er with an unusual feeling, not quite free from
fear, came on; and then they came on together.
     The greater part  of this observation,  she  made while walking towards
them,  for her stoppage  had been momentary. Nearer observation  showed  her
that  they  were poorly  dressed, as wanderers about the country;  that  the
younger woman carried knitted work or some such goods for sale; and that the
old one toiled on empty-handed.
     And yet, however far  removed  she was in dress, in dignity, in beauty,
Edith could not but compare  the younger  woman with herself, still.  It may
have  been  that  she saw  upon her  face some traces which  she  knew  were
lingering  in her own soul, if  not  yet written  on that index; but, as the
woman  came  on,  returning  her gaze,  fixing  her shining  eyes upon  her,
undoubtedly presenting something of  her own air and stature,  and appearing
to reciprocate her own thoughts,  she felt a chill creep over her, as if the
day were darkening, and the wind were colder.
     They  had   now   come  up.   The  old  woman,  holding  out  her  hand
importunately, stopped to beg  of Mrs Skewton. The  younger one stopped too,
and she and Edith looked in one another's eyes.
     'What is it that you have to sell?' said Edith.
     'Only this,' returned the woman, holding out her wares, without looking
at them. 'I sold myself long ago.'
     'My  Lady, don't believe her,' croaked the old woman  to  Mrs  Skewton;
'don't believe what she says. She loves to talk like that. She's my handsome
and  undutiful daughter. She gives me nothing but  reproaches, my  Lady, for
all  I  have done for her. Look at her now, my  Lady, how she turns upon her
poor old mother with her looks.'
     As  Mrs Skewton drew  her purse out with a trembling hand,  and eagerly
fumbled for  some money,  which the  other old  woman greedily watched for -
their heads all  but  touching,  in  their  hurry  and  decrepitude -  Edith
interposed:
     'I have seen you,' addressing the old woman, 'before.'
     'Yes,  my Lady,' with  a curtsey. 'Down in  Warwickshire.  The  morning
among the trees.  When you wouldn't give me nothing.  But  the gentleman, he
give me something! Oh, bless him, bless him!' mumbled the old woman, holding
up her skinny hand, and grinning frightfully at her daughter.
     'It's  of  no  use attempting to  stay  me, Edith!'  said  Mrs Skewton,
angrily  anticipating an  objection from her. 'You know nothing about it.  I
won't  be  dissuaded.  I am  sure  this is  an excellent woman, and  a  good
mother.'
     'Yes,  my  Lady,  yes,'  chattered  the  old  woman,  holding  out  her
avaricious hand. 'Thankee, my Lady. Lord bless you, my  Lady. Sixpence more,
my pretty Lady, as a good mother yourself.'
     'And treated undutifully enough,  too, my good old creature, sometimes,
I assure  you,' said Mrs Skewton, whimpering. 'There! Shake  hands  with me.
You're a  very good old creature - full  of what's-his-name - and all  that.
You're all affection and et cetera, ain't you?'
     'Oh, yes, my Lady!'
     'Yes, I'm sure you are; and  so's that gentlemanly creature Grangeby. I
must really shake hands with you again. And now you  can go, you know; and I
hope,'  addressing the  daughter,  'that  you'll  show more  gratitude,  and
natural what's-its-name, and all the rest of it - but I never remember names
- for there never was  a better  mother than the good old creature's been to
you. Come, Edith!'
     As  the  ruin of Cleopatra tottered off whimpering, and wiping its eyes
with a  gingerly remembrance of  rouge in their neighbourhood, the old woman
hobbled another way, mumbling and counting her money. Not one word more, nor
one other gesture, had been exchanged between Edith and  the younger  woman,
but  neither  had  removed her eyes  from the other  for a  moment. They had
remained confronted until now, when Edith, as awakening from a dream, passed
slowly on.
     'You're a handsome woman,' muttered her shadow, looking after her; 'but
good looks won't save us. And you're a proud woman; but pride won't save us.
We had need to know each other when we meet again!'

        CHAPTER 41.
     New Voices in the Waves

     All is going on as it was wont. The waves are hoarse with repetition of
their mystery; the dust lies piled upon the shore;  the sea-birds  soar  and
hover; the winds and clouds go forth upon  their trackless flight; the white
arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away.

     With a tender melancholy pleasure, Florence finds herself again  on the
old ground  so sadly trodden, yet so happily, and thinks of him in the quiet
place, where  he and she have many  and many a time conversed together, with
the water  welling up  about his couch.  And now, as she sits pensive there,
she  hears in the wild low murmur of the  sea, his little story told  again,
his very words repeated; and finds  that all her life and hopes, and griefs,
since - in the solitary house, and in the pageant it has changed to - have a
portion in the burden of the marvellous song.
