CHAPTER LVII.

ANOTHER WEDDING.

MR. SOWNDS the Beadle, and Mrs. Miff the pew-temperament. He says, as they stand upon the opener, are early at their posts in the fine church steps watching the young couple away, that she has where Mr. Dombey was married. A yellow-faced a pretty figure, hasn't she, and as well as he could old gentleman from India, is going to take unto see (for she held her hand down coming out), an himself a young wife this morning, and six car- uncommon pretty face. "Altogether, Mrs. Miff," riages full of company are expected, and Mrs. Miff says Mr. Sownds with a relish, "she is what you has been informed that the yellow-faced old gentle- may call a rosebud." man could pave the road to church with diamonds and hardly miss them. The nuptial benediction is to be a superior one, proceeding from a very reverend, a dean, and the lady is to be given away, as an extraordinary present, by somebody who comes express from the Horse Guards.

Gradually they come into the darker, narrower streets, where the sun, now yellow, and now red, is seen through the mist, only at street corners, and in small open spaces where there is a tree, or one of the innumerable churches, or a paved way and a flight of steps, or a curious little patch of garden, There is nothing personal in Mrs. Miff's remark.or a burying-ground, where the few tombs and She merely speaks of stock in trade. She is hardly more curious in couples than in coffins. She is ch a spare, straight, dry old lady-such a pew a woman-that you should find as many indivisympathies in a chip. Mr. Sownds, now, who shy, and has scarlet in his coat, is of a different

a few great tacks of warehouses, with waggons at the doors, and busy carmen stopping up the waybut Florence does not see or hear them - and then the air is quiet, and the day is darkened, and she is trembling in a church which has a strange smell like a cellar.

The shabby little old man, ringer of the disappointed bell, is standing in the porch, and has put his hat in the font for he is quite at home there, being sexton. He ushers them into an old, brown, panelled, dusty vestry, like a corner-cupboard with the shelves taken out; where the wormy registers diffuse a smell like faded snuff, which has set the tearful Nipper sneezing.

"God bless you, Susan, dearest Susan! If you ever can bear witness to the love I have for Walter, and the reason that I have to love him, do it for his sake. Good bye! Good bye!"

They have thought it better not to go back to the Midshipman, but to part so; a coach is waiting for them, near at hand.

Miss Nipper cannot speak; she only sobs and chokes, and hugs her mistress. Mr. Toots advances, urges her to cheer up, and takes charge of her. Florence gives him her hand-gives him, in the fulness of her heart, her lips-kisses Uncle Sol, and Captain Cuttle, and is borne away by her young husband.

But Susan cannot bear that Florence should go away with a mournful recollection of her. She had meant to be so different, that she reproaches herself bitterly. Intent on making one last effort to redeem her character, she breaks from Mr. Toots and

smile. The Captain, divining her object, sets off after her; for he feels it his duty also, to dismiss them with a cheer, if possible. Uncle Sol and Mr. Toots are left behind together, outside the church, to wait for them.

Youthful, and how beautiful, the young bride looks, in this old dusty place, with no kindred object near her but her husband. There is a dusty old clerk, who keeps a sort of evaporated news shop underneath an archway opposite, behind a perfect fortification of posts. There is a dusty old pew-runs away to find the coach, and show a parting opener who only keeps herself, and finds that quite enough to do. There is a dusty old beadle (these are Mr. Toots's beadle and pew-opener of last Sunday), who has something to do with a Worshipful Company who have got a Hall in the next yard, with a stained glass window in it that no mortal ever saw. There are dusty wooden ledges and cornices poked in and out over the altar, and over the screen and round the gallery, and over the inscription about what the Master and Wardens of the Worshipful Company did in one thousand six hundred and ninety-four. There are dusty old sounding-boards over the pulpit and reading-desk, look. ing like lids to be let down on the officiating ministers in case of their giving offence. There is every possible provision for the accommodation of dust, except in the churchyard, where the facilities in that respect are very limited.

The Captain, Uncle Sol, and Mr. Toots, are come; the clergyman is putting on his surplice in the vestry, while the clerk walks round him, blow. ing the dust off it; and the bride and bridegroom stand before the altar. There is no bridesmaid, unless Susan Nipper is one; and no better father than Captain Cuttle. A man with a wooden leg, chewing a faint apple and carrying a blue bag in his hand, looks in to see what is going on; but finding it nothing entertaining, stumps off again, and pegs his way among the echoes out of doors.

The coach is gone, but the street is steep, and narrow, and blocked up, and Susan can see it at a stand-still in the distance, she is sure. Captain Cuttle follows her as she flies down the hill, and waves his glazed hat as a general signal, which may attract the right coach and may not.

