Dombey And Son

Chapter 43

The Watches of the Night



Florence, long since awakened from her dream, mournfully observed
the estrangement between her father and Edith, and saw it widen more
and more, and knew that there was greater bitterness between them
every day. Each day's added knowledge deepened the shade upon her love
and hope, roused up the old sorrow that had slumbered for a little
time, and made it even heavier to bear than it had been before.

It had been hard - how hard may none but Florence ever know! - to
have the natural affection of a true and earnest nature turned to
agony; and slight, or stern repulse, substituted for the tenderest
protection and the dearest care. It had been hard to feel in her deep
heart what she had felt, and never know the happiness of one touch of
response. But it was much more hard to be compelled to doubt either
her father or Edith, so affectionate and dear to her, and to think of
her love for each of them, by turns, with fear, distrust, and wonder.

Yet Florence now began to do so; and the doing of it was a task
imposed upon her by the very purity of her soul, as one she could not
fly from. She saw her father cold and obdurate to Edith, as to her;
hard, inflexible, unyielding. Could it be, she asked herself with
starting tears, that her own dear mother had been made unhappy by such
treatment, and had pined away and died? Then she would think how proud
and stately Edith was to everyone but her, with what disdain she
treated him, how distantly she kept apart from him, and what she had
said on the night when they came home; and quickly it would come on
Florence, almost as a crime, that she loved one who was set in
opposition to her father, and that her father knowing of it, must
think of her in his solitary room as the unnatural child who added
this wrong to the old fault, so much wept for, of never having won his
fatherly affection from her birth. The next kind word from Edith, the
next kind glance, would shake these thoughts again, and make them seem
like black ingratitude; for who but she had cheered the drooping heart
of Florence, so lonely and so hurt, and been its best of comforters!
Thus, with her gentle nature yearning to them both, feeling for the
misery of both, and whispering doubts of her own duty to both,
Florence in her wider and expanded love, and by the side of Edith,
endured more than when she had hoarded up her undivided secret in the
mournful house, and her beautiful Mama had never dawned upon it.

One exquisite unhappiness that would have far outweighed this,
Florence was spared. She never had the least suspicion that Edith by
her tenderness for her widened the separation from her father, or gave
him new cause of dislike. If Florence had conceived the possIbility of
such an effect being wrought by such a cause, what grief she would
have felt, what sacrifice she would have tried to make, poor loving
girl, how fast and sure her quiet passage might have been beneath it
to the presence of that higher Father who does not reject his
children's love, or spurn their tried and broken hearts, Heaven knows!
But it was otherwise, and that was well.

No word was ever spoken between Florence and Edith now, on these
subjects. Edith had said there ought to be between them, in that wise,
a division and a silence like the grave itself: and Florence felt she
was right'

In this state of affairs her father was brought home, suffering and
disabled; and gloomily retired to his own rooms, where he was tended
by servants, not approached by Edith, and had no friend or companion
but Mr Carker, who withdrew near midnight.

'And nice company he is, Miss Floy,' said Susan Nipper. 'Oh, he's a
precious piece of goods! If ever he wants a character don't let him
come to me whatever he does, that's all I tell him.'

'Dear Susan,' urged Florence, 'don't!'

'Oh, it's very well to say "don't" Miss Floy,' returned the Nipper,
much exasperated; 'but raly begging your pardon we're coming to such
passes that it turns all the blood in a person's body into pins and
needles, with their pints all ways. Don't mistake me, Miss Floy, I
don't mean nothing again your ma-in-law who has always treated me as a
lady should though she is rather high I must say not that I have any
right to object to that particular, but when we come to Mrs Pipchinses
and having them put over us and keeping guard at your Pa's door like
crocodiles (only make us thankful that they lay no eggs!) we are a
growing too outrageous!'

'Papa thinks well of Mrs Pipchin, Susan,' returned Florence, 'and
has a right to choose his housekeeper, you know. Pray don't!'

'Well Miss Floy,' returned the Nipper, 'when you say don't, I never
do I hope but Mrs Pipchin acts like early gooseberries upon me Miss,
and nothing less.'

