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Miss Blimber was never cold, and never sleepy.
Now, Dombey,' said Miss Blimber, 'I am going out for a constitutional.'
Paul wondered what that was, and why she didn't send the footman out to
get it in such unfavourable weather. But he made no observation on the
subject: his attention being devoted to a little pile of new books, on which
Miss Blimber appeared to have been recently engaged.
'These are yours, Dombey,' said Miss Blimber.
'All of 'em, Ma'am?' said Paul.
'Yes,' returned Miss Blimber; 'and Mr Feeder will look you out some
more very soon, if you are as studious as I expect you will be, Dombey.'
'Thank you, Ma'am,' said Paul.
'I am going out for a constitutional,' resumed Miss Blimber; 'and while
I am gone, that is to say in the interval between this and breakfast,
Dombey, I wish you to read over what I have marked in these books, and to
tell me if you quite understand what you have got to learn. Don't lose time,
Dombey, for you have none to spare, but take them downstairs, and begin
directly.'
'Yes, Ma'am,' answered Paul.
There were so many of them, that although Paul put one hand under the
bottom book and his other hand and his chin on the top book, and hugged them
all closely, the middle book slipped out before he reached the door, and
then they all tumbled down on the floor. Miss Blimber said, 'Oh, Dombey,
Dombey, this is really very careless!' and piled them up afresh for him; and
this time, by dint of balancing them with great nicety, Paul got out of the
room, and down a few stairs before two of them escaped again. But he held
the rest so tight, that he only left one more on the first floor, and one in
the passage; and when he had got the main body down into the schoolroom, he
set off upstairs again to collect the stragglers. Having at last amassed the
whole library, and climbed into his place, he fell to work, encouraged by a
remark from Tozer to the effect that he 'was in for it now;' which was the
only interruption he received till breakfast time. At that meal, for which
he had no appetite, everything was quite as solemn and genteel as at the
others; and when it was finished, he followed Miss Blimber upstairs.
'Now, Dombey,' said Miss Blimber. 'How have you got on with those
books?'
They comprised a little English, and a deal of Latin - names of things,
declensions of articles and substantives, exercises thereon, and preliminary
rules - a trifle of orthography, a glance at ancient history, a wink or two
at modern ditto, a few tables, two or three weights and measures, and a
little general information. When poor Paul had spelt out number two, he
found he had no idea of number one; fragments whereof afterwards obtruded
themselves into number three, which slided into number four, which grafted
itself on to number two. So that whether twenty Romuluses made a Remus, or
hic haec hoc was troy weight, or a verb always agreed with an ancient
Briton, or three times four was Taurus a bull, were open questions with him.
'Oh, Dombey, Dombey!' said Miss Blimber, 'this is very shocking.'
'If you please,' said Paul, 'I think if I might sometimes talk a little
to old Glubb, I should be able to do better.'
'Nonsense, Dombey,' said Miss Blimber. 'I couldn't hear of it. This is
not the place for Glubbs of any kind. You must take the books down, I
suppose, Dombey, one by one, and perfect yourself in the day's instalment of
subject A, before you turn at all to subject B. I am sorry to say, Dombey,
that your education appears to have been very much neglected.'
'So Papa says,' returned Paul; 'but I told you - I have been a weak
child. Florence knows I have. So does Wickam.'
'Who is Wickam?' asked Miss Blimber.
'She has been my nurse,' Paul answered.
'I must beg you not to mention Wickam to me, then,' said Miss
Blimber.'I couldn't allow it'.
'You asked me who she was,' said Paul.
'Very well,' returned Miss Blimber; 'but this is all very different
indeed from anything of that sort, Dombey, and I couldn't think of
permitting it. As to having been weak, you must begin to be strong. And now
take away the top book, if you please, Dombey, and return when you are
master of the theme.'
Miss Blimber expressed her opinions on the subject of Paul's
uninstructed state with a gloomy delight, as if she had expected this
result, and were glad to find that they must be in constant communication.
Paul withdrew with the top task, as he was told, and laboured away at it,
down below: sometimes remembering every word of it, and sometimes forgetting
it all, and everything else besides: until at last he ventured upstairs
again to repeat the lesson, when it was nearly all driven out of his head
before he began, by Miss Blimber's shutting up the book, and saying, 'Good,
Dombey!' a proceeding so suggestive of the knowledge inside of her, that
Paul looked upon the young lady with consternation, as a kind of learned Guy
Faux, or artificial Bogle, stuffed full of scholastic straw.
He acquitted himself very well, nevertheless; and Miss Blimber,
commending him as giving promise of getting on fast, immediately provided
him with subject B; from which he passed to C, and even D before dinner. It
was hard work, resuming his studies, soon after dinner; and he felt giddy
and confused and drowsy and dull. But all the other young gentlemen had
similar sensations, and were obliged to resume their studies too, if there
were any comfort in that. It was a wonder that the great clock in the hall,
instead of being constant to its first inquiry, never said, 'Gentlemen, we
will now resume our studies,' for that phrase was often enough repeated in
its neighbourhood. The studies went round like a mighty wheel, and the young
gentlemen were always stretched upon it.
After tea there were exercises again, and preparations for next day by
candlelight. And in due course there was bed; where, but for that resumption
of the studies which took place in dreams, were rest and sweet
forgetfulness.
Oh Saturdays! Oh happy Saturdays, when Florence always came at noon,
and never would, in any weather, stay away, though Mrs Pipchin snarled and
growled, and worried her bitterly. Those Saturdays were Sabbaths for at
least two little Christians among all the Jews, and did the holy Sabbath
work of strengthening and knitting up a brother's and a sister's love.
