e saw  it done with his waking eyes; but Bunsby, advancing boldly,  put his
shaggy blue  arm round Mrs MacStinger, and so  softened her by his magic way
of doing it, and by these few words - he said no more - that she melted into
tears, after looking upon him for a few  moments, and observed that a  child
might conquer her now, she was so low in her courage.
     Speechless and  utterly amazed, the Captain  saw him gradually persuade
this inexorable woman into the shop,  return for rum and water and a candle,
take  them to  her, and  pacify  her  without appearing to  utter  one word.
Presently  he  looked  in  with his  pilot-coat  on, and said, 'Cuttle,  I'm
a-going to  act as convoy home;' and  Captain  Cuttle, more to his confusion
than if he had been  put in irons himself, for safe transport to Brig Place,
saw the family pacifically filing off, with Mrs MacStinger at their head. He
had  scarcely  time  to take down his canister,  and stealthily convey  some
money  into  the  hands  of Juliana  MacStinger, his former  favourite,  and
Chowley,  who  had the  claim upon  him that he was naturally of a  maritime
build,  before  the  Midshipman  was  abandoned  by  them  all;  and  Bunsby
whispering that he'd carry  on  smart, and hail  Ned Cuttle  again before he
went aboard, shut the door upon himself, as the last member of the party.
     Some uneasy ideas that he must be walking in his  sleep, or that he had
been troubled with phantoms, and not a family of flesh and blood,  beset the
Captain at first, when he went back to the little parlour, and found himself
alone. Illimitable faith in, and  immeasurable  admiration of, the Commander
of the  Cautious Clara,  succeeded, and  threw the Captain into a  wondering
trance.
     Still,  as  time wore on,  and Bunsby failed to reappear,  the  Captain
began to  entertain uncomfortable doubts of another kind. Whether Bunsby had
been artfully decoyed to Brig Place, and was there detained  in safe custody
as hostage for  his friend; in which case it would become the  Captain, as a
man of honour, to  release him, by the sacrifice of his own liberty. Whether
he had been attacked and defeated by Mrs MacStinger, and was ashamed to show
himself  after his discomfiture. Whether Mrs MacStinger,  thinking better of
it,  in  the  uncertainty  of  her  temper, had  turned  back  to  board the
Midshipman again, and Bunsby, pretending to conduct her  by a short cut, was
endeavouring  to  lose  the family  amid the wilds  and savage places of the
City. Above all, what it would behove him, Captain Cuttle, to do, in case of
his hearing no more, either of the MacStingers or of Bunsby, which, in these
wonderful and unforeseen conjunctions of events, might possibly happen.
     He debated all this until he was tired; and still no Bunsby. He made up
his bed under the counter, all ready for turning in; and still no Bunsby. At
length, when  the Captain had given him up, for that night at least, and had
begun to undress, the sound of approaching  wheels was heard,  and, stopping
at the door, was succeeded by Bunsby's hail.
     The Captain trembled to think that Mrs MacStinger was not to be got rid
of, and had been brought back in a coach.
     But  no.  Bunsby was accompanied by nothing  but a large box,  which he
hauled  into the shop with  his own  hands, and as soon as he had hauled in,
sat  upon.  Captain  Cuttle knew  it  for  the  chest  he had  left  at  Mrs
MacStinger's house, and looking, candle in hand, at Bunsby more attentively,
believed that he was three sheets in the wind, or, in plain words, drunk. It
was difficult, however, to be sure of this; the Commander having no trace of
expression in his face when sober.
     'Cuttle,'  said the  Commander, getting off the chest,  and opening the
lid, 'are these here your traps?'
     Captain Cuttle looked in and identified his property.
     'Done pretty taut and trim, hey, shipmet?' said Bunsby.
     The grateful  and bewildered Captain grasped  him  by the hand, and was
launching  into a  reply expressive of his astonished feelings,  when Bunsby
disengaged  himself  by a jerk of his wrist, and seemed to make an effort to
wink  with  his revolving  eye, the only effect  of  which  attempt, in  his
condition, was nearly to over-balance him. He then abruptly opened the door,
and shot away to rejoin the Cautious  Clara  with all speed - supposed to be
his invariable custom, whenever he considered he had made a point.
     As it was not his humour to be often sought, Captain Cuttle decided not
to go or send to him next day, or until he should make his gracious pleasure
known in  such wise,  or failing that, until  some  little time should  have
lapsed. The Captain, therefore, renewed  his solitary life next morning, and
thought profoundly, many mornings, noons,  and nights, of old Sol Gills, and
Bunsby's sentiments concerning  him, and the hopes there were of his return.