     And gentle Mr  Toots,  who  wanders at  a distance,  looking  wistfully
towards the figure that he dotes upon, and has followed there, but cannot in
his delicacy disturb  at such a time, likewise hears  the requiem  of little
Dombey on  the waters,  rising and falling in  the lulls  of  their  eternal
madrigal  in  praise of Florence. Yes! and  he faintly understands, poor  Mr
Toots,  that  they  are saying something of a  time when he was sensible  of
being brighter and  not addle-brained; and the tears rising in his eyes when
he  fears  that he  is  dull and stupid now, and  good  for little but to be
laughed at, diminish  his satisfaction in their soothing reminder that he is
relieved from present responsibility to the Chicken, by  the absence of that
game  head  of poultry in the country,  training (at  Toots's cost) for  his
great mill with the Larkey Boy.
     But Mr Toots  takes courage,  when they whisper a kind thought to  him;
and  by  slow  degrees  and  with  many  indecisive  stoppages  on  the way,
approaches Florence. Stammering and  blushing,  Mr Toots  affects  amazement
when he comes near her, and says  (having  followed close on the carriage in
which  she travelled, every  inch of the way from London,  loving even to be
choked by the dust  of its wheels) that he never was so surprised in all his
life.
     'And  you've  brought  Diogenes,  too,  Miss Dombey!'  says  Mr  Toots,
thrilled through and through by the  touch  of  the small hand so pleasantly
and frankly given him.
     No doubt Diogenes is there, and no doubt Mr Toots has reason to observe
him,  for he  comes straightway at Mr Toots's legs, and tumbles over himself
in the desperation with which he makes at him, like a very dog of Montargis.
But he is checked by his sweet mistress.
     'Down, Di,  down. Don't you remember who first made us friends, Di? For
shame!'
     Oh! Well may Di lay his loving cheek against her hand, and run off, and
run back, and run round her, barking, and run headlong at anybody coming by,
to show  his  devotion.  Mr  Toots  would  run  headlong at anybody,  too. A
military gentleman goes past, and Mr Toots would like nothing better than to
run at him, full tilt.
     'Diogenes is quite in his native  air, isn't  he, Miss Dombey?' says Mr
Toots.
     Florence assents, with a grateful smile.
     'Miss Dombey,'  says Mr Toots, 'beg your  pardon, but if you would like
to walk to Blimber's, I - I'm going there.'
     Florence puts her arm in that of Mr Toots without a word, and they walk
away  together, with Diogenes going on  before. Mr Toots's legs  shake under
him;  and  though  he  is splendidly  dressed,  he  feels  misfits, and sees
wrinkles, in the masterpieces of  Burgess and Co., and wishes he had put  on
that brightest pair of boots.
     Doctor Blimber's house, outside, has as  scholastic and studious an air
as ever;  and  up there is the window  where she used to look for  the  pale
face, and where the pale  face brightened when  it saw her, and  the  wasted
little hand  waved kisses  as she passed. The door  is  opened  by  the same
weak-eyed  young man, whose  imbecility of  grin  at sight  of  Mr Toots  is
feebleness of character personified. They are shown into the Doctor's study,
where blind Homer and  Minerva give them  audience as of yore, to the  sober
ticking of the great clock in the hall; and where  the globes stand still in
their accustomed places, as if the world were stationary too, and nothing in
it ever perished in obedience to  the universal law, that, while it keeps it
on the roll, calls everything to earth.
     And here is Doctor  Blimber, with his  learned  legs; and  here is  Mrs
Blimber, with her sky-blue cap; and here Cornelia, with her sandy little row
of curls, and her bright spectacles,  still  working like  a sexton  in  the
graves  of  languages.  Here  is the table  upon which  he  sat  forlorn and
strange, the 'new boy' of the school; and hither comes the distant cooing of
the old boys, at their old lives in the old room on the old principle!
     'Toots,' says Doctor Blimber, 'I am very glad to see you, Toots.'
     Mr Toots chuckles in reply.
     'Also to see you, Toots, in such good company,' says Doctor Blimber.
     Mr  Toots, with a scarlet visage, explains that he has met  Miss Dombey
by  accident,  and that  Miss Dombey wishing,  like himself,  to see the old
place, they have come together.
     'You will like,' says Doctor Blimber, 'to step among our young friends,
Miss Dombey, no doubt. All fellow-students of yours, Toots, once. I think we
have no new  disciples in our little portico, my dear,' says  Doctor Blimber
to Cornelia, 'since Mr Toots left us.'
     'Except Bitherstone,' returns Cornelia.
     'Ay, truly,' says the Doctor. 'Bitherstone is new to Mr Toots.'
