Chapter 58. After a Lapse

Dombey and Son

by Charles Dickens

The sea had ebbed and flowed, through a whole year. Through a
whole year, the winds and clouds had come and gone; the ceaseless
work of Time had been performed, in storm and sunshine. Through a
whole year, the tides of human chance and change had set in their
allotted courses. Through a whole year, the famous House of Dombey
and Son had fought a fight for life, against cross accidents,
doubtful rumours, unsuccessful ventures, unpropitious times, and most
of all, against the infatuation of its head, who would not contract
its enterprises by a hair's breadth, and would not listen to a word
of warning that the ship he strained so hard against the storm, was
weak, and could not bear it. The year was out, and the great House
was down.

One summer afternoon; a year, wanting some odd days, after the
marriage in the City church; there was a buzz and whisper upon
'Change of a great failure. A certain cold proud man, well known
there, was not there, nor was he represented there. Next day it was
noised abroad that Dombey and Son had stopped, and next night there
was a List of Bankrupts published, headed by that name.

The world was very busy now, in sooth, and had a deal to say. It
was an innocently credulous and a much ill-used world. It was a world
in which there was 'no other sort of bankruptcy whatever. There were
no conspicuous people in it, trading far and wide on rotten banks of
religion, patriotism, virtue, honour. There was no amount worth
mentioning of mere paper in circulation, on which anybody lived
pretty handsomely, promising to pay great sums of goodness with no
effects. There were no shortcomings anywhere, in anything but money.
The world was very angry indeed; and the people especially, who, in a
worse world, might have been supposed to be apt traders themselves in
shows and pretences, were observed to be mightily indignant.

Here was a new inducement to dissipation, presented to that
sport of circumstances, Mr Perch the Messenger! It was apparently the
fate of Mr Perch to be always waking up, and finding himself famous.
He had but yesterday, as one might say, subsided into private life
from the celebrity of the elopement and the events that followed it;
and now he was made a more important man than ever, by the
bankruptcy. Gliding from his bracket in the outer office where he now
sat, watching the strange faces of accountants and others, who
quickly superseded nearly all the old clerks, Mr Perch had but to
show himself in the court outside, or, at farthest, in the bar of the
King's Arms, to be asked a multitude of questions, almost certain to
include that interesting question, what would he take to drink? Then
would Mr Perch descant upon the hours of acute uneasiness he and Mrs
Perch had suffered out at Balls Pond, when they first suspected
'things was going wrong.' Then would Mr Perch relate to gaping
listeners, in a low voice, as if the corpse of the deceased House
were lying unburied in the next room, how Mrs Perch had first come to
surmise that things was going wrong by hearing him (Perch) moaning in
his sleep, 'twelve and ninepence in the pound, twelve and ninepence
in the pound!' Which act of somnambulism he supposed to have
originated in the impression made upon him by the change in Mr
Dombey's face. Then would he inform them how he had once said, 'Might
I make so bold as ask, Sir, are you unhappy in your mind?' and how Mr
Dombey had replied, 'My faithful Perch - but no, it cannot be!' and
with that had struck his hand upon his forehead, and said, 'Leave me,
Perch!' Then, in short, would Mr Perch, a victim to his position,
tell all manner of lies; affecting himself to tears by those that
were of a moving nature, and really believing that the inventions of
yesterday had, on repetition, a sort of truth about them to-day.

Mr Perch always closed these conferences by meekly remarking,
That, of course, whatever his suspicions might have been (as if he
had ever had any!) it wasn't for him to betray his trust, was it?
Which sentiment (there never being any creditors present) was
received as doing great honour to his feelings. Thus, he generally
brought away a soothed conscience and left an agreeable impression
behind him, when he returned to his bracket: again to sit watching
the strange faces of the accountants and others, making so free with
the great mysteries, the Books; or now and then to go on tiptoe into
Mr Dombey's empty room, and stir the fire; or to take an airing at
the door, and have a little more doleful chat with any straggler whom
he knew; or to propitiate, with various small attentions, the head
accountant: from whom Mr Perch had expectations of a messengership in
a Fire Office, when the affairs of the House should be wound up.

