed unnatural, and perhaps the result of an effort equally great, he allowed no sign of emotion to escape him. When he had read it through, he folded and refolded it slowly several times, and tore it carefully into fragments. Checking his hand in the act of throwing these away, he put them in his pocket, as if unwilling to trust them even to the chances of being re-united and deciphered; and instead of ringing, as usual, for little Paul, he sat solitary, all the evening, in his cheerless room.
There was anything but solitude in the nursery; for there, Mrs Chick and Miss Tox were enjoying a social evening, so much to the disgust of Miss Susan Nipper, that that young lady embraced every opportunity of making wry faces behind the door. Her feelings were so much excited on the occasion, that she found it indispensable to afford them this relief, even without having the comfort of any audience or sympathy whatever. As the knight-errants of old relieved their minds by carving their mistress's names in deserts, and wildernesses, and other savage places where there was no probability of there ever being anybody to read them, so did Miss Susan Nipper curl her snub nose into drawers and wardrobes, put away winks of disparagement in cupboards, shed derisive squints into stone pitchers, and contradict and call names out in the passage.
The two interlopers, however, blissfully unconscious of the young lady's sentiments, saw little Paul safe through all the stages of undressing, airy exercise, supper and bed; and then sat down to tea before the fire. The two children now lay, through the good offices of Polly, in one room; and it was not until the ladies were established at their tea-table that, happening to look towards the little beds, they thought of Florence.
'How sound she sleeps!' said Miss Tox.
'Why, you know, my dear, she takes a great deal of exercise in the course of the day,' returned Mrs Chick, 'playing about little Paul so much.'
'She is a curious child,' said Miss Tox.
'My dear,' retorted Mrs Chick, in a low voice: 'Her Mama, all over!'
'In deed!' said Miss Tox. 'Ah dear me!'
A tone of most extraordinary compassion Miss Tox said it in, though she had no distinct idea why, except that it was expected of her.
'Florence will never, never, never be a Dombey,'said Mrs Chick, 'not if she lives to be a thousand years old.'
Miss Tox elevated her eyebrows, and was again full of
commiseration.
'I quite fret and worry myself about her,' said Mrs Chick, with a sigh of modest merit. 'I really don't see what is to become of her when she grows older, or what position she is to take. She don't gain on her Papa in the least. How can one expect she should, when she is so very unlike a Dombey?'
Miss Tox looked as if she saw no way out of such a cogent argument as that, at all.
'And the child, you see,' said Mrs Chick, in deep confidence, 'has poor dear Fanny's nature. She'll never make an effort in after-life, I'll venture to say. Never! She'll never wind and twine herself about her Papa's heart like - '
'Like the ivy?' suggested Miss Tox.
'Like the ivy,' Mrs Chick assented. 'Never! She'll never glide and nestle into the bosom of her Papa's affections like - the - '
'Startled fawn?' suggested Miss Tox.
'Like the startled fawn,' said Mrs Chick. 'Never! Poor Fanny! Yet, how I loved her!'
'You must not distress yourself, my dear,' said Miss Tox, in a soothing voice. 'Now really! You have too much feeling.'
'We have all our faults,' said Mrs Chick, weeping and shaking her head. 'I daresay we have. I never was blind to hers. I never said I was. Far from it. Yet how I loved her!'
What a satisfaction it was to Mrs Chick - a common-place piece of folly enough, compared with whom her sister-in-law had been a very angel of womanly intelligence and gentleness - to patronise and be tender to the memory of that lady: in exact pursuance of her conduct to her in her lifetime: and to thoroughly believe herself, and take herself in, and make herself uncommonly comfortable on the strength of her toleration! What a mighty pleasant virtue toleration should be when we are right, to be so very pleasant when we are wrong, and quite unable to demonstrate how we come to be invested with the privilege of exercising it!
Mrs Chick was yet drying her eyes and shaking her head, when Richards made bold to caution her that Miss Florence was awake and sitting in her bed. She had risen, as the nurse said, and the lashes of her eyes were wet with tears. But no one saw them glistening save Polly. No one else leant over her, and whispered soothing words to her, or was near enough to hear the flutter of her beating heart.
'Oh! dear nurse!' said the child, looking earnestly up in her face, 'let me lie by my brother!'
'Why, my pet?' said Richards.
'Oh! I think he loves me,' cried the child wildly. 'Let me lie by him. Pray do!'
Mrs Chick interposed with some motherly words about going to sleep like a dear, but Florence repeated her supplication, with a frightened look, and in a voice broken by sobs and tears.
'I'll not wake him,' she said, covering her face and hanging down her head. 'I'll only touch him with my hand, and go to sleep. Oh, pray, pray, let me lie by my brother to-night, for I believe he's fond of me!'
Richards took her without a word, and carrying her to the little bed in which the infant was sleeping, laid her down by his side. She crept as near him as she could without disturbing his rest; and stretching out one arm so that it timidly embraced his neck, and hiding her face on the other, over which her damp and scattered hair fell loose, lay motionless.
'Poor little thing,' said Miss Tox; 'she has been dreaming, I daresay.'
Dreaming, perhaps, of loving tones for ever silent, of loving eyes for ever closed, of loving arms again wound round her, and relaxing in that dream within the dam which no tongue can relate. Seeking, perhaps - in dreams - some natural comfort for a heart, deeply and sorely wounded, though so young a child's: and finding it, perhaps, in dreams, if not in waking, cold, substantial truth. This trivial incident had so interrupted the current of conversation, that it was difficult of resumption; and Mrs Chick moreover had been so affected by the contemplation of her own tolerant nature, that she was not in spirits. The two friends accordingly soon made an end of their tea, and a servant was despatched to fetch a hackney cabriolet for Miss Tox. Miss Tox had great experience in hackney cabs, and her starting in one was generally a work of time, as she was systematic in the preparatory arrangements.
'Have the goodness, if you please, Towlinson,' said Miss Tox, 'first of all, to carry out a pen and ink and take his number legibly.'
'Yes, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'Then, if you please, Towlinson,'said Miss Tox, 'have the goodness
to turn the cushion. Which,' said Miss Tox apart to Mrs Chick, 'is generally damp, my dear.'
'Yes, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'I'll trouble you also, if you please, Towlinson,' said Miss Tox, 'with this card and this shilling. He's to drive to the card, and is to understand that he will not on any account have more than the shilling.'