     New to Florence, too, almost;  for, in the schoolroom, Bitherstone - no
longer  Master Bitherstone of  Mrs  Pipchin's  -  shows  in  collars  and  a
neckcloth, and wears a watch. But Bitherstone, born beneath some Bengal star
of ill-omen,  is extremely inky; and his Lexicon  has got so  dropsical from
constant reference, that it won't shut, and yawns as  if it really could not
bear to be so bothered.  So  does Bitherstone its master, forced  at  Doctor
Blimber's highest  pressure;  but in the yawn of Bitherstone there is malice
and snarl, and he  has been heard to say that he wishes he  could catch 'old
Blimber' in India. He'd precious soon find himself carried up the country by
a few of his (Bitherstone's) Coolies,  and handed over to the Thugs; he  can
tell him that.
     Briggs is still grinding in the mill of  knowledge; and Tozer, too; and
Johnson,  too; and  all the rest; the older pupils being principally engaged
in forgetting, with prodigious labour, everything  they knew when they  were
younger. All are as polite and as pale as ever;  and  among them, Mr Feeder,
B.A., with  his bony hand and bristly head, is  still  hard at  it; with his
Herodotus stop on  just at present, and his other barrels  on a shelf behind
him.
     A mighty sensation is created, even among these grave young  gentlemen,
by a  visit from the emancipated Toots; who is regarded with a  kind of awe,
as  one who has passed the Rubicon,  and is pledged never to come  back, and
concerning the  cut  of  whose  clothes,  and  fashion of  whose  jewellery,
whispers go about, behind hands;  the bilious Bitherstone, who is not  of Mr
Toots's  time,  affecting  to despise the latter  to  the  smaller boys, and
saying he knows better, and that he should like to  see him coming that sort
of  thing in Bengal,  where his mother had got an emerald  belonging  to him
that was taken out of the footstool of a Rajah. Come now!
     Bewildering emotions  are awakened also by the sight of  Florence, with
whom every young gentleman  immediately falls  in  love, again;  except,  as
aforesaid,  the  bilious  Bitherstone,  who  declines  to  do   so,  out  of
contradiction. Black jealousies of Mr Toots arise, and Briggs is of  opinion
that he  ain't so very old after all.  But  this  disparaging insinuation is
speedily made nought by Mr Toots saying aloud to Mr  Feeder, B.A., 'How  are
you,  Feeder?'  and asking  him  to  come and  dine  with him to-day at  the
Bedford; in right of  which feats he might set up as Old  Parr, if he chose,
unquestioned.
     There is much shaking of hands,  and much bowing, and a great desire on
the  part of each young gentleman  to take  Toots down in Miss Dombey's good
graces;  and  then,  Mr  Toots having bestowed a  chuckle on  his  old desk,
Florence and  he withdraw with  Mrs Blimber and Cornelia; and Doctor Blimber
is heard to observe behind them as he comes out last,  and shuts  the  door,
'Gentlemen,  we will  now resume our studies,'  For  that and little else is
what the Doctor hears the sea say, or has heard it saying all his life.
     Florence then steals away and goes upstairs to the old bedroom with Mrs
Blimber and Cornelia; Mr  Toots, who feels that neither he  nor anybody else
is wanted there,  stands talking to the  Doctor at the study-door, or rather
hearing the Doctor talk to him, and wondering how he  ever thought the study
a  great  sanctuary, and the Doctor,  with his  round  turned  legs,  like a
clerical pianoforte, an awful man. Florence soon comes down and takes leave;
Mr Toots  takes leave; and Diogenes,  who  has been  worrying  the weak-eyed
young man pitilessly all the time, shoots out at the door, and barks  a glad
defiance down the cliff; while Melia,  and another  of  the  Doctor's female
domestics, looks out of an upper window, laughing 'at that there Toots,' and
saying of Miss Dombey, 'But really though, now - ain't she like her brother,
only prettier?'
     Mr Toots, who  saw  when Florence came down that there were tears  upon
her face, is desperately anxious and uneasy, and at  first fears that he did
wrong  in proposing the visit. But he is  soon relieved by her saying she is
very glad  to have been there  again, and  by  her  talking quite cheerfully
about it all, as  they walked on by the sea. What with the voices there, and
her sweet voice,  when they  come near Mr Dombey's house, and Mr  Toots must
leave her, he is so enslaved that he has not a scrap of free-will left; when
she gives him her hand at parting, he cannot let it go.
     'Miss Dombey, I beg your pardon,' says Mr Toots, in a sad fluster, 'but
if you would allow me to - to -
     The smiling and unconscious look of Florence brings him to a dead stop.
     'If you  would allow  me  to -  if you would not consider it a liberty,
Miss Dombey, if  I  was  to - without any  encouragement at all, if I was to
hope, you know,' says Mr Toots.
     Florence looks at him inquiringly.
     'Miss  Dombey,' says Mr  Toots, who feels that he is in  for it now, 'I
really am in  that state of adoration of you that  I don't know what  to  do
with myself. I am the most deplorable wretch. If it wasn't at the  corner of
the Square at  present, I should go down on my knees, and beg and entreat of
you, without any encouragement at all, just to let me hope  that I may - may
think it possible that you -
     'Oh, if  you please,  don't!'  cries  Florence,  for  the moment  quite
alarmed and  distressed.  'Oh,  pray don't, Mr Toots. Stop,  if  you please.
