Dombey and Son

‘Don’t talk to me,’ said Mrs Brown, still wrathfully pursuing her circle. ‘Now let him go, now let him go!’

‘Misses Brown,’ urged the tormented Grinder, ‘I didn’t mean to – Oh, what a thing it is for a cove to get into such a line as this! – I was only careful of talking, Misses Brown, because I always am, on account of his being up to everything; but I might have known it wouldn’t have gone any further. I’m sure I’m quite agreeable,’ with a wretched face, ‘for any little bit of gossip, Misses Brown. Don’t go on like this, if you please. Oh, couldn’t you have the goodness to put in a word for a miserable cove, here?’ said the Grinder, appealing in desperation to the daughter.

‘Come, mother, you hear what he says,’ she interposed, in her stern voice, and with an impatient action of her head; ‘try him once more, and if you fall out with him again, ruin him, if you like, and have done with him.’

Mrs Brown, moved as it seemed by this very tender exhortation, presently began to howl; and softening by degrees, took the apologetic Grinder to her arms, who embraced her with a face of unutterable woe, and like a victim as he was, resumed his former seat, close by the side of his venerable friend, whom he suffered, not without much constrained sweetness of countenance, combating very expressive physiognomical revelations of an opposite character to draw his arm through hers, and keep it there.

‘And how’s Master, deary dear?’ said Mrs Brown, when, sitting in this amicable posture, they had pledged each other.

‘Hush! If you’d be so good, Misses Brown, as to speak a little lower,’ Rob implored. ‘Why, he’s pretty well, thank’ee, I suppose.’

‘You’re not out of place, Robby?’ said Mrs Brown, in a wheedling tone.

‘Why, I’m not exactly out of place, nor in,’ faltered Rob. ‘I – I’m still in pay, Misses Brown.’

‘And nothing to do, Rob?’

‘Nothing particular to do just now, Misses Brown, but to – keep my eyes open,’ said the Grinder, rolling them in a forlorn way.

‘Master abroad, Rob?’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Misses Brown, couldn’t you gossip with a cove about anything else?’ cried the Grinder, in a burst of despair.

The impetuous Mrs Brown rising directly, the tortured Grinder detained her, stammering ‘Ye-es, Misses Brown, I believe he’s abroad. What’s she staring at?’ he added, in allusion to the daughter, whose eyes were fixed upon the face that now again looked out behind.

‘Don’t mind her, lad,’ said the old woman, holding him closer to prevent his turning round. ‘It’s her way – her way. Tell me, Rob. Did you ever see the lady, deary?’

‘Oh, Misses Brown, what lady?’ cried the Grinder in a tone of piteous supplication.

‘What lady?’ she retorted. ‘The lady; Mrs Dombey.’

‘Yes, I believe I see her once,’ replied Rob.

‘The night she went away, Robby, eh?’ said the old woman in his ear, and taking note of every change in his face. ‘Aha! I know it was that night.’

‘Well, if you know it was that night, you know, Misses Brown,’ replied Rob, ‘it’s no use putting pinchers into a cove to make him say so.

‘Where did they go that night, Rob? Straight away? How did they go? Where did you see her? Did she laugh? Did she cry? Tell me all about it,’ cried the old hag, holding him closer yet, patting the hand that was drawn through his arm against her other hand, and searching every line in his face with her bleared eyes. ‘Come! Begin! I want to be told all about it. What, Rob, boy! You and me can keep a secret together, eh? We’ve done so before now. Where did they go first, Rob?’

The wretched Grinder made a gasp, and a pause.

‘Are you dumb?’ said the old woman, angrily.

‘Lord, Misses Brown, no! You expect a cove to be a flash of lightning. I wish I was the electric fluency,’ muttered the bewildered Grinder. ‘I’d have a shock at somebody, that would settle their business.’

‘What do you say?’ asked the old woman, with a grin.

‘I’m wishing my love to you, Misses Brown,’ returned the false Rob, seeking consolation in the glass. ‘Where did they go to first was it? Him and her, do you mean?’

‘Ah!’ said the old woman, eagerly. ‘Them two.’

‘Why, they didn’t go nowhere – not together, I mean,’ answered Rob.

The old woman looked at him, as though she had a strong impulse upon her to make another clutch at his head and throat, but was restrained by a certain dogged mystery in his face.