Much of such thinking  strengthened  Captain Cuttle's hopes; and he humoured
them and  himself by watching for the Instrument-maker at the  door - as  he
ventured to do now, in  his strange liberty - and setting  his chair  in its
place, and arranging the little parlour as it used to be, in  case he should
come  home unexpectedly.  He likewise, in  his thoughtfulness,  took  down a
certain little miniature of Walter as a schoolboy, from its accustomed nail,
lest it should  shock  the old  man  on  his  return.  The Captain  had  his
presentiments,  too, sometimes, that  he would come on such  a day;  and one
particular  Sunday, even  ordered a  double  allowance of dinner, he  was so
sanguine.  But come,  old Solomon did  not; and still the neighbours noticed
how  the  seafaring man in  the  glazed hat,  stood at the shop-door  of  an
evening, looking up and down the street.

        CHAPTER 40.
     Domestic Relations

     It was  not in  the  nature of things that a  man of Mr  Dombey's mood,
opposed  to such  a spirit  as  he  had  raised  against himself,  should be
softened in  the  imperious asperity  of his  temper; or  that the cold hard
armour of  pride in  which he lived encased, should be made more flexible by
constant  collision with haughty scorn and defiance. It is the curse of such
a nature - it is a main  part  of the heavy retribution  on itself it  bears
within  itself  -  that  while  deference  and  concession  swell  its  evil
qualities, and are the food  it grows upon, resistance and  a questioning of
its exacting claims, foster it  too, no less. The  evil that  is in it finds
equally its means of growth and propagation in opposites.  It draws  support
and life from sweets  and bitters; bowed down before,  or unacknowledged, it
still enslaves the breast in which it  has its  throne;  and,  worshipped or
rejected, is as hard a master as the Devil in dark fables.
     Towards his first wife, Mr Dombey, in his cold and lofty arrogance, had
borne himself  like the removed Being he almost conceived  himself to be. He
had been 'Mr Dombey' with her when she first saw him, and he was 'Mr Dombey'
when she died.  He  had asserted his  greatness during  their  whole married
life, and  she had  meekly recognised  it.  He had kept  his distant seat of
state  on the top of his throne,  and she her  humble station  on its lowest
step; and  much good it had done him, so to live  in solitary bondage to his
one idea. He had imagined that the proud character of  his second wife would
have  been  added to  his own  -  would have merged into it, and exalted his
greatness.  He  had  pictured  himself  haughtier  than  ever, with  Edith's
haughtiness subservient to his. He  had never entertained the possibility of
its arraying itself against him. And now,  when  he found it rising  in  his
path at every step and turn of his daily life, fixing its cold, defiant, and
contemptuous  face upon him, this pride  of his,  instead  of  withering, or
hanging down its  head beneath the shock, put forth new shoots,  became more
concentrated and intense, more gloomy, sullen, irksome, and unyielding, than
it had ever been before.
     Who  wears  such  armour,  too,  bears  with  him  ever  another  heavy
retribution.  It is of  proof  against conciliation, love,  and  confidence;
against  all  gentle  sympathy from  without, all trust, all tenderness, all
soft emotion; but to deep stabs in the self-love, it is as vulnerable as the
bare breast to steel; and such tormenting festers rankle there, as follow on
no other wounds, no, though  dealt with the mailed  hand of Pride itself, on
weaker pride, disarmed and thrown down.
     Such wounds were his. He felt them sharply, in the solitude  of his old
rooms; whither he  now  began often to retire again, and  pass long solitary
hours. It  seemed his  fate to be ever proud and powerful;  ever humbled and
powerless where he would be most strong. Who seemed fated  to work  out that
doom?
     Who? Who was it who could win his wife as she had won his boy?  Who was
it who had shown him that new victory, as he sat in the dark corner? Who was
it  whose least word did what his  utmost  means could not? Who was it  who,
unaided by his love, regard or notice, thrived and grew beautiful when those
so  aided  died? Who could it be, but  the same  child at whom he had  often
glanced uneasily in her motherless  infancy, with a kind of  dread, lest  he
might come to hate her; and of whom his foreboding was fulfilled, for he DID
hate her in his heart?
     Yes, and he  would have it hatred, and he made  it  hatred, though some
sparkles of the light in  which she had appeared before him on the memorable
night of his return home with his Bride, occasionally hung about  her still.