Don't say any more. As a kindness and a favour to me, don't.'
     Mr Toots is dreadfully abashed, and his mouth opens.
     'You have been so good to me,' says Florence, 'I am so grateful to you,
I have such reason  to like you for being a kind friend to me, and I do like
you  so  much;'  and  here  the  ingenuous  face smiles  upon him  with  the
pleasantest look of honesty in the world; 'that I am sure you are only going
to say good-bye!'
     'Certainly, Miss Dombey,' says Mr Toots, 'I - I - that's exactly what I
mean. It's of no consequence.'
     'Good-bye!' cries Florence.
     'Good-bye,  Miss Dombey!' stammers Mr Toots.  'I  hope you  won't think
anything about it. It's - it's of no consequence, thank you. It's not of the
least consequence in the world.'
     Poor Mr Toots goes  home to his hotel in a state of desperation,  locks
himself into his bedroom, flings himself upon his bed, and lies  there for a
long time; as if it were of the  greatest consequence,  nevertheless. But Mr
Feeder, B.A., is coming to dinner, which happens well for Mr Toots, or there
is no knowing when he might get  up again. Mr Toots is obliged to  get up to
receive him, and to give him hospitable entertainment.
     And the generous influence  of that social virtue, hospitality (to make
no mention of wine and good cheer), opens Mr Toots's heart, and warms him to
conversation. He does not tell Mr Feeder, B.A., what passed at the corner of
the Square; but  when Mr Feeder asks him 'When  it is to come off?' Mr Toots
replies, 'that there are certain  subjects' - which brings Mr Feeder down  a
peg or two immediately. Mr Toots adds, that he don't know what right Blimber
had  to notice his being in Miss Dombey's company, and that if he thought he
meant impudence  by it,  he'd have him out, Doctor  or  no  Doctor;  but  he
supposes its only his ignorance. Mr Feeder says he has no doubt of it.
     Mr Feeder, however,  as an  intimate  friend, is not  excluded from the
subject. Mr Toots merely  requires that it should be mentioned mysteriously,
and  with feeling.  After  a  few  glasses  of  wine, he gives Miss Dombey's
health, observing, 'Feeder, you have no idea of the sentiments with which  I
propose that toast.' Mr Feeder replies, 'Oh, yes, I have, my dear Toots; and
greatly they redound to your honour, old boy.' Mr Feeder is then agitated by
friendship,  and shakes hands;  and says,  if ever Toots wants a brother, he
knows where to find him, either by post or parcel. Mr Feeder like-wise says,
that if he may advise, he would recommend Mr Toots to  learn the guitar, or,
at least the flute; for women like music, when you are paying your addresses
to 'em, and he has found the advantage of it himself.
     This brings Mr Feeder, B.A., to the confession that he has his eye upon
Cornelia Blimber.  He informs Mr Toots that he don't  object to  spectacles,
and that  if  the Doctor  were  to  do the  handsome thing  and give  up the
business, why, there they are - provided for. He says it's his  opinion that
when a man has made a handsome sum  by his business, he is bound to give  it
up; and that Cornelia would be an assistance  in it  which any  man might be
proud  of.  Mr  Toots  replies by  launching wildly out into  Miss  Dombey's
praises, and by insinuations that sometimes he thinks he should like to blow
his brains out. Mr Feeder strongly  urges  that  it would be a rash attempt,
and shows  him,  as  a  reconcilement  to  existence,  Cornelia's  portrait,
spectacles and all.
     Thus  these quiet spirits  pass the evening; and  when  it has  yielded
place  to night, Mr Toots walks home with Mr  Feeder, and parts  with him at
Doctor  Blimber's door. But  Mr Feeder  only goes up the  steps, and when Mr
Toots is gone, comes down again, to stroll  upon  the beach alone, and think
about his prospects. Mr  Feeder plainly hears the waves informing him, as he
loiters along, that Doctor Blimber will give up the business; and he feels a
soft romantic  pleasure in looking at the outside of the house, and thinking
that the Doctor will first paint it, and put it into thorough repair.
     Mr  Toots is likewise roaming up  and  down,  outside the  casket  that
contains  his  jewel;  and  in  a  deplorable  condition  of mind,  and  not
unsuspected  by the police, gazes  at a  window  where he sees a  light, and
which  he  has no  doubt  is Florence's.  But  it  is not, for  that  is Mrs
Skewton's room;  and while Florence,  sleeping  in  another  chamber, dreams
lovingly,  in the midst  of the old scenes, and their old  associations live
again, the figure which in grim reality is substituted for the patient boy's
on the same theatre,  once more to connect it  - but how differently! - with
decay  and  death, is  stretched there,  wakeful  and complaining. Ugly  and
haggard it lies upon its  bed of  unrest; and  by  it, in the terror  of her
unimpassioned loveliness - for it has terror in the sufferer's  failing eyes
- sits Edith. What do the waves say, in the stillness of the night, to them?
