Dombey and Son

Dombey sat in the corner of the darkened room in the great armchair by the bedside, and Son lay tucked up warm in a little basket bedstead, carefully disposed on a low settee immediately in front of the fire and close to it, as if his constitution were analogous to that of a muffin, and it was essential to toast him brown while he was very new.

Dombey was about eight-and-forty years of age. Son about eight-and-forty minutes. Dombey was rather bald, rather red, and though a handsome well-made man, too stern and pompous in appearance, to be prepossessing. Son was very bald, and very red, and though (of course) an undeniably fine infant, somewhat crushed and spotty in his general effect, as yet. On the brow of Dombey, Time and his brother Care had set some marks, as on a tree that was to come down in good time⁠—remorseless twins they are for striding through their human forests, notching as they go⁠—while the countenance of Son was crossed with a thousand little creases, which the same deceitful Time would take delight in smoothing out and wearing away with the flat part of his scythe, as a preparation of the surface for his deeper operations.

Dombey, exulting in the long-looked-for event, jingled and jingled the heavy gold watch-chain that depended from below his trim blue coat, whereof the buttons sparkled phosphorescently in the feeble rays of the distant fire. Son, with his little fists curled up and clenched, seemed, in his feeble way, to be squaring at existence for having come upon him so unexpectedly.

“It’s Miss Florence come home from her aunt’s, no doubt,” thought Richards, who had never seen the child before. “Hope I see you well, Miss.”

“Is that my brother?” asked the child, pointing to the Baby.

“Yes, my pretty,” answered Richards. “Come and kiss him.”

But the child, instead of advancing, looked her earnestly in the face, and said:

“What have you done with my Mama?”

“Lord bless the little creeter!” cried Richards, “what a sad question! I done? Nothing, Miss.”

“What have they done with my Mama?” inquired the child.

“I never saw such a melting thing in all my life!” said Richards, who naturally substituted for this child one of her own, inquiring for herself in like circumstances. “Come nearer here, my dear Miss! Don’t be afraid of me.”

“I am not afraid of you,” said the child, drawing nearer. “But I want to know what they have done with my Mama.”

“My darling,” said Richards, “you wear that pretty black frock in remembrance of your Mama.”

“I can remember my Mama,” returned the child, with tears springing to her eyes, “in any frock.”

“But people put on black, to remember people when they’re gone.”

“Where gone?” asked the child.

“Where are they?” said an old woman, coming hobbling across as fast as she could from the opposite side of the way. “Why did you run away from ’em?”

“I was frightened,” answered Florence. “I didn’t know what I did. I thought they were with me. Where are they?”

The old woman took her by the wrist, and said, “I’ll show you.”

She was a very ugly old woman, with red rims round her eyes, and a mouth that mumbled and chattered of itself when she was not speaking. She was miserably dressed, and carried some skins over her arm. She seemed to have followed Florence some little way at all events, for she had lost her breath; and this made her uglier still, as she stood trying to regain it: working her shrivelled yellow face and throat into all sorts of contortions.

Florence was afraid of her, and looked, hesitating, up the street, of which she had almost reached the bottom. It was a solitary place⁠—more a back road than a street⁠—and there was no one in it but herself and the old woman.

“You needn’t be frightened now,” said the old woman, still holding her tight. “Come along with me.”

“I⁠—I don’t know you. What’s your name?” asked Florence.

“Mrs. Brown,” said the old woman. “Good Mrs. Brown.”

“Are they near here?” asked Florence, beginning to be led away.

“Susan ain’t far off,” said Good Mrs. Brown; “and the others are close to her.”

“Is anybody hurt?” cried Florence.

“Not a bit of it,” said Good Mrs. Brown.

The child shed tears of delight on hearing this, and accompanied the old woman willingly; though she could not help glancing at her face

The two so very much alike, and yet so monstrously contrasted.

On one of these occasions, when they had both been perfectly quiet for a long time, and Mr. Dombey only knew that the child was awake by occasionally glancing at his eye, where the bright fire was sparkling like a jewel, little Paul broke silence thus:

“Papa! what’s money?”

The abrupt question had such immediate reference to the subject of Mr. Dombey’s thoughts, that Mr. Dombey was quite disconcerted.

“What is money, Paul?” he answered. “Money?”

“Yes,” said the child, laying his hands upon the elbows of his little chair, and turning the old face up towards Mr. Dombey’s; “what is money?”

Mr. Dombey was in a difficulty. He would have liked to give him some explanation involving the terms circulating-medium, currency, depreciation of currency, paper, bullion, rates of exchange, value of precious metals in the market, and so forth; but looking down at the little chair, and seeing what a long way down it was, he answered: “Gold, and silver, and copper. Guineas, shillings, halfpence. You know what they are?”

“Oh yes, I know what they are,” said Paul. “I don’t mean that, Papa. I mean what’s money after all?”

Heaven and Earth, how old his face was as he turned it up again towards his father’s!

“What is money after all!” said Mr. Dombey, backing his chair a little, that he might the better gaze in sheer amazement at the presumptuous atom that propounded such an inquiry.

This celebrated Mrs. Pipchin was a marvellous ill-favoured, ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping figure, with a mottled face, like bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard grey eye, that looked as if it might have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury. Forty years at least had elapsed since the Peruvian mines had been the death of Mr. Pipchin; but his relict still wore black bombazeen, of such a lustreless, deep, dead, sombre shade, that gas itself couldn’t light her up after dark, and her presence was a quencher to any number of candles. She was generally spoken of as “a great manager” of children; and the secret of her management was, to give them everything that they didn’t like, and nothing that they did⁠—which was found to sweeten their dispositions very much. She was such a bitter old lady, that one was tempted to believe there had been some mistake in the application of the Peruvian machinery, and that all her waters of gladness and milk of human kindness, had been pumped out dry, instead of the mines.

The Castle of this ogress and child-queller was in a steep by-street at Brighton; where the soil was more than usually chalky, flinty, and sterile, and the houses were more than usually brittle and thin; where the small front-gardens had