Susan was unusually emphatic and destitute of punctuation in her
discourse on this night, which was the night of Mr Dombey's being
brought home, because, having been sent downstairs by Florence to
inquire after him, she had been obliged to deliver her message to her
mortal enemy Mrs Pipchin; who, without carrying it in to Mr Dombey,
had taken upon herself to return what Miss Nipper called a huffish
answer, on her own responsibility. This, Susan Nipper construed into
presumption on the part of that exemplary sufferer by the Peruvian
mines, and a deed of disparagement upon her young lady, that was not
to be forgiven; and so far her emphatic state was special. But she had
been in a condition of greatly increased suspicion and distrust, ever
since the marriage; for, like most persons of her quality of mind, who
form a strong and sincere attachment to one in the different station
which Florence occupied, Susan was very jealous, and her jealousy
naturally attached to Edith, who divided her old empire, and came
between them. Proud and glad as Susan Nipper truly was, that her young
mistress should be advanced towards her proper place in the scene of
her old neglect, and that she should have her father's handsome wife
for her companion and protectress, she could not relinquish any part
of her own dominion to the handsome wife, without a grudge and a vague
feeling of ill-will, for which she did not fail to find a
disinterested justification in her sharp perception of the pride and
passion of the lady's character. From the background to which she had
necessarily retired somewhat, since the marriage, Miss Nipper looked
on, therefore, at domestic affairs in general, with a resolute
conviction that no good would come of Mrs Dombey: always being very
careful to publish on all possible occasions, that she had nothing to
say against her.

'Susan,' said Florence, who was sitting thoughtfully at her table,
'it is very late. I shall want nothing more to-night.'

'Ah, Miss Floy!' returned the Nipper, 'I'm sure I often wish for
them old times when I sat up with you hours later than this and fell
asleep through being tired out when you was as broad awake as
spectacles, but you've ma's-in-law to come and sit with you now Miss
Floy and I'm thankful for it I'm sure. I've not a word to say against
'em.'

'I shall not forget who was my old companion when I had none,
Susan,' returned Florence, gently, 'never!' And looking up, she put
her arm round the neck of her humble friend, drew her face down to
hers, and bidding her good-night, kissed it; which so mollified Miss
Nipper, that she fell a sobbing.

'Now my dear Miss Floy, said Susan, 'let me go downstairs again and
see how your Pa is, I know you're wretched about him, do let me go
downstairs again and knock at his door my own self.'

'No,' said Florence, 'go to bed. We shall hear more in the morning.
I will inquire myself in the morning. Mama has been down, I daresay;'
Florence blushed, for she had no such hope; 'or is there now, perhaps.
Good-night!'

Susan was too much softened to express her private opinion on the
probability of Mrs Dombey's being in attendance on her husband, and
silently withdrew. Florence left alone, soon hid her head upon her
hands as she had often done in other days, and did not restrain the
tears from coursing down her face. The misery of this domestic discord
and unhappiness; the withered hope she cherished now, if hope it could
be called, of ever being taken to her father's heart; her doubts and
fears between the two; the yearning of her innocent breast to both;
the heavy disappointment and regret of such an end as this, to what
had been a vision of bright hope and promise to her; all crowded on
her mind and made her tears flow fast. Her mother and her brother
dead, her father unmoved towards her, Edith opposed to him and casting
him away, but loving her, and loved by her, it seemed as if her
affection could never prosper, rest where it would. That weak thought
was soon hushed, but the thoughts in which it had arisen were too true
and strong to be dismissed with it; and they made the night desolate.

Among such reflections there rose up, as there had risen up all
day, the image of her father, wounded and in pain, alone in his own
room, untended by those who should be nearest to him, and passing the
tardy hours in lonely suffering. A frightened thought which made her
start and clasp her hands - though it was not a new one in her mind -
that he might die, and never see her or pronounce her name, thrilled
her whole frame. In her agitation she thought, and trembled while she
thought, of once more stealing downstairs, and venturing to his door.

She listened at her own. The house was quiet, and all the lights
were out. It was a long, long time, she thought, since she used to
make her nightly pilgrimages to his door! It was a long, long time,
she tried to think, since she had entered his room at midnight, and he
had led her back to the stair-foot!

With the same child's heart within her, as of old: even with the
child's sweet timid eyes and clustering hair: Florence, as strange to
her father in her early maiden bloom, as in her nursery time, crept
down the staircase listening as she went, and drew near to his room.
No one was stirring in the house. The door was partly open to admit
air; and all was so still within, that she could hear the burning of
the fire, and count the ticking of the clock that stood upon the
chimney-piece.

