Throughout she had spoken in a low plain voice, that neither rose nor fell; ceasing, she dropped the hand with which she had enforced herself to be so passionless and distinct, but not the eyes with which she had so steadily observed him.
‘Madam,’ said Mr Dombey, with his utmost dignity, ‘I cannot entertain any proposal of this extraordinary nature.’
She looked at him yet, without the least change.
‘I cannot,’ said Mr Dombey, rising as he spoke, ‘consent to temporise or treat with you, Mrs Dombey, upon a subject as to which you are in possession of my opinions and expectations. I have stated my ultimatum, Madam, and have only to request your very serious attention to it.’
To see the face change to its old expression, deepened in intensity! To see the eyes droop as from some mean and odious object! To see the lighting of the haughty brow! To see scorn, anger, indignation, and abhorrence starting into sight, and the pale blank earnestness vanish like a mist! He could not choose but look, although he looked to his dismay.
‘Go, Sir!’ she said, pointing with an imperious hand towards the door. ‘Our first and last confidence is at an end. Nothing can make us stranger to each other than we are henceforth.’
‘I shall take my rightful course, Madam,’ said Mr Dombey, ‘undeterred, you may be sure, by any general declamation.’
She turned her back upon him, and, without reply, sat down before her glass.
‘I place my reliance on your improved sense of duty, and more correct feeling, and better reflection, Madam,’ said Mr Dombey.
She answered not one word. He saw no more expression of any heed of him, in the mirror, than if he had been an unseen spider on the wall, or beetle on the floor, or rather, than if he had been the one or other, seen and crushed when she last turned from him, and forgotten among the ignominious and dead vermin of the ground.
He looked back, as he went out at the door, upon the well-lighted and luxurious room, the beautiful and glittering objects everywhere displayed, the shape of Edith in its rich dress seated before her glass, and the face of Edith as the glass presented it to him; and betook himself to his old chamber of cogitation, carrying away with him a vivid picture in his mind of all these things, and a rambling and unaccountable speculation (such as sometimes comes into a man’s head) how they would all look when he saw them next.
For the rest, Mr Dombey was very taciturn, and very dignified, and very confident of carrying out his purpose; and remained so.
He did not design accompanying the family to Brighton; but he graciously informed Cleopatra at breakfast, on the morning of departure, which arrived a day or two afterwards, that he might be expected down, soon. There was no time to be lost in getting Cleopatra to any place recommended as being salutary; for, indeed, she seemed upon the wane, and turning of the earth, earthy.
Without having undergone any decided second attack of her malady, the old woman seemed to have crawled backward in her recovery from the first. She was more lean and shrunken, more uncertain in her imbecility, and made stranger confusions in her mind and memory. Among other symptoms of this last affliction, she fell into the habit of confounding the names of her two sons-in-law, the living and the deceased; and in general called Mr Dombey, either ‘Grangeby,’ or ‘Domber,’ or indifferently, both.
But she was youthful, very youthful still; and in her youthfulness appeared at breakfast, before going away, in a new bonnet made express, and a travelling robe that was embroidered and braided like an old baby’s. It was not easy to put her into a fly-away bonnet now, or to keep the bonnet in its place on the back of her poor nodding head, when it was got on. In this instance, it had not only the extraneous effect of being always on one side, but of being perpetually tapped on the crown by Flowers the maid, who attended in the background during breakfast to perform that duty.
‘Now, my dearest Grangeby,’ said Mrs Skewton, ‘you must posively prom,’ she cut some of her words short, and cut out others altogether, ‘come down very soon.’
‘I said just now, Madam,’ returned Mr Dombey, loudly and laboriously, ‘that I am coming in a day or two.’
‘Bless you, Domber!’
Here the Major, who was come to take leave of the ladies, and who was staring through his apoplectic eyes at Mrs Skewton’s face with the disinterested composure of an immortal being, said:
‘Begad, Ma’am, you don’t ask old Joe to come!’
