Dombey and Son
looked in, about a little matter of payment, he says: but I mentioned
to him, Sir, that you was engaged several deep; several deep.”
Mr Perch coughed once behind his hand, and waited for further orders.
“Anybody else?”
“Well, Sir,” said Mr Perch, “I wouldn’t of my own self take the liberty
of mentioning, Sir, that there was anybody else; but that same young
lad that was here yesterday, Sir, and last week, has been hanging about
the place; and it looks, Sir,” added Mr Perch, stopping to shut the
door, “dreadful unbusiness-like to see him whistling to the sparrows
down the court, and making of ’em answer him.”
“You said he wanted something to do, didn’t you, Perch?” asked Mr
Carker, leaning back in his chair and looking at that officer.
“Why, Sir,” said Mr Perch, coughing behind his hand again, “his
expression certainly were that he was in wants of a sitiwation, and
that he considered something might be done for him about the Docks,
being used to fishing with a rod and line: but—” Mr Perch shook his
head very dubiously indeed.
“What does he say when he comes?” asked Mr Carker.
“Indeed, Sir,” said Mr Perch, coughing another cough behind his hand,
which was always his resource as an expression of humility when nothing
else occurred to him, “his observation generally air that he would
humbly wish to see one of the gentlemen, and that he wants to earn a
living. But you see, Sir,” added Perch, dropping his voice to a
whisper, and turning, in the inviolable nature of his confidence, to
give the door a thrust with his hand and knee, as if that would shut it
any more when it was shut already, “it’s hardly to be bore, Sir, that a
common lad like that should come a prowling here, and saying that his
mother nursed our House’s young gentleman, and that he hopes our House
will give him a chance on that account. I am sure, Sir,” observed Mr
Perch, “that although Mrs Perch was at that time nursing as thriving a
little girl, Sir, as we’ve ever took the liberty of adding to our
family, I wouldn’t have made so free as drop a hint of her being
capable of imparting nourishment, not if it was never so!”
Mr Carker grinned at him like a shark, but in an absent, thoughtful
manner.
“Whether,” submitted Mr Perch, after a short silence, and another
cough, “it mightn’t be best for me to tell him, that if he was seen
here any more he would be given into custody; and to keep to it! With
respect to bodily fear,” said Mr Perch, “I’m so timid, myself, by
nature, Sir, and my nerves is so unstrung by Mrs Perch’s state, that I
could take my affidavit easy.”
“Let me see this fellow, Perch,” said Mr Carker. “Bring him in!”
“Yes, Sir. Begging your pardon, Sir,” said Mr Perch, hesitating at the
door, “he’s rough, Sir, in appearance.”
“Never mind. If he’s there, bring him in. I’ll see Mr Gills directly.
Ask him to wait.”
Mr Perch bowed; and shutting the door, as precisely and carefully as if
he were not coming back for a week, went on his quest among the
sparrows in the court. While he was gone, Mr Carker assumed his
favourite attitude before the fire-place, and stood looking at the
door; presenting, with his under lip tucked into the smile that showed
his whole row of upper teeth, a singularly crouching apace.
The messenger was not long in returning, followed by a pair of heavy
boots that came bumping along the passage like boxes. With the
unceremonious words “Come along with you!”—a very unusual form of
introduction from his lips—Mr Perch then ushered into the presence a
strong-built lad of fifteen, with a round red face, a round sleek head,
round black eyes, round limbs, and round body, who, to carry out the
general rotundity of his appearance, had a round hat in his hand,
without a particle of brim to it.
Obedient to a nod from Mr Carker, Perch had no sooner confronted the
visitor with that gentleman than he withdrew. The moment they were face
to face alone, Mr Carker, without a word of preparation, took him by
the throat, and shook him until his head seemed loose upon his
shoulders.
The boy, who in the midst of his astonishment could not help staring
wildly at the gentleman with so many white teeth who was choking him,
and at the office walls, as though determined, if he were choked, that
his last look should be at the mysteries for his intrusion into which
he was paying such a severe penalty, at last contrived to utter—
“Come, Sir! You let me alone, will you!”
“Let you alone!” said Mr Carker. “What! I have got you, have I?” There
was no doubt of that, and tightly too. “You dog,” said Mr Carker,
through his set jaws, “I’ll strangle you!”
Biler whimpered, would he though? oh no he wouldn’t—and what was he
doing of—and why didn’t he strangle some—body of his own size and not
him: but Biler was quelled by the extraordinary nature of his
reception, and, as his head became stationary, and he looked the
gentleman in the face, or rather in the teeth, and saw him snarling at
him, he so far forgot his manhood as to cry.
“I haven’t done nothing to you, Sir,” said Biler, otherwise Rob,
otherwise Grinder, and always Toodle.
“You young scoundrel!” replied Mr Carker, slowly releasing him, and
moving back a step into his favourite position. “What do you mean by
daring to come here?”
“I didn’t mean no harm, Sir,” whimpered Rob, putting one hand to his
throat, and the knuckles of the other to his eyes. “I’ll never come
again, Sir. I only wanted work.”
“Work, young Cain that you are!” repeated Mr Carker, eyeing him
narrowly. “Ain’t you the idlest vagabond in London?”
The impeachment, while it much affected Mr Toodle Junior, attached to
his character so justly, that he could not say a word in denial. He
stood looking at the gentleman, therefore, with a frightened,
self-convicted, and remorseful air. As to his looking at him, it may be
observed that he was fascinated by Mr Carker, and never took his round
eyes off him for an instant.