She looked in. In that room, the housekeeper wrapped in a blanket
was fast asleep in an easy chair before the fire. The doors between it
and the next were partly closed, and a screen was drawn before them;
but there was a light there, and it shone upon the cornice of his bed.
All was so very still that she could hear from his breathing that he
was asleep. This gave her courage to pass round the screen, and look
into his chamber.

It was as great a start to come upon his sleeping face as if she
had not expected to see it. Florence stood arrested on the spot, and
if he had awakened then, must have remained there.

There was a cut upon his forehead, and they had been wetting his
hair, which lay bedabbled and entangled on the pillow. One of his
arms, resting outside the bed, was bandaged up, and he was very white.
But it was not this, that after the first quick glance, and first
assurance of his sleeping quietly, held Florence rooted to the ground.
It was something very different from this, and more than this, that
made him look so solemn in her eye

She had never seen his face in all her life, but there had been
upon it - or she fancied so - some disturbing consciousness of her.
She had never seen his face in all her life, but hope had sunk within
her, and her timid glance had dropped before its stern, unloving, and
repelling harshness. As she looked upon it now, she saw it, for the
first time, free from the cloud that had darkened her childhood. Calm,
tranquil night was reigning in its stead. He might have gone to sleep,
for anything she saw there, blessing her.

Awake, unkind father! Awake, now, sullen man! The time is flitting
by; the hour is coming with an angry tread. Awake!

There was no change upon his face; and as she watched it, awfully,
its motionless reponse recalled the faces that were gone. So they
looked, so would he; so she, his weeping child, who should say when!
so all the world of love and hatred and indifference around them! When
that time should come, it would not be the heavier to him, for this
that she was going to do; and it might fall something lighter upon
her.

She stole close to the bed, and drawing in her breath, bent down,
and softly kissed him on the face, and laid her own for one brief
moment by its side, and put the arm, with which she dared not touch
him, round about him on the pillow.

Awake, doomed man, while she is near! The time is flitting by; the
hour is coming with an angry tread; its foot is in the house. Awake!

In her mind, she prayed to God to bless her father, and to soften
him towards her, if it might be so; and if not, to forgive him if he
was wrong, and pardon her the prayer which almost seemed impiety. And
doing so, and looking back at him with blinded eyes, and stealing
timidly away, passed out of his room, and crossed the other, and was
gone.

He may sleep on now. He may sleep on while he may. But let him look
for that slight figure when he wakes, and find it near him when the
hour is come!

Sad and grieving was the heart of Florence, as she crept upstairs.
The quiet house had grown more dismal since she came down. The sleep
she had been looking on, in the dead of night, had the solemnity to
her of death and life in one. The secrecy and silence of her own
proceeding made the night secret, silent, and oppressive. She felt
unwilling, almost unable, to go on to her own chamber; and turnIng
into the drawing-rooms, where the clouded moon was shining through the
blinds, looked out into the empty streets.

The wind was blowing drearily. The lamps looked pale, and shook as
if they were cold. There was a distant glimmer of something that was
not quite darkness, rather than of light, in the sky; and foreboding
night was shivering and restless, as the dying are who make a troubled
end. Florence remembered how, as a watcher, by a sick-bed, she had
noted this bleak time, and felt its influence, as if in some hidden
natural antipathy to it; and now it was very, very gloomy.

Her Mama had not come to her room that night, which was one cause
of her having sat late out of her bed. In her general uneasiness, no
less than in her ardent longing to have somebody to speak to, and to
break the spell of gloom and silence, Florence directed her steps
towards the chamber where she slept.

The door was not fastened within, and yielded smoothly to her
hesitating hand. She was surprised to find a bright light burning;
still more surprised, on looking in, to see that her Mama, but
partially undressed, was sitting near the ashes of the fire, which had
crumbled and dropped away. Her eyes were intently bent upon the air;
and in their light, and in her face, and in her form, and in the grasp
with which she held the elbows of her chair as if about to start up,
Florence saw such fierce emotion that it terrified her.

'Mama!' she cried, 'what is the matter?'

Edith started; looking at her with such a strange dread in her
face, that Florence was more frightened than before.

'Mama!' said Florence, hurriedly advancing. 'Dear Mama! what is the
matter?'

'I have not been well,' said Edith, shaking, and still looking at
her in the same strange way. 'I have had had dreams, my love.'

