Dombey and Son
wound of love for that sweet, injured girl and lacerated it? How often
have you fanned the fire on which, for two years, I have writhed; and
tempted me to take a desperate revenge, when it has most tortured me?”
“I have no doubt, Ma’am,” he replied, “that you have kept a good
account, and that it’s pretty accurate. Come, Edith. To your husband,
poor wretch, this was well enough—”
“Why, if,” she said, surveying him with a haughty contempt and disgust,
that he shrunk under, let him brave it as he would, “if all my other
reasons for despising him could have been blown away like feathers, his
having you for his counsellor and favourite, would have almost been
enough to hold their place.”
“Is that a reason why you have run away with me?” he asked her,
tauntingly.
“Yes, and why we are face to face for the last time. Wretch! We meet
tonight, and part tonight. For not one moment after I have ceased to
speak, will I stay here!”
He turned upon her with his ugliest look, and gripped the table with
his hand; but neither rose, nor otherwise answered or threatened her.
“I am a woman,” she said, confronting him steadfastly, “who from her
childhood has been shamed and steeled. I have been offered and
rejected, put up and appraised, until my very soul has sickened. I have
not had an accomplishment or grace that might have been a resource to
me, but it has been paraded and vended to enhance my value, as if the
common crier had called it through the streets. My poor, proud friends,
have looked on and approved; and every tie between us has been deadened
in my breast. There is not one of them for whom I care, as I could care
for a pet dog. I stand alone in the world, remembering well what a
hollow world it has been to me, and what a hollow part of it I have
been myself. You know this, and you know that my fame with it is
worthless to me.”
“Yes; I imagined that,” he said.
“And calculated on it,” she rejoined, “and so pursued me. Grown too
indifferent for any opposition but indifference, to the daily working
of the hands that had moulded me to this; and knowing that my marriage
would at least prevent their hawking of me up and down; I suffered
myself to be sold, as infamously as any woman with a halter round her
neck is sold in any market-place. You know that.”
“Yes,” he said, showing all his teeth “I know that.”
“And calculated on it,” she rejoined once more, “and so pursued me.
From my marriage day, I found myself exposed to such new shame—to such
solicitation and pursuit (expressed as clearly as if it had been
written in the coarsest words, and thrust into my hand at every turn)
from one mean villain, that I felt as if I had never known humiliation
till that time. This shame my husband fixed upon me; hemmed me round
with, himself; steeped me in, with his own hands, and of his own act,
repeated hundreds of times. And thus—forced by the two from every point
of rest I had—forced by the two to yield up the last retreat of love
and gentleness within me, or to be a new misfortune on its innocent
object—driven from each to each, and beset by one when I escaped the
other—my anger rose almost to distraction against both. I do not know
against which it rose higher—the master or the man!”
He watched her closely, as she stood before him in the very triumph of
her indignant beauty. She was resolute, he saw; undauntable; with no
more fear of him than of a worm.
“What should I say of honour or of chastity to you!” she went on. “What
meaning would it have to you; what meaning would it have from me! But
if I tell you that the lightest touch of your hand makes my blood cold
with antipathy; that from the hour when I first saw and hated you, to
now, when my instinctive repugnance is enhanced by every minute’s
knowledge of you I have since had, you have been a loathsome creature
to me which has not its like on earth; how then?”
He answered with a faint laugh, “Ay! How then, my queen?”
“On that night, when, emboldened by the scene you had assisted at, you
dared come to my room and speak to me,” she said, “what passed?”
He shrugged his shoulders, and laughed
“What passed?” she said.
“Your memory is so distinct,” he said, “that I have no doubt you can
recall it.”
“I can,” she said. “Hear it! Proposing then, this flight—not this
flight, but the flight you thought it—you told me that in the having
given you that meeting, and leaving you to be discovered there, if you
so thought fit; and in the having suffered you to be alone with me many
times before,—and having made the opportunities, you said,—and in the
having openly avowed to you that I had no feeling for my husband but
aversion, and no care for myself—I was lost; I had given you the power
to traduce my name; and I lived, in virtuous reputation, at the
pleasure of your breath.”
“All stratagems in love—-” he interrupted, smiling. “The old adage—”
“On that night,” said Edith, “and then, the struggle that I long had
had with something that was not respect for my good fame—that was I
know not what—perhaps the clinging to that last retreat—was ended. On
that night, and then, I turned from everything but passion and
resentment. I struck a blow that laid your lofty master in the dust,
and set you there, before me, looking at me now, and knowing what I
mean.”
He sprung up from his chair with a great oath. She put her hand into
her bosom, and not a finger trembled, not a hair upon her head was
stirred. He stood still: she too: the table and chair between them.
“When I forget that this man put his lips to mine that night, and held
me in his arms as he has done again tonight,” said Edith, pointing at
him; “when I forget the taint of his kiss upon my cheek—the cheek that
Florence would have laid her guiltless face against—when I forget my
meeting with her, while that taint was hot upon me, and in what a flood
the knowledge rushed upon me when I saw her, that in releasing her from
the persecution I had caused by my love, I brought a shame and
degradation on her name through mine, and in all time to come should be
the solitary figure representing in her mind her first avoidance of a
guilty creature—then, Husband, from whom I stand divorced henceforth, I
will forget these last two years, and undo what I have done, and
undeceive you!”