'No, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'And - I'm sorry to give you so much trouble, Towlinson,' said Miss Tox, looking at him pensively.
'Not at all, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'Mention to the man, then, if you please, Towlinson,' said Miss Tox, 'that the lady's uncle is a magistrate, and that if he gives her any of his impertinence he will be punished terribly. You can pretend to say that, if you please, Towlinson, in a friendly way, and because you know it was done to another man, who died.'
'Certainly, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'And now good-night to my sweet, sweet, sweet, godson,' said Miss Tox, with a soft shower of kisses at each repetition of the adjective; 'and Louisa, my dear friend, promise me to take a little something warm before you go to bed, and not to distress yourself!'
It was with extreme difficulty that Nipper, the black-eyed, who looked on steadfastly, contained herself at this crisis, and until the subsequent departure of Mrs Chick. But the nursery being at length free of visitors, she made herself some recompense for her late restraint.
'You might keep me in a strait-waistcoat for six weeks,' said Nipper, 'and when I got it off I'd only be more aggravated, who ever heard the like of them two Griffins, Mrs Richards?'
'And then to talk of having been dreaming, poor dear!' said Polly.
'Oh you beauties!' cried Susan Nipper, affecting to salute the door by which the ladies had departed. 'Never be a Dombey won't she? It's to be hoped she won't, we don't want any more such, one's enough.'
'Don't wake the children, Susan dear,' said Polly.
'I'm very much beholden to you, Mrs Richards,' said Susan, who was not by any means discriminating in her wrath, 'and really feel it as a honour to receive your commands, being a black slave and a mulotter. Mrs Richards, if there's any other orders, you can give me, pray mention 'em.'
'Nonsense; orders,' said Polly.
'Oh! bless your heart, Mrs Richards,' cried Susan, 'temporaries always orders permanencies here, didn't you know that, why wherever was you born, Mrs Richards? But wherever you was born, Mrs Richards,' pursued Spitfire, shaking her head resolutely, 'and whenever, and however (which is best known to yourself), you may bear in mind, please, that it's one thing to give orders, and quite another thing to take 'em. A person may tell a person to dive off a bridge head foremost into five-and-forty feet of water, Mrs Richards, but a person may be very far from diving.'
'There now,' said Polly, 'you're angry because you're a good little thing, and fond of Miss Florence; and yet you turn round on me, because there's nobody else.'
'It's very easy for some to keep their tempers, and be soft-spoken, Mrs Richards,' returned Susan, slightly mollified, 'when their child's made as much of as a prince, and is petted and patted till it wishes its friends further, but when a sweet young pretty innocent, that never ought to have a cross word spoken to or of it, is rundown, the case is very different indeed. My goodness gracious me, Miss Floy, you naughty, sinful child, if you don't shut your eyes this minute, I'll call in them hobgoblins that lives in the cock-loft to come and eat you up alive!'
Here Miss Nipper made a horrible lowing, supposed to issue from a conscientious goblin of the bull species, impatient to discharge the severe duty of his position. Having further composed her young charge by covering her head with the bedclothes, and making three or four angry dabs at the pillow, she folded her arms, and screwed up her mouth, and sat looking at the fire for the rest of the evening.
Though little Paul was said, in nursery phrase, 'to take a deal of notice for his age,' he took as little notice of all this as of the preparations for his christening on the next day but one; which nevertheless went on about him, as to his personal apparel, and that of his sister and the two nurses, with great activity. Neither did he, on the arrival of the appointed morning, show any sense of its importance; being, on the contrary, unusually inclined to sleep, and unusually inclined to take it ill in his attendants that they dressed him to go out.
It happened to be an iron-grey autumnal day, with a shrewd east wind blowing - a day in keeping with the proceedings. Mr Dombey represented in himself the wind, the shade, and the autumn of the christening. He stood in his library to receive the company, as hard and cold as the weather; and when he looked out through the glass room, at the trees in the little garden, their brown and yellow leaves came fluttering down, as if he blighted them.
Ugh! They were black, cold rooms; and seemed to be in mourning, like the inmates of the house. The books precisely matched as to size, and drawn up in line, like soldiers, looked in their cold, hard, slippery uniforms, as if they had but one idea among them, and that was a freezer. The bookcase, glazed and locked, repudiated all familiarities. Mr Pitt, in bronze, on the top, with no trace of his celestial origin' about him, guarded the unattainable treasure like an enchanted Moor. A dusty urn at each high corner, dug up from an ancient tomb, preached desolation and decay, as from two pulpits; and the chimney-glass, reflecting Mr Dombey and his portrait at one blow, seemed fraught with melancholy meditations.
The stiff and stark fire-irons appeared to claim a nearer relationship than anything else there to Mr Dombey, with his buttoned coat, his white cravat, his heavy gold watch-chain, and his creaking boots.
But this was before the arrival of Mr and Mrs Chick, his lawful relatives, who soon presented themselves.
'My dear Paul,' Mrs Chick murmured, as she embraced him, 'the beginning, I hope, of many joyful days!'
'Thank you, Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, grimly. 'How do you do, Mr John?'
'How do you do, Sir?' said Chick.
He gave Mr Dombey his hand, as if he feared it might electrify him. Mr Dombey tool: it as if it were a fish, or seaweed, or some such clammy substance, and immediately returned it to him with exalted politeness.
'Perhaps, Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, slightly turning his head in his cravat, as if it were a socket, 'you would have preferred a fire?'
'Oh, my dear Paul, no,' said Mrs Chick, who had much ado to keep her teeth from chattering; 'not for me.'
'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, 'you are not sensible of any chill?'
Mr John, who had already got both his hands in his pockets over the wrists, and was on the very threshold of that same canine chorus which had given Mrs Chick so much offence on a former occasion, protested that he was perfectly comfortable.
He added in a low voice, 'With my tiddle tol toor rul' - when he was providentially stopped by Towlinson, who announced:
'Miss Tox!'
And enter that fair enslaver, with a blue nose and indescribably frosty face, referable to her being very thinly clad in a maze of fluttering odds and ends, to do honour to the ceremony.
'How do you do, Miss Tox?' said Mr Dombey.
Miss Tox, in the midst of her spreading gauzes, went down altogether like an opera-glass shutting-up; she curtseyed so low, in acknowledgment of Mr Dombey's advancing a step or two to meet her.