‘Sterious wretch, who’s he?’ lisped Cleopatra. But a tap on the bonnet from Flowers seeming to jog her memory, she added, ‘Oh! You mean yourself, you naughty creature!’
‘Devilish queer, Sir,’ whispered the Major to Mr Dombey. ‘Bad case. Never did wrap up enough;’ the Major being buttoned to the chin. ‘Why who should J. B. mean by Joe, but old Joe Bagstock – Joseph – your slave – Joe, Ma’am? Here! Here’s the man! Here are the Bagstock bellows, Ma’am!’ cried the Major, striking himself a sounding blow on the chest.
‘My dearest Edith – Grangeby – it’s most trordinry thing,’ said Cleopatra, pettishly, ‘that Major – ’
‘Bagstock! J. B.!’ cried the Major, seeing that she faltered for his name.
‘Well, it don’t matter,’ said Cleopatra. ‘Edith, my love, you know I never could remember names – what was it? oh! – most trordinry thing that so many people want to come down to see me. I’m not going for long. I’m coming back. Surely they can wait, till I come back!’
Cleopatra looked all round the table as she said it, and appeared very uneasy.
‘I won’t have visitors – really don’t want visitors,’ she said; ‘little repose – and all that sort of thing – is what I quire. No odious brutes must proach me till I’ve shaken off this numbness;’ and in a grisly resumption of her coquettish ways, she made a dab at the Major with her fan, but overset Mr Dombey’s breakfast cup instead, which was in quite a different direction.
Then she called for Withers, and charged him to see particularly that word was left about some trivial alterations in her room, which must be all made before she came back, and which must be set about immediately, as there was no saying how soon she might come back; for she had a great many engagements, and all sorts of people to call upon. Withers received these directions with becoming deference, and gave his guarantee for their execution; but when he withdrew a pace or two behind her, it appeared as if he couldn’t help looking strangely at the Major, who couldn’t help looking strangely at Mr Dombey, who couldn’t help looking strangely at Cleopatra, who couldn’t help nodding her bonnet over one eye, and rattling her knife and fork upon her plate in using them, as if she were playing castanets.
Edith alone never lifted her eyes to any face at the table, and never seemed dismayed by anything her mother said or did. She listened to her disjointed talk, or at least, turned her head towards her when addressed; replied in a few low words when necessary; and sometimes stopped her when she was rambling, or brought her thoughts back with a monosyllable, to the point from which they had strayed. The mother, however unsteady in other things, was constant in this – that she was always observant of her. She would look at the beautiful face, in its marble stillness and severity, now with a kind of fearful admiration; now in a giggling foolish effort to move it to a smile; now with capricious tears and jealous shakings of her head, as imagining herself neglected by it; always with an attraction towards it, that never fluctuated like her other ideas, but had constant possession of her. From Edith she would sometimes look at Florence, and back again at Edith, in a manner that was wild enough; and sometimes she would try to look elsewhere, as if to escape from her daughter’s face; but back to it she seemed forced to come, although it never sought hers unless sought, or troubled her with one single glance.
The breakfast concluded, Mrs Skewton, affecting to lean girlishly upon the Major’s arm, but heavily supported on the other side by Flowers the maid, and propped up behind by Withers the page, was conducted to the carriage, which was to take her, Florence, and Edith to Brighton.
‘And is Joseph absolutely banished?’ said the Major, thrusting in his purple face over the steps. ‘Damme, Ma’am, is Cleopatra so hard-hearted as to forbid her faithful Antony Bagstock to approach the presence?’
‘Go along!’ said Cleopatra, ‘I can’t bear you. You shall see me when I come back, if you are very good.’
‘Tell Joseph, he may live in hope, Ma’am,’ said the Major; ‘or he’ll die in despair.’
Cleopatra shuddered, and leaned back. ‘Edith, my dear,’ she said. ‘Tell him – ’
‘What?’
‘Such dreadful words,’ said Cleopatra. ‘He uses such dreadful words!’
