DOMBEY AND SON. great, and yet as natural in its development, when But no such day had ever dawned on Mr. Dombey Through six months that ensued upon his accident, they held the same relations one toward the other. A marble rock could not have stood more obdurately in his way than she; and no chilled spring, lying uncheered by any ray of light in the depths of a deep cave, could be more sullen or more cold than he. The hope that had fluttered within her when the promise of her new home dawned was quite gone from the heart of Florence now. nearly two years old; and even the patient trust That home was that was in her could not survive the daily blight of such experience. If she had any lingering fancy in the nature of hope left, that Edith and her father might be happier together in some distant time, she had none, now, that her father would ever love her. The little interval in which she had imagined that she saw some small relenting in him, was forgotten in the long remembrance of his coldness since and before, or only remembered as a sorrowful delusion. Florence loved him still, but by degrees had come to love him rather as some dear one who had been, or who might have been, than as the hard reality before her eyes. Something of the softened sadness with which she loved the memory of little Paul, or of her mother, seemed to enter now into her thoughts of him, and to make them, as it were, a dear remembrance. Whether it was that he was dead to her, and that partly for this reason, partly for his share in those old objects of her affection, and partly for the long association of him with hopes that were withered and tenderness he had frozen, she could not have told; but the father whom she loved began to be a vague and dreamy idea to her; hardly more substantially connected with her real life, than the image she would sometimes conjure up, of her dear brother yet alive, and growing to be a man, who would protect and cherish her. The change, if it may be called one, had stolen on her like the change from childhood to womanhood, and had come with it. Florence was almost seventeen, when, in her lonely musings, she was conscious of these thoughts. She was often alone now, for the old association between her and her mamma was greatly changed. At the time of her father's accident, and when he was lying in his room down stairs, Florence had first observed that Edith avoided her. Wounded and shocked, and yet unable to reconcile this with her affection when they did meet, she sought her in her own room at night, once more. "Mamma," said Florence, stealing softly to her side, "have I offended you?" Edith answered "No." "I must have done something," said Florence. "Tell me what it is. ner to me, dear mamma. I can not say how instantYou have changed your manly I feel the least change, for I love you with my whole heart." "As I do you," said Edith. "Ah, Florence, believe me never more than now!" "Why do you go away from me so often, and keep away?" asked Florence. "And why do you sometimes look so strangely on me, dear mamma? You do so, do you not?” 66 "Tell Edith signified assent with her dark eyes. "Why?" returned Florence, imploringly. me why, that I may know how to please you better; and tell me this shall not be so any more." "My Florence," answered Edith, taking the hand that embraced her neck, and looking into the eyes that looked into hers so lovingly, as Florence knelt upon the ground before her, "why it is, I can not tell you. It is neither for me to say, nor you to hear; but that it is, and that it must be, I know. Should I do it if I did not ?" "Are we to be estranged, mamma?" asked Florence, gazing at her like one frightened. Edith's silent lips formed "Yes." Florence looked at her with increasing fear and blinding tears that ran down her face. wonder, until she could see her no more through the en to me. "Florence! my life!" said Edith, hurriedly, "listI can not bear to see this grief. calmer. You see that I am composed, and is it nothBe ing to me?" She resumed her steady voice and manner as she said the latter words, and added presently: in appearance, Florence, for in my own breast I am "to "Is it for me, mamma ?" asked Florence. "It is enough," said Edith, after a pause, know what it is; why, matters little. Dear Florence, it is better-it is necessary-it must be-that our association should be less frequent. The confidence there has been between us must be broken off." "When?" cried Florence. "Oh, mamma, when?” "Now," said Edith. "For all time to come?" asked Florence. "I do not say that," answered Edith. know that. Nor will I say that companionship be"I do not tween us is, at the best, an ill-assorted and unholy union, of which I might have known no good could My way here has been through paths that you will never tread, and my way henceforth may lie-God knows-I do not see it-" come. Her voice died away into silence; and she sat looking at Florence, and almost shrinking from her, pride and rage succeeded, sweeping over her form with the same strange dread and wild avoidance that Florence had noticed once before. The same dark and features like an angry chord across the strings of a wild harp. But no softness or humility ensued on that. She did not lay her head down now and weep, and say that she had no hope