Susan outstrips the Captain, and comes up with it. She looks in at the window, sees Walter, with the gentle face beside him, and claps her hands and screams:

"Miss Floy, my darling! look at me! We are all so happy now, dear! One more good bye, my precious, one more!"

How Susan does it, she don't know, but she reaches to the window, kisses her, and has her arms about her neck, in a moment.

"We are all so-so happy now, my dear Miss Floy!" says Susan, with a suspicious catching in her breath. You, you won't be angry with me,

now. Now will you?"
'Angry, Susan!"

No, no; I am sure you won't. I say you won't my pet, my dearest !" exclaims Susan; "and here's the Captain, too-your friend the Captain, you know-to say good bye once more!"

"Hooroar, my Heart's Delight!" vociferates the Captain, with a countenance of strong emotion. "Hooroar, Wal'r my lad! Hooroar! Hooroar!"

No gracious ray of light is seen to fall on Fiorence, kneeling at the altar with her timid head bowed down. Tho morning luminary is built out, and don't shine there. There is a meagre tree out. side, where the sparrows are chirping a little; and What with the young husband at one window, there is a blackbird in an eyelet-hole of sun in a and the young wife at the other; the Captain hangdyer's garret, over against the window, who whising on at this door, and Susan Nipper holding fast tles loudly whilst the service is performing; and there is the man with the wooden leg stumping away. The amens of the dusty clerk appear, like Macheth's, to stick in his throat a little; but Captain Cuttle helps him out, and does it with so much good-will that he interpolates three entirely new responses to that word, never introduced into the service before.

They are married, and have signed their names in one of the old sneezy registers, and the clergyman's surplice is restored to the dust, and the clergyman is gone home. In a dark corner of the dark church, Florence has turned to Susan Nipper, and is weeping in her arms. Mr. Toots's eyes are red. The Captain lubricates his nose. Uncle Sol has pulled down his spectacle: from his forehead,

by that; the coach obliged to go on whether it will or no, and all the other carts and coaches turbulent because it hesitates; there never was so much confusion on four wheels. But Susan Nipper gallantly maintains her point. She keeps a smiling face upon her mistress, smiling through her tears, until the last. Even when she is left behind, the Captain continues to appear and disappear at the door, crying, "Hooroar my lad! Hooroar my Heart's Delight!" with his shirt collar in a violent state of agitation, until it is hopeless to attempt to keep up with the coach any longer. Finally, when the coach is gone, Susan Nipper, being rejoined by the Captain, falls into a state of insensibility, and taken into a baker's shop to recover.

Uncle Sol and Mr. Toots wait patiently in

ings, until Captain Cuttle and Susan come back. | Captain, puts his hand into the breast-pocket of his Neither being at all desirous to speak, or to be coffee-coloured coat, brings forth his pocket-book, spoken to, they are excellent company, and quite and takes a letter out. satisfied. When they all arrive again at the little Midshipman, and sit down to breakfast, nobody can touch a morsel. Captain Cuttle makes a feint of being voracious about toast, but gives it up as a swindle. Mr. Toots says, after breakfast, he will come back in the evening; and goes wandering about the town all day, with a vague sensation upon him as if he hadn't been to bed for a fortnight.

CHAPTER LVIII.

AFTER A LAPSE.

THE sea had ebbed and flowed, through a whole year. Through a whole year, the winds and clouds had come and gone; the ceaseless work of time had been performed, in storm and sunshine. Through a whole year the tides of human chance and change had set in their allotted courses. Through a whole year, the famous House of Dombey and Son had fought a fight for life, against cross accidents, doubtful rumours, unsuccessful ventures, unpropitions times, and most of all, against the infatuation of its head, who would not contract its enterprises by a hair's breadth, and would not listen to a word of warning that the ship he strained so hard against the storm, was weak, and could not bear it.

The year was out, and the great House was down. One summer afternoon; a year, wanting some odd days, after the marriage in the City church; there was a buzz and whisper upon 'Change of a great failure. A certain cold proud man, well known there, was not there, nor was he represented there. Next day it was noised abroad that Dombey and Son had stopped, and next night there was a list of Bankrupts published, headed by that name.

ninepence in the pound!" Which act of somnambulism he supposed to have originated in the impression made upon him by the change in Mr. Dombey's face. Then would he inform them how he had once said, "Might I inake so bold as ask, sir, are you unhappy in your mind?" and how Mr. Dombey had replied, "My faithful Perch-but no, it cannot be!" and with that had struck his hand upon his 'forehead, and said, "Leave me, Perch!" Then, in short, would Mr. Perch, a victim to his position, teil all manner of lies; affecting himself to tears by those that were of a moving nature, and really believing that the inventions of yesterday, had, on repetition, a sort of truth about them to-day