Not even Sunday nights - the heavy Sunday nights, whose shadow darkened
the first waking burst of light on Sunday mornings - could mar those
precious Saturdays. Whether it was the great sea-shore, where they sat, and
strolled together; or whether it was only Mrs Pipchin's dull back room, in
which she sang to him so softly, with his drowsy head upon her arm; Paul
never cared. It was Florence. That was all he thought of. So, on Sunday
nights, when the Doctor's dark door stood agape to swallow him up for
another week, the time was come for taking leave of Florence; no one else.
Mrs Wickam had been drafted home to the house in town, and Miss Nipper,
now a smart young woman, had come down. To many a single combat with Mrs
Pipchin, did Miss Nipper gallantly devote herself, and if ever Mrs Pipchin
in all her life had found her match, she had found it now. Miss Nipper threw
away the scabbard the first morning she arose in Mrs Pipchin's house. She
asked and gave no quarter. She said it must be war, and war it was; and Mrs
Pipchin lived from that time in the midst of surprises, harassings, and
defiances, and skirmishing attacks that came bouncing in upon her from the
passage, even in unguarded moments of chops, and carried desolation to her
very toast.
Miss Nipper had returned one Sunday night with Florence, from walking
back with Paul to the Doctor's, when Florence took from her bosom a little
piece of paper, on which she had pencilled down some words.
'See here, Susan,' she said. 'These are the names of the little books
that Paul brings home to do those long exercises with, when he is so tired.
I copied them last night while he was writing.'
'Don't show 'em to me, Miss Floy, if you please,' returned Nipper, 'I'd
as soon see Mrs Pipchin.'
'I want you to buy them for me, Susan, if you will, tomorrow morning. I
have money enough,' said Florence.
'Why, goodness gracious me, Miss Floy,' returned Miss Nipper, 'how can
you talk like that, when you have books upon books already, and masterses
and mississes a teaching of you everything continual, though my belief is
that your Pa, Miss Dombey, never would have learnt you nothing, never would
have thought of it, unless you'd asked him - when be couldn't well refuse;
but giving consent when asked, and offering when unasked, Miss, is quite two
things; I may not have my objections to a young man's keeping company with
me, and when he puts the question, may say "yes," but that's not saying
"would you be so kind as like me."'
'But you can buy me the books, Susan; and you will, when you know why I
want them.'
'Well, Miss, and why do you want 'em?' replied Nipper; adding, in a
lower voice, 'If it was to fling at Mrs Pipchin's head, I'd buy a
cart-load.'
'Paul has a great deal too much to do, Susan,' said Florence, 'I am
sure of it.'
'And well you may be, Miss,' returned her maid, 'and make your mind
quite easy that the willing dear is worked and worked away. If those is
Latin legs,' exclaimed Miss Nipper, with strong feeling - in allusion to
Paul's; 'give me English ones.'
'I am afraid he feels lonely and lost at Doctor Blimber's, Susan,'
pursued Florence, turning away her face.
'Ah,' said Miss Nipper, with great sharpness, 'Oh, them "Blimbers"'
'Don't blame anyone,' said Florence. 'It's a mistake.'
'I say nothing about blame, Miss,' cried Miss Nipper, 'for I know that
you object, but I may wish, Miss, that the family was set to work to make
new roads, and that Miss Blimber went in front and had the pickaxe.'
After this speech, Miss Nipper, who was perfectly serious, wiped her
eyes.
'I think I could perhaps give Paul some help, Susan, if I had these
books,' said Florence, 'and make the coming week a little easier to him. At
least I want to try. So buy them for me, dear, and I will never forget how
kind it was of you to do it!'
It must have been a harder heart than Susan Nipper's that could have
rejected the little purse Florence held out with these words, or the gentle
look of entreaty with which she seconded her petition. Susan put the purse
in her pocket without reply, and trotted out at once upon her errand.
The books were not easy to procure; and the answer at several shops
was, either that they were just out of them, or that they never kept them,
or that they had had a great many last month, or that they expected a great
many next week But Susan was not easily baffled in such an enterprise; and
having entrapped a white-haired youth, in a black calico apron, from a
library where she was known, to accompany her in her quest, she led him such
a life in going up and down, that he exerted himself to the utmost, if it
were only to get rid of her; and finally enabled her to return home in
triumph.
With these treasures then, after her own daily lessons were over,
Florence sat down at night to track Paul's footsteps through the thorny ways
of learning; and being possessed of a naturally quick and sound capacity,
and taught by that most wonderful of masters, love, it was not long before
she gained upon Paul's heels, and caught and passed him.
Not a word of this was breathed to Mrs Pipchin: but many a night when
they were all in bed, and when Miss Nipper, with her hair in papers and
herself asleep in some uncomfortable attitude, reposed unconscious by her
side; and when the chinking ashes in the grate were cold and grey; and when
the candles were burnt down and guttering out; - Florence tried so hard to
be a substitute for one small Dombey, that her fortitude and perseverance
might have almost won her a free right to bear the name herself.
And high was her reward, when one Saturday evening, as little Paul was
sitting down as usual to 'resume his studies,' she sat down by his side, and
showed him all that was so rough, made smooth, and all that was so dark,
made clear and plain, before him. It was nothing but a startled look in
Paul's wan face - a flush - a smile - and then a close embrace - but God
knows how her heart leapt up at this rich payment for her trouble.
'Oh, Floy!' cried her brother, 'how I love you! How I love you, Floy!'