To Major Bagstock, the bankruptcy was quite a calamity. The
Major was not a sympathetic character - his attention being wholly
concentrated on J. B. - nor was he a man subject to lively emotions,
except in the physical regards of gasping and choking. But he had so
paraded his friend Dombey at the club; had so flourished him at the
heads of the members in general, and so put them down by continual
assertion of his riches; that the club, being but human, was
delighted to retort upon the Major, by asking him, with a show of
great concern, whether this tremendous smash had been at all
expected, and how his friend Dombey bore it. To such questions, the
Major, waxing very purple, would reply that it was a bad world, Sir,
altogether; that Joey knew a thing or two, but had been done, Sir,
done like an infant; that if you had foretold this, Sir, to J.
Bagstock, when he went abroad with Dombey and was chasing that
vagabond up and down France, J. Bagstock would have pooh-pooh'd you -
would have pooh- pooh'd you, Sir, by the Lord! That Joe had been
deceived, Sir, taken in, hoodwinked, blindfolded, but was broad awake
again and staring; insomuch, Sir, that if Joe's father were to rise
up from the grave to-morrow, he wouldn't trust the old blade with a
penny piece, but would tell him that his son Josh was too old a
soldier to be done again, Sir. That he was a suspicious, crabbed,
cranky, used-up, J. B. infidel, Sir; and that if it were consistent
with the dignity of a rough and tough old Major, of the old school,
who had had the honour of being personally known to, and commended
by, their late Royal Highnesses the Dukes of Kent and York, to retire
to a tub and live in it, by Gad! Sir, he'd have a tub in Pall Mall
to-morrow, to show his contempt for mankind!'

Of all this, and many variations of the same tune, the Major
would deliver himself with so many apoplectic symptoms, such rollings
of his head, and such violent growls of ill usage and resentment,
that the younger members of the club surmised he had invested money
in his friend Dombey's House, and lost it; though the older soldiers
and deeper dogs, who knew Joe better, wouldn't hear of such a thing.
The unfortunate Native, expressing no opinion, suffered dreadfully;
not merely in his moral feelings, which were regularly fusilladed by
the Major every hour in the day, and riddled through and through, but
in his sensitiveness to bodily knocks and bumps, which was kept
continually on the stretch. For six entire weeks after the
bankruptcy, this miserable foreigner lived in a rainy season of
boot-jacks and brushes.

Mrs Chick had three ideas upon the subject of the terrible
reverse. The first was that she could not understand it. The second,
that her brother had not made an effort. The third, that if she had
been invited to dinner on the day of that first party, it never would
have happened; and that she had said so, at the time.

Nobody's opinion stayed the misfortune, lightened it, or made it
heavier. It was understood that the affairs of the House were to be
wound up as they best could be; that Mr Dombey freely resigned
everything he had, and asked for no favour from anyone. That any
resumption of the business was out of the question, as he would
listen to no friendly negotiation having that compromise in view;
that he had relinquished every post of trust or distinction he had
held, as a man respected among merchants; that he was dying,
according to some; that he was going melancholy mad, according to
others; that he was a broken man, according to all.

The clerks dispersed after holding a little dinner of condolence
among themselves, which was enlivened by comic singing, and went off
admirably. Some took places abroad, and some engaged in other Houses
at home; some looked up relations in the country, for whom they
suddenly remembered they had a particular affection; and some
advertised for employment in the newspapers. Mr Perch alone remained
of all the late establishment, sitting on his bracket looking at the
accountants, or starting off it, to propitiate the head accountant,
who was to get him into the Fire Office. The Counting House soon got
to be dirty and neglected. The principal slipper and dogs' collar
seller, at the corner of the court, would have doubted the propriety
of throwing up his forefinger to the brim of his hat, any more, if Mr
Dombey had appeared there now; and the ticket porter, with his hands
under his white apron, moralised good sound morality about ambition,
which (he observed) was not, in his opinion, made to rhyme to
perdition, for nothing.

Mr Morfin, the hazel-eyed bachelor, with the hair and whiskers
sprinkled with grey, was perhaps the only person within the
atmosphere of the House - its head, of course, excepted - who was
heartily and deeply affected by the disaster that had befallen it. He
had treated Mr Dombey with due respect and deference through many
years, but he had never disguised his natural character, or meanly
truckled to him, or pampered his master passion for the advancement
of his own purposes. He had, therefore, no self-disrespect to avenge;
no long-tightened springs to release with a quick recoil. He worked
early and late to unravel whatever was complicated or difficult in
the records of the transactions of the House; was always in
attendance to explain whatever required explanation; sat in his old
room sometimes very late at night, studying points by his mastery of
which he could spare Mr Dombey the pain of being personally referred
to; and then would go home to Islington, and calm his mind by
producing the most dismal and forlorn sounds out of his violoncello
before going to bed.