'I can never forget this occasion, Sir,' said Miss Tox, softly. ''Tis impossible. My dear Louisa, I can hardly believe the evidence of my senses.'
If Miss Tox could believe the evidence of one of her senses, it was a very cold day. That was quite clear. She took an early opportunity of promoting the circulation in the tip of her nose by secretly chafing it with her pocket handkerchief, lest, by its very low temperature, it should disagreeably astonish the baby when she came to kiss it.
The baby soon appeared, carried in great glory by Richards; while Florence, in custody of that active young constable, Susan Nipper, brought up the rear. Though the whole nursery party were dressed by this time in lighter mourning than at first, there was enough in the appearance of the bereaved children to make the day no brighter. The baby too - it might have been Miss Tox's nose - began to cry. Thereby, as it happened, preventing Mr Chick from the awkward fulfilment of a very honest purpose he had; which was, to make much of Florence. For this gentleman, insensible to the superior claims of a perfect Dombey (perhaps on account of having the honour to be united to a Dombey himself, and being familiar with excellence), really liked her, and showed that he liked her, and was about to show it in his own way now, when Paul cried, and his helpmate stopped him short
'Now Florence, child!' said her aunt, briskly, 'what are you doing, love? Show yourself to him. Engage his attention, my dear!'
The atmosphere became or might have become colder and colder, when Mr Dombey stood frigidly watching his little daughter, who, clapping her hands, and standing On tip-toe before the throne of his son and heir, lured him to bend down from his high estate, and look at her. Some honest act of Richards's may have aided the effect, but he did look down, and held his peace. As his sister hid behind her nurse, he followed her with his eyes; and when she peeped out with a merry cry to him, he sprang up and crowed lustily - laughing outright when she ran in upon him; and seeming to fondle her curls with his tiny hands, while she smothered him with kisses.
Was Mr Dombey pleased to see this? He testified no pleasure by the relaxation of a nerve; but outward tokens of any kind of feeling were unusual with him. If any sunbeam stole into the room to light the children at their play, it never reached his face. He looked on so fixedly and coldly, that the warm light vanished even from the laughing eyes of little Florence, when, at last, they happened to meet his.
It was a dull, grey, autumn day indeed, and in a minute's pause and silence that took place, the leaves fell sorrowfully.
'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, referring to his watch, and assuming his hat and gloves. 'Take my sister, if you please: my arm today is Miss Tox's. You had better go first with Master Paul, Richards. Be very careful.'
In Mr Dombey's carriage, Dombey and Son, Miss Tox, Mrs Chick, Richards, and Florence. In a little carriage following it, Susan Nipper and the owner Mr Chick. Susan looking out of window, without intermission, as a relief from the embarrassment of confronting the large face of that gentleman, and thinking whenever anything rattled that he was putting up in paper an appropriate pecuniary compliment for herself.
Once upon the road to church, Mr Dombey clapped his hands for the amusement of his son. At which instance of parental enthusiasm Miss Tox was enchanted. But exclusive of this incident, the chief difference between the christening party and a party in a mourning coach consisted in the colours of the carriage and horses.
Arrived at the church steps, they were received by a portentous beadle.' Mr Dombey dismounting first to help the ladies out, and standing near him at the church door, looked like another beadle. A beadle less gorgeous but more dreadful; the beadle of private life; the beadle of our business and our bosoms.
Miss Tox's hand trembled as she slipped it through Mr Dombey's arm, and felt herself escorted up the steps, preceded by a cocked hat and a Babylonian collar. It seemed for a moment like that other solemn institution, 'Wilt thou have this man, Lucretia?' 'Yes, I will.'
'Please to bring the child in quick out of the air there,' whispered the beadle, holding open the inner door of the church.
Little Paul might have asked with Hamlet 'into my grave?' so chill and earthy was the place. The tall shrouded pulpit and reading desk; the dreary perspective of empty pews stretching away under the galleries, and empty benches mounting to the roof and lost in the shadow of the great grim organ; the dusty matting and cold stone slabs; the grisly free seats' in the aisles; and the damp corner by the bell-rope, where the black trestles used for funerals were stowed away, along with some shovels and baskets, and a coil or two of deadly-looking rope; the strange, unusual, uncomfortable smell, and the cadaverous light; were all in unison. It was a cold and dismal scene.
'There's a wedding just on, Sir,' said the beadle, 'but it'll be over directly, if you'll walk into the westry here.
Before he turned again to lead the way, he gave Mr Dombey a bow and a half smile of recognition, importing that he (the beadle) remembered to have had the pleasure of attending on him when he buried his wife, and hoped he had enjoyed himself since.
The very wedding looked dismal as they passed in front of the altar. The bride was too old and the bridegroom too young, and a superannuated beau with one eye and an eyeglass stuck in its blank companion, was giving away the lady, while the friends were shivering. In the vestry the fire was smoking; and an over-aged and over-worked and under-paid attorney's clerk, 'making a search,' was running his forefinger down the parchment pages of an immense register (one of a long series of similar volumes) gorged with burials. Over the fireplace was a ground-plan of the vaults underneath the church; and Mr Chick, skimming the literary portion of it aloud, by way of enlivening the company, read the reference to Mrs Dombey's tomb in full, before he could stop himself.
After another cold interval, a wheezy little pew-opener afflicted with an asthma, appropriate to the churchyard, if not to the church, summoned them to the font - a rigid marble basin which seemed to have been playing a churchyard game at cup and ball with its matter of fact pedestal, and to have been just that moment caught on the top of it. Here they waited some little time while the marriage party enrolled themselves; and meanwhile the wheezy little pew-opener - partly in consequence of her infirmity, and partly that the marriage party might not forget her - went about the building coughing like a grampus.
Presently the clerk (the only cheerful-looking object there, and he was an undertaker) came up with a jug of warm water, and said something, as he poured it into the font, about taking the chill off; which millions of gallons boiling hot could not have done for the occasion. Then the clergyman, an amiable and mild-looking young curate, but obviously afraid of the baby, appeared like the principal character in a ghost-story, 'a tall figure all in white;' at sight of whom Paul rent the air with his cries, and never left off again till he was taken out black in the face.
Even when that event had happened, to the great relief of everybody, he was heard under the portico, during the rest of the ceremony, now fainter, now louder, now hushed, now bursting forth again with an irrepressible sense of his wrongs. This so distracted the attention of the two ladies, that Mrs Chick was constantly deploying into the centre aisle, to send out messages by the pew-opener, while Miss Tox kept her Prayer-book open at the Gunpowder Plot, and occasionally read responses from that service.
