Unable to exclude these things from his remembrance, or to keep his mind free from such imperfect shapes of the meaning with which they were fraught, as were able to make themselves visible to him through the mist of his pride, his previous feeling of indifference towards little Florence changed into an uneasiness of an extraordinary kind. He almost felt as if she watched and distrusted him. As if she held the clue to something secret in his breast, of the nature of which he was hardly informed himself. As if she had an innate knowledge of one jarring and discordant string within him, and her very breath could sound it.
His feeling about the child had been negative from her birth. He had never conceived an aversion to her: it had not been worth his while or in his humour. She had never been a positively disagreeable object to him. But now he was ill at ease about her. She troubled his peace. He would have preferred to put her idea aside altogether, if he had known how. Perhaps—who shall decide on such mysteries!—he was afraid that he might come to hate her.
When little Florence timidly presented herself, Mr. Dombey stopped in his pacing up and down and looked towards her. Had he looked with greater interest and with a father’s eye, he might have read in her keen glance the impulses and fears that made her waver; the passionate desire to run clinging to him, crying, as she hid her face in his embrace, “Oh father, try to love me! there’s no one else!” the dread of a repulse; the fear of being too bold, and of offending him; the pitiable need in which she stood of some assurance and encouragement; and how her overcharged young heart was wandering to find some natural resting-place, for its sorrow and affection.
But he saw nothing of this. He saw her pause irresolutely at the door and look towards him; and he saw no more.
“Come in,” he said, “come in: what is the child afraid of?”
She came in; and after glancing round her for a moment with an uncertain air, stood pressing her small hands hard together, close within the door.
“Come here, Florence,” said her father, coldly. “Do you know who I am?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Have you nothing to say to me?”
The tears that stood in her eyes as she raised them quickly to his face, were frozen by the expression it wore. She looked down again, and put out her trembling hand.
Mr. Dombey took it loosely in his own, and stood looking down upon her for a moment, as if he knew as little as the child, what to say or do.
“There! Be a good girl,” he said, patting her on the head, and regarding her as it were by stealth with a disturbed and doubtful look. “Go to Richards! Go!”
His little daughter hesitated for another instant as though she would have clung about him still, or had some lingering hope that he might raise her in his arms and kiss her. She looked up in his face once more. He thought how like her expression was then, to what it had been when she looked round at the Doctor—that night—and instinctively dropped her hand and turned away.
It was not difficult to perceive that Florence was at a great disadvantage in her father’s presence. It was not only a constraint upon the child’s mind, but even upon the natural grace and freedom of her actions. Still, Polly persevered with all the better heart for seeing this; and, judging of Mr. Dombey by herself, had great confidence in the mute appeal of poor little Florence’s mourning dress. “It’s hard indeed,” thought Polly, “if he takes only to one little motherless child, when he has another, and that a girl, before his eyes.”
So, Polly kept her before his eyes, as long as she could, and managed so well with little Paul, as to make it very plain that he was all the livelier for his sister’s company. When it was time to withdraw upstairs again, she would have sent Florence into the inner room to say good night to her father, but the child was timid and drew back; and when she urged her again, said, spreading her hands before her eyes, as if to shut out her own unworthiness, “Oh no, no! He don’t want me. He don’t want me!”
The little altercation between them had attracted the notice of Mr. Dombey, who inquired from the table where he was sitting at his wine, what the matter was.
“Miss Florence was afraid of interrupting, Sir, if she came in to say good night,” said Richards.
“It doesn’t matter,” returned Mr. Dombey. “You can let her come and go without regarding me.”
The child shrunk as she listened—and was gone, before her humble friend looked round again.
However, Polly triumphed not a little in the success of her well-intentioned scheme, and in the address with which she had brought it to bear: whereof she made a full disclosure to Spitfire when she was once more safely entrenched upstairs. Miss Nipper received that proof of her confidence, as well as the prospect of their free association for the future, rather coldly, and was anything but enthusiastic in her demonstrations of joy.
“I thought you would have been pleased,” said Polly.
“Oh yes, Mrs. Richards, I’m very well pleased,