'And not yet been to bed, Mama?'

'No,' she returned. 'Half-waking dreams.'

Her features gradually softened; and suffering Florence to come
closer to her, within her embrace, she said in a tender manner, 'But
what does my bird do here? What does my bird do here?'

'I have been uneasy, Mama, in not seeing you to-night, and in not
knowing how Papa was; and I - '

Florence stopped there, and said no more.

'Is it late?' asked Edith, fondly putting back the curls that
mingled with her own dark hair, and strayed upon her face.

'Very late. Near day.'

'Near day!' she repeated in surprise.

'Dear Mama, what have you done to your hand?' said Florence.

Edith drew it suddenly away, and, for a moment, looked at her with
the same strange dread (there was a sort of wild avoidance in it) as
before; but she presently said, 'Nothing, nothing. A blow.' And then
she said, 'My Florence!' and then her bosom heaved, and she was
weeping passionately.

'Mama!' said Florence. 'Oh Mama, what can I do, what should I do,
to make us happier? Is there anything?'

'Nothing,' she replied.

'Are you sure of that? Can it never be? If I speak now of what is
in my thoughts, in spite of what we have agreed,' said Florence, 'you
will not blame me, will you?'

'It is useless,' she replied, 'useless. I have told you, dear, that
I have had bad dreams. Nothing can change them, or prevent them coming
back.'

'I do not understand,' said Florence, gazing on her agitated face
which seemed to darken as she looked.

'I have dreamed,' said Edith in a low voice, 'of a pride that is
all powerless for good, all powerful for evil; of a pride that has
been galled and goaded, through many shameful years, and has never
recoiled except upon itself; a pride that has debased its owner with
the consciousness of deep humiliation, and never helped its owner
boldly to resent it or avoid it, or to say, "This shall not be!" a
pride that, rightly guided, might have led perhaps to better things,
but which, misdirected and perverted, like all else belonging to the
same possessor, has been self-contempt, mere hardihood and ruin.'

She neither looked nor spoke to Florence now, but went on as if she
were alone.

'I have dreamed,' she said, 'of such indifference and callousness,
arising from this self-contempt; this wretched, inefficient, miserable
pride; that it has gone on with listless steps even to the altar,
yielding to the old, familiar, beckoning finger, - oh mother, oh
mother! - while it spurned it; and willing to be hateful to itself for
once and for all, rather than to be stung daily in some new form.
Mean, poor thing!'

And now with gathering and darkening emotion, she looked as she had
looked when Florence entered.

'And I have dreamed,' she said, 'that in a first late effort to
achieve a purpose, it has been trodden on, and trodden down by a base
foot, but turns and looks upon him. I have dreamed that it is wounded,
hunted, set upon by dogs, but that it stands at hay, and will not
yield; no, that it cannot if it would; but that it is urged on to hate

Her clenched hand tightened on the trembling arm she had in hers,
and as she looked down on the alarmed and wondering face, frown
subsided. 'Oh Florence!' she said, 'I think I have been nearly mad
to-night!' and humbled her proud head upon her neck and wept again.

'Don't leave me! be near me! I have no hope but in you! These words
she said a score of times.

Soon she grew calmer, and was full of pity for the tears of
Florence, and for her waking at such untimely hours. And the day now
dawning, with folded her in her arms and laid her down upon her bed,
and, not lying down herself, sat by her, and bade her try to sleep.

'For you are weary, dearest, and unhappy, and should rest.'

'I am indeed unhappy, dear Mama, tonight,' said Florence. 'But you
are weary and unhappy, too.'

'Not when you lie asleep so near me, sweet.'

They kissed each other, and Florence, worn out, gradually fell into
a gentle slumber; but as her eyes closed on the face beside her, it
was so sad to think upon the face downstairs, that her hand drew
closer to Edith for some comfort; yet, even in the act, it faltered,
lest it should be deserting him. So, in her sleep, she tried to
reconcile the two together, and to show them that she loved them both,
but could not do it, and her waking grief was part of her dreams.

Edith, sitting by, looked down at the dark eyelashes lying wet on
the flushed cheeks, and looked with gentleness and pity, for she knew
the truth. But no sleep hung upon her own eyes. As the day came on she
still sat watching and waking, with the placid hand in hers, and
sometimes whispered, as she looked at the hushed face, 'Be near me,
Florence. I have no hope but in you!'