He knew now that she was beautiful; he did not dispute that she was graceful
and winning, and that in  the bright dawn of her womanhood she had come upon
him, a  surprise. But  he  turned even this against  her. In his  sullen and
unwholesome  brooding,  the  unhappy man,  with  a  dull  perception of  his
alienation from all  hearts, and  a vague  yearning for what he had  all his
life repelled, made  a  distorted  picture  of  his rights  and wrongs,  and
justified  himself with it against her. The worthier she promised  to be  of
him, the  greater claim  he  was  disposed  to  antedate  upon  her duty and
submission. When had she ever  shown  him duty and submission? Did she grace
his life - or Edith's? Had her attractions been manifested first to him - or
Edith?  Why, he  and she had  never been, from her  birth,  like  father and
child!  They  had always been  estranged. She had crossed him every way  and
everywhere. She  was  leagued against  him  now. Her  very  beauty  softened
natures that were  obdurate to  him, and  insulted  him  with  an  unnatural
triumph.
     It may have been that in all this there were mutterings of an  awakened
feeling  in  his breast,  however  selfishly  aroused  by  his  position  of
disadvantage, in comparison with what she might have made his life.  But  he
silenced the distant  thunder with the rolling of his sea of pride. He would
bear nothing  but his pride. And in  his pride, a heap of inconsistency, and
misery, and self-inflicted torment, he hated her.
     To  the moody,  stubborn, sullen  demon, that possessed him,  his  wife
opposed her different  pride in its full  force. They never could have led a
happy  life together;  but nothing could have made it more unhappy, than the
wilful and  determined  warfare of such  elements.  His pride was  set  upon
maintaining his magnificent  supremacy, and forcing  recognition  of it from
her. She would  have been racked to death, and turned but her haughty glance
of  calm inflexible  disdain  upon him, to the last.  Such recognition  from
Edith! He little knew through what a storm and  struggle she had been driven
onward to  the crowning honour  of his hand.  He little  knew how  much  she
thought she had conceded, when she suffered him to call her wife.
     Mr Dombey was resolved to show  her that he was supreme. There  must be
no will but his. Proud he desired that she should be, but she must be  proud
for, not against him. As he sat alone, hardening, he would often hear her go
out  and come home,  treading the round of London life with no more heed  of
his  liking or  disliking, pleasure or displeasure, than if  he had been her
groom.  Her  cold  supreme  indifference  -  his own  unquestioned attribute
usurped - stung him more than  any other  kind of treatment could have done;
and he determined to bend her to his magnificent and stately will.
     He  had  been  long communing with  these thoughts,  when  one night he
sought her in her own apartment,  after he  had heard her  return home late.
She was alone, in her brilliant dress, and had but that moment come from her
mother's  room. Her face was melancholy and pensive, when he  came upon her;
but it marked him at the door; for, glancing at the mirror before it, he saw
immediately,  as in a picture-frame,  the  knitted brow, and darkened beauty
that he knew so well.
     'Mrs Dombey,' he said, entering, 'I must beg leave to  have a few words
with you.'
     'To-morrow,' she replied.
     'There  is no time  like the present, Madam,' he returned. 'You mistake
your position. I am used to choose my own times; not to have them chosen for
me. I think you scarcely understand who and what I am, Mrs Dombey.
     'I think,' she answered, 'that I understand you very well.'
     She  looked upon  him  as  she  said so,  and  folding  her white arms,
sparkling  with gold  and gems, upon her swelling  breast,  turned away  her
eyes.
     If she  had been less handsome, and less stately in her cold composure,
she might  not have  had  the  power  of impressing  him with  the  sense of
disadvantage  that  penetrated  through his utmost pride.  But  she  had the
power, and he felt it  keenly.  He  glanced round  the  room:  saw  how  the
splendid  means  of personal  adornment,  and the  luxuries of  dress,  were
scattered  here  and  there,  and  disregarded;  not  in  mere  caprice  and
carelessness (or  so  he thought), but in  a steadfast haughty  disregard of
costly  things: and felt  it more and more. Chaplets of flowers,  plumes  of
feathers, jewels,  laces,  silks  and satins; look  where he  would, he  saw
riches, despised, poured out, and. made of no account. The very diamonds - a
marriage gift - that rose  and  fell  impatiently upon her bosom,  seemed to
pant to  break the chain that clasped them round her neck,  and roll down on
the floor where she might tread upon them.
     He  felt  his disadvantage, and  he showed it. Solemn and strange among
this  wealth of  colour  and  voluptuous  glitter, strange  and  constrained
towards  its  haughty  mistress, whose  repellent beauty  it  repeated,  and
presented all around him, as  in  so many  fragments of  a  mirror,  he  was
conscious of  embarrassment and awkwardness.  Nothing that ministered to her
disdainful self-possession could fail to gall him. Galled and irritated with
himself, he sat down, and went on, in no improved humour:
     'Mrs  Dombey,  it  is  very  necessary  that  there   should   be  some
understanding  arrived at  between  us. Your  conduct  does  not please  me,
Madam.'
     She merely glanced at him again,  and again  averted her  eyes; but she
might have spoken for an hour, and expressed less.