During the whole of these proceedings, Mr Dombey remained as impassive and gentlemanly as ever, and perhaps assisted in making it so cold, that the young curate smoked at the mouth as he read. The only time that he unbent his visage in the least, was when the clergyman, in delivering (very unaffectedly and simply) the closing exhortation, relative to the future examination of the child by the sponsors, happened to rest his eye on Mr Chick; and then Mr Dombey might have been seen to express by a majestic look, that he would like to catch him at it.
It might have been well for Mr Dombey, if he had thought of his own dignity a little less; and had thought of the great origin and purpose of the ceremony in which he took so formal and so stiff a part, a little more. His arrogance contrasted strangely with its history.
When it was all over, he again gave his arm to Miss Tox, and conducted her to the vestry, where he informed the clergyman how much pleasure it would have given him to have solicited the honour of his company at dinner, but for the unfortunate state of his household affairs. The register signed, and the fees paid, and the pew-opener (whose cough was very bad again) remembered, and the beadle gratified, and the sexton (who was accidentally on the doorsteps, looking with great interest at the weather) not forgotten, they got into the carriage again, and drove home in the same bleak fellowship.
There they found Mr Pitt turning up his nose at a cold collation, set forth in a cold pomp of glass and silver, and looking more like a dead dinner lying in state than a social refreshment. On their arrival Miss Tox produced a mug for her godson, and Mr Chick a knife and fork and spoon in a case. Mr Dombey also produced a bracelet for Miss Tox; and, on the receipt of this token, Miss Tox was tenderly affected.
'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, 'will you take the bottom of the table, if you please? What have you got there, Mr John?'
'I have got a cold fillet of veal here, Sir,' replied Mr Chick, rubbing his numbed hands hard together. 'What have you got there, Sir?'
'This,' returned Mr Dombey, 'is some cold preparation of calf's head, I think. I see cold fowls - ham - patties - salad - lobster. Miss Tox will do me the honour of taking some wine? Champagne to Miss Tox.'
There was a toothache in everything. The wine was so bitter cold that it forced a little scream from Miss Tox, which she had great difficulty in turning into a 'Hem!' The veal had come from such an airy pantry, that the first taste of it had struck a sensation as of cold lead to Mr Chick's extremities. Mr Dombey alone remained unmoved. He might have been hung up for sale at a Russian fair as a specimen of a frozen gentleman.
The prevailing influence was too much even for his sister. She made no effort at flattery or small talk, and directed all her efforts to looking as warm as she could.
'Well, Sir,' said Mr Chick, making a desperate plunge, after a long silence, and filling a glass of sherry; 'I shall drink this, if you'll allow me, Sir, to little Paul.'
'Bless him!' murmured Miss Tox, taking a sip of wine.
'Dear little Dombey!' murmured Mrs Chick.
'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, with severe gravity, 'my son would feel and express himself obliged to you, I have no doubt, if he could appreciate the favour you have done him. He will prove, in time to come, I trust, equal to any responsibility that the obliging disposition of his relations and friends, in private, or the onerous nature of our position, in public, may impose upon him.'
The tone in which this was said admitting of nothing more, Mr Chick relapsed into low spirits and silence. Not so Miss Tox, who, having listened to Mr Dombey with even a more emphatic attention than usual, and with a more expressive tendency of her head to one side, now leant across the table, and said to Mrs Chick softly:
'Louisa!'
'My dear,' said Mrs Chick.
'Onerous nature of our position in public may - I have forgotten
the exact term.'
'Expose him to,' said Mrs Chick.
'Pardon me, my dear,' returned Miss Tox, 'I think not. It was more rounded and flowing. Obliging disposition of relations and friends in private, or onerous nature of position in public - may - impose upon him!'
'Impose upon him, to be sure,' said Mrs Chick.
Miss Tox struck her delicate hands together lightly, in triumph; and added, casting up her eyes, 'eloquence indeed!'
Mr Dombey, in the meanwhile, had issued orders for the attendance of Richards, who now entered curtseying, but without the baby; Paul being asleep after the fatigues of the morning. Mr Dombey, having delivered a glass of wine to this vassal, addressed her in the following words: Miss Tox previously settling her head on one side, and making other little arrangements for engraving them on her heart.
'During the six months or so, Richards, which have seen you an inmate of this house, you have done your duty. Desiring to connect some little service to you with this occasion, I considered how I could best effect that object, and I also advised with my sister, Mrs - '
'Chick,' interposed the gentleman of that name.
'Oh, hush if you please!' said Miss Tox.
'I was about to say to you, Richards,' resumed Mr Dombey, with an appalling glance at Mr John, 'that I was further assisted in my decision, by the recollection of a conversation I held with your husband in this room, on the occasion of your being hired, when he disclosed to me the melancholy fact that your family, himself at the head, were sunk and steeped in ignorance.
Richards quailed under the magnificence of the reproof.
'I am far from being friendly,' pursued Mr Dombey, 'to what is called by persons of levelling sentiments, general education. But it is necessary that the inferior classes should continue to be taught to know their position, and to conduct themselves properly. So far I approve of schools. Having the power of nominating a child on the foundation of an ancient establishment, called (from a worshipful company) the Charitable Grinders; where not only is a wholesome education bestowed upon the scholars, but where a dress and badge is likewise provided for them; I have (first communicating, through Mrs Chick, with your family) nominated your eldest son to an existing vacancy; and he has this day, I am informed, assumed the habit. The number of her son, I believe,' said Mr Dombey, turning to his sister and speaking of the child as if he were a hackney-coach, is one hundred and forty-seven. Louisa, you can tell her.'
'One hundred and forty-seven,' said Mrs Chick 'The dress, Richards, is a nice, warm, blue baize tailed coat and cap, turned up with orange coloured binding; red worsted stockings; and very strong leather small-clothes. One might wear the articles one's self,' said Mrs Chick, with enthusiasm, 'and be grateful.'
'There, Richards!' said Miss Tox. 'Now, indeed, you may be proud. The Charitable Grinders!'
'I am sure I am very much obliged, Sir,' returned Richards faintly, 'and take it very kind that you should remember my little ones.' At the same time a vision of Biler as a Charitable Grinder, with his very small legs encased in the serviceable clothing described by Mrs Chick, swam before Richards's eyes, and made them water.