He was solacing himself with this melodious grumbler one
evening, and, having been much dispirited by the proceedings of the
day, was scraping consolation out of its deepest notes, when his
landlady (who was fortunately deaf, and had no other consciousness of
these performances than a sensation of something rumbling in her
bones) announced a lady.

'In mourning,' she said.

The violoncello stopped immediately; and the performer, laying
it on the sofa with great tenderness and care, made a sign that the
lady was to come in. He followed directly, and met Harriet Carker on
the stair.

'Alone!' he said, 'and John here this morning! Is there anything
the matter, my dear? But no,' he added, 'your face tells quite
another story.'

'I am afraid it is a selfish revelation that you see there,
then,' she answered.

'It is a very pleasant one,' said he; 'and, if selfish, a
novelty too, worth seeing in you. But I don't believe that.'

He had placed a chair for her by this time, and sat down
opposite; the violoncello lying snugly on the sofa between them.

'You will not be surprised at my coming alone, or at John's not
having told you I was coming,' said Harriet; 'and you will believe
that, when I tell you why I have come. May I do so now?'

'You can do nothing better.'

'You were not busy?'

He pointed to the violoncello lying on the sofa, and said 'I
have been, all day. Here's my witness. I have been confiding all my
cares to it. I wish I had none but my own to tell.'

'Is the House at an end?' said Harriet, earnestly.

'Completely at an end.'

'Will it never be resumed?'

'Never.'

The bright expression of her face was not overshadowed as her
lips silently repeated the word. He seemed to observe this with some
little involuntary surprise: and said again:

'Never. You remember what I told you. It has been, all along,
impossible to convince him; impossible to reason with him; sometimes,
impossible even to approach him. The worst has happened; and the
House has fallen, never to be built up any more.'

'And Mr Dombey, is he personally ruined?'

'Ruined.'

'Will he have no private fortune left? Nothing?'

A certain eagerness in her voice, and something that was almost
joyful in her look, seemed to surprise him more and more; to
disappoint him too, and jar discordantly against his own emotions. He
drummed with the fingers of one hand on the table, looking wistfully
at her, and shaking his head, said, after a pause:

'The extent of Mr Dombey's resources is not accurately within my
knowledge; but though they are doubtless very large, his obligations
are enormous. He is a gentleman of high honour and integrity. Any man
in his position could, and many a man in his position would, have
saved himself, by making terms which would have very slightly, almost
insensibly, increased the losses of those who had had dealings with
him, and left him a remnant to live upon. But he is resolved on
payment to the last farthing of his means. His own words are, that
they will clear, or nearly clear, the House, and that no one can lose
much. Ah, Miss Harriet, it would do us no harm to remember oftener
than we do, that vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!
His pride shows well in this.'

She heard him with little or no change in her expression, and
with a divided attention that showed her to be busy with something in
her own mind. When he was silent, she asked him hurriedly:

'Have you seen him lately?'

'No one sees him. When this crisis of his affairs renders it
necessary for him to come out of his house, he comes out for the
occasion, and again goes home, and shuts himself up, and will sea no
one. He has written me a letter, acknowledging our past connexion in
higher terms than it deserved, and parting from me. I am delicate of
obtruding myself upon him now, never having had much intercourse with
him in better times; but I have tried to do so. I have written, gone
there, entreated. Quite in vain.'

He watched her, as in the hope that she would testify some
greater concern than she had yet shown; and spoke gravely and
feelingly, as if to impress her the more; but there was no change in
her.

'Well, well, Miss Harriet,' he said, with a disappointed air,
'this is not to the purpose. You have not come here to hear this.
Some other and pleasanter theme is in your mind. Let it be in mine,
too, and we shall talk upon more equal terms. Come!'

'No, it is the same theme,' returned Harriet, with frank and
quick surprise. 'Is it not likely that it should be? Is it not
natural that John and I should have been thinking and speaking very
much of late of these great changes? Mr Dombey, whom he served so
many years - you know upon what terms - reduced, as you describe; and
we quite rich!'

Good, true face, as that face of hers was, and pleasant as it
had been to him, Mr Morfin, the hazel-eyed bachelor, since the first
time he had ever looked upon it, it pleased him less at that moment,
lighted with a ray of exultation, than it had ever pleased him
before.

