Dombey and Son
“No, Ma’am,” said the Major. “Couldn’t do it.”
“You’re a barbarous being,” replied the lady, “and my hand’s destroyed.
You are fond of music, Mr Dombey?”
“Eminently so,” was Mr Dombey’s answer.
“Yes. It’s very nice,” said Cleopatra, looking at her cards. “So much
heart in it—undeveloped recollections of a previous state of
existence—and all that—which is so truly charming. Do you know,”
simpered Cleopatra, reversing the knave of clubs, who had come into her
game with his heels uppermost, “that if anything could tempt me to put
a period to my life, it would be curiosity to find out what it’s all
about, and what it means; there are so many provoking mysteries,
really, that are hidden from us. Major, you to play!”
The Major played; and Mr Dombey, looking on for his instruction, would
soon have been in a state of dire confusion, but that he gave no
attention to the game whatever, and sat wondering instead when Edith
would come back.
She came at last, and sat down to her harp, and Mr Dombey rose and
stood beside her, listening. He had little taste for music, and no
knowledge of the strain she played, but he saw her bending over it, and
perhaps he heard among the sounding strings some distant music of his
own, that tamed the monster of the iron road, and made it less
inexorable.
Cleopatra had a sharp eye, verily, at picquet. It glistened like a
bird’s, and did not fix itself upon the game, but pierced the room from
end to end, and gleamed on harp, performer, listener, everything.
When the haughty beauty had concluded, she arose, and receiving Mr
Dombey’s thanks and compliments in exactly the same manner as before,
went with scarcely any pause to the piano, and began there.
Edith Granger, any song but that! Edith Granger, you are very handsome,
and your touch upon the keys is brilliant, and your voice is deep and
rich; but not the air that his neglected daughter sang to his dead son!
Alas, he knows it not; and if he did, what air of hers would stir him,
rigid man! Sleep, lonely Florence, sleep! Peace in thy dreams, although
the night has turned dark, and the clouds are gathering, and threaten
to discharge themselves in hail!
CHAPTER XXII.
A Trifle of Management by Mr Carker the Manager
Mr Carker the Manager sat at his desk, smooth and soft as usual,
reading those letters which were reserved for him to open, backing them
occasionally with such memoranda and references as their business
purport required, and parcelling them out into little heaps for
distribution through the several departments of the House. The post had
come in heavy that morning, and Mr Carker the Manager had a good deal
to do.
The general action of a man so engaged—pausing to look over a bundle of
papers in his hand, dealing them round in various portions, taking up
another bundle and examining its contents with knitted brows and
pursed-out lips—dealing, and sorting, and pondering by turns—would
easily suggest some whimsical resemblance to a player at cards. The
face of Mr Carker the Manager was in good keeping with such a fancy. It
was the face of a man who studied his play, warily: who made himself
master of all the strong and weak points of the game: who registered
the cards in his mind as they fell about him, knew exactly what was on
them, what they missed, and what they made: who was crafty to find out
what the other players held, and who never betrayed his own hand.
The letters were in various languages, but Mr Carker the Manager read
them all. If there had been anything in the offices of Dombey and Son
that he could read, there would have been a card wanting in the pack.
He read almost at a glance, and made combinations of one letter with
another and one business with another as he went on, adding new matter
to the heaps—much as a man would know the cards at sight, and work out
their combinations in his mind after they were turned. Something too
deep for a partner, and much too deep for an adversary, Mr Carker the
Manager sat in the rays of the sun that came down slanting on him
through the skylight, playing his game alone.
And although it is not among the instincts wild or domestic of the cat
tribe to play at cards, feline from sole to crown was Mr Carker the
Manager, as he basked in the strip of summer-light and warmth that
shone upon his table and the ground as if they were a crooked
dial-plate, and himself the only figure on it. With hair and whiskers
deficient in colour at all times, but feebler than common in the rich
sunshine, and more like the coat of a sandy tortoise-shell cat; with
long nails, nicely pared and sharpened; with a natural antipathy to any
speck of dirt, which made him pause sometimes and watch the falling
motes of dust, and rub them off his smooth white hand or glossy linen:
Mr Carker the Manager, sly of manner, sharp of tooth, soft of foot,
watchful of eye, oily of tongue, cruel of heart, nice of habit, sat
with a dainty steadfastness and patience at his work, as if he were
waiting at a mouse’s hole.
At length the letters were disposed of, excepting one which he reserved
for a particular audience. Having locked the more confidential
correspondence in a drawer, Mr Carker the Manager rang his bell.
“Why do you answer it?” was his reception of his brother.
“The messenger is out, and I am the next,” was the submissive reply.
“You are the next?” muttered the Manager. “Yes! Creditable to me!
There!”
Pointing to the heaps of opened letters, he turned disdainfully away,
in his elbow-chair, and broke the seal of that one which he held in his
hand.
“I am sorry to trouble you, James,” said the brother, gathering them
up, “but—”
“Oh! you have something to say. I knew that. Well?”
Mr Carker the Manager did not raise his eyes or turn them on his
brother, but kept them on his letter, though without opening it.
“Well?” he repeated sharply.
“I am uneasy about Harriet.”
