Dombey and Son
must recall our former conversation to her remembrance, in some
surprise that it has not yet had its effect. That I must insist upon
her regulating her conduct by the injunctions laid upon her in that
conversation. That I am not satisfied with her conduct. That I am
greatly dissatisfied with it. And that I shall be under the very
disagreeable necessity of making you the bearer of yet more unwelcome
and explicit communications, if she has not the good sense and the
proper feeling to adapt herself to my wishes, as the first Mrs Dombey
did, and, I believe I may add, as any other lady in her place would.”
“The first Mrs Dombey lived very happily,” said Carker.
“The first Mrs Dombey had great good sense,” said Mr Dombey, in a
gentlemanly toleration of the dead, “and very correct feeling.”
“Is Miss Dombey like her mother, do you think?” said Carker.
Swiftly and darkly, Mr Dombey’s face changed. His confidential agent
eyed it keenly.
“I have approached a painful subject,” he said, in a soft regretful
tone of voice, irreconcilable with his eager eye. “Pray forgive me. I
forget these chains of association in the interest I have. Pray forgive
me.”
But for all he said, his eager eye scanned Mr Dombey’s downcast face
none the less closely; and then it shot a strange triumphant look at
the picture, as appealing to it to bear witness how he led him on
again, and what was coming.
“Carker,” said Mr Dombey, looking here and there upon the table, and
saying in a somewhat altered and more hurried voice, and with a paler
lip, “there is no occasion for apology. You mistake. The association is
with the matter in hand, and not with any recollection, as you suppose.
I do not approve of Mrs Dombey’s behaviour towards my daughter.”
“Pardon me,” said Mr Carker, “I don’t quite understand.”
“Understand then,” returned Mr Dombey, “that you may make that—that you
will make that, if you please—matter of direct objection from me to Mrs
Dombey. You will please to tell her that her show of devotion for my
daughter is disagreeable to me. It is likely to be noticed. It is
likely to induce people to contrast Mrs Dombey in her relation towards
my daughter, with Mrs Dombey in her relation towards myself. You will
have the goodness to let Mrs Dombey know, plainly, that I object to it;
and that I expect her to defer, immediately, to my objection. Mrs
Dombey may be in earnest, or she may be pursuing a whim, or she may be
opposing me; but I object to it in any case, and in every case. If Mrs
Dombey is in earnest, so much the less reluctant should she be to
desist; for she will not serve my daughter by any such display. If my
wife has any superfluous gentleness, and duty over and above her proper
submission to me, she may bestow them where she pleases, perhaps; but I
will have submission first!—Carker,” said Mr Dombey, checking the
unusual emotion with which he had spoken, and falling into a tone more
like that in which he was accustomed to assert his greatness, “you will
have the goodness not to omit or slur this point, but to consider it a
very important part of your instructions.”
Mr Carker bowed his head, and rising from the table, and standing
thoughtfully before the fire, with his hand to his smooth chin, looked
down at Mr Dombey with the evil slyness of some monkish carving, half
human and half brute; or like a leering face on an old water-spout. Mr
Dombey, recovering his composure by degrees, or cooling his emotion in
his sense of having taken a high position, sat gradually stiffening
again, and looking at the parrot as she swung to and fro, in her great
wedding ring.
“I beg your pardon,” said Carker, after a silence, suddenly resuming
his chair, and drawing it opposite to Mr Dombey’s, “but let me
understand. Mrs Dombey is aware of the probability of your making me
the organ of your displeasure?”
“Yes,” replied Mr Dombey. “I have said so.”
“Yes,” rejoined Carker, quickly; “but why?”
“Why!” Mr Dombey repeated, not without hesitation. “Because I told
her.”
“Ay,” replied Carker. “But why did you tell her? You see,” he continued
with a smile, and softly laying his velvet hand, as a cat might have
laid its sheathed claws, on Mr Dombey’s arm; “if I perfectly understand
what is in your mind, I am so much more likely to be useful, and to
have the happiness of being effectually employed. I think I do
understand. I have not the honour of Mrs Dombey’s good opinion. In my
position, I have no reason to expect it; but I take the fact to be,
that I have not got it?”
“Possibly not,” said Mr Dombey.
“Consequently,” pursued Carker, “your making the communications to Mrs
Dombey through me, is sure to be particularly unpalatable to that
lady?”
“It appears to me,” said Mr Dombey, with haughty reserve, and yet with
some embarrassment, “that Mrs Dombey’s views upon the subject form no
part of it as it presents itself to you and me, Carker. But it may be
so.”
“And—pardon me—do I misconceive you,” said Carker, “when I think you
descry in this, a likely means of humbling Mrs Dombey’s pride—I use the
word as expressive of a quality which, kept within due bounds, adorns
and graces a lady so distinguished for her beauty and
accomplishments—and, not to say of punishing her, but of reducing her
to the submission you so naturally and justly require?”
“I am not accustomed, Carker, as you know,” said Mr Dombey, “to give
such close reasons for any course of conduct I think proper to adopt,
but I will gainsay nothing of this. If you have any objection to found
upon it, that is indeed another thing, and the mere statement that you
have one will be sufficient. But I have not supposed, I confess, that
any confidence I could entrust to you, would be likely to degrade you—”
“Oh! _I_ degraded!” exclaimed Carker. “In _your_ service!”