'I need not remind you,' said Harriet, casting down her eyes
upon her black dress, 'through what means our circumstances changed.
You have not forgotten that our brother James, upon that dreadful
day, left no will, no relations but ourselves.'

The face was pleasanter to him now, though it was pale and
melancholy, than it had been a moment since. He seemed to breathe
more cheerily.

'You know,' she said, 'our history, the history of both my
brothers, in connexion with the unfortunate, unhappy gentleman, of
whom you have spoken so truly. You know how few our wants are -
John's and mine - and what little use we have for money, after the
life we have led together for so many years; and now that he is
earning an income that is ample for us, through your kindness. You
are not unprepared to hear what favour I have come to ask of you?'

'I hardly know. I was, a minute ago. Now, I think, I am not.'

'Of my dead brother I say nothing. If the dead know what we do -
but you understand me. Of my living brother I could say much; but
what need I say more, than that this act of duty, in which I have
come to ask your indispensable assistance, is his own, and that he
cannot rest until it is performed!'

She raised her eyes again; and the light of exultation in her
face began to appear beautiful, in the observant eyes that watched
her.

'Dear Sir,' she went on to say, 'it must be done very quietly
and secretly. Your experience and knowledge will point out a way of
doing it. Mr Dombey may, perhaps, be led to believe that it is
something saved, unexpectedly, from the wreck of his fortunes; or
that it is a voluntary tribute to his honourable and upright
character, from some of those with whom he has had great dealings; or
that it is some old lost debt repaid. There must be many ways of
doing it. I know you will choose the best. The favour I have come to
ask is, that you will do it for us in your own kind, generous,
considerate manner. That you will never speak of it to John, whose
chief happiness in this act of restitution is to do it secretly,
unknown, and unapproved of: that only a very small part of the
inheritance may be reserved to us, until Mr Dombey shall have
possessed the interest of the rest for the remainder of his life;
that you will keep our secret, faithfully - but that I am sure you
will; and that, from this time, it may seldom be whispered, even
between you and me, but may live in my thoughts only as a new reason
for thankfulness to Heaven, and joy and pride in my brother.'

Such a look of exultation there may be on Angels' faces when the
one repentant sinner enters Heaven, among ninety-nine just men. It
was not dimmed or tarnished by the joyful tears that filled her eyes,
but was the brighter for them.

'My dear Harriet,' said Mr Morfin, after a silence, 'I was not
prepared for this. Do I understand you that you wish to make your own
part in the inheritance available for your good purpose, as well as
John's?'

'Oh, yes,' she returned 'When we have shared everything together
for so long a time, and have had no care, hope, or purpose apart,
could I bear to be excluded from my share in this? May I not urge a
claim to be my brother's partner and companion to the last?'

'Heaven forbid that I should dispute it!' he replied.

'We may rely on your friendly help?' she said. 'I knew we
might!'

'I should be a worse man than, - than I hope I am, or would
willingly believe myself, if I could not give you that assurance from
my heart and soul. You may, implicitly. Upon my honour, I will keep
your secret. And if it should be found that Mr Dombey is so reduced
as I fear he will be, acting on a determination that there seem to be
no means of influencing, I will assist you to accomplish the design,
on which you and John are jointly resolved.'

She gave him her hand, and thanked him with a cordial, happy
face.

'Harriet,' he said, detaining it in his. 'To speak to you of the
worth of any sacrifice that you can make now - above all, of any
sacrifice of mere money - would be idle and presumptuous. To put
before you any appeal to reconsider your purpose or to set narrow
limits to it, would be, I feel, not less so. I have no right to mar
the great end of a great history, by any obtrusion of my own weak
self. I have every right to bend my head before what you confide to
me, satisfied that it comes from a higher and better source of
inspiration than my poor worldly knowledge. I will say only this: I
am your faithful steward; and I would rather be so, and your chosen
friend, than I would be anybody in the world, except yourself.'

She thanked him again, cordially, and wished him good-night.
'Are you going home?' he said. 'Let me go with you.'

'Not to-night. I am not going home now; I have a visit to make
alone. Will you come to-morrow?'

'Well, well,' said he, 'I'll come to-morrow. In the meantime,
I'll think of this, and how we can best proceed. And perhaps I'll
think of it, dear Harriet, and - and - think of me a little in
connexion with it.'