'I am very glad to see you have so much feeling, Richards,' said Miss Tox.
'It makes one almost hope, it really does,' said Mrs Chick, who prided herself on taking trustful views of human nature, 'that there may yet be some faint spark of gratitude and right feeling in the world.'
Richards deferred to these compliments by curtseying and murmuring
her thanks; but finding it quite impossible to recover her spirits from the disorder into which they had been thrown by the image of her son in his precocious nether garments, she gradually approached the door and was heartily relieved to escape by it.
Such temporary indications of a partial thaw that had appeared with her, vanished with her; and the frost set in again, as cold and hard as ever. Mr Chick was twice heard to hum a tune at the bottom of the table, but on both occasions it was a fragment of the Dead March in Saul. The party seemed to get colder and colder, and to be gradually resolving itself into a congealed and solid state, like the collation round which it was assembled. At length Mrs Chick looked at Miss Tox, and Miss Tox returned the look, and they both rose and said it was really time to go. Mr Dombey receiving this announcement with perfect equanimity, they took leave of that gentleman, and presently departed under the protection of Mr Chick; who, when they had turned their backs upon the house and left its master in his usual solitary state, put his hands in his pockets, threw himself back in the carriage, and whistled 'With a hey ho chevy!' all through; conveying into his face as he did so, an expression of such gloomy and terrible defiance, that Mrs Chick dared not protest, or in any way molest him.
Richards, though she had little Paul on her lap, could not forget her own first-born. She felt it was ungrateful; but the influence of the day fell even on the Charitable Grinders, and she could hardly help regarding his pewter badge, number one hundred and forty-seven, as, somehow, a part of its formality and sternness. She spoke, too, in the nursery, of his 'blessed legs,' and was again troubled by his spectre in uniform.
'I don't know what I wouldn't give,' said Polly, 'to see the poor little dear before he gets used to 'em.'
'Why, then, I tell you what, Mrs Richards,' retorted Nipper, who had been admitted to her confidence, 'see him and make your mind easy.'
'Mr Dombey wouldn't like it,' said Polly.
'Oh, wouldn't he, Mrs Richards!' retorted Nipper, 'he'd like it very much, I think when he was asked.'
'You wouldn't ask him, I suppose, at all?' said Polly.
'No, Mrs Richards, quite contrairy,' returned Susan, 'and them two inspectors Tox and Chick, not intending to be on duty tomorrow, as I heard 'em say, me and Mid Floy will go along with you tomorrow morning, and welcome, Mrs Richards, if you like, for we may as well walk there as up and down a street, and better too.'
