Dombey and Son
“You have a tasteful place here, Carker,” said Mr Dombey, condescending
to stop upon the lawn, to look about him.
“You can afford to say so,” returned Carker. “Thank you.”
“Indeed,” said Mr Dombey, in his lofty patronage, “anyone might say so.
As far as it goes, it is a very commodious and well-arranged
place—quite elegant.”
“As far as it goes, truly,” returned Carker, with an air of
disparagement. “It wants that qualification. Well! we have said enough
about it; and though you can afford to praise it, I thank you
nonetheless. Will you walk in?”
Mr Dombey, entering the house, noticed, as he had reason to do, the
complete arrangement of the rooms, and the numerous contrivances for
comfort and effect that abounded there. Mr Carker, in his ostentation
of humility, received this notice with a deferential smile, and said he
understood its delicate meaning, and appreciated it, but in truth the
cottage was good enough for one in his position—better, perhaps, than
such a man should occupy, poor as it was.
“But perhaps to you, who are so far removed, it really does look better
than it is,” he said, with his false mouth distended to its fullest
stretch. “Just as monarchs imagine attractions in the lives of
beggars.”
He directed a sharp glance and a sharp smile at Mr Dombey as he spoke,
and a sharper glance, and a sharper smile yet, when Mr Dombey, drawing
himself up before the fire, in the attitude so often copied by his
second in command, looked round at the pictures on the walls. Cursorily
as his cold eye wandered over them, Carker’s keen glance accompanied
his, and kept pace with his, marking exactly where it went, and what it
saw. As it rested on one picture in particular, Carker hardly seemed to
breathe, his sidelong scrutiny was so cat-like and vigilant, but the
eye of his great chief passed from that, as from the others, and
appeared no more impressed by it than by the rest.
Carker looked at it—it was the picture that resembled Edith—as if it
were a living thing; and with a wicked, silent laugh upon his face,
that seemed in part addressed to it, though it was all derisive of the
great man standing so unconscious beside him. Breakfast was soon set
upon the table; and, inviting Mr Dombey to a chair which had its back
towards this picture, he took his own seat opposite to it as usual.
Mr Dombey was even graver than it was his custom to be, and quite
silent. The parrot, swinging in the gilded hoop within her gaudy cage,
attempted in vain to attract notice, for Carker was too observant of
his visitor to heed her; and the visitor, abstracted in meditation,
looked fixedly, not to say sullenly, over his stiff neckcloth, without
raising his eyes from the table-cloth. As to Rob, who was in
attendance, all his faculties and energies were so locked up in
observation of his master, that he scarcely ventured to give shelter to
the thought that the visitor was the great gentleman before whom he had
been carried as a certificate of the family health, in his childhood,
and to whom he had been indebted for his leather smalls.
“Allow me,” said Carker suddenly, “to ask how Mrs Dombey is?”
He leaned forward obsequiously, as he made the inquiry, with his chin
resting on his hand; and at the same time his eyes went up to the
picture, as if he said to it, “Now, see, how I will lead him on!”
Mr Dombey reddened as he answered:
“Mrs Dombey is quite well. You remind me, Carker, of some conversation
that I wish to have with you.”
“Robin, you can leave us,” said his master, at whose mild tones Robin
started and disappeared, with his eyes fixed on his patron to the last.
“You don’t remember that boy, of course?” he added, when the enmeshed
Grinder was gone.
“No,” said Mr Dombey, with magnificent indifference.
“Not likely that a man like you would. Hardly possible,” murmured
Carker. “But he is one of that family from whom you took a nurse.
Perhaps you may remember having generously charged yourself with his
education?”
“Is it that boy?” said Mr Dombey, with a frown. “He does little credit
to his education, I believe.”
“Why, he is a young rip, I am afraid,” returned Carker, with a shrug.
“He bears that character. But the truth is, I took him into my service
because, being able to get no other employment, he conceived (had been
taught at home, I daresay) that he had some sort of claim upon you, and
was constantly trying to dog your heels with his petition. And although
my defined and recognised connexion with your affairs is merely of a
business character, still I have that spontaneous interest in
everything belonging to you, that—”
He stopped again, as if to discover whether he had led Mr Dombey far
enough yet. And again, with his chin resting on his hand, he leered at
the picture.
“Carker,” said Mr Dombey, “I am sensible that you do not limit your—”
“Service,” suggested his smiling entertainer.
“No; I prefer to say your regard,” observed Mr Dombey; very sensible,
as he said so, that he was paying him a handsome and flattering
compliment, “to our mere business relations. Your consideration for my
feelings, hopes, and disappointments, in the little instance you have
just now mentioned, is an example in point. I am obliged to you,
Carker.”
Mr Carker bent his head slowly, and very softly rubbed his hands, as if
he were afraid by any action to disturb the current of Mr Dombey’s
confidence.
“Your allusion to it is opportune,” said Mr Dombey, after a little
hesitation; “for it prepares the way to what I was beginning to say to
you, and reminds me that that involves no absolutely new relations
between us, although it may involve more personal confidence on my part
than I have hitherto—”
“Distinguished me with,” suggested Carker, bending his head again: “I
will not say to you how honoured I am; for a man like you well knows
how much honour he has in his power to bestow at pleasure.”
