“Ask Mr. Feeder, if you please, Toots,” said the Doctor, “to prepare a few introductory volumes for Mr. Dombey’s son, and to allot him a convenient seat for study. My dear, I believe Mr. Dombey has not seen the dormitories.”
“If Mr. Dombey will walk upstairs,” said Mrs. Blimber, “I shall be more than proud to show him the dominions of the drowsy god.”
With that, Mrs. Blimber, who was a lady of great suavity, and a wiry figure, and who wore a cap composed of sky-blue materials, proceeded upstairs with Mr. Dombey and Cornelia; Mrs. Pipchin following, and looking out sharp for her enemy the footman.
While they were gone, Paul sat upon the table, holding Florence by the hand, and glancing timidly from the Doctor round and round the room, while the Doctor, leaning back in his chair, with his hand in his breast as usual, held a book from him at arm’s length, and read. There was something very awful in this manner of reading. It was such a determined, unimpassioned, inflexible, cold-blooded way of going to work. It left the Doctor’s countenance exposed to view; and when the Doctor smiled suspiciously at his author, or knit his brows, or shook his head and made wry faces at him, as much as to say, “Don’t tell me, Sir; I know better,” it was terrific.
Toots, too, had no business to be outside the door, ostentatiously examining the wheels in his watch, and counting his half-crowns. But that didn’t last long; for Doctor Blimber, happening to change the position of his tight plump legs, as if he were going to get up, Toots swiftly vanished, and appeared no more.
Mr. Dombey and his conductress were soon heard coming downstairs again, talking all the way; and presently they re-entered the Doctor’s study.
“I hope, Mr. Dombey,” said the Doctor, laying down his book, “that the arrangements meet your approval.”
“They are excellent, Sir,” said Mr. Dombey.
“Very fair, indeed,” said Mrs. Pipchin, in a low voice; never disposed to give too much encouragement.
“Mrs. Pipchin,” said Mr. Dombey, wheeling round, “will, with your permission, Doctor and Mrs. Blimber, visit Paul now and then.”
“Whenever Mrs. Pipchin pleases,” observed the Doctor.
“Always happy to see her,” said Mrs. Blimber.
“I think,” said Mr. Dombey, “I have given all the trouble I need, and may take my leave. Paul, my child,” he went close to him, as he sat upon the table. “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Papa.”
The limp and careless little hand that Mr. Dombey took in his, was singularly out of keeping with the wistful face. But he had no part in its sorrowful expression. It was not addressed to him. No, no. To Florence—all to Florence.
If Mr. Dombey in his insolence of wealth, had ever made an enemy, hard to appease and cruelly vindictive in his hate, even such an enemy might have received the pang that wrung his proud heart then, as compensation for his injury.
He bent down, over his boy, and kissed him. If his sight were dimmed as he did so, by something that for a moment blurred the little face, and made it indistinct to him, his mental vision may have been, for that short time, the clearer perhaps.
“I shall see you soon, Paul. You are free on Saturdays and Sundays, you know.”
“Yes, Papa,” returned Paul: looking at his sister. “On Saturdays and Sundays.”
“And you’ll try and learn a great deal here, and be a clever man,” said Mr. Dombey; “won’t you?”
“I’ll try,” returned the child, wearily.
“And you’ll soon be grown up now!” said Mr. Dombey.
“Oh! very soon!” replied the child. Once more the old, old look passed rapidly across his features like a strange light. It fell on Mrs. Pipchin, and extinguished itself in her black dress. That excellent ogress stepped forward to take leave and to bear off Florence, which she had long been thirsting to do. The move on her part roused Mr. Dombey, whose eyes were fixed on Paul. After patting him on the head, and pressing his small hand again, he took leave of Doctor Blimber, Mrs. Blimber, and Miss Blimber, with his usual polite frigidity, and walked out of the study.
Despite his entreaty that they would not think of stirring, Doctor Blimber, Mrs. Blimber, and Miss Blimber all pressed forward to attend him to the hall; and thus Mrs. Pipchin got into a state of entanglement with Miss Blimber and the Doctor, and was crowded out of the study before she could clutch Florence. To which happy accident Paul stood afterwards indebted for the dear remembrance, that Florence ran back to throw her arms round his neck, and that hers was the last face in the doorway: turned towards him with a smile of encouragement, the brighter for the tears through which it beamed.
It made his childish bosom heave and swell when it was gone; and sent the globes, the books, blind Homer and Minerva, swimming round the room. But they stopped, all of a sudden; and then he heard the loud clock in the hall still gravely inquiring “how, is, my, lit, tle, friend? how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?” as it had done before.
He sat, with folded hands, upon his pedestal, silently listening. But he might have answered “weary, weary! very lonely, very sad!” And there, with an aching void in his young heart, and all outside so cold, and bare, and strange, Paul sat as if he had taken life unfurnished, and the upholsterer were never coming.
XII
Paul’s Education
After the lapse of some minutes, which appeared an immense time to little Paul Dombey on the table, Doctor Blimber came back. The Doctor’s walk was stately, and calculated to impress the juvenile mind with solemn feelings. It was a sort of march; but when the Doctor put out his right foot, he gravely turned upon his axis, with a semicircular sweep towards the left; and when he put out his left foot, he turned in the same manner towards the