Polly rejected the idea pretty stoutly at first; but by little and little she began to entertain it, as she entertained more and more distinctly the forbidden pictures of her children, and her own home. At length, arguing that there could be no great harm in calling for a moment at the door, she yielded to the Nipper proposition.
The matter being settled thus, little Paul began to cry most piteously, as if he had a foreboding that no good would come of it.
'What's the matter with the child?' asked Susan.
'He's cold, I think,' said Polly, walking with him to and fro, and hushing him.
It was a bleak autumnal afternoon indeed; and as she walked, and hushed, and, glancing through the dreary windows, pressed the little fellow closer to her breast, the withered leaves came showering down.
小保羅從圖德爾的血液中沒有受到污染，每天長得愈來愈結(jié)實，愈來愈強壯。托克斯小姐每天也愈來愈熱心地愛護(hù)他；董貝先生對她的忠誠十分贊賞，開始把她看作是一位天性善良、十分明白事理的女人；她的感情為她增光，應(yīng)當(dāng)?shù)玫焦膭睢Ｋ幌Ъu尊降貴，向她充分表示好感。不僅好幾次特別有禮地向她鞠躬，甚至還通過她的妹妹鄭重地轉(zhuǎn)達(dá)他對她的謝意?！罢埜嬖V你的朋友，路易莎，她很好，”或者“請跟托克斯小姐說，路易莎，我謝謝她?！彼麑@位女士這樣刮目相看，這給她留下了深刻的印象。
托克斯小姐時常讓奇克夫人放心，對她說，跟那位可愛的嬰孩的發(fā)育成長有關(guān)的一切事情，是她最感興趣的，沒有什么能超過它的了。她這樣講，已經(jīng)成了一種習(xí)慣。觀察托克斯小姐活動的人不需要取得確鑿肯定的證詞就可以得出同樣的結(jié)論。她會懷著難以形容的滿意心情主持這位年輕繼承人的天真的用餐，那副神態(tài)就幾乎像在這個款待中她跟理查茲共同享有所有權(quán)似的。在洗澡與穿著打扮這些小小的活動中，她熱情地進(jìn)行幫助。給孩子服用藥物，喚起了她生性具有的強烈的同情心。有一次董貝先生被他的妹妹領(lǐng)到育兒室里來看他的兒子；托克斯小姐由于謙虛，急忙跑到一個碗柜里去躲避；這時候孩子正準(zhǔn)備睡覺，穿著一件輕薄的亞麻短上衣，沿著理查茲的長外衣向上短時間地爬了一會兒；托克斯小姐在毫無所知的客人背后欣喜若狂，忍不住喊道，“他不是很漂亮嗎，董貝先生，他不就是個丘比德①嗎，先生？”然后神情慌亂，滿臉通紅，在柜子的門后幾乎都要倒下去了。
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①丘比德（Cupid）：羅馬神話中的愛神，他的形象是一個背生雙翼、手持弓箭的美童；因此，美麗的兒童或美少年常被稱為丘比德。
“路易莎，”董貝先生有一次對他的妹妹說道，“我確實覺得應(yīng)該在給保羅施洗禮的時候，給你的朋友送一點兒小小的紀(jì)念品。她從一開始就那么熱心地為孩子操心出力，而且似乎完全明白自己的身份（我很遺憾地說，在這個世界上這是難能可貴的一種美德），我真愿意向她表示一點謝意?！?BR> 我們在這里并不是想要貶損托克斯小姐的美德，但需要提一下，在董貝先生的眼中——就像在那些有時能體察事理的其他人的眼中一樣——，只有對他的地位表示適當(dāng)尊敬的人，才能稱得上具有明白自己身份的那份非凡的理解力。他們了解自己的美德并不比他們了解他在他面前卑躬屈節(jié)的美德更為重要。
“我親愛的保羅，”他的妹妹回答道，“你對待托克斯小姐完全公道；我知道，像你這樣洞察一切的人一定會這樣做。我相信，在我國的語言中，如有四個字她尊敬得幾乎達(dá)到了崇拜的地步的話，那么這四個字就是董貝父子。”
“唔，”董貝先生說道，“我相信這一點。這會給托克斯小姐增光?！?BR> “至于說到紀(jì)念品，我親愛的保羅，”他的妹妹繼續(xù)說道，“我只想說一句話，就是，你給托克斯小姐不論什么東西，我相信她都會把它當(dāng)作圣物一樣珍視和收藏起來的。不過，親愛的保羅，如果你愿意的話，那么你還可以用一種更使她高興、更使她滿意的方式來表示你對托克斯小姐的友好情誼的謝意?！?BR> “什么方式？”董貝先生問道。
“就關(guān)系與影響來說，”奇克夫人繼續(xù)說道，“選擇教父自然是重要的?！?BR> “我不知道為什么他們對我的兒子是重要的，”董貝先生冷若冰霜地說道。
“完全正確，我親愛的保羅，”奇克夫人回答道；為了掩蓋她突然改變主意，她就顯示出異乎尋常的活潑；“這正是你應(yīng)該說的。我原來就料想你不會說別的。我原先就知道這就是你的意見。”奇克夫人這時又奉承起來，一邊沒有很大把握地摸索著前進(jìn)；“也許正因為這樣，如果讓托克斯小姐僅僅作為其他什么人的代表和替身，來充當(dāng)可愛的孩子的教母，那么你可能是不會反對的。不用說，保羅，她將會把這看作是極為體面、極為光榮的事情來接受的?！?BR> “路易莎，”董貝先生沉默了一會兒，說道，“不應(yīng)該認(rèn)為——”
“當(dāng)然不應(yīng)該，”奇克夫人急忙防止會遭到拒絕，“我從來不曾認(rèn)為那是應(yīng)該的?！?BR> 董貝先生不耐煩地看著她。
“別把我的心攪亂了，我親愛的保羅，”他的妹妹說道，“因為這會毀了我。我的身體很不好。自從可憐的親愛的范妮離開我們以后，我就一直覺得不舒服。”
董貝先生向他妹妹掏出來擦眼淚的手絹看了一眼，繼續(xù)說道：
“我說，不應(yīng)該認(rèn)為?！?BR> “我說，”奇克夫人嘟噥著說道，“我從來不曾想過那是應(yīng)該的?！?BR> “我的天，路易莎！”董貝先生說道。