“Harriet who? what Harriet? I know nobody of that name.”
“She is not well, and has changed very much of late.”
“She changed very much, a great many years ago,” replied the Manager;
“and that is all I have to say.
“I think if you would hear me—
“Why should I hear you, Brother John?” returned the Manager, laying a
sarcastic emphasis on those two words, and throwing up his head, but
not lifting his eyes. “I tell you, Harriet Carker made her choice many
years ago between her two brothers. She may repent it, but she must
abide by it.”
“Don’t mistake me. I do not say she does repent it. It would be black
ingratitude in me to hint at such a thing,” returned the other. “Though
believe me, James, I am as sorry for her sacrifice as you.”
“As I?” exclaimed the Manager. “As I?”
“As sorry for her choice—for what you call her choice—as you are angry
at it,” said the Junior.
“Angry?” repeated the other, with a wide show of his teeth.
“Displeased. Whatever word you like best. You know my meaning. There is
no offence in my intention.”
“There is offence in everything you do,” replied his brother, glancing
at him with a sudden scowl, which in a moment gave place to a wider
smile than the last. “Carry those papers away, if you please. I am
busy.
His politeness was so much more cutting than his wrath, that the Junior
went to the door. But stopping at it, and looking round, he said:
“When Harriet tried in vain to plead for me with you, on your first
just indignation, and my first disgrace; and when she left you, James,
to follow my broken fortunes, and devote herself, in her mistaken
affection, to a ruined brother, because without her he had no one, and
was lost; she was young and pretty. I think if you could see her now—if
you would go and see her—she would move your admiration and
compassion.”
The Manager inclined his head, and showed his teeth, as who should say,
in answer to some careless small-talk, “Dear me! Is that the case?” but
said never a word.
“We thought in those days: you and I both: that she would marry young,
and lead a happy and light-hearted life,” pursued the other. “Oh if you
knew how cheerfully she cast those hopes away; how cheerfully she has
gone forward on the path she took, and never once looked back; you
never could say again that her name was strange in your ears. Never!”
Again the Manager inclined his head and showed his teeth, and seemed to
say, “Remarkable indeed! You quite surprise me!” And again he uttered
never a word.
“May I go on?” said John Carker, mildly.
“On your way?” replied his smiling brother. “If you will have the
goodness.”
John Carker, with a sigh, was passing slowly out at the door, when his
brother’s voice detained him for a moment on the threshold.
“If she has gone, and goes, her own way cheerfully,” he said, throwing
the still unfolded letter on his desk, and putting his hands firmly in
his pockets, “you may tell her that I go as cheerfully on mine. If she
has never once looked back, you may tell her that I have, sometimes, to
recall her taking part with you, and that my resolution is no easier to
wear away;” he smiled very sweetly here; “than marble.”
“I tell her nothing of you. We never speak about you. Once a year, on
your birthday, Harriet says always, ‘Let us remember James by name, and
wish him happy,’ but we say no more.”
“Tell it then, if you please,” returned the other, “to yourself. You
can’t repeat it too often, as a lesson to you to avoid the subject in
speaking to me. I know no Harriet Carker. There is no such person. You
may have a sister; make much of her. I have none.”
Mr Carker the Manager took up the letter again, and waved it with a
smile of mock courtesy towards the door. Unfolding it as his brother
withdrew, and looking darkly after him as he left the room, he once
more turned round in his elbow-chair, and applied himself to a diligent
perusal of its contents.
It was in the writing of his great chief, Mr Dombey, and dated from
Leamington. Though he was a quick reader of all other letters, Mr
Carker read this slowly; weighing the words as he went, and bringing
every tooth in his head to bear upon them. When he had read it through
once, he turned it over again, and picked out these passages. “I find
myself benefited by the change, and am not yet inclined to name any
time for my return.” “I wish, Carker, you would arrange to come down
once and see me here, and let me know how things are going on, in
person.” “I omitted to speak to you about young Gay. If not gone per
Son and Heir, or if Son and Heir still lying in the Docks, appoint some
other young man and keep him in the City for the present. I am not
decided.” “Now that’s unfortunate!” said Mr Carker the Manager,
expanding his mouth, as if it were made of India-rubber: “for he’s far
away.”
Still that passage, which was in a postscript, attracted his attention
and his teeth, once more.
“I think,” he said, “my good friend Captain Cuttle mentioned something
about being towed along in the wake of that day. What a pity he’s so
far away!”
He refolded the letter, and was sitting trifling with it, standing it
long-wise and broad-wise on his table, and turning it over and over on
all sides—doing pretty much the same thing, perhaps, by its
contents—when Mr Perch the messenger knocked softly at the door, and
coming in on tiptoe, bending his body at every step as if it were the
delight of his life to bow, laid some papers on the table.
“Would you please to be engaged, Sir?” asked Mr Perch, rubbing his
hands, and deferentially putting his head on one side, like a man who
felt he had no business to hold it up in such a presence, and would
keep it as much out of the way as possible.
“Who wants me?”
“Why, Sir,” said Mr Perch, in a soft voice, “really nobody, Sir, to
speak of at present. Mr Gills the Ship’s Instrument-maker, Sir, has