Tales from Dickens Part 17

At last, in desperation, he told Kate, and the brother and sister went together to Bray's house. They reached it just as the wedding was about to begin.

Ralph Nickleby, who was there, foamed with fury to find the nephew he so hated again stepping between him and his evil designs. He tried to bar them out, but Nicholas forced him back.

They would doubtless have come to blows, but at that moment there came from another room the sound of a fall, and a scream from Madeline. The excitement had proved too much for her father. His heart had failed and he had fallen dead on the floor. Thus Providence interfered to bring the wicked scheme of the marriage to naught.

Vainly did Gride bemoan the loss of the money he had hoped to gain, and vainly did Ralph Nickleby, with curses, try to prevent. Nicholas thrust them both aside, lifted the unconscious Madeline as easily as if she had been a baby, placed her with Kate in a coach and, daring Ralph to follow; jumped up beside the coachman and bade him drive away.

He took her to his own home, where his mother and Kate cared for her tenderly till she had recovered from the shock and was her own lovely self again.

The penalty that he had so long deserved was soon to overtake Ralph Nickleby. He lost much of his wealth through a failure, and close on the heels of this misfortune came the news that the infamous plot he had formed against Smike had been discovered and that Squeers, his accomplice, had been arrested.

The most terrible blow came last. A man whom Ralph had long ago ruined and had caused to be transported for a crime, confessed that he had been the one who, many years before, had left Smike at Dotheboys Hall, and he confessed also that Smike was really Ralph Nickleby's own son by a secret marriage. Ralph had not known this, because the man, in revenge, had falsely told him the child was dead.

The knowledge that, in Smike, he had been persecuting his own son was the crowning blow for cruel Ralph Nickleby. When he heard this he locked himself up alone in his great house and never was seen alive again. His body was found in the garret where he had hanged himself to a rafter.

Poor Smike, however, did not live to sorrow over the villainy of his father. The exposure and hards.h.i.+ps of his years at Squeers's school had broken his health. He had for long been gradually growing weaker, and at last one day he died peacefully, with Nicholas's arms around him.

Every one of whose villainy this story tells came to a bad end. Sir Mulberry Hawk quarreled with young Lord Verisopht and shot him dead in the duel that followed. For this he himself had to fly to a foreign country, where he finally died miserably in jail. Gride, the miser who had plotted to marry Madeline, met almost as terrible a fate as Ralph's.

His house was broken into by burglars one night and he was found murdered in his bed.

Squeers was declared guilty and transported for seven years. When the news reached Dotheboys Hall such a cheer arose as had never been heard there. It came on the weekly "treacle day," and the boys ducked young Wackford in the soup kettle and made Mrs. Squeers swallow a big dose of her own brimstone. Then, big and little, they all ran away, just as Nicholas and Smike had done.

Kate married a nephew of the Cheeryble brothers, and Nicholas, of course, married Madeline, and in time became a partner in the firm. All of them lived near by, and their little children played together under the watchful care of old Noggs, the one-eyed clerk, who loved them all alike.

The children laid flowers every day on poor Smike's grave, and often their eyes filled with tears as they spoke low and softly of the dead cousin they had never known.

DEALINGS WITH THE FIRM OF DOMBEY AND SON WHOLESALE, RETAIL, AND FOR EXPORTATION

Published 1846-1848

_Scene_: London, Brighton, and France

_Time_: About 1830 to 1846

CHARACTERS

Mr. Dombey A London merchant Head of the firm of Dombey and Son

"Little Paul" His son

Florence His daughter Called by little Paul, "Floy"

Edith Granger A widow Later, Mr. Dombey's wife

Walter Gay A clerk for Dombey and Son Later, Florence's husband

Solomon Gills His uncle A s.h.i.+p's instrument maker. Known as Old Sol

Captain Cuttle A retired seaman Bosom friend of Old Sol's

Carker Manager for Dombey and Son

Mrs. Pipchin Proprietress of a children's boarding-house at Brighton Later, Mr. Dombey's housekeeper

Doctor Blimber Proprietor of a boys' school at Brighton

Major Bagstock A retired army officer

Diogenes Doctor Blimber's dog Later a pet of Florence's

DOMBEY AND SON

I

LITTLE PAUL

In London there was once a business house known as Dombey and Son. It had borne that name for generations, though at the time this story begins Mr. Dombey, the head of the house, had no son. He was a merchant, hard, cold and selfish, who thought the world was made only for his firm to trade in. He had one little daughter, Florence, but never since her birth had he loved or petted her because of his disappointment that she was not a boy.

