Dombey and Son
was thick, and there was great confusion, he knew one of these too well
to doubt whose voice it was.
He took up his lamp again, and came back quickly through all the rooms,
stopping as he quitted each, and looking round for her, with the light
raised above his head. He was standing thus in the bed-chamber, when
the door, leading to the little passage in the wall, caught his eye. He
went to it, and found it fastened on the other side; but she had
dropped a veil in going through, and shut it in the door.
All this time the people on the stairs were ringing at the bell, and
knocking with their hands and feet.
He was not a coward: but these sounds; what had gone before; the
strangeness of the place, which had confused him, even in his return
from the hall; the frustration of his schemes (for, strange to say, he
would have been much bolder, if they had succeeded); the unseasonable
time; the recollection of having no one near to whom he could appeal
for any friendly office; above all, the sudden sense, which made even
his heart beat like lead, that the man whose confidence he had
outraged, and whom he had so treacherously deceived, was there to
recognise and challenge him with his mask plucked off his face; struck
a panic through him. He tried the door in which the veil was shut, but
couldn’t force it. He opened one of the windows, and looked down
through the lattice of the blind, into the court-yard; but it was a
high leap, and the stones were pitiless.
The ringing and knocking still continuing—his panic too—he went back to
the door in the bed-chamber, and with some new efforts, each more
stubborn than the last, wrenched it open. Seeing the little staircase
not far off, and feeling the night-air coming up, he stole back for his
hat and coat, made the door as secure after him as he could, crept down
lamp in hand, extinguished it on seeing the street, and having put it
in a corner, went out where the stars were shining.
CHAPTER LV.
Rob the Grinder loses his Place
The Porter at the iron gate which shut the court-yard from the street,
had left the little wicket of his house open, and was gone away; no
doubt to mingle in the distant noise at the door of the great
staircase. Lifting the latch softly, Carker crept out, and shutting the
jangling gate after him with as little noise as possible, hurried off.
In the fever of his mortification and unavailing rage, the panic that
had seized upon him mastered him completely. It rose to such a height
that he would have blindly encountered almost any risk, rather than
meet the man of whom, two hours ago, he had been utterly regardless.
His fierce arrival, which he had never expected; the sound of his
voice; their having been so near a meeting, face to face; he would have
braved out this, after the first momentary shock of alarm, and would
have put as bold a front upon his guilt as any villain. But the
springing of his mine upon himself, seemed to have rent and shivered
all his hardihood and self-reliance. Spurned like any reptile;
entrapped and mocked; turned upon, and trodden down by the proud woman
whose mind he had slowly poisoned, as he thought, until she had sunk
into the mere creature of his pleasure; undeceived in his deceit, and
with his fox’s hide stripped off, he sneaked away, abashed, degraded,
and afraid.
Some other terror came upon him quite removed from this of being
pursued, suddenly, like an electric shock, as he was creeping through
the streets Some visionary terror, unintelligible and inexplicable,
associated with a trembling of the ground,—a rush and sweep of
something through the air, like Death upon the wing. He shrunk, as if
to let the thing go by. It was not gone, it never had been there, yet
what a startling horror it had left behind.
He raised his wicked face so full of trouble, to the night sky, where
the stars, so full of peace, were shining on him as they had been when
he first stole out into the air; and stopped to think what he should
do. The dread of being hunted in a strange remote place, where the laws
might not protect him—the novelty of the feeling that it was strange
and remote, originating in his being left alone so suddenly amid the
ruins of his plans—his greater dread of seeking refuge now, in Italy or
in Sicily, where men might be hired to assassinate him, he thought, at
any dark street corner—the waywardness of guilt and fear—perhaps some
sympathy of action with the turning back of all his schemes—impelled
him to turn back too, and go to England.
“I am safer there, in any case. If I should not decide,” he thought,
“to give this fool a meeting, I am less likely to be traced there, than
abroad here, now. And if I should (this cursed fit being over), at
least I shall not be alone, without a soul to speak to, or advise with,
or stand by me. I shall not be run in upon and worried like a rat.”
He muttered Edith’s name, and clenched his hand. As he crept along, in
the shadow of the massive buildings, he set his teeth, and muttered
dreadful imprecations on her head, and looked from side to side, as if
in search of her. Thus, he stole on to the gate of an inn-yard. The
people were a-bed; but his ringing at the bell soon produced a man with
a lantern, in company with whom he was presently in a dim coach-house,
bargaining for the hire of an old phaeton, to Paris.
The bargain was a short one; and the horses were soon sent for. Leaving
word that the carriage was to follow him when they came, he stole away
again, beyond the town, past the old ramparts, out on the open road,
which seemed to glide away along the dark plain, like a stream.
Whither did it flow? What was the end of it? As he paused, with some
such suggestion within him, looking over the gloomy flat where the
slender trees marked out the way, again that flight of Death came
rushing up, again went on, impetuous and resistless, again was nothing
but a horror in his mind, dark as the scene and undefined as its
remotest verge.
