down his own, raised it again, all red and burning; and looked at Uncle Sol, quite sheepishly.
‘Where’s Walter?’ ‘Good-night, Walter!’ ‘Good-bye, Walter!’ ‘Shake hands once more, Walter!’ This was still Florence’s cry, after she was shut up with her little maid, in the coach. And when the coach at length moved off, Walter on the door-step gaily returned the waving of her handkerchief, while the wooden Midshipman behind him seemed, like himself, intent upon that coach alone, excluding all the other passing coaches from his observation.
In good time Mr Dombey’s mansion was gained again, and again there was a noise of tongues in the library. Again, too, the coach was ordered to wait—‘for Mrs Richards,’ one of Susan’s fellow-servants ominously whispered, as she passed with Florence.
The entrance of the lost child made a slight sensation, but not much. Mr Dombey, who had never found her, kissed her once upon the forehead, and cautioned her not to run away again, or wander anywhere with treacherous attendants. Mrs Chick stopped in her lamentations on the corruption of human nature, even when beckoned to the paths of virtue by a Charitable Grinder; and received her with a welcome something short of the reception due to none but perfect Dombeys. Miss Tox regulated her feelings by the models before her. Richards, the culprit Richards, alone poured out her heart in broken words of welcome, and bowed herself over the little wandering head as if she really loved it.
‘Ah, Richards!’ said Mrs Chick, with a sigh. ‘It would have been much more satisfactory to those who wish to think well of their fellow creatures, and much more becoming in you, if you had shown some proper feeling, in time, for the little child that is now going to be prematurely deprived of its natural nourishment.
‘Cut off,’ said Miss Tox, in a plaintive whisper, ‘from one common fountain!’
‘If it was my ungrateful case,’ said Mrs Chick, solemnly, ‘and I had your reflections, Richards, I should feel as if the Charitable Grinders’ dress would blight my child, and the education choke him.’
For the matter of that—but Mrs Chick didn’t know it—he had been pretty well blighted by the dress already; and as to the education, even its retributive effect might be produced in time, for it was a storm of sobs and blows.
‘Louisa!’ said Mr Dombey. ‘It is not necessary to prolong these observations. The woman is discharged and paid. You leave this house, Richards, for taking my son—my son,’ said Mr Dombey, emphatically repeating these two words, ‘into haunts and into society which are not to be thought of without a shudder. As to the accident which befel Miss Florence this morning, I regard that as, in one great sense, a happy and fortunate circumstance; inasmuch as, but for that occurrence, I never could have known—and from your own lips too—of what you had been guilty. I think, Louisa, the other nurse, the young person,’ here Miss Nipper sobbed aloud, ‘being so much younger, and necessarily influenced by Paul’s nurse, may remain. Have the goodness to direct that this woman’s coach is paid to’—Mr Dombey stopped and winced—‘to Staggs’s Gardens.’
Polly moved towards the door, with Florence holding to her dress, and crying to her in the most pathetic manner not to go away. It was a dagger in the haughty father’s heart, an arrow in his brain, to see how the flesh and blood he could not disown clung to this obscure stranger, and he sitting by. Not that he cared to whom his daughter turned, or from whom turned away. The swift sharp agony struck through him, as he thought of what his son might do.
His son cried lustily that night, at all events. Sooth to say, poor Paul had better reason for his tears than sons of that age often have, for he had lost his second mother—his first, so far as he knew—by a stroke as sudden as that natural affliction which had darkened the beginning of his life. At the same blow, his sister too, who cried herself to sleep so mournfully, had lost as good and true a friend. But that is quite beside the question. Let us waste no words about it.
Chapter 7.
A Bird’s-eye Glimpse of Miss Tox’s Dwelling-place: also of the State of Miss Tox’s Affections
Miss Tox inhabited a dark little house that had been squeezed, at some remote period of English History, into a fashionable neighbourhood at the west end of the town, where it stood in the shade like a poor relation of the great street round the corner, coldly looked down upon by mighty mansions. It was not exactly in a court, and it was not exactly in a yard; but it was in the dullest of No-Thoroughfares, rendered anxious and haggard by distant double knocks. The name of this retirement, where grass grew between the chinks in the stone pavement, was Princess’s Place; and in Princess’s Place was Princess’s Chapel, with a tinkling bell, where sometimes as many as five-and-twenty people attended service on a Sunday. The Princess’s Arms was also there, and much resorted to by splendid footmen. A sedan chair was kept inside the railing before the Princess’s Arms, but it had never come out within the memory of man; and on fine mornings, the top of every rail (there were eight-and-forty, as Miss Tox had often counted) was decorated with a pewter-pot.
There was another private house besides Miss Tox’s in Princess’s Place: not to mention an immense Pair of gates, with an immense pair of lion-headed knockers on them, which were never opened by any chance, and were supposed to constitute a disused entrance to somebody’s stables. Indeed, there was a smack of stabling in the air of Princess’s Place; and Miss Tox’s bedroom (which was at the back) commanded a vista of Mews, where hostlers, at whatever sort of work engaged, were continually accompanying themselves with effervescent noises; and where the most domestic and confidential garments of coachmen and their wives and families, usually hung, like Macbeth’s banners, on the outward walls.
At this other private house in Princess’s Place, tenanted by a retired butler who had married a housekeeper, apartments were let Furnished, to a single gentleman: to wit, a wooden-featured, blue-faced Major, with his eyes starting out of his head, in whom Miss Tox recognised, as she herself expressed it, ‘something so truly military;’ and between whom and herself, an occasional interchange of newspapers and pamphlets, and such Platonic dalliance, was effected through the medium of a dark servant of the Major’s who Miss Tox was quite content to classify as a ‘native,’ without connecting him with any geographical idea whatever.
Perhaps there never was a smaller entry and staircase, than the entry and staircase of Miss Tox’s house. Perhaps, taken altogether, from top to bottom, it was the most inconvenient little house in England, and the crookedest; but then, Miss Tox said, what a situation! There was very little daylight to be got there in the winter: no sun at the best of times: air was out of the question, and traffic was walled out. Still Miss Tox said, think of the situation! So said the blue-faced Major, whose eyes were starting out of his head: who gloried in Princess’s Place: and who delighted to turn the conversation at his club, whenever he could, to something connected with some of the great people in the great street round the corner, that he might have the satisfaction of saying they were his neighbours.
In short, with Miss Tox and the blue-faced Major, it was enough for Princess’s Place—as with a very small fragment of society, it is enough for many a little hanger-on of another sort—to be well connected, and to have genteel blood in its veins. It might be poor, mean, shabby, stupid, dull. No matter. The great street round the corner trailed off into Princess’s Place; and that which of High Holborn would have become a choleric word, spoken of Princess’s Place became flat blasphemy.
The dingy tenement inhabited by Miss Tox was her own; having been devised and bequeathed to her by the deceased owner of the fishy eye in the locket, of whom a miniature portrait, with a powdered head and a pigtail, balanced the kettle-holder on opposite