“Mrs Dombey and myself,” said Mr Dombey, passing this compliment with
august self-denial, “are not quite agreed upon some points. We do not
appear to understand each other yet. Mrs Dombey has something to
learn.”
“Mrs Dombey is distinguished by many rare attractions; and has been
accustomed, no doubt, to receive much adulation,” said the smooth,
sleek watcher of his slightest look and tone. “But where there is
affection, duty, and respect, any little mistakes engendered by such
causes are soon set right.”
Mr Dombey’s thoughts instinctively flew back to the face that had
looked at him in his wife’s dressing-room when an imperious hand was
stretched towards the door; and remembering the affection, duty, and
respect, expressed in it, he felt the blood rush to his own face quite
as plainly as the watchful eyes upon him saw it there.
“Mrs Dombey and myself,” he went on to say, “had some discussion,
before Mrs Skewton’s death, upon the causes of my dissatisfaction; of
which you will have formed a general understanding from having been a
witness of what passed between Mrs Dombey and myself on the evening
when you were at our—at my house.”
“When I so much regretted being present,” said the smiling Carker.
“Proud as a man in my position necessarily must be of your familiar
notice—though I give you no credit for it; you may do anything you
please without losing caste—and honoured as I was by an early
presentation to Mrs Dombey, before she was made eminent by bearing your
name, I almost regretted that night, I assure you, that I had been the
object of such especial good fortune.”
That any man could, under any possible circumstances, regret the being
distinguished by his condescension and patronage, was a moral
phenomenon which Mr Dombey could not comprehend. He therefore
responded, with a considerable accession of dignity. “Indeed! And why,
Carker?”
“I fear,” returned the confidential agent, “that Mrs Dombey, never very
much disposed to regard me with favourable interest—one in my position
could not expect that, from a lady naturally proud, and whose pride
becomes her so well—may not easily forgive my innocent part in that
conversation. Your displeasure is no light matter, you must remember;
and to be visited with it before a third party—”
“Carker,” said Mr Dombey, arrogantly; “I presume that I am the first
consideration?”
“Oh! Can there be a doubt about it?” replied the other, with the
impatience of a man admitting a notorious and incontrovertible fact.
“Mrs Dombey becomes a secondary consideration, when we are both in
question, I imagine,” said Mr Dombey. “Is that so?”
“Is it so?” returned Carker. “Do you know better than anyone, that you
have no need to ask?”
“Then I hope, Carker,” said Mr Dombey, “that your regret in the
acquisition of Mrs Dombey’s displeasure, may be almost counterbalanced
by your satisfaction in retaining my confidence and good opinion.”
“I have the misfortune, I find,” returned Carker, “to have incurred
that displeasure. Mrs Dombey has expressed it to you?”
“Mrs Dombey has expressed various opinions,” said Mr Dombey, with
majestic coldness and indifference, “in which I do not participate, and
which I am not inclined to discuss, or to recall. I made Mrs Dombey
acquainted, some time since, as I have already told you, with certain
points of domestic deference and submission on which I felt it
necessary to insist. I failed to convince Mrs Dombey of the expediency
of her immediately altering her conduct in those respects, with a view
to her own peace and welfare, and my dignity; and I informed Mrs Dombey
that if I should find it necessary to object or remonstrate again, I
should express my opinion to her through yourself, my confidential
agent.”
Blended with the look that Carker bent upon him, was a devilish look at
the picture over his head, that struck upon it like a flash of
lightning.
“Now, Carker,” said Mr Dombey, “I do not hesitate to say to you that I
will carry my point. I am not to be trifled with. Mrs Dombey must
understand that my will is law, and that I cannot allow of one
exception to the whole rule of my life. You will have the goodness to
undertake this charge, which, coming from me, is not unacceptable to
you, I hope, whatever regret you may politely profess—for which I am
obliged to you on behalf of Mrs Dombey; and you will have the goodness,
I am persuaded, to discharge it as exactly as any other commission.”
“You know,” said Mr Carker, “that you have only to command me.”
“I know,” said Mr Dombey, with a majestic indication of assent, “that I
have only to command you. It is necessary that I should proceed in
this. Mrs Dombey is a lady undoubtedly highly qualified, in many
respects, to—”
“To do credit even to your choice,” suggested Carker, with a yawning
show of teeth.
“Yes; if you please to adopt that form of words,” said Mr Dombey, in
his tone of state; “and at present I do not conceive that Mrs Dombey
does that credit to it, to which it is entitled. There is a principle
of opposition in Mrs Dombey that must be eradicated; that must be
overcome: Mrs Dombey does not appear to understand,” said Mr Dombey,
forcibly, “that the idea of opposition to Me is monstrous and absurd.”
“We, in the City, know you better,” replied Carker, with a smile from
ear to ear.
“You know me better,” said Mr Dombey. “I hope so. Though, indeed, I am
bound to do Mrs Dombey the justice of saying, however inconsistent it
may seem with her subsequent conduct (which remains unchanged), that on
my expressing my disapprobation and determination to her, with some
severity, on the occasion to which I have referred, my admonition
appeared to produce a very powerful effect.” Mr Dombey delivered
himself of those words with most portentous stateliness. “I wish you to
have the goodness, then, to inform Mrs Dombey, Carker, from me, that I