Dombey and Son
begging, and stealing, and tinkering, and weaving rushes, by turns, or
all together, had been observing the lady, too; for, as she rose, this
second figure strangely confronting the first, scrambled up from the
ground—out of it, it almost appeared—and stood in the way.
“Let me tell your fortune, my pretty lady,” said the old woman,
munching with her jaws, as if the Death’s Head beneath her yellow skin
were impatient to get out.
“I can tell it for myself,” was the reply.
“Ay, ay, pretty lady; but not right. You didn’t tell it right when you
were sitting there. I see you! Give me a piece of silver, pretty lady,
and I’ll tell your fortune true. There’s riches, pretty lady, in your
face.”
“I know,” returned the lady, passing her with a dark smile, and a proud
step. “I knew it before.
“What! You won’t give me nothing?” cried the old woman. “You won’t give
me nothing to tell your fortune, pretty lady? How much will you give me
to tell it, then? Give me something, or I’ll call it after you!”
croaked the old woman, passionately.
Mr Carker, whom the lady was about to pass close, slinking against his
tree as she crossed to gain the path, advanced so as to meet her, and
pulling off his hat as she went by, bade the old woman hold her peace.
The lady acknowledged his interference with an inclination of the head,
and went her way.
“You give me something then, or I’ll call it after her!” screamed the
old woman, throwing up her arms, and pressing forward against his
outstretched hand. “Or come,” she added, dropping her voice suddenly,
looking at him earnestly, and seeming in a moment to forget the object
of her wrath, “give me something, or I’ll call it after you!”
“After me, old lady!” returned the Manager, putting his hand in his
pocket.
“Yes,” said the woman, steadfast in her scrutiny, and holding out her
shrivelled hand. “I know!”
“What do you know?” demanded Carker, throwing her a shilling. “Do you
know who the handsome lady is?”
Munching like that sailor’s wife of yore, who had chestnuts in her lap,
and scowling like the witch who asked for some in vain, the old woman
picked the shilling up, and going backwards, like a crab, or like a
heap of crabs: for her alternately expanding and contracting hands
might have represented two of that species, and her creeping face, some
half-a-dozen more: crouched on the veinous root of an old tree, pulled
out a short black pipe from within the crown of her bonnet, lighted it
with a match, and smoked in silence, looking fixedly at her questioner.
Mr Carker laughed, and turned upon his heel.
“Good!” said the old woman. “One child dead, and one child living: one
wife dead, and one wife coming. Go and meet her!”
In spite of himself, the Manager looked round again, and stopped. The
old woman, who had not removed her pipe, and was munching and mumbling
while she smoked, as if in conversation with an invisible familiar,
pointed with her finger in the direction he was going, and laughed.
“What was that you said, Bedlamite?” he demanded.
The woman mumbled, and chattered, and smoked, and still pointed before
him; but remained silent Muttering a farewell that was not
complimentary, Mr Carker pursued his way; but as he turned out of that
place, and looked over his shoulder at the root of the old tree, he
could yet see the finger pointing before him, and thought he heard the
woman screaming, “Go and meet her!”
Preparations for a choice repast were completed, he found, at the
hotel; and Mr Dombey, and the Major, and the breakfast, were awaiting
the ladies. Individual constitution has much to do with the development
of such facts, no doubt; but in this case, appetite carried it hollow
over the tender passion; Mr Dombey being very cool and collected, and
the Major fretting and fuming in a state of violent heat and
irritation. At length the door was thrown open by the Native, and,
after a pause, occupied by her languishing along the gallery, a very
blooming, but not very youthful lady, appeared.
“My dear Mr Dombey,” said the lady, “I am afraid we are late, but Edith
has been out already looking for a favourable point of view for a
sketch, and kept me waiting for her. Falsest of Majors,” giving him her
little finger, “how do you do?”
“Mrs Skewton,” said Mr Dombey, “let me gratify my friend Carker:” Mr
Dombey unconsciously emphasised the word friend, as saying ‘no really;
I do allow him to take credit for that distinction:’ “by presenting him
to you. You have heard me mention Mr Carker.”
“I am charmed, I am sure,” said Mrs Skewton, graciously.
Mr Carker was charmed, of course. Would he have been more charmed on Mr
Dombey’s behalf, if Mrs Skewton had been (as he at first supposed her)
the Edith whom they had toasted overnight?
“Why, where, for Heaven’s sake, is Edith?” exclaimed Mrs Skewton,
looking round. “Still at the door, giving Withers orders about the
mounting of those drawings! My dear Mr Dombey, will you have the
kindness”—
Mr Dombey was already gone to seek her. Next moment he returned,
bearing on his arm the same elegantly dressed and very handsome lady
whom Mr Carker had encountered underneath the trees.
“Carker—” began Mr Dombey. But their recognition of each other was so
manifest, that Mr Dombey stopped surprised.
“I am obliged to the gentleman,” said Edith, with a stately bend, “for
sparing me some annoyance from an importunate beggar just now.”
“I am obliged to my good fortune,” said Mr Carker, bowing low, “for the
opportunity of rendering so slight a service to one whose servant I am
proud to be.”
As her eye rested on him for an instant, and then lighted on the
ground, he saw in its bright and searching glance a suspicion that he
had not come up at the moment of his interference, but had secretly
observed her sooner. As he saw that, she saw in his eye that her
distrust was not without foundation.