‘That was the art of it,’ said the reluctant Grinder; ‘that’s the way nobody saw ‘em go, or has been able to say how they did go. They went different ways, I tell you Misses Brown.’

‘Ay, ay, ay! To meet at an appointed place,’ chuckled the old woman, after a moment’s silent and keen scrutiny of his face.

‘Why, if they weren’t a going to meet somewhere, I suppose they might as well have stayed at home, mightn’t they, Brown?’ returned the unwilling Grinder.

‘Well, Rob? Well?’ said the old woman, drawing his arm yet tighter through her own, as if, in her eagerness, she were afraid of his slipping away.

‘What, haven’t we talked enough yet, Misses Brown?’ returned the Grinder, who, between his sense of injury, his sense of liquor, and his sense of being on the rack, had become so lachrymose, that at almost every answer he scooped his coats into one or other of his eyes, and uttered an unavailing whine of remonstrance. ‘Did she laugh that night, was it? Didn’t you ask if she laughed, Misses Brown?’

‘Or cried?’ added the old woman, nodding assent.

‘Neither,’ said the Grinder. ‘She kept as steady when she and me – oh, I see you will have it out of me, Misses Brown! But take your solemn oath now, that you’ll never tell anybody.’

This Mrs Brown very readily did: being naturally Jesuitical; and having no other intention in the matter than that her concealed visitor should hear for himself.

‘She kept as steady, then, when she and me went down to Southampton,’ said the Grinder, ‘as a image. In the morning she was just the same, Misses Brown. And when she went away in the packet before daylight, by herself – me pretending to be her servant, and seeing her safe aboard – she was just the same. Now, are you contented, Misses Brown?’

‘No, Rob. Not yet,’ answered Mrs Brown, decisively.

‘Oh, here’s a woman for you!’ cried the unfortunate Rob, in an outburst of feeble lamentation over his own helplessness. ‘What did you wish to know next, Misses Brown?’

‘What became of Master? Where did he go?’ she inquired, still holding him tight, and looking close into his face, with her sharp eyes.

‘Upon my soul, I don’t know, Misses Brown,’ answered Rob. ‘Upon my soul I don’t know what he did, nor where he went, nor anything about him I only know what he said to me as a caution to hold my tongue, when we parted; and I tell you this, Misses Brown, as a friend, that sooner than ever repeat a word of what we’re saying now, you had better take and shoot yourself, or shut yourself up in this house, and set it a-fire, for there’s nothing he wouldn’t do, to be revenged upon you. You don’t know him half as well as I do, Misses Brown. You’re never safe from him, I tell you.’

‘Haven’t I taken an oath,’ retorted the old woman, ‘and won’t I keep it?’

‘Well, I’m sure I hope you will, Misses Brown,’ returned Rob, somewhat doubtfully, and not without a latent threatening in his manner. ‘For your own sake, quite as much as mine.’

He looked at her as he gave her this friendly caution, and emphasized it with a nodding of his head; but finding it uncomfortable to encounter the yellow face with its grotesque action, and the ferret eyes with their keen old wintry gaze, so close to his own, he looked down uneasily and sat skulking in his chair, as if he were trying to bring himself to a sullen declaration that he would answer no more questions. The old woman, still holding him as before, took this opportunity of raising the forefinger of her right hand, in the air, as a stealthy signal to the concealed observer to give particular attention to what was about to follow.

‘Rob,’ she said, in her most coaxing tone.

‘Good gracious, Misses Brown, what’s the matter now?’ returned the exasperated Grinder.

‘Rob! where did the lady and Master appoint to meet?’

Rob shuffled more and more, and looked up and looked down, and bit his thumb, and dried it on his waistcoat, and finally said, eyeing his tormentor askance, ‘How should I know, Misses Brown?’

The old woman held up her finger again, as before, and replying, ‘Come, lad! It’s no use leading me to that, and there leaving me. I want to know’ waited for his answer. Rob, after a discomfited pause, suddenly broke out with, ‘How can I pronounce the names of foreign places, Mrs Brown? What an unreasonable woman you are!’

‘But you have heard it said, Robby,’ she retorted firmly, ‘and you know what it sounded like. Come!’

‘I never heard it said, Misses Brown,’ returned the Grinder.

‘Then,’ retorted the old woman quickly, ‘you have seen it written, and you can spell it.’

