Dombey and Son. Чарльз Диккенс
returned the child.
Even his childish agitation could not master the sly and quaint yet touching look, with which he accompanied the reply.
It brought a vague expression of dissatisfaction into Mr Dombey’s face; but the door being opened, it was quickly gone.
‘Doctor Blimber is at home, I believe?’ said Mr Dombey.
The man said yes; and as they passed in, looked at Paul as if he were a little mouse, and the house were a trap. He was a weak-eyed young man, with the first faint streaks or early dawn of a grin on his countenance. It was mere imbecility; but Mrs Pipchin took it into her head that it was impudence, and made a snap at him directly.
‘How dare you laugh behind the gentleman’s back?’ said Mrs Pipchin. ‘And what do you take me for?’
‘I ain’t a laughing at nobody, and I’m sure I don’t take you for nothing, Ma’am,’ returned the young man, in consternation.
‘A pack of idle dogs!’ said Mrs Pipchin, ‘only fit to be turnspits. Go and tell your master that Mr Dombey’s here, or it’ll be worse for you!’
The weak-eyed young man went, very meekly, to discharge himself of this commission; and soon came back to invite them to the Doctor’s study.
‘You’re laughing again, Sir,’ said Mrs Pipchin, when it came to her turn, bringing up the rear, to pass him in the hall.
‘I ain’t,’ returned the young man, grievously oppressed. ‘I never see such a thing as this!’
‘What is the matter, Mrs Pipchin?’ said Mr Dombey, looking round. ‘Softly! Pray!’
Mrs Pipchin, in her deference, merely muttered at the young man as she passed on, and said, ‘Oh! he was a precious fellow’ – leaving the young man, who was all meekness and incapacity, affected even to tears by the incident. But Mrs Pipchin had a way of falling foul of all meek people; and her friends said who could wonder at it, after the Peruvian mines!
The Doctor was sitting in his portentous study, with a globe at each knee, books all round him, Homer over the door, and Minerva on the mantel-shelf. ‘And how do you do, Sir?’ he said to Mr Dombey, ‘and how is my little friend?’ Grave as an organ was the Doctor’s speech; and when he ceased, the great clock in the hall seemed (to Paul at least) to take him up, and to go on saying, ‘how, is, my, lit, tle, friend? how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?’ over and over and over again.
The little friend being something too small to be seen at all from where the Doctor sat, over the books on his table, the Doctor made several futile attempts to get a view of him round the legs; which Mr Dombey perceiving, relieved the Doctor from his embarrassment by taking Paul up in his arms, and sitting him on another little table, over against the Doctor, in the middle of the room.
‘Ha!’ said the Doctor, leaning back in his chair with his hand in his breast. ‘Now I see my little friend. How do you do, my little friend?’
The clock in the hall wouldn’t subscribe to this alteration in the form of words, but continued to repeat how, is, my, lit, tle, friend? how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?’
‘Very well, I thank you, Sir,’ returned Paul, answering the clock quite as much as the Doctor.
‘Ha!’ said Doctor Blimber. ‘Shall we make a man of him?’
‘Do you hear, Paul?’ added Mr Dombey; Paul being silent.
‘Shall we make a man of him?’ repeated the Doctor.
‘I had rather be a child,’ replied Paul.
‘Indeed!’ said the Doctor. ‘Why?’
The child sat on the table looking at him, with a curious expression of suppressed emotion in his face, and beating one hand proudly on his knee as if he had the rising tears beneath it, and crushed them. But his other hand strayed a little way the while, a little farther – farther from him yet – until it lighted on the neck of Florence. ‘This is why,’ it seemed to say, and then the steady look was broken up and gone; the working lip was loosened; and the tears came streaming forth.
‘Mrs Pipchin,’ said his father, in a querulous manner, ‘I am really very sorry to see this.’
‘Come away from him, do, Miss Dombey,’ quoth the matron.
‘Never mind,’ said the Doctor, blandly nodding his head, to keep Mrs Pipchin back. ‘Never mind; we shall substitute new cares and new impressions, Mr Dombey, very shortly. You would still wish my little friend to acquire – ’
‘Everything, if you please, Doctor,’ returned Mr Dombey, firmly.
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor, who, with his half-shut eyes, and his usual smile, seemed to survey Paul with the sort of interest that might attach to some choice little animal he was going to stuff. ‘Yes, exactly. Ha! We shall impart a great variety of information to our little friend, and bring him quickly forward, I daresay. I daresay. Quite a virgin soil, I believe you said, Mr Dombey?’
‘Except some ordinary preparation at home, and from this lady,’ replied Mr Dombey, introducing Mrs Pipchin, who instantly communicated a rigidity to her whole muscular system, and snorted defiance beforehand, in case the Doctor should disparage her; ‘except so far, Paul has, as yet, applied himself to no studies at all.’
Doctor Blimber inclined his head, in gentle tolerance of such insignificant poaching as Mrs Pipchin’s, and said he was glad to hear it. It was much more satisfactory, he observed, rubbing his hands, to begin at the foundation. And again he leered at Paul, as if he would have liked to tackle him with the Greek alphabet, on the spot.
‘That circumstance, indeed, Doctor Blimber,’ pursued Mr Dombey, glancing at his little son, ‘and the interview I have already had the pleasure of holding with you, renders any further explanation, and consequently, any further intrusion on your valuable time, so unnecessary, that – ’
‘Now, Miss Dombey!’ said the acid Pipchin.
‘Permit me,’ said the Doctor, ‘one moment. Allow me to present Mrs Blimber and my daughter; who will be associated with the domestic life of our young Pilgrim to Parnassus Mrs Blimber,’ for the lady, who had perhaps been in waiting, opportunely entered, followed by her daughter, that fair Sexton in spectacles, ‘Mr Dombey. My daughter Cornelia, Mr Dombey. Mr Dombey, my love,’ pursued the Doctor, turning to his wife, ‘is so confiding as to – do you see our little friend?’
Mrs Blimber, in an excess of politeness, of which Mr Dombey was the object, apparently did not, for she was backing against the little friend, and very much endangering his position on the table. But, on this hint, she turned to admire his classical and intellectual lineaments, and turning again to Mr Dombey, said, with a sigh, that she envied his dear son.
‘Like a bee, Sir,’ said Mrs Blimber, with uplifted eyes, ‘about to plunge into a garden of the choicest flowers, and sip the sweets for the first time Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Terence, Plautus, Cicero. What a world of honey have we here. It may appear remarkable, Mr Dombey, in one who is a wife – the wife of such a husband – ’
‘Hush, hush,’ said Doctor Blimber. ‘Fie for shame.’
‘Mr Dombey will forgive the partiality of a wife,’ said Mrs Blimber, with an engaging smile.
Mr Dombey answered ‘Not at all:’ applying those words, it is to be presumed, to the partiality, and not to the forgiveness.
‘And it may seem remarkable in one who is a mother also,’ resumed Mrs Blimber.
‘And such a mother,’ observed Mr Dombey, bowing with some confused idea of being complimentary to Cornelia.
‘But really,’ pursued Mrs Blimber, ‘I think if I could have known Cicero, and been his friend, and talked with him in his retirement at Tusculum (beau-ti-ful Tusculum!), I could have died contented.’
A learned enthusiasm is so very contagious, that Mr Dombey half believed this was exactly his case; and even Mrs Pipchin, who was not, as we have seen, of an accommodating disposition