There was no wind; there was no passing shadow on the deep shade of the
night; there was no noise. The city lay behind him, lighted here and
there, and starry worlds were hidden by the masonry of spire and roof
that hardly made out any shapes against the sky. Dark and lonely
distance lay around him everywhere, and the clocks were faintly
striking two.
He went forward for what appeared a long time, and a long way; often
stopping to listen. At last the ringing of horses’ bells greeted his
anxious ears. Now softer, and now louder, now inaudible, now ringing
very slowly over bad ground, now brisk and merry, it came on; until
with a loud shouting and lashing, a shadowy postillion muffled to the
eyes, checked his four struggling horses at his side.
“Who goes there! Monsieur?”
“Yes.”
“Monsieur has walked a long way in the dark midnight.”
“No matter. Everyone to his task. Were there any other horses ordered
at the Post-house?”
“A thousand devils!—and pardons! other horses? at this hour? No.”
“Listen, my friend. I am much hurried. Let us see how fast we can
travel! The faster, the more money there will be to drink. Off we go
then! Quick!”
“Halloa! whoop! Halloa! Hi!” Away, at a gallop, over the black
landscape, scattering the dust and dirt like spray!
The clatter and commotion echoed to the hurry and discordance of the
fugitive’s ideas. Nothing clear without, and nothing clear within.
Objects flitting past, merging into one another, dimly descried,
confusedly lost sight of, gone! Beyond the changing scraps of fence and
cottage immediately upon the road, a lowering waste. Beyond the
shifting images that rose up in his mind and vanished as they showed
themselves, a black expanse of dread and rage and baffled villainy.
Occasionally, a sigh of mountain air came from the distant Jura, fading
along the plain. Sometimes that rush which was so furious and horrible,
again came sweeping through his fancy, passed away, and left a chill
upon his blood.
The lamps, gleaming on the medley of horses’ heads, jumbled with the
shadowy driver, and the fluttering of his cloak, made a thousand
indistinct shapes, answering to his thoughts. Shadows of familiar
people, stooping at their desks and books, in their remembered
attitudes; strange apparitions of the man whom he was flying from, or
of Edith; repetitions in the ringing bells and rolling wheels, of words
that had been spoken; confusions of time and place, making last night a
month ago, a month ago last night—home now distant beyond hope, now
instantly accessible; commotion, discord, hurry, darkness, and
confusion in his mind, and all around him.—Hallo! Hi! away at a gallop
over the black landscape; dust and dirt flying like spray, the smoking
horses snorting and plunging as if each of them were ridden by a demon,
away in a frantic triumph on the dark road—whither?
Again the nameless shock comes speeding up, and as it passes, the bells
ring in his ears “whither?” The wheels roar in his ears “whither?” All
the noise and rattle shapes itself into that cry. The lights and
shadows dance upon the horses’ heads like imps. No stopping now: no
slackening! On, on! Away with him upon the dark road wildly!
He could not think to any purpose. He could not separate one subject of
reflection from another, sufficiently to dwell upon it, by itself, for
a minute at a time. The crash of his project for the gaining of a
voluptuous compensation for past restraint; the overthrow of his
treachery to one who had been true and generous to him, but whose least
proud word and look he had treasured up, at interest, for years—for
false and subtle men will always secretly despise and dislike the
object upon which they fawn and always resent the payment and receipt
of homage that they know to be worthless; these were the themes
uppermost in his mind. A lurking rage against the woman who had so
entrapped him and avenged herself was always there; crude and misshapen
schemes of retaliation upon her, floated in his brain; but nothing was
distinct. A hurry and contradiction pervaded all his thoughts. Even
while he was so busy with this fevered, ineffectual thinking, his one
constant idea was, that he would postpone reflection until some
indefinite time.
Then, the old days before the second marriage rose up in his
remembrance. He thought how jealous he had been of the boy, how jealous
he had been of the girl, how artfully he had kept intruders at a
distance, and drawn a circle round his dupe that none but himself
should cross; and then he thought, had he done all this to be flying
now, like a scared thief, from only the poor dupe?
He could have laid hands upon himself for his cowardice, but it was the
very shadow of his defeat, and could not be separated from it. To have
his confidence in his own knavery so shattered at a blow—to be within
his own knowledge such a miserable tool—was like being paralysed. With
an impotent ferocity he raged at Edith, and hated Mr Dombey and hated
himself, but still he fled, and could do nothing else.
Again and again he listened for the sound of wheels behind. Again and
again his fancy heard it, coming on louder and louder. At last he was
so persuaded of this, that he cried out, “Stop” preferring even the
loss of ground to such uncertainty.
The word soon brought carriage, horses, driver, all in a heap together,
across the road.
“The devil!” cried the driver, looking over his shoulder, “what’s the
matter?”
“Hark! What’s that?”
“What?”
“That noise?”
“Ah Heaven, be quiet, cursed brigand!” to a horse who shook his bells
“What noise?”
“Behind. Is it not another carriage at a gallop? There! what’s that?”
“Miscreant with a Pig’s head, stand still!” to another horse, who bit
another, who frightened the other two, who plunged and backed. “There