'And I you, dear!'
'Oh! I am sure of that, Floy.'
He said no more about it, but all that evening sat close by her, very
quiet; and in the night he called out from his little room within hers,
three or four times, that he loved her.
Regularly, after that, Florence was prepared to sit down with Paul on
Saturday night, and patiently assist him through so much as they could
anticipate together of his next week's work. The cheering thought that he
was labouring on where Florence had just toiled before him, would, of
itself, have been a stimulant to Paul in the perpetual resumption of his
studies; but coupled with the actual lightening of his load, consequent on
this assistance, it saved him, possibly, from sinking underneath the burden
which the fair Cornelia Blimber piled upon his back.
It was not that Miss Blimber meant to be too hard upon him, or that
Doctor Blimber meant to bear too heavily on the young gentlemen in general.
Cornelia merely held the faith in which she had been bred; and the Doctor,
in some partial confusion of his ideas, regarded the young gentlemen as if
they were all Doctors, and were born grown up. Comforted by the applause of
the young gentlemen's nearest relations, and urged on by their blind vanity
and ill-considered haste, it would have been strange if Doctor Blimber had
discovered his mistake, or trimmed his swelling sails to any other tack.
Thus in the case of Paul. When Doctor Blimber said he made great
progress and was naturally clever, Mr Dombey was more bent than ever on his
being forced and crammed. In the case of Briggs, when Doctor Blimber
reported that he did not make great progress yet, and was not naturally
clever, Briggs senior was inexorable in the same purpose. In short, however
high and false the temperature at which the Doctor kept his hothouse, the
owners of the plants were always ready to lend a helping hand at the
bellows, and to stir the fire.
Such spirits as he had in the outset, Paul soon lost of course. But he
retained all that was strange, and old, and thoughtful in his character: and
under circumstances so favourable to the development of those tendencies,
became even more strange, and old, and thoughtful, than before.
The only difference was, that he kept his character to himself. He grew
more thoughtful and reserved, every day; and had no such curiosity in any
living member of the Doctor's household, as he had had in Mrs Pipchin. He
loved to be alone; and in those short intervals when he was not occupied
with his books, liked nothing so well as wandering about the house by
himself, or sitting on the stairs, listening to the great clock in the hall.
He was intimate with all the paperhanging in the house; saw things that no
one else saw in the patterns; found out miniature tigers and lions running
up the bedroom walls, and squinting faces leering in the squares and
diamonds of the floor-cloth.
The solitary child lived on, surrounded by this arabesque work of his
musing fancy, and no one understood him. Mrs Blimber thought him 'odd,' and
sometimes the servants said among themselves that little Dombey 'moped;' but
that was all.
Unless young Toots had some idea on the subject, to the expression of
which he was wholly unequal. Ideas, like ghosts (according to the common
notion of ghosts), must be spoken to a little before they will explain
themselves; and Toots had long left off asking any questions of his own
mind. Some mist there may have been, issuing from that leaden casket, his
cranium, which, if it could have taken shape and form, would have become a
genie; but it could not; and it only so far followed the example of the
smoke in the Arabian story, as to roll out in a thick cloud, and there hang
and hover. But it left a little figure visible upon a lonely shore, and
Toots was always staring at it.
'How are you?' he would say to Paul, fifty times a day. 'Quite well,
Sir, thank you,' Paul would answer. 'Shake hands,' would be Toots's next
advance.
Which Paul, of course, would immediately do. Mr Toots generally said
again, after a long interval of staring and hard breathing, 'How are you?'
To which Paul again replied, 'Quite well, Sir, thank you.'
One evening Mr Toots was sitting at his desk, oppressed by
correspondence, when a great purpose seemed to flash upon him. He laid down
his pen, and went off to seek Paul, whom he found at last, after a long
search, looking through the window of his little bedroom.
'I say!' cried Toots, speaking the moment he entered the room, lest he
should forget it; 'what do you think about?'
'Oh! I think about a great many things,' replied Paul.
'Do you, though?' said Toots, appearing to consider that fact in itself
surprising. 'If you had to die,' said Paul, looking up into his face - Mr
Toots started, and seemed much disturbed.
'Don't you think you would rather die on a moonlight night, when the
sky was quite clear, and the wind blowing, as it did last night?'
Mr Toots said, looking doubtfully at Paul, and shaking his head, that
he didn't know about that.
'Not blowing, at least,' said Paul, 'but sounding in the air like the
sea sounds in the shells. It was a beautiful night. When I had listened to
the water for a long time, I got up and looked out. There was a boat over
there, in the full light of the moon; a boat with a sail.'
The child looked at him so steadfastly, and spoke so earnestly, that Mr
Toots, feeling himself called upon to say something about this boat, said,
'Smugglers.' But with an impartial remembrance of there being two sides to
every question, he added, 'or Preventive.'
'A boat with a sail,' repeated Paul, 'in the full light of the moon.
The sail like an arm, all silver. It went away into the distance, and what
do you think it seemed to do as it moved with the waves?'
'Pitch,' said Mr Toots.
'It seemed to beckon,' said the child, 'to beckon me to come! - There
she is! There she is!'
Toots was almost beside himself with dismay at this sudden exclamation,
after what had gone before, and cried 'Who?'
'My sister Florence!' cried Paul, 'looking up here, and waving her
hand. She sees me - she sees me! Good-night, dear, good-night, good-night.'