“Really,” cried Mrs Skewton, who had taken this opportunity of
inspecting Mr Carker through her glass, and satisfying herself (as she
lisped audibly to the Major) that he was all heart; “really now, this
is one of the most enchanting coincidences that I ever heard of. The
idea! My dearest Edith, there is such an obvious destiny in it, that
really one might almost be induced to cross one’s arms upon one’s
frock, and say, like those wicked Turks, there is no What’s-his-name
but Thingummy, and What-you-may-call-it is his prophet!”
Edith designed no revision of this extraordinary quotation from the
Koran, but Mr Dombey felt it necessary to offer a few polite remarks.
“It gives me great pleasure,” said Mr Dombey, with cumbrous gallantry,
“that a gentleman so nearly connected with myself as Carker is, should
have had the honour and happiness of rendering the least assistance to
Mrs Granger.” Mr Dombey bowed to her. “But it gives me some pain, and
it occasions me to be really envious of Carker;” he unconsciously laid
stress on these words, as sensible that they must appear to involve a
very surprising proposition; “envious of Carker, that I had not that
honour and that happiness myself.” Mr Dombey bowed again. Edith, saving
for a curl of her lip, was motionless.
“By the Lord, Sir,” cried the Major, bursting into speech at sight of
the waiter, who was come to announce breakfast, “it’s an extraordinary
thing to me that no one can have the honour and happiness of shooting
all such beggars through the head without being brought to book for it.
But here’s an arm for Mrs Granger if she’ll do J. B. the honour to
accept it; and the greatest service Joe can render you, Ma’am, just
now, is, to lead you into table!”
With this, the Major gave his arm to Edith; Mr Dombey led the way with
Mrs Skewton; Mr Carker went last, smiling on the party.
“I am quite rejoiced, Mr Carker,” said the lady-mother, at breakfast,
after another approving survey of him through her glass, “that you have
timed your visit so happily, as to go with us today. It is the most
enchanting expedition!”
“Any expedition would be enchanting in such society,” returned Carker;
“but I believe it is, in itself, full of interest.”
“Oh!” cried Mrs Skewton, with a faded little scream of rapture, “the
Castle is charming!—associations of the Middle Ages—and all that—which
is so truly exquisite. Don’t you dote upon the Middle Ages, Mr Carker?”
“Very much, indeed,” said Mr Carker.
“Such charming times!” cried Cleopatra. “So full of faith! So vigorous
and forcible! So picturesque! So perfectly removed from commonplace! Oh
dear! If they would only leave us a little more of the poetry of
existence in these terrible days!”
Mrs Skewton was looking sharp after Mr Dombey all the time she said
this, who was looking at Edith: who was listening, but who never lifted
up her eyes.
“We are dreadfully real, Mr Carker,” said Mrs Skewton; “are we not?”
Few people had less reason to complain of their reality than Cleopatra,
who had as much that was false about her as could well go to the
composition of anybody with a real individual existence. But Mr Carker
commiserated our reality nevertheless, and agreed that we were very
hardly used in that regard.
“Pictures at the Castle, quite divine!” said Cleopatra. “I hope you
dote upon pictures?”
“I assure you, Mrs Skewton,” said Mr Dombey, with solemn encouragement
of his Manager, “that Carker has a very good taste for pictures; quite
a natural power of appreciating them. He is a very creditable artist
himself. He will be delighted, I am sure, with Mrs Granger’s taste and
skill.”
“Damme, Sir!” cried Major Bagstock, “my opinion is, that you’re the
admirable Carker, and can do anything.”
“Oh!” smiled Carker, with humility, “you are much too sanguine, Major
Bagstock. I can do very little. But Mr Dombey is so generous in his
estimation of any trivial accomplishment a man like myself may find it
almost necessary to acquire, and to which, in his very different
sphere, he is far superior, that—” Mr Carker shrugged his shoulders,
deprecating further praise, and said no more.
All this time, Edith never raised her eyes, unless to glance towards
her mother when that lady’s fervent spirit shone forth in words. But as
Carker ceased, she looked at Mr Dombey for a moment. For a moment only;
but with a transient gleam of scornful wonder on her face, not lost on
one observer, who was smiling round the board.
Mr Dombey caught the dark eyelash in its descent, and took the
opportunity of arresting it.
“You have been to Warwick often, unfortunately?” said Mr Dombey.
“Several times.”
“The visit will be tedious to you, I am afraid.”
“Oh no; not at all.”
“Ah! You are like your cousin Feenix, my dearest Edith,” said Mrs
Skewton. “He has been to Warwick Castle fifty times, if he has been
there once; yet if he came to Leamington to-morrow—I wish he would,
dear angel!—he would make his fifty-second visit next day.”
“We are all enthusiastic, are we not, Mama?” said Edith, with a cold
smile.
“Too much so, for our peace, perhaps, my dear,” returned her mother;
“but we won’t complain. Our own emotions are our recompense. If, as
your cousin Feenix says, the sword wears out the what’s-its-name—”
“The scabbard, perhaps,” said Edith.
“Exactly—a little too fast, it is because it is bright and glowing, you
know, my dearest love.”
Mrs Skewton heaved a gentle sigh, supposed to cast a shadow on the
surface of that dagger of lath, whereof her susceptible bosom was the
sheath: and leaning her head on one side, in the Cleopatra manner,
looked with pensive affection on her darling child.
Edith had turned her face towards Mr Dombey when he first addressed
her, and had remained in that attitude, while speaking to her mother,
and while her mother spoke to her, as though offering him her