'Now my dear Miss Floy, said Susan, 'let me go downstairs again and see how your Pa is, I know you're wretched about him, do let me go downstairs again and knock at his door my own self.'
'No,' said Florence, 'go to bed. We shall hear more in the morning. I will inquire myself in the morning. Mama has been down, I daresay;' Florence blushed, for she had no such hope; 'or is there now, perhaps. Good-night!'
Susan was too much softened to express her private opinion on the probability of Mrs Dombey's being in attendance on her husband, and silently withdrew. Florence left alone, soon hid her head upon her hands as she had often done in other days, and did not restrain the tears from coursing down her face. The misery of this domestic discord and unhappiness; the withered hope she cherished now, if hope it could be called, of ever being taken to her father's heart; her doubts and fears between the two; the yearning of her innocent breast to both; the heavy disappointment and regret of such an end as this, to what had been a vision of bright hope and promise to her; all crowded on her mind and made her tears flow fast. Her mother and her brother dead, her father unmoved towards her, Edith opposed to him and casting him away, but loving her, and loved by her, it seemed as if her affection could never prosper, rest where it would. That weak thought was soon hushed, but the thoughts in which it had arisen were too true and strong to be dismissed with it; and they made the night desolate.
Among such reflections there rose up, as there had risen up all day, the image of her father, wounded and in pain, alone in his own room, untended by those who should be nearest to him, and passing the tardy hours in lonely suffering. A frightened thought which made her start and clasp her hands - though it was not a new one in her mind - that he might die, and never see her or pronounce her name, thrilled her whole frame. In her agitation she thought, and trembled while she thought, of once more stealing downstairs, and venturing to his door.
She listened at her own. The house was quiet, and all the lights were out. It was a long, long time, she thought, since she used to make her nightly pilgrimages to his door! It was a long, long time, she tried to think, since she had entered his room at midnight, and he had led her back to the stair-foot!
With the same child's heart within her, as of old: even with the child's sweet timid eyes and clustering hair: Florence, as strange to her father in her early maiden bloom, as in her nursery time, crept down the staircase listening as she went, and drew near to his room. No one was stirring in the house. The door was partly open to admit air; and all was so still within, that she could hear the burning of the fire, and count the ticking of the clock that stood upon the chimney-piece.
She looked in. In that room, the housekeeper wrapped in a blanket was fast asleep in an easy chair before the fire. The doors between it and the next were partly closed, and a screen was drawn before them; but there was a light there, and it shone upon the cornice of his bed. All was so very still that she could hear from his breathing that he was asleep. This gave her courage to pass round the screen, and look into his chamber.
It was as great a start to come upon his sleeping face as if she had not expected to see it. Florence stood arrested on the spot, and if he had awakened then, must have remained there.
There was a cut upon his forehead, and they had been wetting his hair, which lay bedabbled and entangled on the pillow. One of his arms, resting outside the bed, was bandaged up, and he was very white. But it was not this, that after the first quick glance, and first assurance of his sleeping quietly, held Florence rooted to the ground. It was something very different from this, and more than this, that made him look so solemn in her eye
She had never seen his face in all her life, but there had been upon it - or she fancied so - some disturbing consciousness of her. She had never seen his face in all her life, but hope had sunk within her, and her timid glance had dropped before its stern, unloving, and repelling harshness. As she looked upon it now, she saw it, for the first time, free from the cloud that had darkened her childhood. Calm, tranquil night was reigning in its stead. He might have gone to sleep, for anything she saw there, blessing her.
Awake, unkind father! Awake, now, sullen man! The time is flitting by; the hour is coming with an angry tread. Awake!
There was no change upon his face; and as she watched it, awfully, its motionless reponse recalled the faces that were gone. So they looked, so would he; so she, his weeping child, who should say when! so all the world of love and hatred and indifference around them! When that time should come, it would not be the heavier to him, for this that she was going to do; and it might fall something lighter upon her.
She stole close to the bed, and drawing in her breath, bent down, and softly kissed him on the face, and laid her own for one brief moment by its side, and put the arm, with which she dared not touch him, round about him on the pillow.
