“You are very poor, mother, I see,” said Alice, looking round, when she had sat thus for some time.
“Bitter poor, my deary,” replied the old woman.
She admired her daughter, and was afraid of her. Perhaps her admiration, such as it was, had originated long ago, when she first found anything that was beautiful appearing in the midst of the squalid fight of her existence. Perhaps her fear was referable, in some sort, to the retrospect she had so lately heard. Be this as it might, she stood, submissively and deferentially, before her child, and inclined her head, as if in a pitiful entreaty to be spared any further reproach.
“How have you lived?”
“By begging, my deary.”
“And pilfering, mother?”
“Sometimes, Ally—in a very small way. I am old and timid. I have taken trifles from children now and then, my deary, but not often. I have tramped about the country, pet, and I know what I know. I have watched.”
“Watched?” returned the daughter, looking at her.
“I have hung about a family, my deary,” said the mother, even more humbly and submissively than before.
“What family?”
“Hush, darling. Don’t be angry with me. I did it for the love of you. In memory of my poor gal beyond seas.” She put out her hand deprecatingly, and drawing it back again, laid it on her lips.
“Years ago, my deary,” she pursued, glancing timidly at the attentive and stern face opposed to her, “I came across his little child, by chance.”
“Whose child?”
“Not his, Alice deary; don’t look at me like that; not his. How could it be his? You know he has none.”
“Whose then?” returned the daughter. “You said his.”
“Hush, Ally; you frighten me, deary. Mr. Dombey’s—only Mr. Dombey’s. Since then, darling, I have seen them often. I have seen him.”
In uttering this last word, the old woman shrunk and recoiled, as if with sudden fear that her daughter would strike her. But though the daughter’s face was fixed upon her, and expressed the most vehement passion, she remained still: except that she clenched her arms tighter and tighter within each other, on her bosom, as if to restrain them by that means from doing an injury to herself, or someone else, in the blind fury of the wrath that suddenly possessed her.
“Little he thought who I was!” said the old woman, shaking her clenched hand.
“And little he cared!” muttered her daughter, between her teeth.
“But there we were,” said the old woman, “face to face. I spoke to him, and he spoke to me. I sat and watched him as he went away down a long grove of trees: and at every step he took, I cursed him soul and body.”
“He will thrive in spite of that,” returned the daughter disdainfully.
“Ay, he is thriving,” said the mother.
She held her peace; for the face and form before her were unshaped by rage. It seemed as if the bosom would burst with the emotions that strove within it. The effort that constrained and held it pent up, was no less formidable than the rage itself: no less bespeaking the violent and dangerous character of the woman who made it. But it succeeded, and she asked, after a silence:
“Is he married?”
“No, deary,” said the mother.
“Going to be?”
“Not that I know of, deary. But his master and friend is married. Oh, we may give him joy! We may give ’em all joy!” cried the old woman, hugging herself with her lean arms in her exultation. “Nothing but joy to us will come of that marriage. Mind me!”
The daughter looked at her for an explanation.
“But you are wet and tired; hungry and thirsty,” said the old woman, hobbling to the cupboard; “and there’s little here, and little”—diving down into her pocket, and jingling a few halfpence on the table—“little here. Have you any money, Alice, deary?”
The covetous, sharp, eager face, with which she asked the question and looked on, as her daughter took out of her bosom the little gift she had so lately received, told almost as much of the history of this parent and child as the child herself had told in words.
“Is that all?” said the mother.
“I have no more. I should not have this, but for charity.”
“But for charity, eh, deary?” said the old woman, bending greedily over the table to look at the money, which she appeared distrustful of her daughter’s still retaining in her hand, and gazing on. “Humph! six and six is twelve, and six eighteen—so—we must make the most of it. I’ll go buy something to eat and drink.”
With greater alacrity than might have been expected in one of her appearance—for age and misery seemed to have made her as decrepit as ugly—she began to occupy her trembling hands in tying an old bonnet on her head, and folding a torn shawl about herself: still eyeing the money in her daughter’s hand, with the same sharp desire.
“What joy is to come to us of this marriage, mother?” asked the daughter. “You have not told me that.”
“The joy,” she replied, attiring herself, with fumbling fingers, “of no love at all, and much pride and hate, my deary. The joy of confusion and strife among ’em, proud as they are, and of danger—danger, Alice!”
“What danger?”
“I have seen what I have seen. I know what I know!” chuckled the mother. “Let some look to it. Let some be upon their guard. My gal may keep good company yet!”
Then, seeing that in the wondering earnestness