     'Edith, what is that stone arm raised to strike me? Don't you see it?'
     There is nothing, mother, but your fancy.'
     'But my fancy! Everything  is my  fancy. Look! Is it  possible that you
don't see it?'
     'Indeed, mother, there is nothing. Should I sit  unmoved, if there were
any such thing there?'
     'Unmoved?' looking wildly at her - 'it's gone now - and why are you  so
unmoved? That is not my fancy, Edith. It turns me cold to see you sitting at
my side.'
     'I am sorry, mother.'
     'Sorry! You seem always sorry. But it is not for me!'
     With that, she cries;  and tossing  her restless head from side to side
upon her pillow, runs on about neglect, and the mother she has been, and the
mother  the  good old creature was, whom they met,  and the cold  return the
daughters of such mothers make. In the midst  of her incoherence, she stops,
looks at her daughter, cries out that her wits are going, and hides her face
upon the bed.
     Edith, in compassion,  bends over her and speaks to her.  The sick  old
woman clutches her round the neck, and says, with a look of horror,
     'Edith! we are  going home soon;  going back. You mean  that I shall go
home again?'
     'Yes, mother, yes.'
     'And  what he said  - what's-his-name, I never could  remember names  -
Major - that dreadful word, when we came away -  it's not true? Edith!' with
a shriek and a stare, 'it's not that that is the matter with me.'
     Night  after night, the  lights burn in the window, and the figure lies
upon the bed, and Edith sits beside it, and  the restless  waves are calling
to them  both the whole night  long. Night after night, the waves are hoarse
with repetition of their  mystery;  the dust lies piled upon the  shore; the
sea-birds  soar  and  hover;  the  winds  and  clouds are on their trackless
flight; the white arms beckon, in the moonlight,  to the  invisible  country
far away.
     And still the sick old woman looks into the corner, where the stone arm
- part of a figure of some tomb, she says - is raised to strike her. At last
it  falls;  and then  a dumb old  woman lies upon the  the  bed,  and she is
crooked and shrunk up, and half of her is dead.
     Such is the figure, painted  and patched  for the sun to mock,  that is
drawn slowly through the crowd from day to day; looking, as it goes, for the
good old creature who was such a mother, and making mouths as it peers among
the  crowd in vain. Such  is the figure  that  is often wheeled  down to the
margin of the  sea,  and  stationed there; but  on which  no wind  can  blow
freshness, and for which the murmur of  the ocean has no soothing word.  She
lies  and listens to it by the hour;  but its speech  is dark and gloomy  to
her, and a dread is on her face, and when her eyes wander over the  expanse,
they see but a broad stretch of desolation between earth and heaven.
     Florence she seldom sees, and when she does, is angry with and mows at.
Edith is beside her  always, and  keeps  Florence away; and Florence, in her
bed at night,  trembles at the  thought of  death in such a shape, and often
wakes and listens, thinking it has come. No one attends on her but Edith. It
is better  that  few eyes  should see her; and her daughter watches alone by
the bedside.
     A shadow even on that shadowed face, a sharpening even of the sharpened
features,  and  a  thickening of the  veil before  the eyes into a pall that
shuts out the dim world, is come. Her wandering hands upon the coverlet join
feebly palm to palm, and  move towards her  daughter; and a  voice  not like
hers, not  like any voice that speaks our mortal  language  -  says,  'For I
nursed you!'
     Edith,  without a tear, kneels down  to bring  her voice  closer to the
sinking head, and answers:
     'Mother, can you hear me?'
     Staring wide, she tries to nod in answer.
     'Can you recollect the night before I married?'
     The head is motionless, but it expresses somehow that she does.
     'I  told you  then  that  I forgave  your part in it, and prayed God to
forgive my own. I told you that time past was at an end between us. I say so
now, again. Kiss me, mother.'
     Edith touches the white lips, and  for a moment all is still.  A moment
afterwards, her  mother,  with  her  girlish laugh, and  the skeleton of the
Cleopatra manner, rises in her bed.
     Draw  the  rose-coloured  curtains. There  is  something else  upon its
flight besides the wind and clouds. Draw the rose-coloured curtains close!

     Intelligence  of the event is sent to Mr Dombey in town, who waits upon
Cousin Feenix  (not yet able to  make up his  mind for Baden-Baden), who has
just received it too. A good-natured creature like Cousin Feenix is the very
man for a marriage  or a funeral, and his position in the family  renders it
right that he should be consulted.
     'Dombey,' said Cousin Feenix, 'upon my  soul, I am very much shocked to
see you  on such  a melancholy  occasion. My  poor aunt! She was  a devilish
lively woman.'
