CHARLES DICKENS DOMBEY AND SON CHAPTER I Dombey and ...

CHAPTER XXIII
Florence solitary, and the Midshipman mysterious
FLORENCE lived alone in the great dreary house, and day succeeded day, and
still she lived alone; and the blank walls looked down upon her with a
vacant stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like mind to stare her youth and
beauty into stone.
No magic dwelling-place in magic story, shut up in the heart of a thick
wood, was ever more solitary and deserted to the fancy, than was her
father's mansion in its grim reality, as it stood lowering on the street:
always by night, when lights were shining from neighbouring windows, a blot
upon its scanty brightness; always by day, a frown upon its never-smiling
face.
There were not two dragon sentries keeping ward before the gate of this
abode, as in magic legend are usually found on duty over the wronged
innocence imprisoned; but besides a glowering visage, with its thin lips
parted wickedly, that surveyed all comers from above the archway of the
door, there was a monstrous fantasy of rusty iron, curling and twisting like
a petrifaction of an arbour over the threshold, budding in spikes and
corkscrew points, and bearing, one on either side, two ominous
extinguishers, that seemed to say, 'Who enter here, leave light behind!'
There were no talismanic characters engraven on the portal, but the house
was now so neglected in appearance, that boys chalked the railings and the
pavement--particularly round the corner where the side wall was--and drew
ghosts on the stable door; and being sometimes driven off by Mr. Towlinson,
made portraits of him, in return, with his ears growing out horizontally
from under his hat. Noise ceased to be, within the shadow of the roof. The
brass band that came into the street once a week, in the morning, never
brayed a note in at those windows; but all such company, down to a poor
little piping organ of weak intellect, with an imbecile party of automaton
dancers, waltzing in and out at folding-doors, fell off from it with one
accord, and shunned it as a hopeless place.