but in FlorShe held it up as if she were a beautiful Medusa, looking on him, face to face, to strike him dead. Yes, and she would have done it, if she had had the charm. ence. 66 change in you, in more than what you say to me, EDITH WITHDRAWS HERSELF FROM FLORENCE. what I am when I seem fickle or capricious to you, I am not of my own will, or for myself. Believe, though we are stranger to each other than we have been, that I am unchanged to you within. Forgive me for having ever darkened your dark home-I am a shadow on it, I know well-and let us never speak of this again." "Mamma," sobbed Florence, "we are not to part?" "We do this that we may not part," said Edith. "Ask no more. Go, Florence! My love and my re morse go with you!" She embraced her, and dismissed her; and as Florence passed out of her room, Edith looked on the retiring figure, as if her good angel went out in that form, and left her to the haughty and indignant passions that now claimed her for their own, and set their seal upon her brow. From that hour, Florence and she were, as they had been, no more. For days together they would seldom meet, except at table, and when Mr. Dombey was present. Then Edith, imperious, inflexible, and silent, never looked at her. Whenever Mr. Carker was of the party, as he often was, during the progress of Mr. Dombey's recovery, and afterward, Edith held herself more removed from her, and was more distant toward her, than at other times. Yet she and Florence never encountered, when there was no one by, but she would embrace her as affectionately as of old, though not with the same relenting of her proud aspect; and often, when she had been out late, she would steal up to Florence's room, as she had been used to do, in the dark, and whisper "Good-night" on her pillow. When unconscious, in her slumber, of such visits, Florence would sometimes awake, as from a dream of those words, softly spoken, and would seem to feel the touch of lips upon her face. But less and less often as the months went on. And now the void in Florence's own heart began again, indeed, to make a solitude around her. As the image of the father whom she loved had insensibly become a mere abstraction, so Edith, following the fate of all the rest about whom her affections had entwined themselves, was fleeting, fading, growing paler in the distance, every day. Little by little, she receded from Florence, like the retiring ghost of what she had been; little by little, the chasm between them widened and seemed deeper; little by little, all the power of earnestness and tenderness she had shown was frozen up in the bold, angry hardihood with which she stood, upon the brink of a deep precipice unseen by Florence, daring to look down. There was but one consideration to set against the heavy loss of Edith, and though it was slight comfort to her burdened heart, she tried to think it some relief. No longer divided between her affection and duty to the two, Florence could love both and do no injustice to either. As shadows of her fond imagination, she could give them equal place in her own bosom, and wrong them with no doubts. So she tried to do. At times, and often too, wondering speculations on the cause of this change in Edith would obtrude themselves upon her mind and frighten her; but in the calm of its abandonment once more to silent grief and loneliness, it was not a curious mind. Florence had only to remember that 265 her star of promise was clouded in the general gloom that hung upon the house, and to weep and be resigned. Thus living, in a dream wherein the overflowing love of her young heart expended itself on airy forms, and in a real world where she had experienced little but the rolling back of that strong tide upon itself, Florence grew to be seventeen. Timid and retiring as her solitary life had made her, it had not imbittered her sweet temper, nor her earnest nature. A child in innocent simplicity; a woman in her modest self-reliance, and her deep intensity of feeling; both child and woman seemed at once expressed in her fair face and fragile delicacy of shape, and gracefully to mingle there;-as if the spring should be unwilling to depart when summer came, and sought to blend the earlier beauties of the flowers with their bloom. But in her thrilling voice, in her calm eyes, sometimes in a strange ethereal light that seemed to rest upon her head, and always in a certain pensive air upon her beauty, there was an expression such as had been seen in the dead boy; and the council in the Servants' Hall whispered so among themselves, and shook their heads, and ate and drank the more, in a closer bond of good-fellowship. This observant body had plenty to say of Mr. and Mrs. Dombey, and of Mr. Carker, who appeared to be a mediator between them, and who came and went as if he were trying to make peace, but never could. They all deplored the uncomfortable state of affairs, and all agreed that Mrs. Pipchin (whose unpopularity was not to be surpassed) had some hand in it; but, upon the whole, it was agreeable to have so good a subject for a rallying-point, and they made a great deal of it, and enjoyed themselves very much. The general visitors who came to the house, and those among whom Mr. and Mrs. Dombey visited, thought it a pretty equal match, as to