     Mr Dombey replies, 'Very much so.'
     'And   made   up,'  says  Cousin  Feenix,  'really   young,  you  know,
considering. I am sure, on the day of your marriage, I thought she  was good
for another twenty years. In point of fact, I said so to a man at Brooks's -
little Billy Joper - you know him, no doubt - man with a glass in his eye?'
     Mr Dombey bows  a negative. 'In reference to the obsequies,' he  hints,
'whether there is any suggestion - '
     'Well, upon  my life,'  says Cousin Feenix, stroking his chin, which he
has  just enough of hand below his wristbands  to do; 'I  really don't know.
There's  a  Mausoleum down at my place,  in the park, but I'm afraid it's in
bad  repair,  and, in point of fact, in  a devil of a state. But for being a
little out at elbows, I should have had it put to  rights; but I believe the
people come and make pic-nic parties there inside the iron railings.'
     Mr Dombey is clear that this won't do.
     'There's  an uncommon  good church in the village,' says Cousin Feenix,
thoughtfully; 'pure specimen of the Anglo-Norman style,  and  admirably well
sketched too by Lady  Jane Finchbury  - woman with tight stays - but they've
spoilt it with whitewash, I understand, and it's a long journey.
     'Perhaps Brighton itself,' Mr Dombey suggests.
     'Upon my honour, Dombey, I don't think we could do better,' says Cousin
Feenix. 'It's on the spot, you see, and a very cheerful place.'
     'And when,' hints Mr Dombey, 'would it be convenient?'
     'I shall make a point,' says Cousin Feenix, 'of pledging myself for any
day you  think best. I  shall have  great pleasure  (melancholy pleasure, of
course) in following my poor aunt to the confines of the - in point of fact,
to the grave,' says Cousin Feenix, failing in the other turn of speech.
     'Would Monday do for leaving town?' says Mr Dombey.
     'Monday would suit me to perfection,'  replies Cousin Feenix. Therefore
Mr Dombey arranges to  take Cousin Feenix down  on that  day, and  presently
takes  his  leave,  attended to the  stairs by Cousin Feenix, who  says,  at
parting, 'I'm really excessively sorry, Dombey, that you should have so much
trouble about it;' to which Mr Dombey answers, 'Not at all.'
     At the appointed time, Cousin Feenix and Mr Dombey meet, and go down to
Brighton, and representing, in their  two selves, all the other mourners for
the  deceased lady's loss, attend her remains to their place of rest. Cousin
Feenix, sitting in the mourning-coach, recognises innumerable  acquaintances
on the road, but takes no other notice of  them, in decorum,  than  checking
them off aloud, as they go by, for Mr Dombey's information, as 'Tom Johnson.
Man with cork leg, from White's. What, are you here, Tommy? Foley on a blood
mare. The Smalder girls' -  and so forth. At the ceremony  Cousin  Feenix is
depressed, observing,  that these are  the occasions to make a man think, in
point of fact,  that he is getting shaky; and his eyes are really moistened,
when it is over. But he soon recovers;  and so  do the rest of Mrs Skewton's
relatives and friends, of whom the Major continually tells the club that she
never did wrap up  enough; while the  young lady with  the  back, who has so
much trouble  with her  eyelids,  says, with a little scream, that  she must
have been enormously old, and that she died of all kinds of horrors, and you
mustn't mention it.
     So Edith's mother lies unmentioned of her dear friends, who are deaf to
the waves that are hoarse with repetition of their mystery, and blind to the
dust that is piled upon the shore, and to the white arms that are beckoning,
in the moonlight, to the  invisible country far away. But all goes on, as it
was wont,  upon  the  margin of  the unknown sea; and Edith  standing  there
alone,  and  listening to  its waves, has dank  weed cast up at her feet, to
strew her path in life withal.

        CHAPTER 42.
     Confidential and Accidental

     Attired no  more in  Captain Cuttle's sable slops and sou'-wester  hat,
but dressed in a substantial suit of brown livery,  which, while it affected
to be a  very  sober and demure livery indeed, was  really as self-satisfied
and confident a one as tailor  need desire  to  make,  Rob the Grinder, thus
transformed as  to his  outer man, and all regardless  within of the Captain
and the Midshipman, except when he devoted a few minutes of his leisure time
to  crowing  over those  inseparable  worthies,  and  recalling,  with  much
applauding music from that brazen instrument, his conscience, the triumphant
manner in which he  had disembarrassed himself of their company,  now served
his patron, Mr Carker. Inmate of  Mr  Carker's house,  and serving about his
person, Rob kept his round eyes on the white  teeth with fear and trembling,
and felt that he had need to open them wider than ever.