His quick transition to a state of unbounded pleasure, as he stood at
his window, kissing and clapping his hands: and the way in which the light
retreated from his features as she passed out of his view, and left a
patient melancholy on the little face: were too remarkable wholly to escape
even Toots's notice. Their interview being interrupted at this moment by a
visit from Mrs Pipchin, who usually brought her black skirts to bear upon
Paul just before dusk, once or twice a week, Toots had no opportunity of
improving the occasion: but it left so marked an impression on his mind that
he twice returned, after having exchanged the usual salutations, to ask Mrs
Pipchin how she did. This the irascible old lady conceived to be a deeply
devised and long-meditated insult, originating in the diabolical invention
of the weak-eyed young man downstairs, against whom she accordingly lodged a
formal complaint with Doctor Blimber that very night; who mentioned to the
young man that if he ever did it again, he should be obliged to part with
him.
The evenings being longer now, Paul stole up to his window every
evening to look out for Florence. She always passed and repassed at a
certain time, until she saw him; and their mutual recognition was a gleam of
sunshine in Paul's daily life. Often after dark, one other figure walked
alone before the Doctor's house. He rarely joined them on the Saturdays now.
He could not bear it. He would rather come unrecognised, and look up at the
windows where his son was qualifying for a man; and wait, and watch, and
plan, and hope.
Oh! could he but have seen, or seen as others did, the slight spare boy
above, watching the waves and clouds at twilight, with his earnest eyes, and
breasting the window of his solitary cage when birds flew by, as if he would
have emulated them, and soared away!
Shipping Intelligence and Office Business
Mr Dombey's offices were in a court where there was an old-established
stall of choice fruit at the corner: where perambulating merchants, of both
sexes, offered for sale at any time between the hours of ten and five,
slippers, pocket-books, sponges, dogs' collars, and Windsor soap; and
sometimes a pointer or an oil-painting.
The pointer always came that way, with a view to the Stock Exchange,
where a sporting taste (originating generally in bets of new hats) is much
in vogue. The other commodities were addressed to the general public; but
they were never offered by the vendors to Mr Dombey. When he appeared, the
dealers in those wares fell off respectfully. The principal slipper and
dogs' collar man - who considered himself a public character, and whose
portrait was screwed on to an artist's door in Cheapside - threw up his
forefinger to the brim of his hat as Mr Dombey went by. The ticket-porter,
if he were not absent on a job, always ran officiously before, to open Mr
Dombey's office door as wide as possible, and hold it open, with his hat
off, while he entered.
The clerks within were not a whit behind-hand in their demonstrations
of respect. A solemn hush prevailed, as Mr Dombey passed through the outer
office. The wit of the Counting-House became in a moment as mute as the row
of leathern fire-buckets hanging up behind him. Such vapid and flat daylight
as filtered through the ground-glass windows and skylights, leaving a black
sediment upon the panes, showed the books and papers, and the figures
bending over them, enveloped in a studious gloom, and as much abstracted in
appearance, from the world without, as if they were assembled at the bottom
of the sea; while a mouldy little strong room in the obscure perspective,
where a shaded lamp was always burning, might have represented the cavern of
some ocean monster, looking on with a red eye at these mysteries of the
deep.
When Perch the messenger, whose place was on a little bracket, like a
timepiece, saw Mr Dombey come in - or rather when he felt that he was
coming, for he had usually an instinctive sense of his approach - he hurried
into Mr Dombey's room, stirred the fire, carried fresh coals from the bowels
of the coal-box, hung the newspaper to air upon the fender, put the chair
ready, and the screen in its place, and was round upon his heel on the
instant of Mr Dombey's entrance, to take his great-coat and hat, and hang
them up. Then Perch took the newspaper, and gave it a turn or two in his
hands before the fire, and laid it, deferentially, at Mr Dombey's elbow. And
so little objection had Perch to being deferential in the last degree, that
if he might have laid himself at Mr Dombey's feet, or might have called him
by some such title as used to be bestowed upon the Caliph Haroun Alraschid,
he would have been all the better pleased.
As this honour would have been an innovation and an experiment, Perch
was fain to content himself by expressing as well as he could, in his
manner, You are the light of my Eyes. You are the Breath of my Soul. You are
the commander of the Faithful Perch! With this imperfect happiness to cheer
him, he would shut the door softly, walk away on tiptoe, and leave his great
chief to be stared at, through a dome-shaped window in the leads, by ugly
chimney-pots and backs of houses, and especially by the bold window of a
hair-cutting saloon on a first floor, where a waxen effigy, bald as a
Mussulman in the morning, and covered, after eleven o'clock in the day, with
luxuriant hair and whiskers in the latest Christian fashion, showed him the
wrong side of its head for ever.
Between Mr Dombey and the common world, as it was accessible through
the medium of the outer office - to which Mr Dombey's presence in his own
room may be said to have struck like damp, or cold air - there were two
degrees of descent. Mr Carker in his own office was the first step; Mr
Morfin, in his own office, was the second. Each of these gentlemen occupied
a little chamber like a bath-room, opening from the passage outside Mr
Dombey's door. Mr Carker, as Grand Vizier, inhabited the room that was
nearest to the Sultan. Mr Morfin, as an officer of inferior state, inhabited
the room that was nearest to the clerks.
