With these words, Susan Nipper, in a transport of coercion, made a charge at her young ward, and swept her out of the room.
The child, in her grief and neglect, was so gentle, so quiet, and uncomplaining; was possessed of so much affection that no one seemed to care to have, and so much sorrowful intelligence that no one seemed to mind or think about the wounding of, that Polly's heart was sore when she was left alone again. In the simple passage that had taken place between herself and the motherless little girl, her own motherly heart had been touched no less than the child's; and she felt, as the child did, that there was something of confidence and interest between them from that moment.
Notwithstanding Mr Toodle's great reliance on Polly, she was perhaps in point of artificial accomplishments very little his superior. She had been good-humouredly working and drudging for her life all her life, and was a sober steady-going person, with matter-of-fact ideas about the butcher and baker, and the division of pence into farthings. But she was a good plain sample of a nature that is ever, in the mass, better, truer, higher, nobler, quicker to feel, and much more constant to retain, all tenderness and pity, self-denial and devotion, than the nature of men. And, perhaps, unlearned as she was, she could have brought a dawning knowledge home to Mr Dombey at that early day, which would not then have struck him in the end like lightning.
But this is from the purpose. Polly only thought, at that time, of improving on her successful propitiation of Miss Nipper, and devising some means of having little Florence aide her, lawfully, and without rebellion. An opening happened to present itself that very night.
She had been rung down into the glass room as usual, and had walked about and about it a long time, with the baby in her arms, when, to her great surprise and dismay, Mr Dombey - whom she had seen at first leaning on his elbow at the table, and afterwards walking up and down the middle room, drawing, each time, a little nearer, she thought, to the open folding doors - came out, suddenly, and stopped before her.
'Good evening, Richards.'
Just the same austere, stiff gentleman, as he had appeared to her on that first day. Such a hard-looking gentleman, that she involuntarily dropped her eyes and her curtsey at the same time.
'How is Master Paul, Richards?'
'Quite thriving, Sir, and well.'
'He looks so,' said Mr Dombey, glancing with great interest at the tiny face she uncovered for his observation, and yet affecting to be half careless of it. 'They give you everything you want, I hope?'
'Oh yes, thank you, Sir.'
She suddenly appended such an obvious hesitation to this reply, however, that Mr Dombey, who had turned away; stopped, and turned round again, inquiringly.
'If you please, Sir, the child is very much disposed to take notice of things,' said Richards, with another curtsey, 'and - upstairs is a little dull for him, perhaps, Sir.'
'I begged them to take you out for airings, constantly,' said Mr Dombey. 'Very well! You shall go out oftener. You're quite right to mention it.'
'I beg your pardon, Sir,' faltered Polly, 'but we go out quite plenty Sir, thank you.'
'What would you have then?' asked Mr Dombey.
'Indeed Sir, I don't exactly know,' said Polly, 'unless - '
'Yes?'
'I believe nothing is so good for making children lively and cheerful, Sir, as seeing other children playing about 'em,' observed Polly, taking courage.
'I think I mentioned to you, Richards, when you came here,' said Mr Dombey, with a frown, 'that I wished you to see as little of your family as possible.'
'Oh dear yes, Sir, I wasn't so much as thinking of that.'
'I am glad of it,' said Mr Dombey hastily. 'You can continue your walk if you please.'
With that, he disappeared into his inner room; and Polly had the satisfaction of feeling that he had thoroughly misunderstood her object, and that she had fallen into disgrace without the least advancement of her purpose.
Next night, she found him walking about the conservatory when she came down. As she stopped at the door, checked by this unusual sight, and uncertain whether to advance or retreat, he called her in. His mind was too much set on Dombey and Son, it soon appeared, to admit of his having forgotten her suggestion.
'If you really think that sort of society is good for the child,' he said sharply, as if there had been no interval since she proposed it, 'where's Miss Florence?'
'Nothing could be better than Miss Florence, Sir,' said Polly eagerly, 'but I understood from her maid that they were not to - '
Mr Dombey rang the bell, and walked till it was answered.
'Tell them always to let Miss Florence be with Richards when she chooses, and go out with her, and so forth. Tell them to let the children be together, when Richards wishes it.'