He handed her down to a coach she had in waiting at the door;
and if his landlady had not been deaf, she would have heard him
muttering as he went back upstairs, when the coach had driven off,
that we were creatures of habit, and it was a sorrowful habit to be
an old bachelor.

The violoncello lying on the sofa between the two chairs, he
took it up, without putting away the vacant chair, and sat droning on
it, and slowly shaking his head at the vacant chair, for a long, long
time. The expression he communicated to the instrument at first,
though monstrously pathetic and bland, was nothing to the expression
he communicated to his own face, and bestowed upon the empty chair:
which was so sincere, that he was obliged to have recourse to Captain
Cuttle's remedy more than once, and to rub his face with his sleeve.
By degrees, however, the violoncello, in unison with his own frame of
mind, glided melodiously into the Harmonious Blacksmith, which he
played over and over again, until his ruddy and serene face gleamed
like true metal on the anvil of a veritable blacksmith. In fine, the
violoncello and the empty chair were the companions of his
bachelorhood until nearly midnight; and when he took his supper, the
violoncello set up on end in the sofa corner, big with the latent
harmony of a whole foundry full of harmonious blacksmiths, seemed to
ogle the empty chair out of its crooked eyes, with unutterable
intelligence.

When Harriet left the house, the driver of her hired coach,
taking a course that was evidently no new one to him, went in and out
by bye-ways, through that part of the suburbs, until he arrived at
some open ground, where there were a few quiet little old houses
standing among gardens. At the garden-gate of one of these he
stopped, and Harriet alighted.

Her gentle ringing at the bell was responded to by a
dolorous-looking woman, of light complexion, with raised eyebrows,
and head drooping on one side, who curtseyed at sight of her, and
conducted her across the garden to the house.

'How is your patient, nurse, to-night?' said Harriet.

'In a poor way, Miss, I am afraid. Oh how she do remind me,
sometimes, of my Uncle's Betsey Jane!' returned the woman of the
light complexion, in a sort of doleful rapture.

'In what respect?' asked Harriet.

'Miss, in all respects,' replied the other, 'except that she's
grown up, and Betsey Jane, when at death's door, was but a child.'

'But you have told me she recovered,' observed Harriet mildly;
'so there is the more reason for hope, Mrs Wickam.'

'Ah, Miss, hope is an excellent thing for such as has the
spirits to bear it!' said Mrs Wickam, shaking her head. 'My own
spirits is not equal to it, but I don't owe it any grudge. I envys
them that is so blest!'

'You should try to be more cheerful,' remarked Harriet.

'Thank you, Miss, I'm sure,' said Mrs Wickam grimly. 'If I was
so inclined, the loneliness of this situation - you'll excuse my
speaking so free - would put it out of my power, in four and twenty
hours; but I ain't at all. I'd rather not. The little spirits that I
ever had, I was bereaved of at Brighton some few years ago, and I
think I feel myself the better for it.'

In truth, this was the very Mrs Wickam who had superseded Mrs
Richards as the nurse of little Paul, and who considered herself to
have gained the loss in question, under the roof of the amiable
Pipchin. The excellent and thoughtful old system, hallowed by long
prescription, which has usually picked out from the rest of mankind
the most dreary and uncomfortable people that could possibly be laid
hold of, to act as instructors of youth, finger-posts to the virtues,
matrons, monitors, attendants on sick beds, and the like, had
established Mrs Wickam in very good business as a nurse, and had led
to her serious qualities being particularly commended by an admiring
and numerous connexion.

Mrs Wickam, with her eyebrows elevated, and her head on one
side, lighted the way upstairs to a clean, neat chamber, opening on
another chamber dimly lighted, where there was a bed. In the first
room, an old woman sat mechanically staring out at the open window,
on the darkness. In the second, stretched upon the bed, lay the
shadow of a figure that had spurned the wind and rain, one wintry
night; hardly to be recognised now, but by the long black hair that
showed so very black against the colourless face, and all the white
things about it.

Oh, the strong eyes, and the weak frame! The eyes that turned so
eagerly and brightly to the door when Harriet came in; the feeble
head that could not raise itself, and moved so slowly round upon its
pillow!

'Alice!' said the visitor's mild voice, 'am I late to-night?'

'You always seem late, but are always early.'

