“Hush!” said Cleopatra, suddenly, “Edith!”
The loving mother can scarcely be described as resuming her insipid and affected air when she made this exclamation; for she had never cast it off; nor was it likely that she ever would or could, in any other place than in the grave. But hurriedly dismissing whatever shadow of earnestness, or faint confession of a purpose, laudable or wicked, that her face, or voice, or manner, had, for the moment, betrayed, she lounged upon the couch, her most insipid and most languid self again, as Edith entered the room.
Edith, so beautiful and stately, but so cold and so repelling. Who, slightly acknowledging the presence of Major Bagstock, and directing a keen glance at her mother, drew back the curtain from a window, and sat down there, looking out.
“My dearest Edith,” said Mrs. Skewton, “where on earth have you been? I have wanted you, my love, most sadly.”
“You said you were engaged, and I stayed away,” she answered, without turning her head.
“It was cruel to Old Joe, Ma’am,” said the Major in his gallantry.
“It was very cruel, I know,” she said, still looking out—and said with such calm disdain, that the Major was discomfited, and could think of nothing in reply.
“Major Bagstock, my darling Edith,” drawled her mother, “who is generally the most useless and disagreeable creature in the world: as you know—”
“It is surely not worthwhile, Mama,” said Edith, looking round, “to observe these forms of speech. We are quite alone. We know each other.”
The quiet scorn that sat upon her handsome face—a scorn that evidently lighted on herself, no less than them—was so intense and deep, that her mother’s simper, for the instant, though of a hardy constitution, drooped before it.
“My darling girl,” she began again.
“Not woman yet?” said Edith, with a smile.
“How very odd you are today, my dear! Pray let me say, my love, that Major Bagstock has brought the kindest of notes from Mr. Dombey, proposing that we should breakfast with him tomorrow, and ride to Warwick and Kenilworth. Will you go, Edith?”
“Will I go!” she repeated, turning very red, and breathing quickly as she looked round at her mother.
“I knew you would, my own,” observed the latter carelessly. “It is, as you say, quite a form to ask. Here is Mr. Dombey’s letter, Edith.”
“Thank you. I have no desire to read it,” was her answer.
“Then perhaps I had better answer it myself,” said Mrs. Skewton, “though I had thought of asking you to be my secretary, darling.” As Edith made no movement, and no answer, Mrs. Skewton begged the Major to wheel her little table nearer, and to set open the desk it contained, and to take out pen and paper for her; all which congenial offices of gallantry the Major discharged, with much submission and devotion.
“Your regards, Edith, my dear?” said Mrs. Skewton, pausing, pen in hand, at the postscript.
“What you will, Mama,” she answered, without turning her head, and with supreme indifference.
Mrs. Skewton wrote what she would, without seeking for any more explicit directions, and handed her letter to the Major, who receiving it as a precious charge, made a show of laying it near his heart, but was fain to put it in the pocket of his pantaloons on account of the insecurity of his waistcoat. The Major then took a very polished and chivalrous farewell of both ladies, which the elder one acknowledged in her usual manner, while the younger, sitting with her face addressed to the window, bent her head so slightly that it would have been a greater compliment to the Major to have made no sign at all, and to have left him to infer that he had not been heard or thought of.
“As to alteration in her, Sir,” mused the Major on his way back; on which expedition—the afternoon being sunny and hot—he ordered the Native and the light baggage to the front, and walked in the shadow of that expatriated prince: “as to alteration, Sir, and pining, and so forth, that won’t go down with Joseph Bagstock. None of that, Sir. It won’t do here. But as to there being something of a division between ’em—or a gulf as the mother calls it—damme, Sir, that seems true enough. And it’s odd enough! Well, Sir!” panted the Major, “Edith Granger and Dombey are well matched; let ’em fight it out! Bagstock backs the winner!”
The Major, by saying these latter words aloud, in the vigour of his thoughts, caused the unhappy Native to stop, and turn round, in the belief that he was personally addressed. Exasperated to the last degree by this act of insubordination, the Major (though he was swelling with enjoyment of his own humour, at the moment of its occurrence) instantly thrust his cane among the Native’s ribs, and continued to stir him up, at short intervals, all the way to the hotel.
Nor was the Major less exasperated as he dressed for dinner, during which operation the dark servant underwent the pelting of a shower of miscellaneous objects, varying in size from a boot to a hairbrush, and including everything that came within his master’s reach. For the Major plumed himself on having the Native in a perfect state of drill, and visited the least departure from strict discipline with this kind of fatigue duty. Add to this, that he maintained the Native about his person as a counterirritant against the gout, and all other vexations, mental as well as bodily; and the Native would appear to have earned his pay—which was not large.
At length, the Major having disposed of all the missiles
