The exquisite indifference of her manner in saying this: an indifference quite removed from dullness or insensibility, for it was pointed with proud purpose: was well set off by the carelessness with which she drew her hand across the strings, and came from that part of the room.
“Do you know, Mr. Dombey,” said her languishing mother, playing with a hand-screen, “that occasionally my dearest Edith and myself actually almost differ—”
“Not quite, sometimes, Mama?” said Edith.
“Oh never quite, my darling! Fie, fie, it would break my heart,” returned her mother, making a faint attempt to pat her with the screen, which Edith made no movement to meet, “—about these old conventionalities of manner that are observed in little things? Why are we not more natural? Dear me! With all those yearnings, and gushings, and impulsive throbbings that we have implanted in our souls, and which are so very charming, why are we not more natural?”
Mr. Dombey said it was very true, very true.
“We could be more natural I suppose if we tried?” said Mrs. Skewton.
Mr. Dombey thought it possible.
“Devil a bit, Ma’am,” said the Major. “We couldn’t afford it. Unless the world was peopled with J. B.’s—tough and blunt old Joes, Ma’am, plain red herrings with hard roes, Sir—we couldn’t afford it. It wouldn’t do.”
“You naughty Infidel,” said Mrs. Skewton, “be mute.”
“Cleopatra commands,” returned the Major, kissing his hand, “and Antony Bagstock obeys.”
“The man has no sensitiveness,” said Mrs. Skewton, cruelly holding up the hand-screen so as to shut the Major out. “No sympathy. And what do we live for but sympathy! What else is so extremely charming! Without that gleam of sunshine on our cold cold earth,” said Mrs. Skewton, arranging her lace tucker, and complacently observing the effect of her bare lean arm, looking upward from the wrist, “how could we possibly bear it? In short, obdurate man!” glancing at the Major, round the screen, “I would have my world all heart; and Faith is so excessively charming, that I won’t allow you to disturb it, do you hear?”
The Major replied that it was hard in Cleopatra to require the world to be all heart, and yet to appropriate to herself the hearts of all the world; which obliged Cleopatra to remind him that flattery was insupportable to her, and that if he had the boldness to address her in that strain any more, she would positively send him home.
Withers the Wan, at this period, handing round the tea, Mr. Dombey again addressed himself to Edith.
“There is not much company here, it would seem?” said Mr. Dombey, in his own portentous gentlemanly way.
“I believe not. We see none.”
“Why really,” observed Mrs. Skewton from her couch, “there are no people here just now with whom we care to associate.”
“They have not enough heart,” said Edith, with a smile. The very twilight of a smile: so singularly were its light and darkness blended.
“My dearest Edith rallies me, you see!” said her mother, shaking her head: which shook a little of itself sometimes, as if the palsy twinkled now and then in opposition to the diamonds. “Wicked one!”
“You have been here before, if I am not mistaken?” said Mr. Dombey. Still to Edith.
“Oh, several times. I think we have been everywhere.”
“A beautiful country!”
“I suppose it is. Everybody says so.”
“Your cousin Feenix raves about it, Edith,” interposed her mother from her couch.
The daughter slightly turned her graceful head, and raising her eyebrows by a hair’s-breadth, as if her cousin Feenix were of all the mortal world the least to be regarded, turned her eyes again towards Mr. Dombey.
“I hope, for the credit of my good taste, that I am tired of the neighbourhood,” she said.
“You have almost reason to be, Madam,” he replied, glancing at a variety of landscape drawings, of which he had already recognised several as representing neighbouring points of view, and which were strewn abundantly about the room, “if these beautiful productions are from your hand.”
She gave him no reply, but sat in a disdainful beauty, quite amazing.
“Have they that interest?” said Mr. Dombey. “Are they yours?”
“Yes.”
“And you play, I already know.”
“Yes.”
“And sing?”
“Yes.”
She answered all these questions with a strange reluctance; and with that remarkable air of opposition to herself, already noticed as belonging to her beauty. Yet she was not embarrassed, but wholly self-possessed. Neither did she seem to wish to avoid the conversation, for she addressed her face, and—so far as she could—her manner also, to him; and continued to do so, when he was silent.
“You have many resources against weariness at least,” said Mr. Dombey.
“Whatever their efficiency may be,” she returned, “you know them all now. I have no more.”
“May I hope to prove them all?” said Mr. Dombey, with solemn gallantry, laying down a drawing he had held, and motioning towards the harp.
“Oh certainly! If you desire it!”
She rose as she spoke, and crossing by her mother’s couch, and directing a stately look towards her, which was instantaneous in its duration, but inclusive (if anyone had seen it) of a multitude of expressions, among which that of the twilight smile, without the smile itself, overshadowed all the rest, went out of the room.
The Major, who was quite forgiven by this time, had wheeled a little table up to Cleopatra, and was sitting down to play picquet with her. Mr. Dombey, not knowing the game, sat down to watch them for his edification until Edith should return.
“We are going to have some music, Mr. Dombey, I hope?” said Cleopatra.
“Mrs. Granger has been kind enough to promise so,” said Mr. Dombey.
“Ah! That’s very nice. Do you propose, Major?”
“No, Ma’am,” said the Major. “Couldn’t do it.”
“You’re a barbarous being,” replied the lady, “and my hand’s destroyed. You are fond of music, Mr. Dombey?”
“Eminently so,” was Mr. Dombey’s answer.
“Yes. It’s very nice,” said Cleopatra, looking at her cards. “So much heart in it—undeveloped recollections of a previous state of existence—and all that—which is so truly charming. Do you know,” simpered Cleopatra, reversing the
