Dombey and Son
flight besides the wind and clouds. Draw the rose-coloured curtains
close!
Intelligence of the event is sent to Mr Dombey in town, who waits upon
Cousin Feenix (not yet able to make up his mind for Baden-Baden), who
has just received it too. A good-natured creature like Cousin Feenix is
the very man for a marriage or a funeral, and his position in the
family renders it right that he should be consulted.
“Dombey,” said Cousin Feenix, “upon my soul, I am very much shocked to
see you on such a melancholy occasion. My poor aunt! She was a devilish
lively woman.”
Mr Dombey replies, “Very much so.”
“And made up,” says Cousin Feenix, “really young, you know,
considering. I am sure, on the day of your marriage, I thought she was
good for another twenty years. In point of fact, I said so to a man at
Brooks’s—little Billy Joper—you know him, no doubt—man with a glass in
his eye?”
Mr Dombey bows a negative. “In reference to the obsequies,” he hints,
“whether there is any suggestion—”
“Well, upon my life,” says Cousin Feenix, stroking his chin, which he
has just enough of hand below his wristbands to do; “I really don’t
know. There’s a Mausoleum down at my place, in the park, but I’m afraid
it’s in bad repair, and, in point of fact, in a devil of a state. But
for being a little out at elbows, I should have had it put to rights;
but I believe the people come and make pic-nic parties there inside the
iron railings.”
Mr Dombey is clear that this won’t do.
“There’s an uncommon good church in the village,” says Cousin Feenix,
thoughtfully; “pure specimen of the Anglo-Norman style, and admirably
well sketched too by Lady Jane Finchbury—woman with tight stays—but
they’ve spoilt it with whitewash, I understand, and it’s a long
journey.”
“Perhaps Brighton itself,” Mr Dombey suggests.
“Upon my honour, Dombey, I don’t think we could do better,” says Cousin
Feenix. “It’s on the spot, you see, and a very cheerful place.”
“And when,” hints Mr Dombey, “would it be convenient?”
“I shall make a point,” says Cousin Feenix, “of pledging myself for any
day you think best. I shall have great pleasure (melancholy pleasure,
of course) in following my poor aunt to the confines of the—in point of
fact, to the grave,” says Cousin Feenix, failing in the other turn of
speech.
“Would Monday do for leaving town?” says Mr Dombey.
“Monday would suit me to perfection,” replies Cousin Feenix. Therefore
Mr Dombey arranges to take Cousin Feenix down on that day, and
presently takes his leave, attended to the stairs by Cousin Feenix, who
says, at parting, “I’m really excessively sorry, Dombey, that you
should have so much trouble about it;” to which Mr Dombey answers, “Not
at all.”
At the appointed time, Cousin Feenix and Mr Dombey meet, and go down to
Brighton, and representing, in their two selves, all the other mourners
for the deceased lady’s loss, attend her remains to their place of
rest. Cousin Feenix, sitting in the mourning-coach, recognises
innumerable acquaintances on the road, but takes no other notice of
them, in decorum, than checking them off aloud, as they go by, for Mr
Dombey’s information, as “Tom Johnson. Man with cork leg, from White’s.
What, are you here, Tommy? Foley on a blood mare. The Smalder
girls”—and so forth. At the ceremony Cousin Feenix is depressed,
observing, that these are the occasions to make a man think, in point
of fact, that he is getting shaky; and his eyes are really moistened,
when it is over. But he soon recovers; and so do the rest of Mrs
Skewton’s relatives and friends, of whom the Major continually tells
the club that she never did wrap up enough; while the young lady with
the back, who has so much trouble with her eyelids, says, with a little
scream, that she must have been enormously old, and that she died of
all kinds of horrors, and you mustn’t mention it.
So Edith’s mother lies unmentioned of her dear friends, who are deaf to
the waves that are hoarse with repetition of their mystery, and blind
to the dust that is piled upon the shore, and to the white arms that
are beckoning, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away. But
all goes on, as it was wont, upon the margin of the unknown sea; and
Edith standing there alone, and listening to its waves, has dank weed
cast up at her feet, to strew her path in life withal.
CHAPTER XLII.
Confidential and Accidental
Attired no more in Captain Cuttle’s sable slops and sou’-wester hat,
but dressed in a substantial suit of brown livery, which, while it
affected to be a very sober and demure livery indeed, was really as
self-satisfied and confident a one as tailor need desire to make, Rob
the Grinder, thus transformed as to his outer man, and all regardless
within of the Captain and the Midshipman, except when he devoted a few
minutes of his leisure time to crowing over those inseparable worthies,
and recalling, with much applauding music from that brazen instrument,
his conscience, the triumphant manner in which he had disembarrassed
himself of their company, now served his patron, Mr Carker. Inmate of
Mr Carker’s house, and serving about his person, Rob kept his round
eyes on the white teeth with fear and trembling, and felt that he had
need to open them wider than ever.
He could not have quaked more, through his whole being, before the
teeth, though he had come into the service of some powerful enchanter,
and they had been his strongest spells. The boy had a sense of power
and authority in this patron of his that engrossed his whole attention
and exacted his most implicit submission and obedience. He hardly
considered himself safe in thinking about him when he was absent, lest
he should feel himself immediately taken by the throat again, as on the
morning when he first became bound to him, and should see every one of
the teeth finding him out, and taxing him with every fancy of his mind.