Rob, with a petulant exclamation between laughing and crying – for he was penetrated with some admiration of Mrs Brown’s cunning, even through this persecution – after some reluctant fumbling in his waistcoat pocket, produced from it a little piece of chalk. The old woman’s eyes sparkled when she saw it between his thumb and finger, and hastily clearing a space on the deal table, that he might write the word there, she once more made her signal with a shaking hand.

‘Now I tell you beforehand what it is, Misses Brown,’ said Rob, ‘it’s no use asking me anything else. I won’t answer anything else; I can’t. How long it was to be before they met, or whose plan it was that they was to go away alone, I don’t know no more than you do. I don’t know any more about it. If I was to tell you how I found out this word, you’d believe that. Shall I tell you, Misses Brown?’

‘Yes, Rob.’

‘Well then, Misses Brown. The way – now you won’t ask any more, you know?’ said Rob, turning his eyes, which were now fast getting drowsy and stupid, upon her.

‘Not another word,’ said Mrs Brown.

‘Well then, the way was this. When a certain person left the lady with me, he put a piece of paper with a direction written on it in the lady’s hand, saying it was in case she should forget. She wasn’t afraid of forgetting, for she tore it up as soon as his back was turned, and when I put up the carriage steps, I shook out one of the pieces – she sprinkled the rest out of the window, I suppose, for there was none there afterwards, though I looked for ‘em. There was only one word on it, and that was this, if you must and will know. But remember! You’re upon your oath, Misses Brown!’

Mrs Brown knew that, she said. Rob, having nothing more to say, began to chalk, slowly and laboriously, on the table.

‘“D,”’ the old woman read aloud, when he had formed the letter.

‘Will you hold your tongue, Misses Brown?’ he exclaimed, covering it with his hand, and turning impatiently upon her. ‘I won’t have it read out. Be quiet, will you!’

‘Then write large, Rob,’ she returned, repeating her secret signal; ‘for my eyes are not good, even at print.’

Muttering to himself, and returning to his work with an ill will, Rob went on with the word. As he bent his head down, the person for whose information he so unconsciously laboured, moved from the door behind him to within a short stride of his shoulder, and looked eagerly towards the creeping track of his hand upon the table. At the same time, Alice, from her opposite chair, watched it narrowly as it shaped the letters, and repeated each one on her lips as he made it, without articulating it aloud. At the end of every letter her eyes and Mr Dombey’s met, as if each of them sought to be confirmed by the other; and thus they both spelt D.I.J.O.N.

‘There!’ said the Grinder, moistening the palm of his hand hastily, to obliterate the word; and not content with smearing it out, rubbing and planing all trace of it away with his coat-sleeve, until the very colour of the chalk was gone from the table. ‘Now, I hope you’re contented, Misses Brown!’

The old woman, in token of her being so, released his arm and patted his back; and the Grinder, overcome with mortification, cross-examination, and liquor, folded his arms on the table, laid his head upon them, and fell asleep.

Not until he had been heavily asleep some time, and was snoring roundly, did the old woman turn towards the door where Mr Dombey stood concealed, and beckon him to come through the room, and pass out. Even then, she hovered over Rob, ready to blind him with her hands, or strike his head down, if he should raise it while the secret step was crossing to the door. But though her glance took sharp cognizance of the sleeper, it was sharp too for the waking man; and when he touched her hand with his, and in spite of all his caution, made a chinking, golden sound, it was as bright and greedy as a raven’s.

The daughter’s dark gaze followed him to the door, and noted well how pale he was, and how his hurried tread indicated that the least delay was an insupportable restraint upon him, and how he was burning to be active and away. As he closed the door behind him, she looked round at her mother. The old woman trotted to her; opened her hand to show what was within; and, tightly closing it again in her jealousy and avarice, whispered:

‘What will he do, Ally?’

‘Mischief,’ said the daughter.

‘Murder?’ asked the old woman.

‘He’s a madman, in his wounded pride, and may do that, for anything we can say, or he either.’

Her glance was brighter than her mother’s, and the fire that shone in it was fiercer; but her face was colourless, even to her lips.

They said no more, but sat apart; the mother communing with her money; the daughter with her thoughts; the glance of each, shining in the gloom of the feebly lighted room. Rob slept and snored. The disregarded parrot only was in action. It twisted and pulled at the wires of its cage, with its crooked beak, and crawled up to the dome, and along its roof like a fly, and down again head foremost, and shook, and bit, and rattled at every slender bar, as if it knew its master’s danger, and was wild to force a passage out, and fly away to warn him of it.