haughtiness, at all events, and thought nothing more about it. The young lady with the back did not appear for some time after Mrs. Skewton's death; observing to some particular friends, with her usual engaging little scream, that she couldn't separate the family from a notion of tombstones, and horrors of that sort; but when she did come, she saw nothing wrong, except Mr. Dombey's wearing a bunch of gold seals to his watch, which shocked her very much, as an exploded superstition. This youthful fascinator considered a daughter-in-law objectionable in principle; otherwise, she had nothing to say against Florence, but that she sadly wanted "style"—which might mean back, perhaps. Many, who only came to the house on state occasions, hardly knew who Florence was, and said, going home, "Indeed, was that Miss Dombey in the corner? Very pretty, but a little delicate and thoughtful in appearance!" None the less so, certainly, for her life of the last six months, Florence took her seat at the dinnertable, on the day before the second anniversary of her father's marriage to Edith (Mrs. Skewton had been lying stricken with paralysis when the first came round), with an uneasiness amounting to dread. She had no other warrant for it than the occasion, the expression of her father's face, in the hasty glance she caught of it, and the presence of Mr. Carker, which, always unpleasant to her, was more so on this day than she had ever felt it before. Edith was richly dressed, for she and Mr. Dombey were engaged in the evening to some large assembly, and the dinner-hour that day was late. She did not appear until they were seated at table, when Mr. Carker rose and led her to her chair. Beautiful and lustrous as she was, there was that in her face and air which seemed to separate her hopelessly from Florence, and from every one, for evermore, and yet, for an instant, Florence saw a beam of kindness in her eyes, when they were turned on her, that made the distance to which she had withdrawn herself a greater cause of sorrow and regret than ever. There was very little said at dinner. heard her father speak to Mr. Carker sometimes on business matters, and heard him softly reply, but she paid little attention to what they said, and only wished the dinner at an end. When the dessert was placed upon the table, and they were left alone, with no servant in attendance, Mr. Dombey, who had been several times clearing his throat in a manner that augured no good, said: Florence "Mrs. Dombey, you know, I suppose, that I have instructed the housekeeper that there will be some company to dinner here to-morrow." "I do not dine at home," she answered. "Not at a large party," pursued Mr. Dombey, with an indifferent assumption of not having heard her; "merely some twelve or fourteen. My sister, Major Bagstock, and some others whom you know but slightly." "I do not dine at home," she repeated. "However doubtful reason I may have, Mrs. Dombey," said Mr. Dombey, still going majestically on, as if she had not spoken, "to hold the occasion in very pleasant remembrance just now, there are appearances in these things which must be maintained before the world. If you have no respect for yourself, Mrs. Dombey-" "I have none," she said. "Madam," cried Mr. Dombey, striking his hand upon the table, "hear me, if you please. I say, if you have no respect for yourself " "And I say I have none," she answered. He looked at her; but the face she showed him in return would not have changed if death itself had looked. "Carker," said Mr. Dombey, turning more quietly to that gentleman, "as you have been my medium of communication with Mrs. Dombey on former occasions, and as I choose to preserve the decencies of life, so far as I am individually concerned, I will trouble you to have the goodness to inform Mrs. Dombey that if she has no respect for herself, I have some respect for myself, and therefore insist on my arrangements for to-morrow." "Tell your sovereign master, sir," said Edith, "that I will take leave to speak to him on this subject by-and-by, and that I will speak to him alone." "Mr. Carker, madam," said her husband, "being in possession of the reason which obliges me to refuse you that privilege, shall be absolved from the delivery of any such message." He saw her eyes move while he spoke, and followed them with his own. "Your daughter is present, sir," said Edith. "My daughter will remain present," said Mr. Dombey. Florence, who had risen, sat down again, hiding her face in her hands, and trembling. "My daughter, madam"-began Mr. Dombey. But Edith stopped him, in a voice which, although not raised in the least, was so clear, emphatic, and distinct, that it might have been heard in a whirlwind. "I tell you I will speak to you alone," she said. "If you are not mad, heed what I say." "I have authority to speak to you, madam," returned her husband, "when and where I please; and it is my pleasure to speak here and now." She rose up as if to leave the room; but sat down again, and looking at him with all outward composure, said, in the same voice: "You shall!" "I must tell you, first, that there is a threatening appearance in your manner, madam," said Mr. Dombey, "which does not become you." She laughed. The shaken diamonds in her hair started and trembled. There are fables