The gentleman last mentioned was a cheerful-looking, hazel-eyed elderly
bachelor: gravely attired, as to his upper man, in black; and as to his
legs, in pepper-and-salt colour. His dark hair was just touched here and
there with specks of gray, as though the tread of Time had splashed it; and
his whiskers were already white. He had a mighty respect for Mr Dombey, and
rendered him due homage; but as he was of a genial temper himself, and never
wholly at his ease in that stately presence, he was disquieted by no
jealousy of the many conferences enjoyed by Mr Carker, and felt a secret
satisfaction in having duties to discharge, which rarely exposed him to be
singled out for such distinction. He was a great musical amateur in his way
- after business; and had a paternal affection for his violoncello, which
was once in every week transported from Islington, his place of abode, to a
certain club-room hard by the Bank, where quartettes of the most tormenting
and excruciating nature were executed every Wednesday evening by a private
party.
Mr Carker was a gentleman thirty-eight or forty years old, of a florid
complexion, and with two unbroken rows of glistening teeth, whose regularity
and whiteness were quite distressing. It was impossible to escape the
observation of them, for he showed them whenever he spoke; and bore so wide
a smile upon his countenance (a smile, however, very rarely, indeed,
extending beyond his mouth), that there was something in it like the snarl
of a cat. He affected a stiff white cravat, after the example of his
principal, and was always closely buttoned up and tightly dressed. His
manner towards Mr Dombey was deeply conceived and perfectly expressed. He
was familiar with him, in the very extremity of his sense of the distance
between them. 'Mr Dombey, to a man in your position from a man in mine,
there is no show of subservience compatible with the transaction of business
between us, that I should think sufficient. I frankly tell you, Sir, I give
it up altogether. I feel that I could not satisfy my own mind; and Heaven
knows, Mr Dombey, you can afford to dispense with the endeavour.' If he had
carried these words about with him printed on a placard, and had constantly
offered it to Mr Dombey's perusal on the breast of his coat, he could not
have been more explicit than he was.
This was Carker the Manager. Mr Carker the Junior, Walter's friend, was
his brother; two or three years older than he, but widely removed in
station. The younger brother's post was on the top of the official ladder;
the elder brother's at the bottom. The elder brother never gained a stave,
or raised his foot to mount one. Young men passed above his head, and rose
and rose; but he was always at the bottom. He was quite resigned to occupy
that low condition: never complained of it: and certainly never hoped to
escape from it.
'How do you do this morning?' said Mr Carker the Manager, entering Mr
Dombey's room soon after his arrival one day: with a bundle of papers in his
hand.
'How do you do, Carker?' said Mr Dombey.
'Coolish!' observed Carker, stirring the fire.
'Rather,' said Mr Dombey.
'Any news of the young gentleman who is so important to us all?' asked
Carker, with his whole regiment of teeth on parade.
'Yes - not direct news- I hear he's very well,' said Mr Dombey. Who had
come from Brighton over-night. But no one knew It.
'Very well, and becoming a great scholar, no doubt?' observed the
Manager.
'I hope so,' returned Mr Dombey.
'Egad!' said Mr Carker, shaking his head, 'Time flies!'
'I think so, sometimes,' returned Mr Dombey, glancing at his newspaper.
'Oh! You! You have no reason to think so,' observed Carker. 'One who
sits on such an elevation as yours, and can sit there, unmoved, in all
seasons - hasn't much reason to know anything about the flight of time. It's
men like myself, who are low down and are not superior in circumstances, and
who inherit new masters in the course of Time, that have cause to look about
us. I shall have a rising sun to worship, soon.'
'Time enough, time enough, Carker!' said Mr Dombey, rising from his
chair, and standing with his back to the fire. 'Have you anything there for
me?'
'I don't know that I need trouble you,' returned Carker, turning over
the papers in his hand. 'You have a committee today at three, you know.'
'And one at three, three-quarters,' added Mr Dombey.
'Catch you forgetting anything!' exclaimed Carker, still turning over
his papers. 'If Mr Paul inherits your memory, he'll be a troublesome
customer in the House. One of you is enough'
'You have an accurate memory of your own,' said Mr Dombey.
'Oh! I!' returned the manager. 'It's the only capital of a man like
me.'
Mr Dombey did not look less pompous or at all displeased, as he stood
leaning against the chimney-piece, surveying his (of course unconscious)
clerk, from head to foot. The stiffness and nicety of Mr Carker's dress, and
a certain arrogance of manner, either natural to him or imitated from a
pattern not far off, gave great additional effect to his humility. He seemed
a man who would contend against the power that vanquished him, if he could,
but who was utterly borne down by the greatness and superiority of Mr
Dombey.
'Is Morfin here?' asked Mr Dombey after a short pause, during which Mr
Carker had been fluttering his papers, and muttering little abstracts of
their contents to himself.
'Morfin's here,' he answered, looking up with his widest and almost
sudden smile; 'humming musical recollections - of his last night's quartette
party, I suppose - through the walls between us, and driving me half mad. I
wish he'd make a bonfire of his violoncello, and burn his music-books in
it.'
'You respect nobody, Carker, I think,' said Mr Dombey.
'No?' inquired Carker, with another wide and most feline show of his
teeth. 'Well! Not many people, I believe. I wouldn't answer perhaps,' he
murmured, as if he were only thinking it, 'for more than one.'
A dangerous quality, if real; and a not less dangerous one, if feigned.
But Mr Dombey hardly seemed to think so, as he still stood with his back to
the fire, drawn up to his full height, and looking at his head-clerk with a
dignified composure, in which there seemed to lurk a stronger latent sense
of power than usual.
'Talking of Morfin,' resumed Mr Carker, taking out one paper from the
rest, 'he reports a junior dead in the agency at Barbados, and proposes to
reserve a passage in the Son and Heir - she'll sail in a month or so - for
the successor. You don't care who goes, I suppose? We have nobody of that
sort here.'