Edith signed to him to retire, gave the word to go on, and left the objectionable Major to Mr Dombey. To whom he returned, whistling.
‘I’ll tell you what, Sir,’ said the Major, with his hands behind him, and his legs very wide asunder, ‘a fair friend of ours has removed to Queer Street.’
‘What do you mean, Major?’ inquired Mr Dombey.
‘I mean to say, Dombey,’ returned the Major, ‘that you’ll soon be an orphan-in-law.’
Mr Dombey appeared to relish this waggish description of himself so very little, that the Major wound up with the horse’s cough, as an expression of gravity.
‘Damme, Sir,’ said the Major, ‘there is no use in disguising a fact. Joe is blunt, Sir. That’s his nature. If you take old Josh at all, you take him as you find him; and a devilish rusty, old rasper, of a close-toothed, J. B. file, you do find him. Dombey,’ said the Major, ‘your wife’s mother is on the move, Sir.’
‘I fear,’ returned Mr Dombey, with much philosophy, ‘that Mrs Skewton is shaken.’
‘Shaken, Dombey!’ said the Major. ‘Smashed!’
‘Change, however,’ pursued Mr Dombey, ‘and attention, may do much yet.’
‘Don’t believe it, Sir,’ returned the Major. ‘Damme, Sir, she never wrapped up enough. If a man don’t wrap up,’ said the Major, taking in another button of his buff waistcoat, ‘he has nothing to fall back upon. But some people will die. They will do it. Damme, they will. They’re obstinate. I tell you what, Dombey, it may not be ornamental; it may not be refined; it may be rough and tough; but a little of the genuine old English Bagstock stamina, Sir, would do all the good in the world to the human breed.’
After imparting this precious piece of information, the Major, who was certainly true-blue, whatever other endowments he may have had or wanted, coming within the ‘genuine old English’ classification, which has never been exactly ascertained, took his lobster-eyes and his apoplexy to the club, and choked there all day.
Cleopatra, at one time fretful, at another self-complacent, sometimes awake, sometimes asleep, and at all times juvenile, reached Brighton the same night, fell to pieces as usual, and was put away in bed; where a gloomy fancy might have pictured a more potent skeleton than the maid, who should have been one, watching at the rose-coloured curtains, which were carried down to shed their bloom upon her.
It was settled in high council of medical authority that she should take a carriage airing every day, and that it was important she should get out every day, and walk if she could. Edith was ready to attend her – always ready to attend her, with the same mechanical attention and immovable beauty – and they drove out alone; for Edith had an uneasiness in the presence of Florence, now that her mother was worse, and told Florence, with a kiss, that she would rather they two went alone.
Mrs Skewton, on one particular day, was in the irresolute, exacting, jealous temper that had developed itself on her recovery from her first attack. After sitting silent in the carriage watching Edith for some time, she took her hand and kissed it passionately. The hand was neither given nor withdrawn, but simply yielded to her raising of it, and being released, dropped down again, almost as if it were insensible. At this she began to whimper and moan, and say what a mother she had been, and how she was forgotten! This she continued to do at capricious intervals, even when they had alighted: when she herself was halting along with the joint support of Withers and a stick, and Edith was walking by her side, and the carriage slowly following at a little distance.
It was a bleak, lowering, windy day, and they were out upon the Downs with nothing but a bare sweep of land between them and the sky. The mother, with a querulous satisfaction in the monotony of her complaint, was still repeating it in a low voice from time to time, and the proud form of her daughter moved beside her slowly, when there came advancing over a dark ridge before them, two other figures, which in the distance, were so like an exaggerated imitation of their own, that Edith stopped.
Almost as she stopped, the two figures stopped; and that one which to Edith’s thinking was like a distorted shadow of her mother, spoke to the other, earnestly, and with a pointing hand towards them. That one seemed inclined to turn back, but the other, in which Edith recognised enough that was like herself to strike her with an unusual feeling, not quite free from fear, came on; and then they came on together.