The iron was now hot, and Richards striking on it boldly - it was a good cause and she bold in it, though instinctively afraid of Mr Dombey - requested that Miss Florence might be sent down then and there, to make friends with her little brother.
She feigned to be dandling the child as the servant retired on this errand, but she thought that she saw Mr Dombey's colour changed; that the expression of his face quite altered; that he turned, hurriedly, as if to gainsay what he had said, or she had said, or both, and was only deterred by very shame.
And she was right. The last time he had seen his slighted child, there had been that in the sad embrace between her and her dying mother, which was at once a revelation and a reproach to him. Let him be absorbed as he would in the Son on whom he built such high hopes, he could not forget that closing scene. He could not forget that he had had no part in it. That, at the bottom of its clear depths of tenderness and truth' lay those two figures clasped in each other's arms, while he stood on the bank above them, looking down a mere spectator - not a sharer with them - quite shut out.
Unable to exclude these things from his remembrance, or to keep his mind free from such imperfect shapes of the meaning with which they were fraught, as were able to make themselves visible to him through the mist of his pride, his previous feeling of indifference towards little Florence changed into an uneasiness of an extraordinary kind. Young as she was, and possessing in any eyes but his (and perhaps in his too) even more than the usual amount of childish simplicity and confidence, he almost felt as if she watched and distrusted him. As if she held the clue to something secret in his breast, of the nature of which he was hardly informed himself. As if she had an innate knowledge of one jarring and discordant string within him, and her very breath could sound it.
His feeling about the child had been negative from her birth. He had never conceived an aversion to her: it had not been worth his while or in his humour. She had never been a positively disagreeable object to him. But now he was ill at ease about her. She troubled his peace. He would have preferred to put her idea aside altogether, if he had known how. Perhaps - who shall decide on such mysteries! - he was afraid that he might come to hate her.
When little Florence timidly presented herself, Mr Dombey stopped in his pacing up and down and looked towards her. Had he looked with greater interest and with a father's eye, he might have read in her keen glance the impulses and fears that made her waver; the passionate desire to run clinging to him, crying, as she hid her face in his embrace, 'Oh father, try to love me! there's no one else!' the dread of a repulse; the fear of being too bold, and of offending him; the pitiable need in which she stood of some assurance and encouragement; and how her overcharged young heart was wandering to find some natural resting-place, for its sorrow and affection.
But he saw nothing of this. He saw her pause irresolutely at the door and look towards him; and he saw no more.
'Come in,' he said, 'come in: what is the child afraid of?'
She came in; and after glancing round her for a moment with an uncertain air, stood pressing her small hands hard together, close within the door.
'Come here, Florence,' said her father, coldly. 'Do you know who I am?'
'Yes, Papa.'
'Have you nothing to say to me?'
The tears that stood in her eyes as she raised them quickly to his face, were frozen by the expression it wore. She looked down again, and put out her trembling hand.
Mr Dombey took it loosely in his own, and stood looking down upon her for a moment, as if he knew as little as the child, what to say or do.
'There! Be a good girl,' he said, patting her on the head, and regarding her as it were by stealth with a disturbed and doubtful look. 'Go to Richards! Go!'
His little daughter hesitated for another instant as though she would have clung about him still, or had some lingering hope that he might raise her in his arms and kiss her. She looked up in his face once more. He thought how like her expression was then, to what it had been when she looked round at the Doctor - that night - and instinctively dropped her hand and turned away.
It was not difficult to perceive that Florence was at a great disadvantage in her father's presence. It was not only a constraint upon the child's mind, but even upon the natural grace and freedom of her actions. As she sported and played about her baby brother that night, her manner was seldom so winning and so pretty as it naturally was, and sometimes when in his pacing to and fro, he came near her (she had, perhaps, for the moment, forgotten him) it changed upon the instant and became forced and embarrassed.
Still, Polly persevered with all the better heart for seeing this; and, judging of Mr Dombey by herself, had great confidence in the mute appeal of poor little Florence's mourning dress.' It's hard indeed,' thought Polly, 'if he takes only to one little motherless child, when he has another, and that a girl, before his eyes.'
So, Polly kept her before his eyes, as long as she could, and managed so well with little Paul, as to make it very plain that he was all the livelier for his sister's company. When it was time to withdraw upstairs again, she would have sent Florence into the inner room to say good-night to her father, but the child was timid and drew back; and when she urged her again, said, spreading her hands before her eyes, as if to shut out her own unworthiness, 'Oh no, no! He don't want me. He don't want me!'