     'I repeat, Mrs  Dombey,  does  not please  me.  I  have  already  taken
occasion to request that it may be corrected. I now insist upon it.'
     'You chose a fitting occasion for your first remonstrance, Sir, and you
adopt a fitting manner, and a  fitting  word for your second. You insist! To
me!'
     'Madam,' said Mr Dombey, with his most offensive air of  state, 'I have
made you my wife. You bear my  name. You are associated with my position and
my reputation. I will not say that the world in general may be  disposed  to
think you  honoured by that association; but I will say that I am accustomed
to "insist," to my connexions and dependents.'
     'Which may you be pleased to consider me? she asked.
     'Possibly  I may think that  my wife should  partake - or does partake,
and cannot help herself - of both characters, Mrs Dombey.'
     She bent her eyes upon him steadily, and set her trembling lips. He saw
her bosom throb, and  saw her face  flush and turn  white. All this he could
know, and did: but he could not know that  one  word was  whispering in  the
deep recesses  of  her heart,  to keep  her quiet;  and  that  the word  was
Florence.
     Blind  idiot, rushing to a precipice!  He thought she  stood in awe  of
him.
     'You are too expensive,  Madam,' said Mr Dombey. 'You  are extravagant.
You waste a  great  deal of  money -  or  what would be a great deal in  the
pockets of most gentlemen - in cultivating a kind of society that is useless
to me,  and, indeed, that upon the whole  is  disagreeable to me. I  have to
insist upon a total change in all these respects. I know that in the novelty
of possessing a tithe of  such means as Fortune has placed at your disposal,
ladies are apt to run into a sudden extreme. There has been more than enough
of that extreme. I beg that Mrs Granger's very different experiences may now
come to the instruction of Mrs Dombey.'
     Still  the fixed look, the  trembling lips,  the  throbbing breast, the
face  now  crimson  and  now white;  and still  the  deep whisper  Florence,
Florence, speaking to her in the beating of her heart.
     His insolence of self-importance  dilated as he saw  this alteration in
her. Swollen no less by her past scorn of  him, and his so recent feeling of
disadvantage, than  by  her  present submission (as  he took  it to be),  it
became too mighty for his breast, and burst all bounds. Why,  who could long
resist his lofty will and pleasure! He had resolved to conquer her, and look
here!
     'You  will  further  please,  Madam,'  said Mr  Dombey,  in  a tone  of
sovereign  command, 'to understand distinctly, that I am to be  deferred  to
and  obeyed. That I must have  a positive  show and  confession of deference
before  the world,  Madam. I  am used to this. I require  it as my right. In
short I will have  it. I consider it no unreasonable return for  the worldly
advancement that  has befallen  you; and I believe nobody will be surprised,
either at its being required  from you, or at  your making  it. - To Me - To
Me!' he added, with emphasis.
     No word from her. No change in her. Her eyes upon him.
     'I have  learnt from your  mother,  Mrs Dombey,' said Mr  Dombey,  with
magisterial  importance,  what no doubt you  know,  namely, that Brighton is
recommended for her health. Mr Carker has been so good
     She changed suddenly. Her face and  bosom glowed as if the red light of
an angry sunset had been flung upon them. Not unobservant of the change, and
putting his own interpretation upon it, Mr Dombey resumed:
     'Mr Carker has been so good as to go down and secure a house there, for
a  time. On  the return of the  establishment  to London, I  shall take such
steps for its better management as I consider necessary.  One of these, will
be  the  engagement at  Brighton  (if  it  is to  be effected),  of  a  very
respectable reduced person there,  a  Mrs Pipchin,  formerly  employed in  a
situation of trust in my family,  to  act as  housekeeper. An  establishment
like  this, presided over but  nominally, Mrs Dombey, requires  a  competent
head.'
     She  had changed her attitude before he arrived at these words, and now
sat - still looking at him fixedly - turning a bracelet round and round upon
her arm; not winding it about with a light, womanly touch, but  pressing and
dragging it over the smooth skin, until the white limb showed a bar of red.
     'I  observed,'  said Mr Dombey  - 'and  this concludes  what I  deem it
necessary to say to you at present,  Mrs Dombey - I observed a  moment  ago,
Madam, that my  allusion to Mr Carker was  received in a peculiar manner. On
the occasion of my happening  to  point out to you, before that confidential
agent, the objection  I  had to your mode of receiving my visitors, you were
pleased to  object to his presence. You will have to get  the better of that
objection,  Madam,  and  to accustom yourself to it  very  probably on  many
similar occasions;  unless you adopt the remedy which is  in your own hands,
of giving  me no cause of complaint. Mr Carker,' said Mr  Dombey, who, after
the  emotion he had just seen, set great store by this means of reducing his
proud wife, and who was perhaps sufficiently willing to exhibit his power to
that  gentleman  in  a  new and triumphant  aspect, 'Mr  Carker  being in my
confidence, Mrs Dombey, may very well be in yours to such an extent. I hope,
Mrs  Dombey,'  he  continued,  after  a few  moments, during  which, in  his
increasing  haughtiness,  he had improved on his idea,  'I may not  find  it
necessary ever  to  entrust  Mr  Carker  with any message  of  objection  or
remonstrance  to  you;  but  as  it would  be derogatory to my  position and
reputation to be frequently holding trivial disputes with a lady upon whom I
have conferred  the  highest distinction that it is in my power to bestow, I
shall not scruple to avail myself of his services if I see occasion.'