Awake, doomed man, while she is near! The time is flitting by; the hour is coming with an angry tread; its foot is in the house. Awake!
In her mind, she prayed to God to bless her father, and to soften him towards her, if it might be so; and if not, to forgive him if he was wrong, and pardon her the prayer which almost seemed impiety. And doing so, and looking back at him with blinded eyes, and stealing timidly away, passed out of his room, and crossed the other, and was gone.
He may sleep on now. He may sleep on while he may. But let him look for that slight figure when he wakes, and find it near him when the hour is come!
Sad and grieving was the heart of Florence, as she crept upstairs. The quiet house had grown more dismal since she came down. The sleep she had been looking on, in the dead of night, had the solemnity to her of death and life in one. The secrecy and silence of her own proceeding made the night secret, silent, and oppressive. She felt unwilling, almost unable, to go on to her own chamber; and turnIng into the drawing-rooms, where the clouded moon was shining through the blinds, looked out into the empty streets.
The wind was blowing drearily. The lamps looked pale, and shook as if they were cold. There was a distant glimmer of something that was not quite darkness, rather than of light, in the sky; and foreboding night was shivering and restless, as the dying are who make a troubled end. Florence remembered how, as a watcher, by a sick-bed, she had noted this bleak time, and felt its influence, as if in some hidden natural antipathy to it; and now it was very, very gloomy.
Her Mama had not come to her room that night, which was one cause of her having sat late out of her bed. In her general uneasiness, no less than in her ardent longing to have somebody to speak to, and to break the spell of gloom and silence, Florence directed her steps towards the chamber where she slept.
The door was not fastened within, and yielded smoothly to her hesitating hand. She was surprised to find a bright light burning; still more surprised, on looking in, to see that her Mama, but partially undressed, was sitting near the ashes of the fire, which had crumbled and dropped away. Her eyes were intently bent upon the air; and in their light, and in her face, and in her form, and in the grasp with which she held the elbows of her chair as if about to start up, Florence saw such fierce emotion that it terrified her.
'Mama!' she cried, 'what is the matter?'
Edith started; looking at her with such a strange dread in her face, that Florence was more frightened than before.
'Mama!' said Florence, hurriedly advancing. 'Dear Mama! what is the matter?'
'I have not been well,' said Edith, shaking, and still looking at her in the same strange way. 'I have had had dreams, my love.'
'And not yet been to bed, Mama?'
'No,' she returned. 'Half-waking dreams.'
Her features gradually softened; and suffering Florence to come closer to her, within her embrace, she said in a tender manner, 'But what does my bird do here? What does my bird do here?'
'I have been uneasy, Mama, in not seeing you to-night, and in not knowing how Papa was; and I - '
Florence stopped there, and said no more.
'Is it late?' asked Edith, fondly putting back the curls that mingled with her own dark hair, and strayed upon her face.
'Very late. Near day.'
'Near day!' she repeated in surprise.
'Dear Mama, what have you done to your hand?' said Florence.
Edith drew it suddenly away, and, for a moment, looked at her with the same strange dread (there was a sort of wild avoidance in it) as before; but she presently said, 'Nothing, nothing. A blow.' And then she said, 'My Florence!' and then her bosom heaved, and she was weeping passionately.
'Mama!' said Florence. 'Oh Mama, what can I do, what should I do, to make us happier? Is there anything?'
'Nothing,' she replied.
'Are you sure of that? Can it never be? If I speak now of what is in my thoughts, in spite of what we have agreed,' said Florence, 'you will not blame me, will you?'
'It is useless,' she replied, 'useless. I have told you, dear, that I have had bad dreams. Nothing can change them, or prevent them coming back.'
'I do not understand,' said Florence, gazing on her agitated face which seemed to darken as she looked.