“不，我親愛的保羅，”她眼淚汪汪、尊嚴(yán)地抗辯道，“你確實應(yīng)當(dāng)允許我說話。我不像你那么聰明，那么能推理，那么能言善辯，等等。這一點我很明白。對我來說，這就更糟?？墒侨绻冶仨氄f最后幾句話的話——保羅，在可憐的親愛的范妮逝世以后，這最后幾句話對你和我都必須是很莊嚴(yán)的——，我仍然要說，我從來不曾認(rèn)為那是應(yīng)該的。而且，”奇克夫人以愈益尊嚴(yán)的語氣補充說道，仿佛她直到現(xiàn)在才把她最能把別人駁得一敗涂地、無言以對的論據(jù)拿出來似的?！拔摇ご_·實從來不曾想過那是應(yīng)該的?！?BR> 董貝先生走到窗子前面，又走回來。
“不應(yīng)該認(rèn)為，路易莎，”他說道（奇克夫人堅持到底，決不服，不斷重復(fù)說道，“我知道不應(yīng)該”，但是他沒有理會），“沒有好多人以為，誰擔(dān)任了教父教母，我就會承認(rèn)他（她）對我有什么權(quán)利，因此他們就會比托克斯小姐對我提出更多的權(quán)利。可是我不承認(rèn)這種權(quán)利。我不承認(rèn)任何這類事情。當(dāng)時間到來的時候，保羅和我本人將有能力保持我們自己的財產(chǎn)；換句話說，公司將有能力保持它自己的財產(chǎn)，維護(hù)它自己的財產(chǎn)，把它的財產(chǎn)傳給后代，并不需要任何這類平凡無奇的幫助。人們通常為他們的子女尋求那一類不相干的幫助，我卻能夠蔑視它；因為我希望我超越它。因此當(dāng)保羅順利地度過他的嬰兒時代與孩童時代，當(dāng)我看到他沒有虛度光陰，將能勝任·他預(yù)定要擔(dān)當(dāng)?shù)氖聵I(yè)的時候，我就將稱心滿意了。他在以后的生涯中，當(dāng)他積極地維護(hù)著公司的尊嚴(yán)與榮譽，并且，如果可能的話，加以擴展的時候，他將會結(jié)交他愿意結(jié)交的有權(quán)有勢的朋友。在那時候來到之前，對他來說，也許有我就已經(jīng)足夠了，而且我就是他的一切。總而言之，我不希望有什么人介入我們之間。我寧愿向一位像你的朋友那樣值得感謝的人表示我對她的勞務(wù)的謝意。因此，就讓這件事這樣辦吧，我想，你的丈夫與我本人來充當(dāng)教父，我們將會當(dāng)?shù)煤芎谩！?BR> 在這極為莊嚴(yán)、極為鄭重的談話過程中，董貝先生真實地透露了他心中秘密的感情。他對介入他與他兒子之間的任何人都懷著難以形容的不信任。他傲慢地害怕有任何一個人與他爭奪或與他分享孩子的尊敬與服從；他最近產(chǎn)生出一種深深的憂慮，就是他在改變和約束人們的意志方面并沒有無限的能力；他同樣強烈猜疑的是，他會遭遇到新的挫折與不幸；這些就是在這段時間中支配他心靈的主要思想感情。在他的這一生中，他從沒有結(jié)交過一位朋友。他那對人冷淡、與人疏遠(yuǎn)的性格既沒有尋求過一位朋友，也沒有找到過一位朋友。現(xiàn)在，當(dāng)這性格把它的全部力量有力地集中在體現(xiàn)父親的關(guān)懷與野心的一部分計劃上的時候，看來它那冰流仿佛并沒有在這種影響下完全解凍，清澈地、自由地奔流，而只是融化了一會兒，以便容納它的重荷，然后連它一起凍結(jié)成一個堅硬的大冰塊。
托克斯小姐憑著她低微的身份被這樣提升為小保羅的教母，從這個時候起就被選定并任命就職；董貝先生還進(jìn)一步表示了他的愿望：這個拖延已久的儀式應(yīng)該很快舉行，不再推遲。他的妹妹原先沒有指望能取得這樣輝煌的成功，于是趕快離開，把這個消息告訴給她的朋友；董貝先生則獨自留在他的圖書室中。
育兒室里一點也不寂寞，因為奇克夫人與托克斯小姐正在那里親密愉快地一起度過那個晚上；她們使蘇珊·尼珀姑娘感到極為討厭，因此這姑娘一有機會就在門后撇嘴做怪臉。在這個場合下她的感情是十分激動的，所以她覺得有必要采用這種方法使它們輕松一下，即使沒有任何觀眾在場，她得不到任何同情的安慰也罷。就像古代的游俠騎士把他們情人的名字刻寫在沙漠、曠野和沒有任何人可能讀到它們的其他荒野的地方來安慰心中的懸念一樣，蘇珊·尼珀向柜子和衣櫥皺皺獅子鼻，向碗柜輕蔑地眨眨眼睛，向有柄的大石水罐嘲笑地斜眼瞅一瞅，并在走廊里反駁和謾罵。
不過，那兩位侵犯他人權(quán)利的人卻很有福氣，對這位姑娘的情緒一無所知；她們看著小保羅被脫掉衣服，到戶外散步，吃晚飯，上床睡覺，平安順利地經(jīng)過了所有這些階段，然后在壁爐前面坐下來喝茶。由于波利作出善意努力的結(jié)果，兩個孩子現(xiàn)在睡在同一個房間里；兩位女士坐著喝茶的桌子正巧面對著兩張小床，所以直到這時候她們才想起了弗洛倫斯。
“她睡得多熟??！”托克斯小姐說道。
“是呀，您知道，我親愛的，這一整天她搞了那么多的活動，”奇克夫人回答道，“一直在小保羅身邊玩耍?！?BR> “她是個奇怪的孩子，”托克斯小姐說道。
“我親愛的，”奇克夫人低聲回答道，“跟她媽媽一模一樣！”
“真的嗎？”托克斯小姐說道，“哎呀！”
托克斯小姐是用一種非常憐憫的聲調(diào)說的，雖然她并不清楚為什么要用這樣的聲調(diào)，她只知道奇克夫人期望她這樣說。
“弗洛倫斯永遠(yuǎn)、永遠(yuǎn)、永遠(yuǎn)也不會像董貝家里的人，”奇克夫人說道，“即使她活一千歲，也不會?！?BR> 托克斯小姐揚起眉毛，再次充滿了憐憫。
“我為她感到很焦急，很煩惱，”奇克夫人端莊、賢惠地嘆了一口氣，說道，“我實在不知道她長大了會變成一個什么樣的人，或者她將會有什么樣的地位。她絲毫沒能使她爸爸喜歡她。她這樣不像董貝家里的人，誰又能指望她能使她爸爸喜歡她呢？”
托克斯小姐表露出一副神情，仿佛她覺得根本無法反駁這樣令人信服的論斷似的。
“您知道，這孩子的性格跟可憐的范妮一樣，”奇克夫人滿有信心地說道，“我敢說，她在今后的生活中永遠(yuǎn)也不會作出努力。永遠(yuǎn)不會！她永遠(yuǎn)不會曲曲彎彎，纏繞住她爸爸的心，就像那——”
“就像那常春藤一樣？”托克斯小姐提示道。
“就像那常春藤一樣，”奇克夫人同意道，“永遠(yuǎn)不會！她永遠(yuǎn)不會悄悄地藏到她爸爸慈愛的心窩中，安臥在那里，就像那——”
“就像那受驚的小鹿一樣？”托克斯小姐提示道。
“就像那受驚的小鹿一樣，”奇克夫人說道，“永遠(yuǎn)不會！
可憐的范妮！可是，我是多么愛她??！”
“您自己可別太傷心了，我親愛的，”托克斯小姐用安慰的聲調(diào)說道?！斑恚媸沁@樣的！您太富于感情了！”
