“Our friend had a remote connection with that event,” said the Major, “and all the credit that belongs to her, J. B. is willing to give her, Sir. Notwithstanding which, Ma’am,” he added, raising his eyes from his plate, and casting them across Princess’s Place, to where Miss Tox was at that moment visible at her window watering her flowers, “you’re a scheming jade, Ma’am, and your ambition is a piece of monstrous impudence. If it only made yourself ridiculous, Ma’am,” said the Major, rolling his head at the unconscious Miss Tox, while his starting eyes appeared to make a leap towards her, “you might do that to your heart’s content, Ma’am, without any objection, I assure you, on the part of Bagstock.” Here the Major laughed frightfully up in the tips of his ears and in the veins of his head. “But when, Ma’am,” said the Major, “you compromise other people, and generous, unsuspicious people too, as a repayment for their condescension, you stir the blood of old Joe in his body.”
“Major,” said Mr. Dombey, reddening, “I hope you do not hint at anything so absurd on the part of Miss Tox as—”
“Dombey,” returned the Major, “I hint at nothing. But Joey B. has lived in the world, Sir: lived in the world with his eyes open, Sir, and his ears cocked: and Joe tells you, Dombey, that there’s a de‑vilish artful and ambitious woman over the way.”
Mr. Dombey involuntarily glanced over the way; and an angry glance he sent in that direction, too.
“That’s all on such a subject that shall pass the lips of Joseph Bagstock,” said the Major firmly. “Joe is not a talebearer, but there are times when he must speak, when he will speak!—confound your arts, Ma’am,” cried the Major, again apostrophising his fair neighbour, with great ire—“when the provocation is too strong to admit of his remaining silent.”
The emotion of this outbreak threw the Major into a paroxysm of horse’s coughs, which held him for a long time. On recovering he added:
“And now, Dombey, as you have invited Joe—old Joe, who has no other merit, Sir, but that he is tough and hearty—to be your guest and guide at Leamington, command him in any way you please, and he is wholly yours. I don’t know, Sir,” said the Major, wagging his double chin with a jocose air, “what it is you people see in Joe to make you hold him in such great request, all of you; but this I know, Sir, that if he wasn’t pretty tough, and obstinate in his refusals, you’d kill him among you with your invitations and so forth, in double-quick time.”
Mr. Dombey, in a few words, expressed his sense of the preference he received over those other distinguished members of society who were clamouring for the possession of Major Bagstock. But the Major cut him short by giving him to understand that he followed his own inclinations, and that they had risen up in a body and said with one accord, “J. B., Dombey is the man for you to choose as a friend.”
The Major being by this time in a state of repletion, with essence of savoury pie oozing out at the corners of his eyes, and devilled grill and kidneys tightening his cravat: and the time moreover approaching for the departure of the railway train to Birmingham, by which they were to leave town: the Native got him into his greatcoat with immense difficulty, and buttoned him up until his face looked staring and gasping, over the top of that garment, as if he were in a barrel. The Native then handed him separately, and with a decent interval between each supply, his wash-leather gloves, his thick stick, and his hat; which latter article the Major wore with a rakish air on one side of his head, by way of toning down his remarkable visage. The Native had previously packed, in all possible and impossible parts of Mr. Dombey’s chariot, which was in waiting, an unusual quantity of carpetbags and small portmanteaus, no less apoplectic in appearance than the Major himself: and having filled his own pockets with Seltzer water, East India sherry, sandwiches, shawls, telescopes, maps, and newspapers, any or all of which light baggage the Major might require at any instant of the journey, he announced that everything was ready. To complete the equipment of this unfortunate foreigner (currently believed to be a prince in his own country), when he took his seat in the rumble by the side of Mr. Towlinson, a pile of the Major’s cloaks and greatcoats was hurled upon him by the landlord, who aimed at him from the pavement with those great missiles like a Titan, and so covered him up, that he proceeded, in a living tomb, to the railroad station.
But before the carriage moved away, and while the Native was in the act of sepulture, Miss Tox appearing at her window, waved a lilywhite handkerchief. Mr. Dombey received this parting salutation very coldly—very coldly even for him—and honouring her with the slightest possible inclination of his head, leaned back in the carriage with a very discontented look. His marked behaviour seemed to afford the Major (who was all politeness in his recognition of Miss Tox) unbounded satisfaction; and he sat for a long time afterwards, leering, and choking, like an overfed Mephistopheles.
During the bustle of preparation at the railway, Mr. Dombey and the Major walked up and down the platform side by side; the former taciturn and gloomy, and the latter entertaining him, or entertaining himself, with a variety of anecdotes and reminiscences, in most of which Joe Bagstock was the principal performer. Neither of the two observed that in