'I have dreamed,' said Edith in a low voice, 'of a pride that is all powerless for good, all powerful for evil; of a pride that has been galled and goaded, through many shameful years, and has never recoiled except upon itself; a pride that has debased its owner with the consciousness of deep humiliation, and never helped its owner boldly to resent it or avoid it, or to say, "This shall not be!" a pride that, rightly guided, might have led perhaps to better things, but which, misdirected and perverted, like all else belonging to the same possessor, has been self-contempt, mere hardihood and ruin.'
She neither looked nor spoke to Florence now, but went on as if she were alone.
'I have dreamed,' she said, 'of such indifference and callousness, arising from this self-contempt; this wretched, inefficient, miserable pride; that it has gone on with listless steps even to the altar, yielding to the old, familiar, beckoning finger, - oh mother, oh mother! - while it spurned it; and willing to be hateful to itself for once and for all, rather than to be stung daily in some new form. Mean, poor thing!'
And now with gathering and darkening emotion, she looked as she had looked when Florence entered.
'And I have dreamed,' she said, 'that in a first late effort to achieve a purpose, it has been trodden on, and trodden down by a base foot, but turns and looks upon him. I have dreamed that it is wounded, hunted, set upon by dogs, but that it stands at hay, and will not yield; no, that it cannot if it would; but that it is urged on to hate
Her clenched hand tightened on the trembling arm she had in hers, and as she looked down on the alarmed and wondering face, frown subsided. 'Oh Florence!' she said, 'I think I have been nearly mad to-night!' and humbled her proud head upon her neck and wept again.
'Don't leave me! be near me! I have no hope but in you! These words she said a score of times.
Soon she grew calmer, and was full of pity for the tears of Florence, and for her waking at such untimely hours. And the day now dawning, with folded her in her arms and laid her down upon her bed, and, not lying down herself, sat by her, and bade her try to sleep.
'For you are weary, dearest, and unhappy, and should rest.'
'I am indeed unhappy, dear Mama, tonight,' said Florence. 'But you are weary and unhappy, too.'
'Not when you lie asleep so near me, sweet.'