of precious stones that would turn pale, their wearer being in danger. Had these been such, their imprisoned rays of light would have taken flight that moment, and they would have been as dull as lead. Carker listened, with his eyes cast down "As to my daughter, madam," said Mr. Dombey, resuming the thread of his discourse, "it is by no means inconsistent with her duty to me that she should know what conduct to avoid. At present you are a very strong example to her of this kind, and I hope she may profit by it." "I would not stop you now," returned his wife, immovable in eye, and voice, and attitude; "I would not rise and go away, and save you the utterance of one word, if the room were burning." Mr. Dombey moved his head, as if in a sarcastic acknowledgment of the attention, and resumed. But not with so much self-possession as before; for Edith's quick uneasiness in reference to Florence, and Edith's indifference to him and his censure, chafed and galled him like a stiffening wound. "Mrs. Dombey," said he, " it may not be inconsistent with my daughter's improvement to know how very much to be lamented, and how necessary to be corrected, a stubborn disposition is, especially when it is indulged in-unthankfully indulged in, I will add-after the gratification of ambition and interest. Both of which, I believe, had some share in inducing you to occupy your present station at this board." "No! I would not rise and go away, and save you the utterance of one word," she repeated, exactly as before, "if the room were burning." "It may be natural enough, Mrs. Dombey," he pursued, "that you should be uneasy in the presence of any auditors of these disagreeable truths; though why" he could not hide his real feelings here, or keep his eyes from glancing gloomily at Florencewhy any one can give them greater force and point than myself, whom they so nearly concern, I do not pretend to understand. It may be natural enough 66 MR. DOMBEY'S GREATNESS NOT APPRECIATED. But that you should object to hear, in any body's presence, that there is a rebellious principle within you which you can not curb too soon; which you must curb, Mrs. Dombey; and which, I regret to say, I remember to have seen manifested-with some doubt and displeasure, on more than one occasion before our marriage-toward your deceased mother. you have the remedy in your own hands. I by no means forgot, when I began, that my daughter was present, Mrs. Dombey. I beg you will not forget, tomorrow, that there are several persons present; and that, with some regard to appearances, you will receive your company in a becoming manner." "So it is not enough," said Edith," that you know what has passed between yourself and me; it is not enough that you can look here," pointing at Carker, who still listened, with his eyes cast down, "and be reminded of the affronts you have put upon me; it is not enough that you can look here," pointing to Florence with a hand that slightly trembled for the first and only time, "and think of what you have done, and of the ingenious agony, daily, hourly, constant, you have made me feel in doing it; it is not enough that this day, of all others in the year, is memorable to me for a struggle (well deserved, but not conceivable by such as you) in which I wish I had died! You add to all this, do you, the last crowning meanness of making her a witness of the depth to which I have fallen; when you know that you have made me sacrifice to her peace the only gentle feeling and interest of my life, when you know that for her sake I would now, if I could-but I can not, my soul recoils from you too much-submit myself wholly to your will and be the meekest vassal that you have!" This was not the way to minister to Mr. Dombey's greatness. The old feeling was roused by what she said, into a stronger and fiercer existence than it had ever had. Again, his neglected child, at this rough passage of his life, put forth by even this rebellious woman, as powerful where he was powerless, and every thing where he was nothing! He turned on Florence, as if it were she who had spoken, and bade her leave the room. Florence, with her covered face, obeyed, trembling and weeping as she went. "I understand, madam," said Mr. Dombey, with an angry flush of triumph, "the spirit of opposition that turned your affections in that channel, but they have been met, Mrs. Dombey; they have been met, and turned back!" 66 "The worse for you!" she answered, with her voice and manner still unchanged. Ay!" for he turned sharply when she said so, "what is the worse for me, is twenty million times the worse for you. Heed that, if you heed nothing else." The arch of diamonds spanning her dark hair flashed and glittered like a starry bridge. There was no warning in them, or they would have turned as dull and dim as tarnished honor. Carker still sat and listened, with his eyes cast down. "Mrs. Dombey," said Mr. Dombey, resuming as much as he could of his arrogant composure, “you will not conciliate me, or turn me from any purpose, by this course of conduct." "It is the only true, although it is a faint expres 267 sion of what is within me," she replied. "Brt if I thought it would conciliate you, I would repress it, if it were repressible by any human effort. do nothing that you ask." I will "I am not accustomed to ask, Mrs. Dombey," he observed; "I direct." "I will hold no place in your house to-morrow, or on any recurrence of to-morrow. I will be exhibited to no one, as the refractory slave you purchased, such a time. If I kept my marriage-day, I would keep it as a day of shame. Self-respect! appearances before the world! what are these to me? You have done all you can to make them nothing to me, and they are nothing." 