The greater part of this observation, she made while walking towards them, for her stoppage had been momentary. Nearer observation showed her that they were poorly dressed, as wanderers about the country; that the younger woman carried knitted work or some such goods for sale; and that the old one toiled on empty-handed.
And yet, however far removed she was in dress, in dignity, in beauty, Edith could not but compare the younger woman with herself, still. It may have been that she saw upon her face some traces which she knew were lingering in her own soul, if not yet written on that index; but, as the woman came on, returning her gaze, fixing her shining eyes upon her, undoubtedly presenting something of her own air and stature, and appearing to reciprocate her own thoughts, she felt a chill creep over her, as if the day were darkening, and the wind were colder.
They had now come up. The old woman, holding out her hand importunately, stopped to beg of Mrs Skewton. The younger one stopped too, and she and Edith looked in one another’s eyes.
‘What is it that you have to sell?’ said Edith.
‘Only this,’ returned the woman, holding out her wares, without looking at them. ‘I sold myself long ago.’
‘My Lady, don’t believe her,’ croaked the old woman to Mrs Skewton; ‘don’t believe what she says. She loves to talk like that. She’s my handsome and undutiful daughter. She gives me nothing but reproaches, my Lady, for all I have done for her. Look at her now, my Lady, how she turns upon her poor old mother with her looks.’
As Mrs Skewton drew her purse out with a trembling hand, and eagerly fumbled for some money, which the other old woman greedily watched for – their heads all but touching, in their hurry and decrepitude – Edith interposed:
‘I have seen you,’ addressing the old woman, ‘before.’
‘Yes, my Lady,’ with a curtsey. ‘Down in Warwickshire. The morning among the trees. When you wouldn’t give me nothing. But the gentleman, he give me something! Oh, bless him, bless him!’ mumbled the old woman, holding up her skinny hand, and grinning frightfully at her daughter.
‘It’s of no use attempting to stay me, Edith!’ said Mrs Skewton, angrily anticipating an objection from her. ‘You know nothing about it. I won’t be dissuaded. I am sure this is an excellent woman, and a good mother.’
‘Yes, my Lady, yes,’ chattered the old woman, holding out her avaricious hand. ‘Thankee, my Lady. Lord bless you, my Lady. Sixpence more, my pretty Lady, as a good mother yourself.’
‘And treated undutifully enough, too, my good old creature, sometimes, I assure you,’ said Mrs Skewton, whimpering. ‘There! Shake hands with me. You’re a very good old creature – full of what’s-his-name – and all that. You’re all affection and et cetera, ain’t you?’
‘Oh, yes, my Lady!’
‘Yes, I’m sure you are; and so’s that gentlemanly creature Grangeby. I must really shake hands with you again. And now you can go, you know; and I hope,’ addressing the daughter, ‘that you’ll show more gratitude, and natural what’s-its-name, and all the rest of it – but I never remember names – for there never was a better mother than the good old creature’s been to you. Come, Edith!’
As the ruin of Cleopatra tottered off whimpering, and wiping its eyes with a gingerly remembrance of rouge in their neighbourhood, the old woman hobbled another way, mumbling and counting her money. Not one word more, nor one other gesture, had been exchanged between Edith and the younger woman, but neither had removed her eyes from the other for a moment. They had remained confronted until now, when Edith, as awakening from a dream, passed slowly on.
‘You’re a handsome woman,’ muttered her shadow, looking after her; ‘but good looks won’t save us. And you’re a proud woman; but pride won’t save us. We had need to know each other when we meet again!’
CHAPTER 41. New Voices in the Waves
All is going on as it was wont. The waves are hoarse with repetition of their mystery; the dust lies piled upon the shore; the sea-birds soar and hover; the winds and clouds go forth upon their trackless flight; the white arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away.