The little altercation between them had attracted the notice of Mr Dombey, who inquired from the table where he was sitting at his wine, what the matter was.
'Miss Florence was afraid of interrupting, Sir, if she came in to say good-night,' said Richards.
'It doesn't matter,' returned Mr Dombey. 'You can let her come and go without regarding me.'
The child shrunk as she listened - and was gone, before her humble friend looked round again.
However, Polly triumphed not a little in the success of her well-intentioned scheme, and in the address with which she had brought it to bear: whereof she made a full disclosure to Spitfire when she was once more safely entrenched upstairs. Miss Nipper received that proof of her confidence, as well as the prospect of their free association for the future, rather coldly, and was anything but enthusiastic in her demonstrations of joy.
'I thought you would have been pleased,' said Polly.
'Oh yes, Mrs Richards, I'm very well pleased, thank you,' returned Susan, who had suddenly become so very upright that she seemed to have put an additional bone in her stays.
'You don't show it,' said Polly.
'Oh! Being only a permanency I couldn't be expected to show it like a temporary,' said Susan Nipper. 'Temporaries carries it all before 'em here, I find, but though there's a excellent party-wall between this house and the next, I mayn't exactly like to go to it, Mrs Richards, notwithstanding!'
已故夫人的葬礼完成得使殡仪承办人和邻近的全体居民都完全称心满意（邻近的居民们通常在这种场合是喜欢吹毛求疵的，对礼仪中的任何疏忽或缺点都会生气见怪）；在这之后，董贝先生家里的各个成员各自回到了他们在这个家庭体系中原先的地位中。这个小小的世界，就像户外的大世界一样，很容易把死去的人忘掉；当厨娘说了“她是一位性情安静的夫人”，女管家说了“这是人人都难以逃脱的命运”，男管家说了“谁曾料想到会发生这件事呢？”女仆说了“她简直不能相信这件事”，男仆说了“这似乎完全跟做梦一样”之后，他们在这个话题上就没有什么可以再说的了，而且开始觉得他们的丧服也已经穿得褪色了。
