and conveyed a relenting expression into her very-wide-open black eyes.
‘It ain’t right of you to ask it, Miss Floy, for you know I can’t refuse you, but Mrs Richards and me will see what can be done, if Mrs Richards likes, I may wish, you see, to take a voyage to Chaney, Mrs Richards, but I mayn’t know how to leave the London Docks.’
Richards assented to the proposition.
‘This house ain’t so exactly ringing with merry-making,’ said Miss Nipper, ‘that one need be lonelier than one must be. Your Toxes and your Chickses may draw out my two front double teeth, Mrs Richards, but that’s no reason why I need offer ‘em the whole set.’
This proposition was also assented to by Richards, as an obvious one.
‘So I’m agreeable, I’m sure,’ said Susan Nipper, ‘to live friendly, Mrs Richards, while Master Paul continues a permanency, if the means can be planned out without going openly against orders, but goodness gracious Miss Floy, you haven’t got your things off yet, you naughty child, you haven’t, come along!’
With these words, Susan Nipper, in a transport of coercion, made a charge at her young ward, and swept her out of the room.
The child, in her grief and neglect, was so gentle, so quiet, and uncomplaining; was possessed of so much affection that no one seemed to care to have, and so much sorrowful intelligence that no one seemed to mind or think about the wounding of, that Polly’s heart was sore when she was left alone again. In the simple passage that had taken place between herself and the motherless little girl, her own motherly heart had been touched no less than the child’s; and she felt, as the child did, that there was something of confidence and interest between them from that moment.
Notwithstanding Mr Toodle’s great reliance on Polly, she was perhaps in point of artificial accomplishments very little his superior. She had been good-humouredly working and drudging for her life all her life, and was a sober steady-going person, with matter-of-fact ideas about the butcher and baker, and the division of pence into farthings. But she was a good plain sample of a nature that is ever, in the mass, better, truer, higher, nobler, quicker to feel, and much more constant to retain, all tenderness and pity, self-denial and devotion, than the nature of men. And, perhaps, unlearned as she was, she could have brought a dawning knowledge home to Mr Dombey at that early day, which would not then have struck him in the end like lightning.
But this is from the purpose. Polly only thought, at that time, of improving on her successful propitiation of Miss Nipper, and devising some means of having little Florence aide her, lawfully, and without rebellion. An opening happened to present itself that very night.
She had been rung down into the glass room as usual, and had walked about and about it a long time, with the baby in her arms, when, to her great surprise and dismay, Mr Dombey – whom she had seen at first leaning on his elbow at the table, and afterwards walking up and down the middle room, drawing, each time, a little nearer, she thought, to the open folding doors – came out, suddenly, and stopped before her.
‘Good evening, Richards.’
Just the same austere, stiff gentleman, as he had appeared to her on that first day. Such a hard-looking gentleman, that she involuntarily dropped her eyes and her curtsey at the same time.
‘How is Master Paul, Richards?’
‘Quite thriving, Sir, and well.’
‘He looks so,’ said Mr Dombey, glancing with great interest at the tiny face she uncovered for his observation, and yet affecting to be half careless of it. ‘They give you everything you want, I hope?’
‘Oh yes, thank you, Sir.’
She suddenly appended such an obvious hesitation to this reply, however, that Mr Dombey, who had turned away; stopped, and turned round again, inquiringly.
‘If you please, Sir, the child is very much disposed to take notice of things,’ said Richards, with another curtsey, ‘and – upstairs is a little dull for him, perhaps, Sir.’
‘I begged them to take you out for airings, constantly,’ said Mr Dombey. ‘Very well! You shall go out oftener. You’re quite right to mention it.’
‘I beg your pardon, Sir,’ faltered Polly, ‘but we go out quite plenty Sir, thank you.’
‘What would you have then?’ asked Mr Dombey.
‘Indeed Sir, I don’t exactly know,’ said Polly, ‘unless – ’
‘Yes?’
‘I believe nothing is so good for making children lively and cheerful, Sir, as seeing other children playing about ‘em,’ observed Polly, taking courage.
‘I think I mentioned to you, Richards, when you came here,’ said Mr Dombey, with a frown, ‘that I wished you to see as little of your family as possible.’
‘Oh dear yes, Sir, I wasn’t so much as thinking of that.’
‘I am glad of it,’ said Mr Dombey hastily. ‘You can continue your walk if you please.’
With that, he disappeared into his inner room; and Polly had the satisfaction of feeling that he had thoroughly misunderstood her object, and that she had fallen into disgrace without the least advancement of her purpose.
Next night, she found him walking about the conservatory when she came down. As she stopped at the door, checked by this unusual sight, and uncertain whether to advance or retreat, he called her in. His mind was too much set on Dombey and Son, it soon appeared, to admit of his having forgotten her suggestion.
‘If you really think that sort of society is good for the child,’ he said sharply, as if there had been no interval since she proposed it, ‘where’s Miss Florence?’
‘Nothing could be better than Miss Florence, Sir,’ said Polly eagerly, ‘but I understood from her maid that they were not to – ’
Mr Dombey rang the bell, and walked till it was answered.
‘Tell them always to let Miss Florence be with Richards when she chooses, and go out with her, and so forth. Tell them to let the children be together, when Richards wishes it.’
The iron was now hot, and Richards striking on it boldly – it was a good cause and she bold in it, though instinctively afraid of Mr Dombey – requested that Miss Florence might be sent down then and there, to make friends with her little brother.
She feigned to be dandling the child as the servant retired on this errand, but she thought that she saw Mr Dombey’s colour changed; that the expression of his face quite altered; that he turned, hurriedly, as if to gainsay what he had said, or she had said, or both, and was only deterred by very shame.
And she was right. The last time he had seen his slighted child, there had been that in the sad embrace between her and her dying mother, which was at once a revelation and a reproach to him. Let him be absorbed as he would in the Son on whom he built such high hopes, he could not forget that closing scene. He could not forget that he had had no part in it. That, at the bottom of its clear depths of tenderness and truth lay those two figures clasped in each other’s arms, while he stood on the bank above them, looking down a mere spectator – not a sharer with them – quite shut out.
Unable to exclude these things from his remembrance, or to keep his mind free from such imperfect shapes of the meaning with which they were fraught,