     'And now,' he thought,  rising  in his moral magnificence, and rising a
stiffer  and  more  impenetrable  man  than  ever,  'she  knows  me  and  my
resolution.'
     The hand that had so  pressed the  bracelet was  laid heavily  upon her
breast, but she looked  at him  still, with an unaltered face, and said in a
low voice:
     'Wait! For God's sake! I must speak to you.'
     Why did  she not, and  what was the inward  struggle that  rendered her
incapable of doing so, for minutes, while, in the strong  constraint she put
upon  her face,  it was as fixed  as any  statue's  -  looking upon him with
neither yielding nor  unyielding, liking  nor  hatred,  pride  not humility:
nothing but a searching gaze?
     'Did I ever tempt  you to seek my hand? Did I  ever use any  art to win
you? Was  I  ever more conciliating to you when  you pursued me, than I have
been since our marriage? Was I ever other to you than I am?'
     'It is wholly  unnecessary, Madam,' said Mr Dombey, 'to enter upon such
discussions.'
     'Did you think I  loved you? Did you know I did not? Did you ever care,
Man! for my heart,  or propose to yourself to  win the worthless thing?  Was
there any poor pretence of any in our bargain? Upon your side, or on mine?'
     'These questions,'  said  Mr Dombey, 'are  all  wide  of  the  purpose,
Madam.'
     She  moved  between  him and the door to  prevent  his going  away, and
drawing her majestic figure to its height, looked steadily upon him still.
     'You answer each of them. You answer me before  I speak, I see. How can
you help it; you who know the miserable truth as well as I? Now, tell me. If
I  loved you to devotion, could I do more  than render up my  whole will and
being  to you,  as  you have just  demanded?  If my heart  were pure and all
untried, and you its idol, could you ask more; could you have more?'
     'Possibly not, Madam,' he returned coolly.
     'You know how  different I am. You  see me looking on you now,  and you
can read the warmth  of passion for you that is breathing in my face.' Not a
curl of  the proud lip, not a flash  of  the  dark eye, nothing but the same
intent and  searching look, accompanied  these  words. 'You  know my general
history. You have spoken of my mother. Do you think you can degrade, or bend
or break, me to submission and obedience?'
     Mr  Dombey  smiled, as he  might have smiled at an  inquiry whether  he
thought he could raise ten thousand pounds.
     'If there is anything unusual here,'  she said, with a slight motion of
her  hand  before her brow,  which  did not  for  a  moment  flinch from its
immovable and otherwise expressionless gaze, 'as  I know there  are  unusual
feelings  here,' raising  the hand she  pressed upon  her bosom, and heavily
returning it, 'consider that there is  no common  meaning in the appeal I am
going to make you. Yes, for I am  going;'  she said it as in prompt reply to
something in his face; 'to appeal to you.'
     Mr Dombey, with a slightly condescending bend of his  chin that rustled
and crackled his stiff cravat, sat down on a sofa that was near him, to hear
the appeal.
     'If you can believe that I am of  such a nature now,'  - he  fancied he
saw tears glistening in  her eyes, and he thought, complacently, that he had
forced them from her, though none fell on her cheek, and she regarded him as
steadily as  ever, -  'as would make  what  I now say  almost  incredible to
myself, said to any man  who had become my husband, but, above  all, said to
you, you may, perhaps,  attach  the greater weight to it. In the dark end to
which we are tending, and  may  come,  we shall not involve ourselves  alone
(that might not be much) but others.'
     Others! He knew at whom that word pointed, and frowned heavily.
     'I speak  to  you for the sake  of others. Also your  own sake; and for
mine. Since  our marriage, you have been arrogant to me;  and I have  repaid
you in  kind. You have shown to  me and  everyone  around us, every  day and
hour, that you think I am  graced and distinguished by  your alliance.  I do
not think  so,  and have shown that  too. It seems you do not understand, or
(so far as your power can  go) intend that each of  us shall take a separate
course; and you expect from me instead, a homage you will never have.'