理查兹以一种体面的被囚禁的状态被安顿在楼上；对她来说，她的新生活的黎明是寒冷与灰暗的。董贝先生的公馆是一栋宏伟的房屋，座落在一条阴暗的、非常优雅的街道的背阴的一面，这条街道位于波特兰十字路口和布赖恩广场之间的地区内，两旁矗立着高大的房屋。这是一栋在街道拐角上的房子，里面十分宽敞，其中还包括一些地窖，装了铁条的窗子向它们皱着眉头，眼睛歪斜的、通向垃圾箱的门向它们斜眼瞅着。这是一栋阴暗沉闷的房屋，后背是圆形的，房屋里有一整套客厅；客厅前面是一个铺了石子的庭院，庭院里有两株干枯的树，树干和树枝都已发黑，发出了格格的、而不是飒飒的响声，因为树叶都已被烟熏枯了。夏天的太阳只有在上午吃早饭的时候才照射到这条街上，那时候运水车、卖旧衣的商人、卖天竺葵的小贩、修雨伞的人、还有一边走一边使荷兰钟的小铃儿发出叮当叮当响声的人也随着太阳来到这里。太阳很快就消失，这一天不再回来；随后而来的是乐队和潘趣木偶戏①；在这之后，人们只能听听风琴的极为沉闷的声音和看看白耗子的表演——有时还有一只豪猪来演杂技，以便变换一下娱乐的兴趣；到了薄暮的时候，男管家们（他们家里的人到外面吃晚饭去了）开始站在门口；点街灯的人试图用煤气来照亮这条街道，但每夜都没有成功。
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①潘趣（Punch）：英国木偶戏中的主角，他的背是驼的，鼻子很长，而且是钩形的，他的妻子名叫朱迪（Judy），时常和他吵架。
公馆里面和外面一样单调无趣。葬礼结束以后，董贝先生命令把家具都蒙罩起来——也许是要保留起来给他儿子用的，因为他所有的计划都和他的儿子联系着——；除了第一层留给他自己用的房间外，其他所有的房间都不进行布置。因此，桌子和椅子堆在房间的中间，外面用大块的包尸布遮盖着，形成了各种神秘离奇的形状。铃柄、窗帘、镜子，由于用杂志、日报和周刊的纸包着，因此被迫对上面登载着的死亡与可怖的谋杀案情进行片断的报道。每一个用荷兰麻布包裹起来的枝形吊灯或分枝烛台，看上去就像是天花板眼睛中掉下的一滴巨大的泪珠。从烟囱中跑出来的气味就像从地下灵堂或潮湿的地方跑出的一样。已经逝世和安葬的夫人的肖像被镶嵌在用可怕的绷带包扎起来的画框中，看起来阴森可怖。每刮起一阵风，就从邻近的马厩中吹来了几根稻草，在拐角四周旋转；当她生病的时候，这些稻草曾经撒在房屋前面，那些发了霉的残余的稻草至今仍粘附在邻近的房屋上；它们常常被某种看不见的力量吸引到正对过的、等待出租的、肮脏的房屋的门槛上，现在正以凄凉的声调，向董贝先生的窗子滔滔不绝地诉说着。
董贝先生留给自己居住的房间和前厅连接，它们包括一间起居室，一间图书室，还有一间暖房或吃早餐的小玻璃房。图书室实际上是个化妆室，因此热压纸、上等皮纸、摩洛哥皮、俄国皮革的气味与好几双靴子的气味在室内相互竞赛。从暖房里可以望见前面提到的那两株树和几只四处觅食的猫。这三间房屋彼此相通。早上，当董贝先生在前面首先提到的那两间房子中的一间里吃早饭的时候，或者下午，当他回家来吃晚饭的时候，就有人摇铃，召唤理查兹到这个玻璃房里来，抱着她所抚养的小孩在那里走来走去。她在这些时候可以瞥见董贝先生坐在黑暗的远处，越过黑暗的笨重的家具（他的父亲曾经在这座邸宅中居住多年，它的许多陈设都是老式的，阴沉呆板的），向外望着这个婴儿。她从这些瞥见中开始产生了对他在孤独状态时的一些想法，仿佛他是一个在单人牢房中寂寞无伴的囚徒，或者是一个奇怪的幽灵，不能跟他说话，也不能对他进行了解。
小保罗•董贝的奶妈本人过着这样的生活，并带着小保罗一起过着这样的生活，已有好几个星期了。没有奇克夫人在一起，她是从来不出去的。奇克夫人通常在托克斯小姐的陪同下，在天气晴朗的上午前来看望，并带领她和婴孩到户外去散步，或者换句话说，就是在人行道上庄严地来回行走，像是个步行的送葬队伍似的。有一天，当她忧郁地穿过那些冷冷清清的房间闲逛之后，回到楼上，正要在自己的房间里坐下来的时候，房门缓慢地、平静地开了，一个黑眼睛的小女孩向房间里探望。
“这一定是弗洛伦斯小姐从她姑妈家里回来了，”理查兹想道，她以前从没有看见过这个孩子。“我希望，您身体很好，小姐。”
“这是我的弟弟吗？”女孩子指着婴孩，问道。
“是的，我的宝贝，”理查兹回答道。“来亲亲他吧。”
但是女孩子没有走上前来，而是望着她的脸，问道：
“您把我的妈妈怎么搞的？”
“天主保佑这个小人儿！”理查兹喊道，“多么使人伤心的问题！我怎么搞的？我什么也没有搞，小姐。”
“•他•们把我妈妈怎么搞的？”女孩子问道。
“我这一辈子还从没有见到过这样使人感伤的事情！”理查兹说道，她在心里自然把她自己的一个孩子代替了这个女孩子，在类似的情况下，正在打听她的下落。“往这里走近一些，我亲爱的小姐！别怕我。”
“我不怕您，”女孩子走近一些，说道，“但是我想知道，他们把我妈妈怎么搞的。”
“我亲爱的，”理查兹说道，“您穿那件漂亮的黑长衣来纪念您的妈妈。”
“不论穿什么长衣，”女孩子眼睛里涌出眼泪，回答道，“我都能记得我的妈妈。”
“可是人们穿上黑衣服来纪念那些已经离开我们的人们。”
“离开我们到哪里去了？”女孩子问道。