Mr. Perch always closed these conferences by meekly remarking, That, of course, whatever his sus picions might have been (as if he had ever had any!), it wasn't forim to betray his trust-was it? Which sentiment (there never being any creditors present) was received as doing great honour to his feelings. Thus, he generally brought away a soothed conscience and left an agreeable impression behind him, when he returned to his bracket: again to sit watching the strange faces of the accountants and others, making so free with the great mysteries, the Books; or now and then to go on tiptoe into Mr. Dombey's empty room, and stir the fire; or to take an airing at the door, and have a little more doleful chat with any straggler whom he knew; or to propitiate, with various small attentions, the bead accountant: from whom Mr. Perch had expectations of a messengership in a Fire-Office, when the affairs of the House should be wound up.

The world was very busy now, in sooth, and had a deal to say. It was an innocently credulous, and a much ill used world. It was a world in which there was no other sort of bankruptcy whatever. Thiere were no conspicuous people in it, trading far and wide on rotten banks of religion, patriotism, virtue, honour. There was no amount worth mentioning of mere paper in circulation, on which anybody lived pretty handsomely, promising to pay great sums of goodness with no effects. There were no short comings anywhere, in anything but money. The world was very angry indeed; and the people especially, who, in a worse world, might have been supposed to be bank-racter-his attention being wholly concentrated on s rupt traders themselves in shows and pretences, were observed to be mightily indignant.

Here was a new inducement to dissipation, presented to that sport of circumstances, Mr. Perch the messenger! It was apparently the fate of Mr. Perch to be always waking up, and finding himself famous. He had but yesterday, as one might say, subsided into private life from the celebrity of the elopement and the events that followed it; and now he was made a more important man than ever, by the bankruptcy. Gliding from his bracket in the outer office where he now sat, watching the strange faces of accountants and others, who quickly superseded nearly all the old clerks, Mr. Perch had but to show himself in the court outside, or, at farthest, in the bar of the King's Arms, to be asked a multitude of questions, almost certain to include that interesting question, what would he take to drink? Then would Mr. Perch descant upon the hours of acute uneasiness he and Mrs. Perch had suffered out at Ball's Pond, when they first suspected "things was going wrong." Then would Mr. Perch relate to gaping listeners, in a low voice, as if the corpse of the deceased House were lying unburied in the next room, how Mrs. Perch had first come to surmise that things was going wrong, by hearing him (Perch) moaning in his sleep, "twelve and ninepence in the pound, twelve and

To Major Bagstock, the bankruptcy was quite ? calamity. The Major was not a sympathetic cho

B.-nor was he a man subject to lively emotion, except in the physical regards of gasping and chor ing. But he had so paraded his friend Dombey it the club; had so flourished him at the heads of tl members in general, and so put them down by cor, tinual assertion of his riches; that the club, being bu human, was delighted to retort upon the Major, by asking him, with a show of great concern, whether this tremendous smash had been at all expected, and how his friend Dombey bore it. To such questions, the Major, waxing very purple, would reply that it was a bad world, Sir, altogether; that Joey knew a thing or two, but had been done, Sir, done like an infant; that if you had foretold this, Sir, to J. Bagstock, when he went abroad with Dombey and was chasing that vagabond up and down France, J. Bagstock would have pooh pooh'd you-would have pooh-pooh'd you, Sir, by the Lord! That Joe had been deceived, Sir, taken in, hoodwinked, blindfolded, but was broad awake again and staring; insomuch, Sir, that if Joe's father were to rise up from the grave to-morrow, he wouldn't trust the old blade with a penny piece, but would tell him that his son Josh was too old a soldier to be done again, Sir. That he was a suspicious, crabbed, cranky, used-up, J. B. infidel, Sir; and that if it were consistent with the dignity of a rough a tough old Major, of the old school, who had had :

honour of being personally known to, and commended | guised his natural character, or meanly truckled to

by, their late Royal Highnesses the Dukes of Kent and York, to retire to a tub and live in it, by Gad! Sir, he'd have a tub in Pall Mall to-morrow, to show his contempt for mankind!

him, or pampered his master passion for the advance. ment of his own purposes. He had, therefore, no selfdisrespect to avenge; no long tightened springs to release with a quick recoil. He worked early and late to unravel whatever was complicated or difficult in the records of the transaction of the house; was always in attendance to explain whatever required explanation; sat in his old room sometimes very late at night, studying points by his mastery of which he could spare Mr. Dombey the pain of being personally referred to; and then would go home to Islington, and calm his mind by producing the most dismal and forlorn sounds