     Although her face was still the  same, there  was emphatic confirmation
of this 'Never' in the very breath she drew.
     'I  feel  no  tenderness  towards you;  that  you  know. You would care
nothing for it, if I did or could. I know as well that you feel none towards
me. But we are linked together; and in the  knot that  ties us,  as  I  have
said, others are bound up. We must both die; we are  both connected with the
dead already, each by a little child. Let us forbear.'
     Mr Dombey took  a long respiration, as if  he  would have said, Oh! was
this all!
     'There is no wealth,' she went  on,  turning paler as she  watched him,
while her eyes grew yet more lustrous  in their earnestness, 'that could buy
these  words  of me, and the meaning that belongs to them. Once cast away as
idle breath, no wealth  or power  can bring them back. I mean  them; I  have
weighed them; and I will be true to what I undertake. If you will promise to
forbear on  your  part,  I will  promise to forbear on mine. We  are  a most
unhappy  pair, in whom, from different causes, every sentiment that  blesses
marriage, or justifies it, is rooted out; but in  the course of  time,  some
friendship, or some fitness for each other, may arise between us. I will try
to hope so, if you will make the endeavour too; and I will look forward to a
better and a happier use of age than I have made of youth or prime.
     Throughout she had spoken in  a low plain voice, that neither  rose nor
fell; ceasing, she  dropped  the hand with which she had enforced herself to
be  so passionless and  distinct, but  not  the  eyes  with which she had so
steadily observed him.
     'Madam,' said Mr Dombey,  with  his utmost dignity, 'I cannot entertain
any proposal of this extraordinary nature.
     She looked at him yet, without the least change.
     'I  cannot,'  said Mr Dombey, rising as he spoke, 'consent to temporise
or  treat with  you,  Mrs Dombey, upon  a subject  as to  which  you are  in
possession of my opinions  and  expectations. I  have stated  my  ultimatum,
Madam, and have only to request your very serious attention to it.'
     To see the face change to its old expression, deepened in intensity! To
see the eyes droop as from some mean and odious object! To see  the lighting
of the  haughty  brow!  To  see  scorn, anger, indignation,  and  abhorrence
starting into sight, and the pale  blank earnestness vanish like a  mist! He
could not choose but look, although he looked to his dismay.
     'Go, Sir!' she said, pointing with an imperious hand towards  the door.
'Our first and last confidence is at an end. Nothing can make us stranger to
each other than we are henceforth.'
     'I shall take my rightful  course, Madam,' said Mr Dombey, 'undeterred,
you may be sure, by any general declamation.'
     She turned  her back upon  him, and, without reply, sat down before her
glass.
     'I place my reliance on  your improved sense of  duty, and more correct
feeling, and better reflection, Madam,' said Mr Dombey.
     She  answered not one  word. He  saw no more expression of any  heed of
him, in the mirror,  than  if he had  been an unseen spider on the wall,  or
beetle on the floor, or rather, than if he had been  the  one or other, seen
and  crushed  when  she  last  turned from  him,  and  forgotten  among  the
ignominious and dead vermin of the ground.
     He looked back, as he  went out at the door, upon the well-lighted  and
luxurious room, the  beautiful and glittering objects  everywhere displayed,
the  shape of Edith  in its rich dress seated before her glass, and the face
of  Edith as  the  glass presented it to him;  and betook himself to his old
chamber of cogitation, carrying away with him a vivid picture in his mind of
all these  things,  and a rambling and unaccountable  speculation  (such  as
sometimes comes into a  man's head) how they would all look when he saw them
next.
     For the rest, Mr Dombey was very taciturn, and very dignified, and very
confident of carrying out his purpose; and remained so.
     He  did  not  design  accompanying  the  family  to  Brighton;  but  he
graciously  informed Cleopatra  at  breakfast, on the morning  of departure,
which arrived a day or two afterwards, that he might be expected down, soon.
There was no time  to be lost in getting Cleopatra to any place  recommended
as being salutary; for, indeed, she seemed upon the wane, and turning of the
earth, earthy.
     Without having undergone any  decided second attack of her malady,  the
old woman seemed to have crawled backward  in her  recovery  from the first.
She was more lean and shrunken,  more  uncertain in her imbecility, and made
stranger  confusions  in her mind  and  memory. Among other symptoms of this
last affliction, she fell into the habit of confounding the names of her two
sons-in-law, the living and the deceased;  and in general called  Mr Dombey,
either 'Grangeby,' or 'Domber,' or indifferently, both.