“—or to place you,” pursued Mr Dombey, “in a false position.”
“_I_ in a false position!” exclaimed Carker. “I shall be
proud—delighted—to execute your trust. I could have wished, I own, to
have given the lady at whose feet I would lay my humble duty and
devotion—for is she not your wife!—no new cause of dislike; but a wish
from you is, of course, paramount to every other consideration on
earth. Besides, when Mrs Dombey is converted from these little errors
of judgment, incidental, I would presume to say, to the novelty of her
situation, I shall hope that she will perceive in the slight part I
take, only a grain—my removed and different sphere gives room for
little more—of the respect for you, and sacrifice of all considerations
to you, of which it will be her pleasure and privilege to garner up a
great store every day.”
Mr Dombey seemed, at the moment, again to see her with her hand
stretched out towards the door, and again to hear through the mild
speech of his confidential agent an echo of the words, “Nothing can
make us stranger to each other than we are henceforth!” But he shook
off the fancy, and did not shake in his resolution, and said,
“Certainly, no doubt.”
“There is nothing more,” quoth Carker, drawing his chair back to its
old place—for they had taken little breakfast as yet—and pausing for an
answer before he sat down.
“Nothing,” said Mr Dombey, “but this. You will be good enough to
observe, Carker, that no message to Mrs Dombey with which you are or
may be charged, admits of reply. You will be good enough to bring me no
reply. Mrs Dombey is informed that it does not become me to temporise
or treat upon any matter that is at issue between us, and that what I
say is final.”
Mr Carker signified his understanding of these credentials, and they
fell to breakfast with what appetite they might. The Grinder also, in
due time reappeared, keeping his eyes upon his master without a
moment’s respite, and passing the time in a reverie of worshipful
tenor. Breakfast concluded, Mr Dombey’s horse was ordered out again,
and Mr Carker mounting his own, they rode off for the City together.
Mr Carker was in capital spirits, and talked much. Mr Dombey received
his conversation with the sovereign air of a man who had a right to be
talked to, and occasionally condescended to throw in a few words to
carry on the conversation. So they rode on characteristically enough.
But Mr Dombey, in his dignity, rode with very long stirrups, and a very
loose rein, and very rarely deigned to look down to see where his horse
went. In consequence of which it happened that Mr Dombey’s horse, while
going at a round trot, stumbled on some loose stones, threw him, rolled
over him, and lashing out with his iron-shod feet, in his struggles to
get up, kicked him.
Mr Carker, quick of eye, steady of hand, and a good horseman, was
afoot, and had the struggling animal upon his legs and by the bridle,
in a moment. Otherwise that morning’s confidence would have been Mr
Dombey’s last. Yet even with the flush and hurry of this action red
upon him, he bent over his prostrate chief with every tooth disclosed,
and muttered as he stooped down, “I have given good cause of offence to
Mrs Dombey now, if she knew it!”
Mr Dombey being insensible, and bleeding from the head and face, was
carried by certain menders of the road, under Carker’s direction, to
the nearest public-house, which was not far off, and where he was soon
attended by divers surgeons, who arrived in quick succession from all
parts, and who seemed to come by some mysterious instinct, as vultures
are said to gather about a camel who dies in the desert. After being at
some pains to restore him to consciousness, these gentlemen examined
into the nature of his injuries. One surgeon who lived hard by was
strong for a compound fracture of the leg, which was the landlord’s
opinion also; but two surgeons who lived at a distance, and were only
in that neighbourhood by accident, combated this opinion so
disinterestedly, that it was decided at last that the patient, though
severely cut and bruised, had broken no bones but a lesser rib or so,
and might be carefully taken home before night. His injuries being
dressed and bandaged, which was a long operation, and he at length left
to repose, Mr Carker mounted his horse again, and rode away to carry
the intelligence home.
Crafty and cruel as his face was at the best of times, though it was a
sufficiently fair face as to form and regularity of feature, it was at
its worst when he set forth on this errand; animated by the craft and
cruelty of thoughts within him, suggestions of remote possibility
rather than of design or plot, that made him ride as if he hunted men
and women. Drawing rein at length, and slackening in his speed, as he
came into the more public roads, he checked his white-legged horse into
picking his way along as usual, and hid himself beneath his sleek,
hushed, crouched manner, and his ivory smile, as he best could.
He rode direct to Mr Dombey’s house, alighted at the door, and begged
to see Mrs Dombey on an affair of importance. The servant who showed
him to Mr Dombey’s own room, soon returned to say that it was not Mrs
Dombey’s hour for receiving visitors, and that he begged pardon for not
having mentioned it before.
Mr Carker, who was quite prepared for a cold reception, wrote upon a
card that he must take the liberty of pressing for an interview, and
that he would not be so bold as to do so, for the second time (this he
underlined), if he were not equally sure of the occasion being
sufficient for his justification. After a trifling delay, Mrs Dombey’s
maid appeared, and conducted him to a morning room upstairs, where
Edith and Florence were together.
He had never thought Edith half so beautiful before. Much as he admired
the graces of her face and form, and freshly as they dwelt within his
sensual remembrance, he had never thought her half so beautiful.