With a tender melancholy pleasure, Florence finds herself again on the old ground so sadly trodden, yet so happily, and thinks of him in the quiet place, where he and she have many and many a time conversed together, with the water welling up about his couch. And now, as she sits pensive there, she hears in the wild low murmur of the sea, his little story told again, his very words repeated; and finds that all her life and hopes, and griefs, since – in the solitary house, and in the pageant it has changed to – have a portion in the burden of the marvellous song.
And gentle Mr Toots, who wanders at a distance, looking wistfully towards the figure that he dotes upon, and has followed there, but cannot in his delicacy disturb at such a time, likewise hears the requiem of little Dombey on the waters, rising and falling in the lulls of their eternal madrigal in praise of Florence. Yes! and he faintly understands, poor Mr Toots, that they are saying something of a time when he was sensible of being brighter and not addle-brained; and the tears rising in his eyes when he fears that he is dull and stupid now, and good for little but to be laughed at, diminish his satisfaction in their soothing reminder that he is relieved from present responsibility to the Chicken, by the absence of that game head of poultry in the country, training (at Toots’s cost) for his great mill with the Larkey Boy.
But Mr Toots takes courage, when they whisper a kind thought to him; and by slow degrees and with many indecisive stoppages on the way, approaches Florence. Stammering and blushing, Mr Toots affects amazement when he comes near her, and says (having followed close on the carriage in which she travelled, every inch of the way from London, loving even to be choked by the dust of its wheels) that he never was so surprised in all his life.
‘And you’ve brought Diogenes, too, Miss Dombey!’ says Mr Toots, thrilled through and through by the touch of the small hand so pleasantly and frankly given him.
No doubt Diogenes is there, and no doubt Mr Toots has reason to observe him, for he comes straightway at Mr Toots’s legs, and tumbles over himself in the desperation with which he makes at him, like a very dog of Montargis. But he is checked by his sweet mistress.
‘Down, Di, down. Don’t you remember who first made us friends, Di? For shame!’
Oh! Well may Di lay his loving cheek against her hand, and run off, and run back, and run round her, barking, and run headlong at anybody coming by, to show his devotion. Mr Toots would run headlong at anybody, too. A military gentleman goes past, and Mr Toots would like nothing better than to run at him, full tilt.
‘Diogenes is quite in his native air, isn’t he, Miss Dombey?’ says Mr Toots.
Florence assents, with a grateful smile.
‘Miss Dombey,’ says Mr Toots, ‘beg your pardon, but if you would like to walk to Blimber’s, I – I’m going there.’
Florence puts her arm in that of Mr Toots without a word, and they walk away together, with Diogenes going on before. Mr Toots’s legs shake under him; and though he is splendidly dressed, he feels misfits, and sees wrinkles, in the masterpieces of Burgess and Co., and wishes he had put on that brightest pair of boots.
Doctor Blimber’s house, outside, has as scholastic and studious an air as ever; and up there is the window where she used to look for the pale face, and where the pale face brightened when it saw her, and the wasted little hand waved kisses as she passed. The door is opened by the same weak-eyed young man, whose imbecility of grin at sight of Mr Toots is feebleness of character personified. They are shown into the Doctor’s study, where blind Homer and Minerva give them audience as of yore, to the sober ticking of the great clock in the hall; and where the globes stand still in their accustomed places, as if the world were stationary too, and nothing in it ever perished in obedience to the universal law, that, while it keeps it on the roll, calls everything to earth.
And here is Doctor Blimber, with his learned legs; and here is Mrs Blimber, with her sky-blue cap; and here Cornelia, with her sandy little row of curls, and her bright spectacles, still working like a sexton in the graves of languages. Here is the table upon which he sat forlorn and strange, the ‘new boy’ of the school; and hither comes the distant cooing of the old boys, at their old lives in the old room on the old principle!
‘Toots,’ says Doctor Blimber, ‘I am very glad to see you, Toots.’
Mr Toots chuckles in reply.
‘Also to see you, Toots, in such good company,’ says Doctor Blimber.
Mr Toots, with a scarlet visage, explains that he has met Miss Dombey by accident, and that Miss Dombey wishing, like himself, to see the old place, they have come together.