Mr Dombey shook his head with supreme indifference.
'It's no very precious appointment,' observed Mr Carker, taking up a
pen, with which to endorse a memorandum on the back of the paper. 'I hope he
may bestow it on some orphan nephew of a musical friend. It may perhaps stop
his fiddle-playing, if he has a gift that way. Who's that? Come in!'
'I beg your pardon, Mr Carker. I didn't know you were here, Sir,'
answered Walter; appearing with some letters in his hand, unopened, and
newly arrived. 'Mr Carker the junior, Sir - '
At the mention of this name, Mr Carker the Manager was or affected to
be, touched to the quick with shame and humiliation. He cast his eyes full
on Mr Dombey with an altered and apologetic look, abased them on the ground,
and remained for a moment without speaking.
'I thought, Sir,' he said suddenly and angrily, turning on Walter,
'that you had been before requested not to drag Mr Carker the Junior into
your conversation.'
'I beg your pardon,' returned Walter. 'I was only going to say that Mr
Carker the Junior had told me he believed you were gone out, or I should not
have knocked at the door when you were engaged with Mr Dombey. These are
letters for Mr Dombey, Sir.'
'Very well, Sir,' returned Mr Carker the Manager, plucking them sharply
from his hand. 'Go about your business.'
But in taking them with so little ceremony, Mr Carker dropped one on
the floor, and did not see what he had done; neither did Mr Dombey observe
the letter lying near his feet. Walter hesitated for a moment, thinking that
one or other of them would notice it; but finding that neither did, he
stopped, came back, picked it up, and laid it himself on Mr Dombey's desk.
The letters were post-letters; and it happened that the one in question was
Mrs Pipchin's regular report, directed as usual - for Mrs Pipchin was but an
indifferent penwoman - by Florence. Mr Dombey, having his attention silently
called to this letter by Walter, started, and looked fiercely at him, as if
he believed that he had purposely selected it from all the rest.
'You can leave the room, Sir!' said Mr Dombey, haughtily.
He crushed the letter in his hand; and having watched Walter out at the
door, put it in his pocket without breaking the seal.
'These continual references to Mr Carker the Junior,' Mr Carker the
Manager began, as soon as they were alone, 'are, to a man in my position,
uttered before one in yours, so unspeakably distressing - '
'Nonsense, Carker,' Mr Dombey interrupted. 'You are too sensitive.'
'I am sensitive,' he returned. 'If one in your position could by any
possibility imagine yourself in my place: which you cannot: you would be so
too.'
As Mr Dombey's thoughts were evidently pursuing some other subject, his
discreet ally broke off here, and stood with his teeth ready to present to
him, when he should look up.
'You want somebody to send to the West Indies, you were saying,'
observed Mr Dombey, hurriedly.
'Yes,' replied Carker.
'Send young Gay.'
'Good, very good indeed. Nothing easier,' said Mr Carker, without any
show of surprise, and taking up the pen to re-endorse the letter, as coolly
as he had done before. '"Send young Gay."'
'Call him back,' said Mr Dombey.
Mr Carker was quick to do so, and Walter was quick to return.
'Gay,' said Mr Dombey, turning a little to look at him over his
shoulder. 'Here is a -
'An opening,' said Mr Carker, with his mouth stretched to the utmost.
'In the West Indies. At Barbados. I am going to send you,' said Mr
Dombey, scorning to embellish the bare truth, 'to fill a junior situation in
the counting-house at Barbados. Let your Uncle know from me, that I have
chosen you to go to the West Indies.'
Walter's breath was so completely taken away by his astonishment, that
he could hardly find enough for the repetition of the words 'West Indies.'
'Somebody must go,' said Mr Dombey, 'and you are young and healthy, and
your Uncle's circumstances are not good. Tell your Uncle that you are
appointed. You will not go yet. There will be an interval of a month - or
two perhaps.'
'Shall I remain there, Sir?' inquired Walter.
'Will you remain there, Sir!' repeated Mr Dombey, turning a little more
round towards him. 'What do you mean? What does he mean, Carker?'
'Live there, Sir,' faltered Walter.
'Certainly,' returned Mr Dombey.
Walter bowed.
'That's all,' said Mr Dombey, resuming his letters. 'You will explain
to him in good time about the usual outfit and so forth, Carker, of course.
He needn't wait, Carker.'
'You needn't wait, Gay,' observed Mr Carker: bare to the gums.
'Unless,' said Mr Dombey, stopping in his reading without looking off
the letter, and seeming to listen. 'Unless he has anything to say.'
'No, Sir,' returned Walter, agitated and confused, and almost stunned,
as an infinite variety of pictures presented themselves to his mind; among
which Captain Cuttle, in his glazed hat, transfixed with astonishment at Mrs
MacStinger's, and his uncle bemoaning his loss in the little back parlour,
held prominent places. 'I hardly know - I - I am much obliged, Sir.'
'He needn't wait, Carker,' said Mr Dombey.
And as Mr Carker again echoed the words, and also collected his papers
as if he were going away too, Walter felt that his lingering any longer
would be an unpardonable intrusion - especially as he had nothing to say -
and therefore walked out quite confounded.
Going along the passage, with the mingled consciousness and
helplessness of a dream, he heard Mr Dombey's door shut again, as Mr Carker
came out: and immediately afterwards that gentleman called to him.
'Bring your friend Mr Carker the Junior to my room, Sir, if you
please.'