     He could not  have quaked more, through  his  whole  being,  before the
teeth, though  he  had come into the service of some powerful enchanter, and
they had  been  his strongest spells.  The  boy  had a  sense of  power  and
authority  in  this patron of  his that engrossed  his  whole attention  and
exacted his  most  implicit submission  and obedience.  He hardly considered
himself safe in thinking about him when he was  absent, lest he  should feel
himself  immediately taken by the throat  again, as  on the morning when  he
first became bound to him, and should see every one of the teeth finding him
out, and taxing him with every fancy of his mind. Face to face with him, Rob
had no more doubt that Mr Carker read his secret thoughts, or that  he could
read them by the least exertion of his  will if he were so inclined, than he
had that Mr  Carker  saw him when he looked  at him.  The  ascendancy was so
complete, and held him in  such enthralment, that, hardly daring to think at
all, but with his  mind  filled with a constantly dilating impression of his
patron's irresistible command  over him, and  power of doing  anything  with
him, he  would  stand  watching his pleasure, and trying to  anticipate  his
orders, in a state of mental suspension, as to all other things.
     Rob  had not informed  himself perhaps - in  his then  state of mind it
would have been an act of no common temerity to inquire - whether he yielded
so  completely  to  this  influence  in  any  part, because he  had floating
suspicions  of his patron's being  a master of certain treacherous  arts  in
which he  had  himself  been a poor  scholar  at  the  Grinders' School. But
certainly Rob  admired him, as  well as feared  him. Mr Carker, perhaps, was
better acquainted with the sources of his power, which lost  nothing by  his
management of it.
     On  the  very  night  when he left the Captain's  service,  Rob,  after
disposing of  his pigeons, and even making  a  bad bargain in his hurry, had
gone straight down to Mr Carker's house, and hotly  presented himself before
his new master with a glowing face that seemed to expect commendation.
     'What, scapegrace!' said  Mr Carker, glancing at  his bundle  'Have you
left your situation and come to me?'
     'Oh if you please, Sir,' faltered Rob, 'you said, you know, when I come
here last - '
     'I said,' returned Mr Carker, 'what did I say?'
     'If you please, Sir, you didn't say nothing at all, Sir,' returned Rob,
warned by the manner of this inquiry, and very much disconcerted.
     His patron looked at  him with  a wide display of gums, and shaking his
forefinger, observed:
     'You'll come  to an evil  end, my vagabond friend,  I foresee.  There's
ruin in store for you.
     'Oh if you please,  don't,  Sir!' cried Rob,  with  his legs  trembling
under him.  ' I'm sure, Sir, I only want  to work for you, Sir,  and to wait
upon you, Sir, and to do faithful whatever I'm bid, Sir.'
     'You had  better do  faithfully  whatever you are  bid,'  returned  his
patron, 'if you have anything to do with me.'
     'Yes, I know that, Sir,' pleaded the submissive Rob; 'I'm sure of that,
SIr. If you'll only be so good as try me, Sir! And if ever  you find me out,
Sir, doing anything against your wishes, I give you leave to kill me.'
     'You  dog!'  said Mr Carker, leaning back in his chair, and smiling  at
him serenely. 'That's nothing to what I'd do to you, if you tried to deceive
me.'
     'Yes, Sir,' replied the abject  Grinder, 'I'm  sure you would  be  down
upon me dreadful, Sir. I wouldn't attempt for to go and do it, Sir, not if I
was bribed with golden guineas.'
     Thoroughly checked in his expectations of commendation, the crestfallen
Grinder stood looking at his patron, and vainly endeavouring not  to look at
him, with  the  uneasiness  which a  cur will  often  manifest in  a similar
situation.
     'So you have left your old service, and come here to ask me to take you
into mine, eh?' said Mr Carker.
     'Yes, if you please, Sir,' returned Rob, who, in doing so, had acted on
his patron's own instructions,  but dared  not justify himself  by the least
insinuation to that effect.
     'Well!' said Mr Carker. 'You know me, boy?'
     'Please, Sir, yes, Sir,' returned Rob, tumbling with his hat, and still
fixed by Mr Carker's eye, and fruitlessly endeavouring to unfix himself.
     Mr Carker nodded. 'Take care, then!'
     Rob expressed in  a number of  short  bows his lively understanding  of
this caution, and was bowing  himself back to the door,  greatly relieved by
the prospect of getting on the outside of it, when his patron stopped him.
     'Halloa!' he cried, calling him roughly back.  'You  have  been -  shut
that door.'
     Rob obeyed as if his life had depended on his alacrity.
     'You have been used to eaves-dropping. Do you know what that means?'
     'Listening, Sir?' Rob hazarded, after some embarrassed reflection.
     His patron nodded. 'And watching, and so forth.'
     'I wouldn't do such a thing here, Sir,' answered Rob; 'upon my word and
honour, I wouldn't, Sir, I wish I may die if I would, Sir, for anything that
could be promised  to me. I  should consider  it is as much as all the world
was worth, to offer to do such a thing, unless I was ordered, Sir.'