‘You will like,’ says Doctor Blimber, ‘to step among our young friends, Miss Dombey, no doubt. All fellow-students of yours, Toots, once. I think we have no new disciples in our little portico, my dear,’ says Doctor Blimber to Cornelia, ‘since Mr Toots left us.’
‘Except Bitherstone,’ returns Cornelia.
‘Ay, truly,’ says the Doctor. ‘Bitherstone is new to Mr Toots.’
New to Florence, too, almost; for, in the schoolroom, Bitherstone – no longer Master Bitherstone of Mrs Pipchin’s – shows in collars and a neckcloth, and wears a watch. But Bitherstone, born beneath some Bengal star of ill-omen, is extremely inky; and his Lexicon has got so dropsical from constant reference, that it won’t shut, and yawns as if it really could not bear to be so bothered. So does Bitherstone its master, forced at Doctor Blimber’s highest pressure; but in the yawn of Bitherstone there is malice and snarl, and he has been heard to say that he wishes he could catch ‘old Blimber’ in India. He’d precious soon find himself carried up the country by a few of his (Bitherstone’s) Coolies, and handed over to the Thugs; he can tell him that.
Briggs is still grinding in the mill of knowledge; and Tozer, too; and Johnson, too; and all the rest; the older pupils being principally engaged in forgetting, with prodigious labour, everything they knew when they were younger. All are as polite and as pale as ever; and among them, Mr Feeder, B.A., with his bony hand and bristly head, is still hard at it; with his Herodotus stop on just at present, and his other barrels on a shelf behind him.
A mighty sensation is created, even among these grave young gentlemen, by a visit from the emancipated Toots; who is regarded with a kind of awe, as one who has passed the Rubicon, and is pledged never to come back, and concerning the cut of whose clothes, and fashion of whose jewellery, whispers go about, behind hands; the bilious Bitherstone, who is not of Mr Toots’s time, affecting to despise the latter to the smaller boys, and saying he knows better, and that he should like to see him coming that sort of thing in Bengal, where his mother had got an emerald belonging to him that was taken out of the footstool of a Rajah. Come now!
Bewildering emotions are awakened also by the sight of Florence, with whom every young gentleman immediately falls in love, again; except, as aforesaid, the bilious Bitherstone, who declines to do so, out of contradiction. Black jealousies of Mr Toots arise, and Briggs is of opinion that he ain’t so very old after all. But this disparaging insinuation is speedily made nought by Mr Toots saying aloud to Mr Feeder, B.A., ‘How are you, Feeder?’ and asking him to come and dine with him to-day at the Bedford; in right of which feats he might set up as Old Parr, if he chose, unquestioned.
There is much shaking of hands, and much bowing, and a great desire on the part of each young gentleman to take Toots down in Miss Dombey’s good graces; and then, Mr Toots having bestowed a chuckle on his old desk, Florence and he withdraw with Mrs Blimber and Cornelia; and Doctor Blimber is heard to observe behind them as he comes out last, and shuts the door, ‘Gentlemen, we will now resume our studies,’ For that and little else is what the Doctor hears the sea say, or has heard it saying all his life.
Florence then steals away and goes upstairs to the old bedroom with Mrs Blimber and Cornelia; Mr Toots, who feels that neither he nor anybody else is wanted there, stands talking to the Doctor at the study-door, or rather hearing the Doctor talk to him, and wondering how he ever thought the study a great sanctuary, and the Doctor, with his round turned legs, like a clerical pianoforte, an awful man. Florence soon comes down and takes leave; Mr Toots takes leave; and Diogenes, who has been worrying the weak-eyed young man pitilessly all the time, shoots out at the door, and barks a glad defiance down the cliff; while Melia, and another of the Doctor’s female domestics, looks out of an upper window, laughing ‘at that there Toots,’ and saying of Miss Dombey, ‘But really though, now – ain’t she like her brother, only prettier?’
