Dombey and Son

wheeled chair (which she never varied) was one in which she had been taken in a barouche, some fifty years before, by a then fashionable artist who had appended to his published sketch the name of Cleopatra: in consequence of a discovery made by the critics of the time, that it bore an exact resemblance to that Princess as she reclined on board her galley. Mrs. Skewton was a beauty then, and bucks threw wineglasses over their heads by dozens in her honour. The beauty and the barouche had both passed away, but she still preserved the attitude, and for this reason expressly, maintained the wheeled chair and the butting page: there being nothing whatever, except the attitude, to prevent her from walking.

“Mr. Dombey is devoted to Nature, I trust?” said Mrs. Skewton, settling her diamond brooch. And by the way, she chiefly lived upon the reputation of some diamonds, and her family connections.

“My friend Dombey, Ma’am,” returned the Major, “may be devoted to her in secret, but a man who is paramount in the greatest city in the universe⁠—”

“No one can be a stranger,” said Mrs. Skewton, “to Mr. Dombey’s immense influence.”

As Mr. Dombey acknowledged the compliment with a bend of his head, the younger lady glancing at him, met his eyes.

“You reside here, Madam?” said Mr. Dombey, addressing her.

“No, we have been to a great many places. To Harrogate and Scarborough, and into Devonshire. We have been visiting, and resting here and there. Mama likes change.”

“Edith of course does not,” said Mrs. Skewton, with a ghastly archness.

“I have not found that there is any change in such places,” was the answer, delivered with supreme indifference.

“They libel me. There is only one change, Mr. Dombey,” observed Mrs. Skewton, with a mincing sigh, “for which I really care, and that I fear I shall never be permitted to enjoy. People cannot spare one. But seclusion and contemplation are my what-his-name⁠—”

“If you mean Paradise, Mama, you had better say so, to render yourself intelligible,” said the younger lady.

“My dearest Edith,” returned Mrs. Skewton, “you know that I am wholly dependent upon you for those odious names. I assure you, Mr. Dombey, Nature intended me for an Arcadian. I am thrown away in society. Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for, has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows⁠—and china.”

This curious association of objects, suggesting a remembrance of the celebrated bull who got by mistake into a crockery shop, was received with perfect gravity by Mr. Dombey, who intimated his opinion that Nature was, no doubt, a very respectable institution.

“What I want,” drawled Mrs. Skewton, pinching her shrivelled throat, “is heart.” It was frightfully true in one sense, if not in that in which she used the phrase. “What I want, is frankness, confidence, less conventionality, and freer play of soul. We are so dreadfully artificial.”

We were, indeed.

“In short,” said Mrs. Skewton, “I want Nature everywhere. It would be so extremely charming.”

“Nature is inviting us away now, Mama, if you are ready,” said the younger lady, curling her handsome lip. At this hint, the wan page, who had been surveying the party over the top of the chair, vanished behind it, as if the ground had swallowed him up.

“Stop a moment, Withers!” said Mrs. Skewton, as the chair began to move; calling to the page with all the languid dignity with which she had called in days of yore to a coachman with a wig, cauliflower nosegay, and silk stockings. “Where are you staying, abomination?”

The Major was staying at the Royal Hotel, with his friend Dombey.

“You may come and see us any evening when you are good,” lisped Mrs. Skewton. “If Mr. Dombey will honour us, we shall be happy. Withers, go on!”

The Major again pressed to his blue lips the tips of the fingers that were disposed on the ledge of the wheeled chair with careful carelessness, after the Cleopatra model: and Mr. Dombey bowed. The elder lady honoured them both with a very gracious smile and a girlish wave of her hand; the younger lady with the very slightest inclination of her head that common courtesy allowed.

The last glimpse of the wrinkled face of the mother, with that patched colour on it which the sun made infinitely more haggard and dismal than any want of colour could have been, and of the proud beauty of the daughter with her graceful figure and erect deportment, engendered such an involuntary disposition on the part of both the Major and Mr. Dombey to look after them, that they both turned at the same moment. The Page, nearly as much aslant as his own shadow, was toiling after the chair, uphill, like a slow battering-ram; the top of Cleopatra’s bonnet was fluttering in exactly the same corner to the inch as before; and the Beauty, loitering by herself a little in advance, expressed in all her elegant form, from head to foot, the same supreme disregard of everything and everybody.

“I tell you what, Sir,” said the Major, as they resumed their walk again. “If Joe Bagstock were a younger man, there’s not a woman in the world whom he’d prefer for Mrs. Bagstock to that woman. By George, Sir!” said the Major, “she’s superb!”

“Do you mean the daughter?” inquired Mr. Dombey.

“Is Joey B. a turnip, Dombey,” said the Major, “that he should mean the mother?”

“You were complimentary to the mother,” returned Mr. Dombey.

“An ancient flame, Sir,” chuckled Major Bagstock. “De‑vilish ancient. I humour her.”

“She impresses me as being perfectly genteel,” said Mr. Dombey.

“Genteel, Sir,” said the Major, stopping short, and staring in his companion’s face. “The Honourable Mrs. Skewton, Sir, is sister to the late Lord Feenix, and aunt to the present Lord. The family are not wealthy⁠—they’re poor, indeed⁠—and she lives upon a small jointure; but if you come to blood, Sir!” The Major gave a flourish with his stick and walked on again, in despair of being able to say what you