     But  she  was youthful,  very  youthful still; and  in her youthfulness
appeared at breakfast, before  going away, in a new bonnet made express, and
a travelling robe  that was embroidered  and braided like an old  baby's. It
was not easy to put her into a fly-away bonnet now, or to keep the bonnet in
its place on the back  of her poor nodding head, when it was got on. In this
instance, it had not only the extraneous effect of being always on one side,
but  of being  perpetually tapped  on the crown  by Flowers  the  maid,  who
attended in the background during breakfast to perform that duty.
     'Now, my dearest Grangeby,' said Mrs Skewton, 'you must posively prom,'
she cut some of her words  short, and cut out others altogether,  'come down
very soon.'
     'I said just now,  Madam,' returned  Mr Dombey, loudly and laboriously,
'that I am coming in a day or two.'
     'Bless you, Domber!'
     Here  the Major, who was come to take leave  of the ladies, and who was
staring  through  his  apoplectic  eyes  at  Mrs  Skewton's  face  with  the
disinterested composure of an immortal being, said:
     'Begad, Ma'am, you don't ask old Joe to come!'
     'Sterious  wretch, who's he?' lisped Cleopatra. But a tap on the bonnet
from Flowers seeming to jog her memory, she  added, 'Oh!  You mean yourself,
you naughty creature!'
     'Devilish queer,  Sir,' whispered  the Major to  Mr Dombey. 'Bad  case.
Never did wrap up  enough;'  the Major  being buttoned to the chin. 'Why who
should J. B. mean by Joe, but old Joe Bagstock - Joseph  - your slave - Joe,
Ma'am?  Here! Here's the  man! Here  are the Bagstock bellows, Ma'am!' cried
the Major, striking himself a sounding blow on the chest.
     'My  dearest  Edith -  Grangeby  -  it's most  trordinry  thing,'  said
Cleopatra, pettishly, 'that Major - '
     'Bagstock! J. B.!'  cried  the Major, seeing that she faltered for  his
name.
     'Well, it  don't  matter,' said Cleopatra. 'Edith,  my love, you know I
never could remember names - what was it? oh! - most trordinry thing that so
many people want to come down  to see me. I'm not going for long. I'm coming
back. Surely they can wait, till I come back!'
     Cleopatra looked all round the table as she said  it, and appeared very
uneasy.
     'I won't  have Vistors - really don't want visitors,' she said; 'little
repose - and all that sort of thing - is what I quire. No odious brutes must
proach me till I've shaken off this numbness;' and in a grisly resumption of
her coquettish ways, she made a  dab at the  Major with her fan, but overset
Mr Dombey's breakfast cup instead, which was in quite a different direction.
     Then she called  for Withers, and charged him to see  particularly that
word was  left about some trivial alterations in her room, which must be all
made before she came back, and which must be set about immediately, as there
was  no  saying how  soon she might come  back;  for  she  had  a great many
engagements, and all sorts  of  people  to call upon. Withers received these
directions with  becoming  deference,  and  gave  his  guarantee  for  their
execution; but when he  withdrew a pace or two behind her, it appeared as if
he couldn't help  looking strangely at the Major, who  couldn't help looking
strangely at Mr Dombey,  who  couldn't help looking strangely at  Cleopatra,
who  couldn't help nodding her bonnet  over one eye, and  rattling her knife
and fork upon her plate in using them, as if she were playing castanets.
     Edith alone never  lifted her eyes to any  face at the table, and never
seemed  dismayed by anything  her mother  said  or did.  She listened to her
disjointed talk, or  at least,  turned her head towards her when  addressed;
replied in a few low  words when necessary;  and sometimes  stopped her when
she was rambling,  or brought her  thoughts back with a monosyllable, to the
point  from  which they  had strayed. The mother, however  unsteady in other
things, was  constant  in  this - that she was  always observant of her. She
would look at the beautiful face,  in its marble stillness and severity, now
with a kind of fearful admiration;  now in a giggling foolish effort to move
it to a smile; now with capricious tears and jealous shakings  of her  head,
as imagining herself neglected by  it; always with an attraction towards it,
that never fluctuated like her  other ideas, but had constant possession  of
her. From  Edith she would  sometimes  look  at Florence, and back again  at
Edith, in a manner that was wild enough; and sometimes she would try to look
elsewhere, as if  to escape  from  her daughter's  face; but back to  it she
seemed  forced to  come,  although it never  sought hers  unless  sought, or
troubled her with one single glance.
     The  best concluded, Mrs Skewton, affecting to  lean girlishly upon the
Major's arm, but heavily supported  on the  other side by Flowers the  maid,
and propped up behind  by  Withers  the page, was conducted to the carriage,
which was to take her, Florence, and Edith to Brighton.
     'And is Joseph absolutely  banished?' said the  Major, thrusting in his
purple face over the steps. 'Damme,  Ma'am, is  Cleopatra so hard-hearted as
to forbid her faithful Antony Bagstock to approach the presence?'