Mr Toots, who saw when Florence came down that there were tears upon her face, is desperately anxious and uneasy, and at first fears that he did wrong in proposing the visit. But he is soon relieved by her saying she is very glad to have been there again, and by her talking quite cheerfully about it all, as they walked on by the sea. What with the voices there, and her sweet voice, when they come near Mr Dombey’s house, and Mr Toots must leave her, he is so enslaved that he has not a scrap of free-will left; when she gives him her hand at parting, he cannot let it go.
‘Miss Dombey, I beg your pardon,’ says Mr Toots, in a sad fluster, ‘but if you would allow me to – to – ’
The smiling and unconscious look of Florence brings him to a dead stop.
‘If you would allow me to – if you would not consider it a liberty, Miss Dombey, if I was to – without any encouragement at all, if I was to hope, you know,’ says Mr Toots.
Florence looks at him inquiringly.
‘Miss Dombey,’ says Mr Toots, who feels that he is in for it now, ‘I really am in that state of adoration of you that I don’t know what to do with myself. I am the most deplorable wretch. If it wasn’t at the corner of the Square at present, I should go down on my knees, and beg and entreat of you, without any encouragement at all, just to let me hope that I may – may think it possible that you – ’
‘Oh, if you please, don’t!’ cries Florence, for the moment quite alarmed and distressed. ‘Oh, pray don’t, Mr Toots. Stop, if you please. Don’t say any more. As a kindness and a favour to me, don’t.’
Mr Toots is dreadfully abashed, and his mouth opens.
‘You have been so good to me,’ says Florence, ‘I am so grateful to you, I have such reason to like you for being a kind friend to me, and I do like you so much;’ and here the ingenuous face smiles upon him with the pleasantest look of honesty in the world; ‘that I am sure you are only going to say good-bye!’
‘Certainly, Miss Dombey,’ says Mr Toots, ‘I – I – that’s exactly what I mean. It’s of no consequence.’
‘Good-bye!’ cries Florence.
‘Good-bye, Miss Dombey!’ stammers Mr Toots. ‘I hope you won’t think anything about it. It’s – it’s of no consequence, thank you. It’s not of the least consequence in the world.’
Poor Mr Toots goes home to his hotel in a state of desperation, locks himself into his bedroom, flings himself upon his bed, and lies there for a long time; as if it were of the greatest consequence, nevertheless. But Mr Feeder, B.A., is coming to dinner, which happens well for Mr Toots, or there is no knowing when he might get up again. Mr Toots is obliged to get up to receive him, and to give him hospitable entertainment.
And the generous influence of that social virtue, hospitality (to make no mention of wine and good cheer), opens Mr Toots’s heart, and warms him to conversation. He does not tell Mr Feeder, B.A., what passed at the corner of the Square; but when Mr Feeder asks him ‘When it is to come off?’ Mr Toots replies, ‘that there are certain subjects’ – which brings Mr Feeder down a peg or two immediately. Mr Toots adds, that he don’t know what right Blimber had to notice his being in Miss Dombey’s company, and that if he thought he meant impudence by it, he’d have him out, Doctor or no Doctor; but he supposes its only his ignorance. Mr Feeder says he has no doubt of it.
Mr Feeder, however, as an intimate friend, is not excluded from the subject. Mr Toots merely requires that it should be mentioned mysteriously, and with feeling. After a few glasses of wine, he gives Miss Dombey’s health, observing, ‘Feeder, you have no idea of the sentiments with which I propose that toast.’ Mr Feeder replies, ‘Oh, yes, I have, my dear Toots; and greatly they redound to your honour, old boy.’ Mr Feeder is then agitated by friendship, and shakes hands; and says, if ever Toots wants a brother, he knows where to find him, either by post or parcel. Mr Feeder like-wise says, that if he may advise, he would recommend Mr Toots to learn the guitar, or, at least the flute; for women like music, when you are paying your addresses to ‘em, and he has found the advantage of it himself.