Face to face with him, Rob had no more doubt that Mr Carker read his
secret thoughts, or that he could read them by the least exertion of
his will if he were so inclined, than he had that Mr Carker saw him
when he looked at him. The ascendancy was so complete, and held him in
such enthralment, that, hardly daring to think at all, but with his
mind filled with a constantly dilating impression of his patron’s
irresistible command over him, and power of doing anything with him, he
would stand watching his pleasure, and trying to anticipate his orders,
in a state of mental suspension, as to all other things.
Rob had not informed himself perhaps—in his then state of mind it would
have been an act of no common temerity to inquire—whether he yielded so
completely to this influence in any part, because he had floating
suspicions of his patron’s being a master of certain treacherous arts
in which he had himself been a poor scholar at the Grinders’ School.
But certainly Rob admired him, as well as feared him. Mr Carker,
perhaps, was better acquainted with the sources of his power, which
lost nothing by his management of it.
On the very night when he left the Captain’s service, Rob, after
disposing of his pigeons, and even making a bad bargain in his hurry,
had gone straight down to Mr Carker’s house, and hotly presented
himself before his new master with a glowing face that seemed to expect
commendation.
“What, scapegrace!” said Mr Carker, glancing at his bundle “Have you
left your situation and come to me?”
“Oh if you please, Sir,” faltered Rob, “you said, you know, when I come
here last—”
“I said,” returned Mr Carker, “what did I say?”
“If you please, Sir, you didn’t say nothing at all, Sir,” returned Rob,
warned by the manner of this inquiry, and very much disconcerted.
His patron looked at him with a wide display of gums, and shaking his
forefinger, observed:
“You’ll come to an evil end, my vagabond friend, I foresee. There’s
ruin in store for you.
“Oh if you please, don’t, Sir!” cried Rob, with his legs trembling
under him. “I’m sure, Sir, I only want to work for you, Sir, and to
wait upon you, Sir, and to do faithful whatever I’m bid, Sir.”
“You had better do faithfully whatever you are bid,” returned his
patron, “if you have anything to do with me.”
“Yes, I know that, Sir,” pleaded the submissive Rob; “I’m sure of that,
Sir. If you’ll only be so good as try me, Sir! And if ever you find me
out, Sir, doing anything against your wishes, I give you leave to kill
me.”
“You dog!” said Mr Carker, leaning back in his chair, and smiling at
him serenely. “That’s nothing to what I’d do to you, if you tried to
deceive me.”
“Yes, Sir,” replied the abject Grinder, “I’m sure you would be down
upon me dreadful, Sir. I wouldn’t attempt for to go and do it, Sir, not
if I was bribed with golden guineas.”
Thoroughly checked in his expectations of commendation, the crestfallen
Grinder stood looking at his patron, and vainly endeavouring not to
look at him, with the uneasiness which a cur will often manifest in a
similar situation.
“So you have left your old service, and come here to ask me to take you
into mine, eh?” said Mr Carker.
“Yes, if you please, Sir,” returned Rob, who, in doing so, had acted on
his patron’s own instructions, but dared not justify himself by the
least insinuation to that effect.
“Well!” said Mr Carker. “You know me, boy?”
“Please, Sir, yes, Sir,” returned Rob, tumbling with his hat, and still
fixed by Mr Carker’s eye, and fruitlessly endeavouring to unfix
himself.
Mr Carker nodded. “Take care, then!”
Rob expressed in a number of short bows his lively understanding of
this caution, and was bowing himself back to the door, greatly relieved
by the prospect of getting on the outside of it, when his patron
stopped him.
“Halloa!” he cried, calling him roughly back. “You have been—shut that
door.”
Rob obeyed as if his life had depended on his alacrity.
“You have been used to eaves-dropping. Do you know what that means?”
“Listening, Sir?” Rob hazarded, after some embarrassed reflection.
His patron nodded. “And watching, and so forth.”
“I wouldn’t do such a thing here, Sir,” answered Rob; “upon my word and
honour, I wouldn’t, Sir, I wish I may die if I would, Sir, for anything
that could be promised to me. I should consider it is as much as all
the world was worth, to offer to do such a thing, unless I was ordered,
Sir.”
“You had better not” You have been used, too, to babbling and
tattling,” said his patron with perfect coolness. “Beware of that here,
or you’re a lost rascal,” and he smiled again, and again cautioned him
with his forefinger.
The Grinder’s breath came short and thick with consternation. He tried
to protest the purity of his intentions, but could only stare at the
smiling gentleman in a stupor of submission, with which the smiling
gentleman seemed well enough satisfied, for he ordered him downstairs,
after observing him for some moments in silence, and gave him to
understand that he was retained in his employment.
This was the manner of Rob the Grinder’s engagement by Mr Carker, and
his awe-stricken devotion to that gentleman had strengthened and
increased, if possible, with every minute of his service.
It was a service of some months’ duration, when early one morning, Rob
opened the garden gate to Mr Dombey, who was come to breakfast with his
master, by appointment. At the same moment his master himself came,
hurrying forth to receive the distinguished guest, and give him welcome
with all his teeth.
“I never thought,” said Carker, when he had assisted him to alight from
his horse, “to see you here, I’m sure. This is an extraordinary day in
my calendar. No occasion is very special to a man like you, who may do
anything; but to a man like me, the case is widely different.”