To see the face change to its old expression, deepened in intensity! To see the eyes droop as from some mean and odious object! To see the lighting of the haughty brow! To see scorn, anger, indignation, and abhorrence starting into sight, and the pale blank earnestness vanish like a mist! He could not choose but look, although he looked to his dismay.
“Go, Sir!” she said, pointing with an imperious hand towards the door. “Our first and last confidence is at an end. Nothing can make us stranger to each other than we are henceforth.”
“I shall take my rightful course, Madam,” said Mr. Dombey, “undeterred, you may be sure, by any general declamation.”
She turned her back upon him, and, without reply, sat down before her glass.
“I place my reliance on your improved sense of duty, and more correct feeling, and better reflection, Madam,” said Mr. Dombey.
She answered not one word. He saw no more expression of any heed of him, in the mirror, than if he had been an unseen spider on the wall, or beetle on the floor, or rather, than if he had been the one or other, seen and crushed when she last turned from him, and forgotten among the ignominious and dead vermin of the ground.
He looked back, as he went out at the door, upon the well-lighted and luxurious room, the beautiful and glittering objects everywhere displayed, the shape of Edith in its rich dress seated before her glass, and the face of Edith as the glass presented it to him; and betook himself to his old chamber of cogitation, carrying away with him a vivid picture in his mind of all these things, and a rambling and unaccountable speculation (such as sometimes comes into a man’s head) how they would all look when he saw them next.
For the rest, Mr. Dombey was very taciturn, and very dignified, and very confident of carrying out his purpose; and remained so.
He did not design accompanying the family to Brighton; but he graciously informed Cleopatra at breakfast, on the morning of departure, which arrived a day or two afterwards, that he might be expected down, soon. There was no time to be lost in getting Cleopatra to any place recommended as being salutary; for, indeed, she seemed upon the wane, and turning of the earth, earthy.
Without having undergone any decided second attack of her malady, the old woman seemed to have crawled backward in her recovery from the first. She was more lean and shrunken, more uncertain in her imbecility, and made stranger confusions in her mind and memory. Among other symptoms of this last affliction, she fell into the habit of confounding the names of her two sons-in-law, the living and the deceased; and in general called Mr. Dombey, either “Grangeby,” or “Domber,” or indifferently, both.
But she was youthful, very youthful still; and in her youthfulness appeared at breakfast, before going away, in a new bonnet made express, and a travelling robe that was embroidered and braided like an old baby’s. It was not easy to put her into a flyaway bonnet now, or to keep the bonnet in its place on the back of her poor nodding head, when it was got on. In this instance, it had not only the extraneous effect of being always on one side, but of being perpetually tapped on the crown by Flowers the maid, who attended in the background during breakfast to perform that duty.
“Now, my dearest Grangeby,” said Mrs. Skewton, “you must posively prom,” she cut some of her words short, and cut out others altogether, “come down very soon.”
“I said just now, Madam,” returned Mr. Dombey, loudly and laboriously, “that I am coming in a day or two.”
“Bless you, Domber!”
Here the Major, who was come to take leave of the ladies, and who was staring through his apoplectic eyes at Mrs. Skewton’s face with the disinterested composure of an immortal being, said:
“Begad, Ma’am, you don’t ask old Joe to come!”
“Sterious wretch, who’s he?” lisped Cleopatra. But a tap on the bonnet from Flowers seeming to jog her memory, she added, “Oh! You mean yourself, you naughty creature!”
“Devilish queer, Sir,” whispered the Major to Mr. Dombey. “Bad case. Never did wrap up enough;” the Major being buttoned to the chin. “Why who should J. B. mean by Joe, but old Joe Bagstock—Joseph—your slave—Joe, Ma’am? Here! Here’s the man! Here are the Bagstock bellows, Ma’am!” cried the Major, striking himself a sounding blow on the chest.
“My dearest Edith—Grangeby—it’s most trordinry thing,” said Cleopatra, pettishly, “that Major—”
“Bagstock! J. B.!” cried the Major, seeing that she faltered for his name.
“Well, it don’t matter,” said Cleopatra. “Edith, my love, you know I never could remember names—what was it? oh!—most trordinry thing that so many people want to come down to see me. I’m not going for long. I’m coming back. Surely they can wait, till I come back!”
Cleopatra looked all round the table as she said it, and appeared very uneasy.
“I won’t have visitors—really don’t want visitors,” she said; “little repose—and all that sort of thing—is what I quire. No odious brutes must proach me till I’ve shaken off this numbness;” and in a grisly resumption of her coquettish ways, she made a dab at the Major with her fan, but overset Mr. Dombey’s breakfast cup instead, which was in quite a different direction.
Then she called for Withers, and charged him to see particularly that word was left about some trivial alterations in her room, which must be all made before she came back, and which must be set about immediately, as there was no saying how soon she might come back; for she had a great many engagements, and all sorts of people to call upon. Withers received these directions with becoming deference, and gave his guarantee for their execution; but when he withdrew a pace or two behind her, it appeared as
