“Louisa,” said Mr. Dombey, one day, to his sister, “I really think I must present your friend with some little token, on the occasion of Paul’s christening. She has exerted herself so warmly in the child’s behalf from the first, and seems to understand her position so thoroughly (a very rare merit in this world, I am sorry to say), that it would really be agreeable to me to notice her.”
Let it be no detraction from the merits of Miss Tox, to hint that in Mr. Dombey’s eyes, as in some others that occasionally see the light, they only achieved that mighty piece of knowledge, the understanding of their own position, who showed a fitting reverence for his. It was not so much their merit that they knew themselves, as that they knew him, and bowed low before him.
“My dear Paul,” returned his sister, “you do Miss Tox but justice, as a man of your penetration was sure, I knew, to do. I believe if there are three words in the English language for which she has a respect amounting almost to veneration, those words are, Dombey and Son.”
“Well,” said Mr. Dombey, “I believe it. It does Miss Tox credit.”
“And as to anything in the shape of a token, my dear Paul,” pursued his sister, “all I can say is that anything you give Miss Tox will be hoarded and prized, I am sure, like a relic. But there is a way, my dear Paul, of showing your sense of Miss Tox’s friendliness in a still more flattering and acceptable manner, if you should be so inclined.”
“How is that?” asked Mr. Dombey.
“Godfathers, of course,” continued Mrs. Chick, “are important in point of connection and influence.”
“I don’t know why they should be, to my son,” said Mr. Dombey, coldly.
“Very true, my dear Paul,” retorted Mrs. Chick, with an extraordinary show of animation, to cover the suddenness of her conversion; “and spoken like yourself. I might have expected nothing else from you. I might have known that such would have been your opinion. Perhaps;” here Mrs. Chick faltered again, as not quite comfortably feeling her way; “perhaps that is a reason why you might have the less objection to allowing Miss Tox to be godmother to the dear thing, if it were only as deputy and proxy for someone else. That it would be received as a great honour and distinction, Paul, I need not say.”
“Louisa,” said Mr. Dombey, after a short pause, “it is not to be supposed—”
“Certainly not,” cried Mrs. Chick, hastening to anticipate a refusal, “I never thought it was.”
Mr. Dombey looked at her impatiently.
“Don’t flurry me, my dear Paul,” said his sister; “for that destroys me. I am far from strong. I have not been quite myself, since poor dear Fanny departed.”
Mr. Dombey glanced at the pocket-handkerchief which his sister applied to her eyes, and resumed:
“It is not be supposed, I say—”
“And I say,” murmured Mrs. Chick, “that I never thought it was.”
“Good Heaven, Louisa!” said Mr. Dombey.
“No, my dear Paul,” she remonstrated with tearful dignity, “I must really be allowed to speak. I am not so clever, or so reasoning, or so eloquent, or so anything, as you are. I know that very well. So much the worse for me. But if they were the last words I had to utter—and last words should be very solemn to you and me, Paul, after poor dear Fanny—I would still say I never thought it was. And what is more,” added Mrs. Chick with increased dignity, as if she had withheld her crushing argument until now, “I never did think it was.”
Mr. Dombey walked to the window and back again.
“It is not to be supposed, Louisa,” he said (Mrs. Chick had nailed her colours to the mast, and repeated “I know it isn’t,” but he took no notice of it), “but that there are many persons who, supposing that I recognised any claim at all in such a case, have a claim upon me superior to Miss Tox’s. But I do not. I recognise no such thing. Paul and myself will be able, when the time comes, to hold our own—the House, in other words, will be able to hold its own, and maintain its own, and hand down its own of itself, and without any such commonplace aids. The kind of foreign help which people usually seek for their children, I can afford to despise; being above it, I hope. So that Paul’s infancy and childhood pass away well, and I see him becoming qualified without waste of time for the career on which he is destined to enter, I am satisfied. He will make what powerful friends he pleases in afterlife, when he is actively maintaining—and extending, if that is possible—the dignity and credit of the Firm. Until then, I am enough for him, perhaps, and all in all. I have no wish that people should step in between us. I would much rather show my sense of the obliging conduct of a deserving person like your friend. Therefore let it