“Ain’t you a thief?” said Mr Carker, with his hands behind him in his
pockets.
“No, sir,” pleaded Rob.
“You are!” said Mr Carker.
“I ain’t indeed, Sir,” whimpered Rob. “I never did such a thing as
thieve, Sir, if you’ll believe me. I know I’ve been a going wrong, Sir,
ever since I took to bird-catching and walking-matching. I’m sure a
cove might think,” said Mr Toodle Junior, with a burst of penitence,
“that singing birds was innocent company, but nobody knows what harm is
in them little creeturs and what they brings you down to.”
They seemed to have brought him down to a velveteen jacket and trousers
very much the worse for wear, a particularly small red waistcoat like a
gorget, an interval of blue check, and the hat before mentioned.
“I ain’t been home twenty times since them birds got their will of me,”
said Rob, “and that’s ten months. How can I go home when everybody’s
miserable to see me! I wonder,” said Biler, blubbering outright, and
smearing his eyes with his coat-cuff, “that I haven’t been and drownded
myself over and over again.”
All of which, including his expression of surprise at not having
achieved this last scarce performance, the boy said, just as if the
teeth of Mr Carker drew it out of him, and he had no power of
concealing anything with that battery of attraction in full play.
“You’re a nice young gentleman!” said Mr Carker, shaking his head at
him. “There’s hemp-seed sown for you, my fine fellow!”
“I’m sure, Sir,” returned the wretched Biler, blubbering again, and
again having recourse to his coat-cuff: “I shouldn’t care, sometimes,
if it was growed too. My misfortunes all began in wagging, Sir; but
what could I do, exceptin’ wag?”
“Excepting what?” said Mr Carker.
“Wag, Sir. Wagging from school.”
“Do you mean pretending to go there, and not going?” said Mr Carker.
“Yes, Sir, that’s wagging, Sir,” returned the quondam Grinder, much
affected. “I was chivied through the streets, Sir, when I went there,
and pounded when I got there. So I wagged, and hid myself, and that
began it.”
“And you mean to tell me,” said Mr Carker, taking him by the throat
again, holding him out at arm’s-length, and surveying him in silence
for some moments, “that you want a place, do you?”
“I should be thankful to be tried, Sir,” returned Toodle Junior,
faintly.
Mr Carker the Manager pushed him backward into a corner—the boy
submitting quietly, hardly venturing to breathe, and never once
removing his eyes from his face—and rang the bell.
“Tell Mr Gills to come here.”
Mr Perch was too deferential to express surprise or recognition of the
figure in the corner: and Uncle Sol appeared immediately.
“Mr Gills!” said Carker, with a smile, “sit down. How do you do? You
continue to enjoy your health, I hope?”
“Thank you, Sir,” returned Uncle Sol, taking out his pocket-book, and
handing over some notes as he spoke. “Nothing ails me in body but old
age. Twenty-five, Sir.”
“You are as punctual and exact, Mr Gills,” replied the smiling Manager,
taking a paper from one of his many drawers, and making an endorsement
on it, while Uncle Sol looked over him, “as one of your own
chronometers. Quite right.”
“The Son and Heir has not been spoken, I find by the list, Sir,” said
Uncle Sol, with a slight addition to the usual tremor in his voice.
“The Son and Heir has not been spoken,” returned Carker. “There seems
to have been tempestuous weather, Mr Gills, and she has probably been
driven out of her course.”
“She is safe, I trust in Heaven!” said old Sol.
“She is safe, I trust in Heaven!” assented Mr Carker in that voiceless
manner of his: which made the observant young Toodle tremble again. “Mr
Gills,” he added aloud, throwing himself back in his chair, “you must
miss your nephew very much?”
Uncle Sol, standing by him, shook his head and heaved a deep sigh.
“Mr Gills,” said Carker, with his soft hand playing round his mouth,
and looking up into the Instrument-maker’s face, “it would be company
to you to have a young fellow in your shop just now, and it would be
obliging me if you would give one house-room for the present. No, to be
sure,” he added quickly, in anticipation of what the old man was going
to say, “there’s not much business doing there, I know; but you can
make him clean the place out, polish up the instruments; drudge, Mr
Gills. That’s the lad!”
Sol Gills pulled down his spectacles from his forehead to his eyes, and
looked at Toodle Junior standing upright in the corner: his head
presenting the appearance (which it always did) of having been newly
drawn out of a bucket of cold water; his small waistcoat rising and
falling quickly in the play of his emotions; and his eyes intently
fixed on Mr Carker, without the least reference to his proposed master.
“Will you give him house-room, Mr Gills?” said the Manager.
Old Sol, without being quite enthusiastic on the subject, replied that
he was glad of any opportunity, however slight, to oblige Mr Carker,
whose wish on such a point was a command: and that the wooden
Midshipman would consider himself happy to receive in his berth any
visitor of Mr Carker’s selecting.
Mr Carker bared himself to the tops and bottoms of his gums: making the
watchful Toodle Junior tremble more and more: and acknowledged the
Instrument-maker’s politeness in his most affable manner.
“I’ll dispose of him so, then, Mr Gills,” he answered, rising, and
shaking the old man by the hand, “until I make up my mind what to do
with him, and what he deserves. As I consider myself responsible for
him, Mr Gills,” here he smiled a wide smile at Rob, who shook before
it: “I shall be glad if you’ll look sharply after him, and report his
behaviour to me. I’ll ask a question or two of his parents as I ride
home this afternoon—respectable people—to confirm some particulars in