Harriet had sat down by the bedside now, and put her hand upon
the thin hand lying there.

'You are better?'

Mrs Wickam, standing at the foot of the bed, like a disconsolate
spectre, most decidedly and forcibly shook her head to negative this
position.

'It matters very little!' said Alice, with a faint smile.
'Better or worse to-day, is but a day's difference - perhaps not so
much.'

Mrs Wickam, as a serious character, expressed her approval with
a groan; and having made some cold dabs at the bottom of the
bedclothes, as feeling for the patient's feet and expecting to find
them stony; went clinking among the medicine bottles on the table, as
who should say, 'while we are here, let us repeat the mixture as
before.'

'No,' said Alice, whispering to her visitor, 'evil courses, and
remorse, travel, want, and weather, storm within, and storm without,
have worn my life away. It will not last much longer.

She drew the hand up as she spoke, and laid her face against
it.

'I lie here, sometimes, thinking I should like to live until I
had had a little time to show you how grateful I could be! It is a
weakness, and soon passes. Better for you as it is. Better for
me!'

How different her hold upon the hand, from what it had been when
she took it by the fireside on the bleak winter evening! Scorn, rage,
defiance, recklessness, look here! This is the end.

Mrs Wickam having clinked sufficiently among the bottles, now
produced the mixture. Mrs Wickam looked hard at her patient in the
act of drinking, screwed her mouth up tight, her eyebrows also, and
shook her head, expressing that tortures shouldn't make her say it
was a hopeless case. Mrs Wickam then sprinkled a little cooling-stuff
about the room, with the air of a female grave-digger, who was
strewing ashes on ashes, dust on dust - for she was a serious
character - and withdrew to partake of certain funeral baked meats
downstairs.

'How long is it,' asked Alice, 'since I went to you and told you
what I had done, and when you were advised it was too late for anyone
to follow?'

'It is a year and more,' said Harriet.

'A year and more,' said Alice, thoughtfully intent upon her
face. 'Months upon months since you brought me here!'

Harriet answered 'Yes.'

'Brought me here, by force of gentleness and kindness. Me!' said
Alice, shrinking with her face behind her hand, 'and made me human by
woman's looks and words, and angel's deeds!'

Harriet bending over her, composed and soothed her. By and bye,
Alice lying as before, with the hand against her face, asked to have
her mother called.

Harriet called to her more than once, but the old woman was so
absorbed looking out at the open window on the darkness, that she did
not hear. It was not until Harriet went to her and touched her, that
she rose up, and came.

'Mother,' said Alice, taking the hand again, and fixing her
lustrous eyes lovingly upon her visitor, while she merely addressed a
motion of her finger to the old woman, 'tell her what you know.'

'To-night, my deary?'

'Ay, mother,' answered Alice, faintly and solemnly,
'to-night!'

The old woman, whose wits appeared disorderly by alarm, remorse,
or grief, came creeping along the side of the bed, opposite to that
on which Harriet sat; and kneeling down, so as to bring her withered
face upon a level with the coverlet, and stretching out her hand, so
as to touch her daughter's arm, began:

'My handsome gal - '

Heaven, what a cry was that, with which she stopped there,
gazing at the poor form lying on the bed!

'Changed, long ago, mother! Withered, long ago,' said Alice,
without looking at her. 'Don't grieve for that now.

'My daughter,' faltered the old woman, 'my gal who'll soon get
better, and shame 'em all with her good looks.'

Alice smiled mournfully at Harriet, and fondled her hand a
little closer, but said nothing.

'Who'll soon get better, I say,' repeated the old woman,
menacing the vacant air with her shrivelled fist, 'and who'll shame
'em all with her good looks - she will. I say she will! she shall!' -
as if she were in passionate contention with some unseen opponent at
the bedside, who contradicted her - 'my daughter has been turned away
from, and cast out, but she could boast relationship to proud folks
too, if she chose. Ah! To proud folks! There's relationship without
your clergy and your wedding rings - they may make it, but they can't
break it - and my daughter's well related. Show me Mrs Dombey, and
I'll show you my Alice's first cousin.'

Harriet glanced from the old woman to the lustrous eyes intent
upon her face, and derived corroboration from them.