Walter went to the outer office and apprised Mr Carker the Junior of
his errand, who accordingly came out from behind a partition where he sat
alone in one corner, and returned with him to the room of Mr Carker the
Manager.
That gentleman was standing with his back to the fire, and his hands
under his coat-tails, looking over his white cravat, as unpromisingly as Mr
Dombey himself could have looked. He received them without any change in his
attitude or softening of his harsh and black expression: merely signing to
Walter to close the door.
'John Carker,' said the Manager, when this was done, turning suddenly
upon his brother, with his two rows of teeth bristling as if he would have
bitten him, 'what is the league between you and this young man, in virtue of
which I am haunted and hunted by the mention of your name? Is it not enough
for you, John Carker, that I am your near relation, and can't detach myself
from that - '
'Say disgrace, James,' interposed the other in a low voice, finding
that he stammered for a word. 'You mean it, and have reason, say disgrace.'
'From that disgrace,' assented his brother with keen emphasis, 'but is
the fact to be blurted out and trumpeted, and proclaimed continually in the
presence of the very House! In moments of confidence too? Do you think your
name is calculated to harmonise in this place with trust and confidence,
John Carker?'
'No,' returned the other. 'No, James. God knows I have no such
thought.'
'What is your thought, then?' said his brother, 'and why do you thrust
yourself in my way? Haven't you injured me enough already?'
'I have never injured you, James, wilfully.'
'You are my brother,' said the Manager. 'That's injury enough.'
'I wish I could undo it, James.'
'I wish you could and would.'
During this conversation, Walter had looked from one brother to the
other, with pain and amazement. He who was the Senior in years, and Junior
in the House, stood, with his eyes cast upon the ground, and his head bowed,
humbly listening to the reproaches of the other. Though these were rendered
very bitter by the tone and look with which they were accompanied, and by
the presence of Walter whom they so much surprised and shocked, he entered
no other protest against them than by slightly raising his right hand in a
deprecatory manner, as if he would have said, 'Spare me!' So, had they been
blows, and he a brave man, under strong constraint, and weakened by bodily
suffering, he might have stood before the executioner.
Generous and quick in all his emotions, and regarding himself as the
innocent occasion of these taunts, Walter now struck in, with all the
earnestness he felt.
'Mr Carker,' he said, addressing himself to the Manager. 'Indeed,
indeed, this is my fault solely. In a kind of heedlessness, for which I
cannot blame myself enough, I have, I have no doubt, mentioned Mr Carker the
Junior much oftener than was necessary; and have allowed his name sometimes
to slip through my lips, when it was against your expressed wish. But it has
been my own mistake, Sir. We have never exchanged one word upon the subject
- very few, indeed, on any subject. And it has not been,' added Walter,
after a moment's pause, 'all heedlessness on my part, Sir; for I have felt
an interest in Mr Carker ever since I have been here, and have hardly been
able to help speaking of him sometimes, when I have thought of him so much!'
Walter said this from his soul, and with the very breath of honour. For
he looked upon the bowed head, and the downcast eyes, and upraised hand, and
thought, 'I have felt it; and why should I not avow it in behalf of this
unfriended, broken man!'
Mr Carker the Manager looked at him, as he spoke, and when he had
finished speaking, with a smile that seemed to divide his face into two
parts.
'You are an excitable youth, Gay,' he said; 'and should endeavour to
cool down a little now, for it would be unwise to encourage feverish
predispositions. Be as cool as you can, Gay. Be as cool as you can. You
might have asked Mr John Carker himself (if you have not done so) whether he
claims to be, or is, an object of such strong interest.'
'James, do me justice,' said his brother. 'I have claimed nothing; and
I claim nothing. Believe me, on my -
'Honour?' said his brother, with another smile, as he warmed himself
before the fire.
'On my Me - on my fallen life!' returned the other, in the same low
voice, but with a deeper stress on his words than he had yet seemed capable
of giving them. 'Believe me, I have held myself aloof, and kept alone. This
has been unsought by me. I have avoided him and everyone.
'Indeed, you have avoided me, Mr Carker,' said Walter, with the tears
rising to his eyes; so true was his compassion. 'I know it, to my
disappointment and regret. When I first came here, and ever since, I am sure
I have tried to be as much your friend, as one of my age could presume to
be; but it has been of no use.
'And observe,' said the Manager, taking him up quickly, 'it will be of
still less use, Gay, if you persist in forcing Mr John Carker's name on
people's attention. That is not the way to befriend Mr John Carker. Ask him
if he thinks it is.'
'It is no service to me,' said the brother. 'It only leads to such a
conversation as the present, which I need not say I could have well spared.
No one can be a better friend to me:' he spoke here very distinctly, as if
he would impress it upon Walter: 'than in forgetting me, and leaving me to
go my way, unquestioned and unnoticed.'
'Your memory not being retentive, Gay, of what you are told by others,'
said Mr Carker the Manager, warming himself with great and increased
satisfaction, 'I thought it well that you should be told this from the best
authority,' nodding towards his brother. 'You are not likely to forget it
now, I hope. That's all, Gay. You can go.
Walter passed out at the door, and was about to close it after him,
when, hearing the voices of the brothers again, and also the mention of his
own name, he stood irresolutely, with his hand upon the lock, and the door
ajar, uncertain whether to return or go away. In this position he could not
help overhearing what followed.
'Think of me more leniently, if you can, James,' said John Carker,
'when I tell you I have had - how could I help having, with my history,
written here' - striking himself upon the breast - 'my whole heart awakened
by my observation of that boy, Walter Gay. I saw in him when he first came
here, almost my other self.'