“我們?nèi)巳硕加凶约旱娜秉c，”奇克夫人哭泣著，搖著頭，說道，“我敢說，我們?nèi)巳硕加小Ｎ覜Q不能看不到她的缺點。我決不能說我沒有看到。遠(yuǎn)不是這樣。可是我是多么愛她?。 ?BR> 奇克夫人是一位平庸的、愚蠢的女人；與她相比，她的嫂子倒是一位具有女性智慧與溫柔的天使；當(dāng)奇克夫人回憶起那位夫人的時候，她采取了保護(hù)的、親切的態(tài)度——與她生前時她對待她的態(tài)度完全一樣——，并且完全相信她自己，欺騙她自己；由于寬大為懷而讓她自己感到異常愉快，對她來說，這是多么使她感到滿意的事啊！當(dāng)我們是正確的時候，寬容是多么非凡愉快的美德！當(dāng)我們是錯誤，而又完全不能證明我們是如何取得行使寬容的權(quán)利的時候，寬容也是使人很愉快的呀！
當(dāng)奇克夫人還正在擦眼淚、搖著頭的時候，理查茲大膽地提醒她注意，弗洛倫斯小姐醒來了，正坐在床上。這位奶媽說，她起來了，眼睫毛都被淚水沾濕了。但是除了波利以外，沒有其他任何人看到它們正閃著光。沒有其他任何人向她彎下身去，低聲地對她說些安慰的話，或跟她挨得很近，可以聽到她顫動的心房正在怦怦地跳動。
“??！親愛的奶媽！”孩子懇切地仰望著她的臉，說道，“讓我躺在弟弟的身旁吧！”
“為什么，我的寶貝？”理查茲問道。
“??！我覺得他愛我，”女孩子放聲大哭起來?！白屛姨稍谒纳砼园?。求求您！”
奇克夫人插進(jìn)來，說了些像母親般的話，要她像乖孩子那樣去睡覺；可是弗洛倫斯還是露出受驚的神色，一遍又一遍地懇求著；她的聲音不時被抽泣與眼淚所打斷。
“我不會鬧醒他，”她捂著臉，低著頭，說道?！拔抑挥梦业氖置缓笏?。啊，我求求你們，求求你們，讓我今天躺在弟弟身旁吧，因為我相信他愛我！”
理查茲沒有說一句話，把她抱起來，抱到那個嬰孩睡覺的小床上，讓她在他的身旁躺下。她盡量爬過去挨近他，不去打攪他的安息；然后她伸出一只胳膊，畏畏縮縮地?fù)е牟弊?，用另一只胳膊捂住她的臉；她那潮濕的、散亂的頭發(fā)松散地落在她的臉上，她就這樣一動不動地躺在那里。
“可憐的小東西，”托克斯小姐說道，“我想，她一定夢見什么了?！?BR> 這件小事破壞了談話的頭緒，很難使它恢復(fù)了；加上奇克夫人又沉思她自己那寬容的性格，心神分散，這時情緒不高。因此兩位朋友很快就結(jié)束了喝茶，派遣一位仆人為托克斯小姐雇用一輛出租的單馬篷車。托克斯小姐在雇用出租馬車方面是有豐富經(jīng)驗的，她在動身的時候通?？傄加煤枚鄷r間，因為她事先要有條不紊地做好準(zhǔn)備性的安排。
“勞駕您，托林森，”托克斯小姐說道，“首先請帶上一支筆和墨水，把他的號碼清楚地記下來。”
“一定照辦，小姐，”托林森說道。
“然后，勞駕您，托林森，”托克斯小姐說道，“把椅墊翻過來?！蓖锌怂剐〗戕D(zhuǎn)過身去單獨對奇克夫人說道，“它通常是潮濕的，我親愛的?！?BR> “一定照辦，小姐，”托林森說道。
“我還得麻煩您帶上這張名片和一個先令，”托克斯小姐說道，“他必須把我送到名片上列出的地址，而且還必須明白，除了這個先令之外，他無論如何也不能要求我給更多的錢了?！?BR> “一定照辦，小姐，”托林森說道。
“還有，我很抱歉，給您添了這么多麻煩，托林森，”托克斯小姐若有所思地看著他。
“一點也不，小姐，”托林森說道。
“那么，勞駕您，托林森，請跟車夫說，”托克斯小姐說道，“這位夫人的舅舅是一位治安法庭的法官，如果他要對她稍有一點無禮的話，那么他就會受到嚴(yán)厲的懲罰。如果您愿意的話，托林森，您可以假裝用一種友好的口吻對他說這件事，因為您知道，過去曾經(jīng)這樣處治過另一位車夫，他已經(jīng)死了?！?BR> “毫無問題，一定照辦，”托林森說道。
“好啦，現(xiàn)在我祝我親愛的，親愛的，親愛的教子晚安，再見了，”托克斯小姐說道，她每當(dāng)重復(fù)說一次那個形容詞的時候，都要伴送出一陣陣溫柔的吻?！斑€有，路易莎，我親愛的朋友，請答應(yīng)我，在睡覺前喝點兒溫暖的東西，同時自己別太傷心了！”
在奇克夫人隨后離開之前，一直在密切注視著黑眼睛的尼珀，在這關(guān)鍵性的時刻，她很困難地克制著自己。但是當(dāng)育兒室終于擺脫了這兩位來客之后，她對自己剛才所受的壓抑多少進(jìn)行了一些補償。
“你可以讓我穿緊身衣①穿上六個星期，”尼珀說道，“而當(dāng)我把它脫掉的時候，我只會更加發(fā)怒。理查茲大嫂，有誰聽說過有像她們這兩個格里芬②一樣的嗎？”
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①緊身衣（stait－waistcoat）：是管制瘋?cè)撕颓舴傅囊环N衣服。
②格里芬（Griffin）：希臘神話中的鷲頭飛獅。這里指怪物。
“還說一定夢見什么了，可憐的乖乖！”波利說道。
“哼，您們這兩位美人！”蘇珊·尼珀向兩位女士離開的那扇門故意敬了一個禮，喊道，“她永遠(yuǎn)也不會像董貝家里的人，是不是？希望她不會。一位已足夠了，我們不想再要這樣的人了?！?BR> “別把孩子吵醒了，親愛的蘇珊，”波利說道。
“我對您十分感謝，理查茲大嫂，”蘇珊說道，她在憤怒之中是不分青紅皂白的，“我是一個黑奴，是一個白人與黑人所生的混血兒，接受您的命令我真感到榮幸。理查茲大嫂，如果還有什么其他命令您可以向我下達(dá)的，那就請說吧！”
“胡說！哪里是什么命令！”波利說道。
“?。∩系郾Ｓ幽男?，理查茲大嫂，”蘇珊喊道，“干臨時性活的人在這里總是命令干長期性活的人，難道您這一點也不知道嗎？那么說您是在什么地方出生的呢，理查茲大嫂？可是，不論您是在什么地方出生的，理查茲大嫂，”噴火器堅決地?fù)u著頭，繼續(xù)說道，“也不論您是在什么時候出生的和怎樣出生的（這一點您自己最清楚了），請您記住，下達(dá)命令是一回事，接受命令又是另外一回事。一個人可以告訴另一個人頭朝下，從橋上往下跳，跳到四十五英尺深的水里去，理查茲大嫂，但是這另一個人可能根本就不想跳水。”
“您看，”波利說道，“您生氣了，因為您是一位善良的小人兒，而且喜愛弗洛倫斯小姐；但是由于這里沒有別的人，您就沖著我出氣了。”
“對有些人來說，捺住性子，說話溫柔，是一件很容易的事，理查茲大嫂，”蘇珊氣有些消了，回答道，“因為這時候她們的孩子受到了像王子一樣的對待，被寵愛，被愛撫，直到孩子希望有別的朋友為止?？墒且晃豢蓯鄣摹⑵恋摹⑻煺娴男∨⒆?，本來不應(yīng)當(dāng)當(dāng)面對她說一句壞話，也不應(yīng)當(dāng)在背后議論她一句壞話的，卻受到了不正當(dāng)?shù)闹肛?zé)，這情況確實是大不相同的了。哎呀，我的天哪！弗洛伊小姐，您這淘氣的、造孽的孩子，要是您不在這1分鐘內(nèi)閉上您的眼睛的話，那么我就要把住在頂樓里的妖魔叫進(jìn)來，把您活活地吃掉啦！”
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