     'You  had  better  not'  You  have  been  used,  too, to  babbling  and
tattling,' said  his patron with perfect coolness.  'Beware of that here, or
you're a lost rascal,' and he smiled again, and again cautioned him with his
forefinger.
     The Grinder's breath came short and thick with consternation.  He tried
to protest the purity of his intentions, but could only stare at the smiling
gentleman in a stupor of submission, with which the smiling gentleman seemed
well enough  satisfied, for  he  ordered him downstairs, after observing him
for some moments in silence, and gave him to understand that he was retained
in his employment. This was the manner of Rob the Grinder's engagement by Mr
Carker, and his awe-stricken devotion to that gentleman had strengthened and
increased, if possible, with every minute of his service.
     It was a service of some months'  duration, when early one morning, Rob
opened the  garden gate to  Mr Dombey,  who was  come to breakfast  with his
master, by appointment. At the same moment his master himself came, hurrying
forth  to receive the distinguished guest, and give him welcome with all his
teeth.
     'I never thought,' said Carker, when he had assisted him to alight from
his horse, 'to see you here, I'm  sure. This  is  an extraordinary day in my
calendar. No  occasion  is very  special  to  a  man like  you,  who may  do
anything; but to a man like me, the case is widely different.
     'You have a tasteful place here, Carker,' said Mr Dombey, condescending
to stop upon the lawn, to look about him.
     'You can afford to say so,' returned Carker. 'Thank you.'
     'Indeed,' said Mr Dombey, in his lofty patronage, 'anyone might say so.
As  far as it goes, it is a  very commodious and well-arranged place - quite
elegant.'
     'As  far  as  it  goes,  truly,'  returned  Carker,  with  an  air   of
disparagement' 'It wants that qualification. Well! we have said enough about
it;  and though you  can afford to  praise it, I thank you nonetheless. Will
you walk in?'
     Mr  Dombey,  entering  the house, noticed,  as he had reason to do, the
complete arrangement of the rooms, and the numerous contrivances for comfort
and effect that abounded  there.  Mr Carker, in his ostentation of humility,
received this notice with a  deferential  smile, and said he understood  its
delicate  meaning, and  appreciated  it, but in  truth the cottage was  good
enough for one in  his position  - better,  perhaps, than such a man  should
occupy, poor as it was.
     'But perhaps to you, who are so far removed, it really does look better
than it is,' he said, with his false mouth distended to its fullest stretch.
'Just as monarchs imagine attractions in the lives of beggars.'
     He directed a sharp glance and a sharp smile at  Mr Dombey as he spoke,
and  a  sharper  glance, and  a sharper smile yet, when  Mr  Dombey, drawing
himself up before the fire, in the attitude so often copied by his second in
command,  looked round at  the pictures on the walls. Cursorily as his  cold
eye  wandered over them, Carker's keen glance accompanied his, and kept pace
with  his, marking exactly where  it went,  and what it saw. As it rested on
one  picture in  particular, Carker hardly seemed to  breathe, his  sidelong
scrutiny was so cat-like and vigilant, but the eye of his great chief passed
from  that, as from the others, and appeared no more impressed by it than by
the rest.
     Carker looked at it -  it  was the picture that resembled Edith - as if
it were a living thing; and with a wicked, silent laugh upon  his face, that
seemed in  part addressed to it, though it was all derisive of the great man
standing  so unconscious beside him. Breakfast  was soon set upon the table;
and, inviting Mr Dombey  to a chair which had its back towards this picture,
he took his own seat opposite to it as usual.
     Mr Dombey was  even graver than  it was his  custom to  be,  and  quite
silent. The parrot,  swinging  in the gilded  hoop  within  her  gaudy cage,
attempted in  vain to attract notice,  for  Carker was too observant  of his
visitor to  heed  her;  and  the visitor, abstracted  in meditation,  looked
fixedly, not to say sullenly, over  his stiff neckcloth, without raising his
eyes from  the table-cloth.  As  to  Rob, who  was in  attendance,  all  his
faculties and energies were so locked up in observation of his  master, that
he scarcely ventured to give shelter to the thought that the visitor was the
great gentleman  before  whom  he had been  carried as a  certificate of the
family health, in  his childhood, and to whom he  had been indebted  for his
leather smalls.
     'Allow me,' said Carker suddenly, 'to ask how Mrs Dombey is?'
     He  leaned forward obsequiously, as he made the inquiry,  with his chin
resting on his hand; and at  the same time  his eyes went up to the picture,
as if he said to it, 'Now, see, how I will lead him on!'
     Mr Dombey reddened as he answered:
     'Mrs Dombey is quite well.  You remind me, Carker, of some conversation
that I wish to have with you.'
     'Robin, you  can leave us,' said his master,  at whose mild tones Robin
started and disappeared, with his eyes fixed on his patron to the last. 'You
don't remember that boy, of course?' he