They kissed each other, and Florence, worn out, gradually fell into a gentle slumber; but as her eyes closed on the face beside her, it was so sad to think upon the face downstairs, that her hand drew closer to Edith for some comfort; yet, even in the act, it faltered, lest it should be deserting him. So, in her sleep, she tried to reconcile the two together, and to show them that she loved them both, but could not do it, and her waking grief was part of her dreams.
Edith, sitting by, looked down at the dark eyelashes lying wet on the flushed cheeks, and looked with gentleness and pity, for she knew the truth. But no sleep hung upon her own eyes. As the day came on she still sat watching and waking, with the placid hand in hers, and sometimes whispered, as she looked at the hushed face, 'Be near me, Florence. I have no hope but in you!'
弗洛伦斯早就从迷梦中清醒过来，伤心地注视着她父亲和伊迪丝之间的疏远，看到他们之间的鸿沟愈来愈宽阔；并知道他们之间的痛苦逐日加深。每天增添的了解，加深了笼罩在她的爱与希望之上的阴影，并唤醒了入睡不久的旧日的悲哀，使它甚至比过去更为沉重了。
真诚的、恳切的、出乎天性的亲情变成了痛苦，冷淡的忽视或严厉的拒绝代替了亲切的保护与慈爱的关怀，这曾经是难受的——没有任何人，只有弗洛伦斯才知道这是多么难受！——在内心深处感受她曾经感受过的感情，而从来不曾享受过得到回答的幸福，这曾经是难受的。但是现在被迫地怀疑她的父亲或怀疑对她那么慈爱、亲切的伊迪丝，并怀着恐惧、不信任和纳闷的心情，交替地想着她对他们两人每个人的爱，这是更为难受的。
然而弗洛伦斯现在开始这样做了；这是她的纯洁的心灵强加给她的一项苦役，这是她所无法回避的。她看到父亲就像对待她一样，冷淡地、固执地对待伊迪丝，严酷无情，毫不妥协，决不让步。她含着眼泪问她自己：她的亲母亲是不是可能就是由于这样的对待而过着不幸福的生活，消瘦下去，最后死去的呢？然后她想到伊迪丝除了对她一个人之外，是多么高傲地、威严地对待每一个人，想到她是以多么轻蔑的态度对待他，她是多么远远地避开他，还想到她回家来的那天夜里所说过的话。弗洛伦斯突然间感到她犯了罪，因为她想到，她爱了一位反对她父亲的人；因为她想到，她父亲在寂寞的房间中知道这一点，一定会把她看成一个违反常情的女儿；这个女儿从出生之后从没有博得过他的父爱，如今除了这个她曾为它哭泣过多少次的老的过错之外，她又犯了一个新的错误了。下一次遇到伊迪丝时，她的第一句亲切的话语，第一道亲切的眼光又会动摇她的这些思想，使它们仿佛成为邪恶的忘恩负义；因为除了她，还有谁曾经使那么孤独那么痛苦的弗洛伦斯的消沉不振的心快活起来，成为它最好的安慰者呢？因此，弗洛伦斯现在不断地向往着他们两人，感受着他们两人的痛苦，暗中怀疑着她对他们两人所负的责任；在这样的情况下，当她怀着更宽广的、更扩展的爱，坐在伊迪丝的身旁时，她忍受着的痛苦要比过去她把她整个的秘密保藏在她悲哀的住宅中、她美丽的妈妈还没有到这里来时更大。
一个远远超过这个痛苦的非常的不幸，弗洛伦斯幸免了。她从来不曾怀疑过：伊迪丝对她的亲热会扩大她和她父亲之间的距离，或者会给他提供讨厌她的新的理由。如果弗洛伦斯设想过这样的可能性的话，那么她将会感到什么样的悲痛，她将会设法作出什么样的牺牲，可爱而又可怜的女孩子，她将会多么迅速、多么满怀信心地平平静静地走到那位更加崇高的父亲①前面去（这位父亲是不会拒绝他的孩子们的爱的，是不会摒弃他们的经过考验的、破碎了的心的），这一切只有上天才知道！可是情形并不是这样的，这很好。
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①指上帝。
现在弗洛伦斯与伊迪丝在这些问题上一句话也没有交谈过。伊迪丝曾经说过，在这方面，在她们之间应当有一道像坟墓一般的深沟和沉默；弗洛伦斯觉得她是对的。
就是在这样的情况下，她的父亲被抬回家来的；他忍受着痛苦，身体失去了行动的能力，忧闷不乐地隐居在他自己的房间中；仆人们在那里服侍他，但伊迪丝却没有到那里去看望过他。除了卡克先生之外，他没有别的朋友或伴侣。卡克先生在将近午夜的时候离开了。
“他是一位好同伴，弗洛伊小姐，”苏珊•尼珀说道，“啊，他是个了不起的宝贝！可是如果他什么时候需要一份品德推荐书的话，那么请他别来找我，这就是我要跟他说的一切。”
“亲爱的苏珊，”弗洛伦斯劝告道，“别说了！”
“啊，说声‘别说了’倒是很容易，弗洛伊小姐，”尼珀十分恼怒地回答道，“可是请原谅，我们的情况糟糕透顶，它使一个人身上的血都要变成带尖刺的别针和缝衣针了。请别误会我的意思，弗洛伊小姐，我这么说并不是要反对您的后妈，您的后妈总是以她贵夫人恰当的身份对待我，不过我必须说，她架子很大，虽然我没有权利反对这一点，但是当我们一提起这些个皮普钦太太，提起她们向我们发号施令，提起她们像鳄鱼一样在您爸爸门口守卫（谢天谢地她们幸好没有下蛋！），我们可真觉得太无法容忍下去了！”
“爸爸认为皮普钦太太不错，苏珊，”弗洛伦斯回答道，“您知道，他有权挑选他的女管家。请别说了！”
“唔弗洛伊小姐，”尼珀回答道，“当您对我说别说了，我希望我决不再说了，可是皮普钦太太对待我蛮横无礼，就像是没有成熟的醋栗①一样，小姐，一点也不差。”