66 Carker," said Mr. Dombey, speaking with knitted brows, and after a moment's consideration, "Mrs. Dombey is so forgetful of herself and me in all this, and places me in a position so unsuited to my character, that I must bring this state of matters to a close." "Release me, then," said Edith, immovable in voice, in look, and bearing, as she had been throughout, from the chain by which I am bound. Let me go." "Madam ?" exclaimed Mr. Dombey. "Madam ?" he repeated, "Mrs. Dombey?" "Tell him," said Edith, addressing her proud face to Carker, "that I wish for a separation between us. That there had better be one. That I recommend it to him. Tell him it may take place on his own terms-his wealth is nothing to me-but that it can not be too soon." "Good Heaven, Mrs. Dombey!" said her husband, with supreme amazement, "do you imagine it possible that I could ever listen to such a proposition? Do you know who I am, madam? Do you know what I represent? Did you ever hear of Dombey and Son? People to say that Mr. Dombey - Mr. Dombey!-was separated from his wife! Common people to talk of Mr. Dombey and his domestic affairs! Do you seriously think, Mrs. Dombey, that I would permit my name to be handed about in such connection? Pooh, pooh, madam! Fie for shame! You're absurd." Mr. Dombey absolutely laughed. But not as she did. She had better have been dead than laugh as she did, in reply, with her intent look fixed upon him. He had better have been dead, than sitting there, in his magnificence, to hear her. "No, Mrs. Dombey," he resumed, "no, madam. There is no possibility of separation between you and me, and therefore I the more advise you to be awakened to a sense of duty. And, Carker, as I was about to say to you-" Mr. Carker, who had sat and listened all this time, now raised his eyes, in which there was a bright unusual light. "As I was about to say to you," resumed Mr. Dombey, "I must beg yon, now that matters have come to this, to inform Mrs. Dombey that it is not the rule of my life to allow myself to be thwarted by any body --any body, Carker-or to suffer any body to be paraded as a stronger motive for obedience in those who owe obedience to me than I am myself. The mention that has been made of my daughter, and the use that is made of my daughter, in opposition to me, DOMBEY AND SON. are unnatural. Whether my daughter is in actual concert with Mrs. Dombey, I do not know, and do not care; but after what Mrs. Dombey has said today, and my daughter has heard to-day, I beg you to make known to Mrs. Dombey that, if she continues to make this house the scene of contention it has become, I shall consider my daughter responsible in some degree, on that lady's own avowal, and shall visit her with my severe displeasure. Mrs. Dombey has asked whether it is not enough' that she had done this and that. You will please to answer no, it is not enough." "A moment!" cried Carker, interposing, "permit me! painful as my position is, at the best, and un compromises Miss Dombey every day (for I know how determined you are), will you not relieve her from a continual irritation of spirit, and a continual sacrificing Mrs. Dombey to the preservation of your sense of being unjust to another, almost intolerable? Does this not seem like-I do not say it ispre-eminent and unassailable position?" stood looking at her husband: now with an extraorAgain the light in his eyes fell upon her, as she dinary and awful smile upon her face. final, "you mistake your position in offering advice "Carker," returned Mr. Dombey, with a supercilious frown, and in a tone that was intended to be to me on such a point, and you mistake me (I am FROM EACH ARM SHE UNCLASPED A DIAMOND BRACELET. usually painful in seeming to entertain a different opinion from you," addressing Mr. Dombey, "I must ask, had you not better reconsider the question of a separation? I know how incompatible it appears with your high public position, and I know how determined you are when you give Mrs. Dombey to understand"-the light in his eyes fell upon her as he separated his words each from each, with the distinctness of so many bells-" that nothing but death can ever part you. Nothing else. But when you consider that Mrs. Dombey, by living in this house, and making it, as you have said, a scene of contention, not only as her part in that contention, but surprised to find) in the character of your advice. I have no more to say." "Perhaps," said Carker, with an unusual and indefinable taunt in his air, "you mistook my position, when you honored me with the negotiations in which I have been engaged here"-with a motion of hi hand toward Mrs. Dombey. haughtily. "You were employed-" "Being an inferior person, for the humiliation of Mrs. Dombey. I forgot. Oh yes, it was expressly understood!" said Carker. "I beg your pardon!" As he bent his head to Mr. Dombey, with an air |