When at last a son was born to him it wakened something at the bottom of his cold and heavy heart that he had never known before. He scarcely grieved for his wife, who died when the baby was born, but gave all his thought to the child. He named him Paul, and began at once to long for the time when he should become old enough to be a real member of the firm in which all his own interest centered--Dombey and Son. He hired the best nurse he could find, and, when he was not at his office, would sit and watch the baby Paul hour after hour, laying plans for his future. So selfishly was the father's soul wrapped up in this that he scarcely ever noticed poor, lonely little Florence, whose warm heart was starving for affection.

Little Paul's nurse was very fond of him, and of his sister, too; but she had children of her own also, and one day, instead of walking up and down with Florence and the baby near the Dombey house, she took the children to another part of the city to visit her own home.

This was a wrong thing to do, and resulted in a very unhappy adventure for Florence. On their way home a mad bull broke away from his keepers and charged through the crowded street. There was great screaming and confusion and people ran in every direction, Florence among the rest.

She ran for a long way, and when she stopped, her nurse was nowhere to be seen. Terrified to find herself lost in the great city, she began to cry.

The next thing she knew, an ugly old woman, with red-rimmed eyes and a mouth that mumbled all the while, grasped her by the wrist and dragged her through the shabby doorway of a dirty house into a back room heaped with rags.

"I want that pretty frock," said she, "and that little bonnet and your petticoat. Come! Take them off!"

Florence, dreadfully frightened, obeyed. The old woman took away her shoes, too, and made her put on some filthy ragged clothing from the heaps on the floor. Then she let her go, first making her promise she would not ask any one to show her the way home.

The poor child could think of nothing else but to find her father's office at Dombey and Son's, and for two hours she walked, asking the way of everybody she met. She might not have found it at all, but at a wharf where she wandered, there happened to be a young clerk of Dombey and Son's, and the minute he was pointed out to her she felt such trust in his bright and open face that she caught his hand and sobbed out all her story.

This lad's name was Walter Gay. He lived with his uncle, honest old Solomon Gills, a maker of s.h.i.+p's instruments, who kept a little shop with the wooden figure of a mids.h.i.+pman set outside. Very few customers ever came into the shop, and, indeed, hardly any one else, for Old Sol, as the neighbors called him, had only one intimate friend.

This friend was a retired seaman named Captain Cuttle, who always dressed in blue, as if he were a bird and those were his feathers. He had a hook instead of a hand attached to his right wrist, a s.h.i.+rt collar so large that it looked like a small sail, and wherever he went he carried in his left hand a thick stick that was covered all over (like his nose) with k.n.o.bs.

Captain Cuttle used to talk on land just as if he were at sea. He would say "Steady!" and "Belay, there!" and called Old Sol "s.h.i.+pmate," as though the little shop, in which he spent his evenings, was a s.h.i.+p. He had a deep, rumbling voice, in which he would sing _Lovely Peg_, the only song he knew, and which he never but once got through to the last line. But in spite of his queer ways and talk, Captain Cuttle had the softest, kindest heart in the world. He thought old Solomon Gills the greatest man alive, and was as fond as possible of "Wal'r," as he called the nephew. And, indeed, Walter was a handsome boy, and as good as he was handsome.

Walter soothed Florence's tears and took her, ragged clothes and all, straight home to Solomon Gills's shop, where his uncle gave her a warm supper, while Walter ran to the Dombey house with the news that she was found, and to bring back a dress for her to wear.