Her flashing eyes, uplifted for a moment, lighted again on Carker, and
she held some letters out in her left hand.
“See these!” she said, contemptuously. “You have addressed these to me
in the false name you go by; one here, some elsewhere on my road. The
seals are unbroken. Take them back!”
She crunched them in her hand, and tossed them to his feet. And as she
looked upon him now, a smile was on her face.
“We meet and part tonight,” she said. “You have fallen on Sicilian
days and sensual rest, too soon. You might have cajoled, and fawned,
and played your traitor’s part, a little longer, and grown richer. You
purchase your voluptuous retirement dear!”
“Edith!” he retorted, menacing her with his hand. “Sit down! Have done
with this! What devil possesses you?”
“Their name is Legion,” she replied, uprearing her proud form as if she
would have crushed him; “you and your master have raised them in a
fruitful house, and they shall tear you both. False to him, false to
his innocent child, false every way and everywhere, go forth and boast
of me, and gnash your teeth, for once, to know that you are lying!”
He stood before her, muttering and menacing, and scowling round as if
for something that would help him to conquer her; but with the same
indomitable spirit she opposed him, without faltering.
“In every vaunt you make,” she said, “I have my triumph. I single out
in you the meanest man I know, the parasite and tool of the proud
tyrant, that his wound may go the deeper, and may rankle more. Boast,
and revenge me on him! You know how you came here tonight; you know
how you stand cowering there; you see yourself in colours quite as
despicable, if not as odious, as those in which I see you. Boast then,
and revenge me on yourself.”
The foam was on his lips; the wet stood on his forehead. If she would
have faltered once for only one half-moment, he would have pinioned
her; but she was as firm as rock, and her searching eyes never left
him.
“We don’t part so,” he said. “Do you think I am drivelling, to let you
go in your mad temper?”
“Do you think,” she answered, “that I am to be stayed?”
“I’ll try, my dear,” he said with a ferocious gesture of his head.
“God’s mercy on you, if you try by coming near me!” she replied.
“And what,” he said, “if there are none of these same boasts and vaunts
on my part? What if I were to turn too? Come!” and his teeth fairly
shone again. “We must make a treaty of this, or I may take some
unexpected course. Sit down, sit down!”
“Too late!” she cried, with eyes that seemed to sparkle fire. “I have
thrown my fame and good name to the winds! I have resolved to bear the
shame that will attach to me—resolved to know that it attaches
falsely—that you know it too—and that he does not, never can, and never
shall. I’ll die, and make no sign. For this, I am here alone with you,
at the dead of night. For this, I have met you here, in a false name,
as your wife. For this, I have been seen here by those men, and left
here. Nothing can save you now.”
He would have sold his soul to root her, in her beauty, to the floor,
and make her arms drop at her sides, and have her at his mercy. But he
could not look at her, and not be afraid of her. He saw a strength
within her that was resistless. He saw that she was desperate, and that
her unquenchable hatred of him would stop at nothing. His eyes followed
the hand that was put with such rugged uncongenial purpose into her
white bosom, and he thought that if it struck at him, and failed, it
would strike there, just as soon.
He did not venture, therefore, to advance towards her; but the door by
which he had entered was behind him, and he stepped back to lock it.
“Lastly, take my warning! Look to yourself!” she said, and smiled
again. “You have been betrayed, as all betrayers are. It has been made
known that you are in this place, or were to be, or have been. If I
live, I saw my husband in a carriage in the street tonight!”
“Strumpet, it’s false!” cried Carker.
At the moment, the bell rang loudly in the hall. He turned white, as
she held her hand up like an enchantress, at whose invocation the sound
had come.
“Hark! do you hear it?”
He set his back against the door; for he saw a change in her, and
fancied she was coming on to pass him. But, in a moment, she was gone
through the opposite doors communicating with the bed-chamber, and they
shut upon her.
Once turned, once changed in her inflexible unyielding look, he felt
that he could cope with her. He thought a sudden terror, occasioned by
this night-alarm, had subdued her; not the less readily, for her
overwrought condition. Throwing open the doors, he followed, almost
instantly.
But the room was dark; and as she made no answer to his call, he was
fain to go back for the lamp. He held it up, and looked round,
everywhere, expecting to see her crouching in some corner; but the room
was empty. So, into the drawing-room and dining-room he went, in
succession, with the uncertain steps of a man in a strange place;
looking fearfully about, and prying behind screens and couches; but she
was not there. No, nor in the hall, which was so bare that he could see
that, at a glance.
All this time, the ringing at the bell was constantly renewed, and
those without were beating at the door. He put his lamp down at a
distance, and going near it, listened. There were several voices
talking together: at least two of them in English; and though the door