     'Go along!' said Cleopatra, 'I can't bear you. You shall see me when  I
come back, if you are very good.'
     'Tell  Joseph, he may live in  hope,  Ma'am,' said the Major; 'or he'll
die in despair.'
     Cleopatra shuddered, and leaned back. 'Edith, my dear,' she said. 'Tell
him - '
     'What?'
     'Such dreadful words,' said Cleopatra. 'He uses such dreadful words!'
     Edith  signed to him to retire, gave  the word to  go  on, and left the
objectionable Major to Mr Dombey. To whom he returned, whistling.
     'I'll tell you what, Sir,'  said the Major, with his hands behind  him,
and his legs very wide asunder, 'a  fair friend of ours has removed to Queer
Street.'
     'What do you mean, Major?' inquired Mr Dombey.
     'I mean to say,  Dombey,' returned the Major,  'that you'll  soon be an
orphan-in-law.'
     Mr Dombey appeared  to relish  this  waggish description of  himself so
very  little,  that  the  Major wound  up  with  the horse's  cough,  as  an
expression of gravity.
     'Damme, Sir,'  said the  Major, 'there is  no use in disguising a fact.
Joe is blunt, Sir. That's  his nature. If you take old Josh at all, you take
him  as you find  him; and a devilish rusty, old rasper, of a close-toothed,
J. B. file, you do find him. Dombey,' said the Major, 'your wife's mother is
on the move, Sir.'
     'I fear,' returned Mr Dombey, with  much philosophy, 'that  Mrs Skewton
is shaken.'
     'Shaken, Dombey!' said the Major. 'Smashed!'
     'Change, however,' pursued Mr Dombey, 'and attention, may do much yet.'
     'Don't  believe it, Sir,'  returned the  Major. 'Damme,  Sir, she never
wrapped up  enough.  If  a  man don't  wrap  up,' said the  Major, taking in
another button of his buff waistcoat, 'he has nothing to fall back upon. But
some people  will die. They will do it. Damme, they will. They're obstinate.
I tell you what, Dombey, it may not be ornamental; it may not be refined; it
may  be rough and tough; but a little of the  genuine  old English  Bagstock
stamina, Sir, would do all the good in the world to the human breed.'
     After imparting this precious piece of information,  the Major, who was
certainly true-blue, whatever other  endowments he may  have had or  wanted,
coming within the 'genuine old English' classification, which has never been
exactly ascertained, took his lobster-eyes and his apoplexy to the club, and
choked there all day.
     Cleopatra,  at one time fretful, at another  self-complacent, sometimes
awake, sometimes  asleep, and at  all  times juvenile, reached Brighton  the
same night, fell to pieces as usual, and was put away in bed; where a gloomy
fancy might have pictured a more  potent skeleton than the maid,  who should
have been  one, watching at  the rose-coloured curtains, which were  carried
down to shed their bloom upon her.
     It  was  settled  in  high council of medical authority that she should
take a carriage airing every  day, and that it was important  she should get
out every day, and walk if she could. Edith was ready to attend her - always
ready to attend her, with the same mechanical attention and immovable beauty
- and they drove out alone; for Edith had an uneasiness  in  the presence of
Florence, now that her mother  was  worse, and  told Florence, with  a kiss,
that she would rather they two went alone.
     Mrs Skewton,  on one particular day,  was in  the irresolute, exacting,
jealous temper that  had developed  itself on  her recovery from  her  first
attack. After sitting silent  in the carriage watching Edith for  some time,
she took her hand and kissed it passionately. The hand was neither given nor
withdrawn, but  simply  yielded to  her  raising of it, and  being released,
dropped  down again, almost as if it were insensible. At  this she  began to
whimper  and moan,  and say  what a  mother  she  had been, and how she  was
forgotten!  This she continued to do at capricious intervals, even when they
had alighted:  when she herself was halting  along with the joint support of
Withers  and a  stick,  and Edith was walking by her side, and the  carriage
slowly following at a little distance.
     It was a bleak, lowering,  windy day, and they were out  upon the Downs
with nothing but a bare sweep of land between them and the  sky. The mother,
with a querulous satisfaction  in the  monotony  of her complaint, was still
repeating it in  a  low  voice from time to time, and the  proud form of her
daughter moved  beside  her  slowly, when there came  advancing over  a dark
ridge before them, two other figures, which in the distance, were so like an
exaggerated imitation of their own, that Edith stopped.
     Almost as she stopped, the  two  figures stopped; and that one which to
Edith's thinking  was like a  distorted shadow of her  mother, spoke to  the
other, earnestly, and with  a  pointing  hand towards them. That  one seemed
inclined to  turn back, but the other, in which Edith recognised enough that
was like herself  to strike h