'What!' cried the old woman, her nodding head bridling with a
ghastly vanity. 'Though I am old and ugly now, - much older by life
and habit than years though, - I was once as young as any. Ah! as
pretty too, as many! I was a fresh country wench in my time,
darling,' stretching out her arm to Harriet, across the bed, 'and
looked it, too. Down in my country, Mrs Dombey's father and his
brother were the gayest gentlemen and the best-liked that came a
visiting from London - they have long been dead, though! Lord, Lord,
this long while! The brother, who was my Ally's father, longest of
the two.'

She raised her head a little, and peered at her daughter's face;
as if from the remembrance of her own youth, she had flown to the
remembrance of her child's. Then, suddenly, she laid her face down on
the bed, and shut her head up in her hands and arms.

'They were as like,' said the old woman, without looking up, as
you could see two brothers, so near an age - there wasn't much more
than a year between them, as I recollect - and if you could have seen
my gal, as I have seen her once, side by side with the other's
daughter, you'd have seen, for all the difference of dress and life,
that they were like each other. Oh! is the likeness gone, and is it
my gal - only my gal - that's to change so!'

'We shall all change, mother, in our turn,' said Alice.

'Turn!' cried the old woman, 'but why not hers as soon as my
gal's! The mother must have changed - she looked as old as me, and
full as wrinkled through her paint - but she was handsome. What have
I done, I, what have I done worse than her, that only my gal is to
lie there fading!' With another of those wild cries, she went running
out into the room from which she had come; but immediately, in her
uncertain mood, returned, and creeping up to Harriet, said:

'That's what Alice bade me tell you, deary. That's all. I found
it out when I began to ask who she was, and all about her, away in
Warwickshire there, one summer-time. Such relations was no good to
me, then. They wouldn't have owned me, and had nothing to give me. I
should have asked 'em, maybe, for a little money, afterwards, if it
hadn't been for my Alice; she'd a'most have killed me, if I had, I
think She was as proud as t'other in her way,' said the old woman,
touching the face of her daughter fearfully, and withdrawing her
hand, 'for all she's so quiet now; but she'll shame 'em with her good
looks yet. Ha, ha! She'll shame 'em, will my handsome daughter!'

Her laugh, as she retreated, was worse than her cry; worse than
the burst of imbecile lamentation in which it ended; worse than the
doting air with which she sat down in her old seat, and stared out at
the darkness.

The eyes of Alice had all this time been fixed on Harriet, whose
hand she had never released. She said now:

'I have felt, lying here, that I should like you to know this.
It might explain, I have thought, something that used to help to
harden me. I had heard so much, in my wrongdoing, of my neglected
duty, that I took up with the belief that duty had not been done to
me, and that as the seed was sown, the harvest grew. I somehow made
it out that when ladies had bad homes and mothers, they went wrong in
their way, too; but that their way was not so foul a one as mine, and
they had need to bless God for it.' That is all past. It is like a
dream, now, which I cannot quite remember or understand. It has been
more and more like a dream, every day, since you began to sit here,
and to read to me. I only tell it you, as I can recollect it. Will
you read to me a little more?'

Harriet was withdrawing her hand to open the book, when Alice
detained it for a moment.

'You will not forget my mother? I forgive her, if I have any
cause. I know that she forgives me, and is sorry in her heart. You
will not forget her?'

'Never, Alice!'

'A moment yet. Lay your head so, dear, that as you read I may
see the words in your kind face.'

Harriet complied and read - read the eternal book for all the
weary, and the heavy-laden; for all the wretched, fallen, and
neglected of this earth - read the blessed history, in which the
blind lame palsied beggar, the criminal, the woman stained with
shame, the shunned of all our dainty clay, has each a portion, that
no human pride, indifference, or sophistry, through all the ages that
this world shall last, can take away, or by the thousandth atom of a
grain reduce - read the ministry of Him who, through the round of
human life, and all its hopes and griefs, from birth to death, from
infancy to age, had sweet compassion for, and interest in, its every
scene and stage, its every suffering and sorrow.

'I shall come,' said Harriet, when she shut the book, 'very
early in the morning.'

The lustrous eyes, yet fixed upon her face, closed for a moment,
then opened; and Alice kissed and blest her.

The same eyes followed her to the door; and in their light, and
on the tranquil face, there was a smile when it was closed.

They never turned away. She laid her hand upon her breast,
murmuring the sacred name that had been read to her; and life passed
from her face, like light removed.

Nothing lay there, any longer, but the ruin of the mortal house
on which the rain had beaten, and the black hair that had fluttered
in the wintry wind.