Of all this, and many variations of the same tune, the Major would deliver himself with so many apoplectic symptoms, such rollings of his head, and such violent growls of ill usage and resentment, that the younger members of the club surmised he had invested money in his friend Dombey's house, and lost it; though the older soldiers and deeper dogs, who knew Joe better, wouldn't hear of such a thing. The unfortunate Native, expressing no opinion, suffered dread-out of his violoncello before going to bed. fully; not merely in his moral feelings, which were regularly fusilladed by the Major every hour in the day, and riddled through and through, but in his sensitiveness to bodily knocks and bumps, which was kept continually on the stretch. For six entire weeks after the bankruptcy, this miserable foreigner lived in a rainy season of boot-jacks and brushes.

He was solacing himself with this melodious grumbler one evening, and, having been much dispirited by the proceedings of the day, was scraping consolation out of its deepest notes, when his landlady (who was fortunately deaf, and had no other consciousness of these performances than a sensation of something rumbling in her bones) announced a lady. "In mourning," she said.

The violoncello stopped immediately; and the performer, laying it on a sofa with great tenderness and care, made a sign that the lady was to come in. He followed directly, and met Harriet Carker on the

stair..

"Alone!" he said, "and John here, this morning! Is there anything the matter, my dear? But no," he added, "your face tells quite another story." there, then," she answered. "I am afraid it is a selfish revelation that you see

Mrs. Chick had three ideas upon the subject of the terrible reverse. The first was that she could not understand it. The second, that her brother had not made an effort. The third, that if she had been invited to dinner on the day of that first party, it never would have happened; and that she had said so, at the time. Nobody's opinion stayed the misfortune, lightened it, or made it heavier. It was understood that the affairs of the House were to be wound up as they best could be; that Mr. Dombey freely resigned everything he had, and asked for no favour from any one. That any resumption of the business was out of the question, as he would listen to no friendly negotiation hava ing that compromise in view; that he had relinquished every post of trust or distinction he had held, as a man respected among merchants; that he was dying, according to some; that he was going melancholy mad, according to others; that he was a broken man, accordg to all.

The clerks dispersed after holding a little dinner of ndolence among themselves, which was enlivened comic singing, and went off admirably. Some took ices abroad, and some engaged in other houses at me; some looked up relations in the country, for hom they suddenly remembered they had a parcular affection, and some advertised for employment n the newspapers; Mr. Perch alone remained of all he late establishment, sitting on his bracket lookng at the accountants, or starting off it, to propitiate the head accountant, who was to get him into the Fire Office. The Counting House soon got to be dirty and neglected. The principal slipper and dogs' collar seller, at the corner of the court, would have doubted the propriety of throwing up his forefinger to the brim of his hat, any more, if Mr. Dombey had ap peared there now; and the ticket porter, with his hands under his white apron, moralized good sound morality about ambition, which (he observed) was not, in his opinion, made to rhyme to perdition, for nothing.

"It is a very pleasant one," said he; "and, if selfish, novelty too, worth seeing in you. But I don't believe

that."

down opposite; the violoncello lying snugly on the He had placed a chair for her by this time, and sat

sofa between them.

"You will not be surprised at my coming alone, or at John's not having told you I was coming," said Harriet; "and you will believe that, when I tell you why I have come. May I do so now?"

"You can do nothing better."
"You were not busy?"

He pointed to the violoncello lying on the sofa, and said, "I have been all day. Here's my witness. I have been confiding all my cares to it. I wish I had none but my own to tell."

"Is the House at an end?" said Harriet, earnestly. "Completely at an end."

แ

"Will it never be resumed?”
"Never."

The bright expression of her face was not overshadowed as her lips silently repeated the word. He seemed to observe this with some little involuntary surprise, and said again:

"Never. You remember what I told you. It has been, all along, impossible to convince him; impossi ble to reason with him; sometimes, impossible even to approach him. The worst has happened; and the House has fallen, never to be built up any

more."

"And Mr. Dombey, is he personally ruined?" "Ruined."

Mr. Morfin the hazel-eyed bachelor, with the hair and whiskers sprinkled with gray, was perhaps the only person within the atmosphere of the house-its "Will he have no private fortune left? Nothing?" head, of course, excepted-who was heartily and A certain eagerness in her voice, and something deeply affected by the disaster that had befallen it. that was almost joyful in her look, seemed to surHe had treated Mr. Dombey with due respect and de-prise him more and more; to disappoint him too, and ference through many years, but he had never dis-jar discordantly against his own emotions. He drum