'Your other self!' repeated the Manager, disdainfully.
'Not as I am, but as I was when I first came here too; as sanguine,
giddy, youthful, inexperienced; flushed with the same restless and
adventurous fancies; and full of the same qualities, fraught with the same
capacity of leading on to good or evil.'
'I hope not,' said his brother, with some hidden and sarcastic meaning
in his tone.
'You strike me sharply; and your hand is steady, and your thrust is
Now, Dombey,' said Miss Blimber, 'I am going out for a constitutional.'
Paul wondered what that was, and why she didn't send the footman out to
get it in such unfavourable weather. But he made no observation on the
subject: his attention being devoted to a little pile of new books, on which
Miss Blimber appeared to have been recently engaged.
'These are yours, Dombey,' said Miss Blimber.
'All of 'em, Ma'am?' said Paul.
'Yes,' returned Miss Blimber; 'and Mr Feeder will look you out some
more very soon, if you are as studious as I expect you will be, Dombey.'
'Thank you, Ma'am,' said Paul.
'I am going out for a constitutional,' resumed Miss Blimber; 'and while
I am gone, that is to say in the interval between this and breakfast,
Dombey, I wish you to read over what I have marked in these books, and to
tell me if you quite understand what you have got to learn. Don't lose time,
Dombey, for you have none to spare, but take them downstairs, and begin
directly.'
'Yes, Ma'am,' answered Paul.
There were so many of them, that although Paul put one hand under the
bottom book and his other hand and his chin on the top book, and hugged them
all closely, the middle book slipped out before he reached the door, and
then they all tumbled down on the floor. Miss Blimber said, 'Oh, Dombey,
Dombey, this is really very careless!' and piled them up afresh for him; and
this time, by dint of balancing them with great nicety, Paul got out of the
room, and down a few stairs before two of them escaped again. But he held
the rest so tight, that he only left one more on the first floor, and one in
the passage; and when he had got the main body down into the schoolroom, he
set off upstairs again to collect the stragglers. Having at last amassed the
whole library, and climbed into his place, he fell to work, encouraged by a
remark from Tozer to the effect that he 'was in for it now;' which was the
only interruption he received till breakfast time. At that meal, for which
he had no appetite, everything was quite as solemn and genteel as at the
others; and when it was finished, he followed Miss Blimber upstairs.
'Now, Dombey,' said Miss Blimber. 'How have you got on with those
books?'
They comprised a little English, and a deal of Latin - names of things,
declensions of articles and substantives, exercises thereon, and preliminary
rules - a trifle of orthography, a glance at ancient history, a wink or two
at modern ditto, a few tables, two or three weights and measures, and a
little general information. When poor Paul had spelt out number two, he
found he had no idea of number one; fragments whereof afterwards obtruded
themselves into number three, which slided into number four, which grafted
itself on to number two. So that whether twenty Romuluses made a Remus, or
hic haec hoc was troy weight, or a verb always agreed with an ancient
Briton, or three times four was Taurus a bull, were open questions with him.
'Oh, Dombey, Dombey!' said Miss Blimber, 'this is very shocking.'
'If you please,' said Paul, 'I think if I might sometimes talk a little
to old Glubb, I should be able to do better.'
'Nonsense, Dombey,' said Miss Blimber. 'I couldn't hear of it. This is
not the place for Glubbs of any kind. You must take the books down, I
suppose, Dombey, one by one, and perfect yourself in the day's instalment of
subject A, before you turn at all to subject B. I am sorry to say, Dombey,
that your education appears to have been very much neglected.'
'So Papa says,' returned Paul; 'but I told you - I have been a weak
child. Florence knows I have. So does Wickam.'
'Who is Wickam?' asked Miss Blimber.
'She has been my nurse,' Paul answered.
'I must beg you not to mention Wickam to me, then,' said Miss
Blimber.'I couldn't allow it'.
'You asked me who she was,' said Paul.
'Very well,' returned Miss Blimber; 'but this is all very different
indeed from anything of that sort, Dombey, and I couldn't think of
permitting it. As to having been weak, you must begin to be strong. And now
take away the top book, if you please, Dombey, and return when you are
master of the theme.'
Miss Blimber expressed her opinions on the subject of Paul's
uninstructed state with a gloomy delight, as if she had expected this
result, and were glad to find that they must be in constant communication.
Paul withdrew with the top task, as he was told, and laboured away at it,
down below: sometimes remembering every word of it, and sometimes forgetting
it all, and everything else besides: until at last he ventured upstairs
again to repeat the lesson, when it was nearly all driven out of his head
before he began, by Miss Blimber's shutting up the book, and saying, 'Good,
Dombey!' a proceeding so suggestive of the knowledge inside of her, that
Paul looked upon the young lady with consternation, as a kind of learned Guy
Faux, or artificial Bogle, stuffed full of scholastic straw.
He acquitted himself very well, nevertheless; and Miss Blimber,
commending him as giving promise of getting on fast, immediately provided
him with subject B; from which he passed to C, and even D before dinner. It
was hard work, resuming his studies, soon after dinner; and he felt giddy
and confused and drowsy and dull. But all the other young gentlemen had
similar sensations, and were obliged to resume their studies too, if there
were any comfort in that. It was a wonder that the great clock in the hall,
instead of being constant to its first inquiry, never said, 'Gentlemen, we
will now resume our studies,' for that phrase was often enough repeated in
its neighbourhood. The studies went round like a mighty wheel, and the young
gentlemen were always stretched upon it.
After tea there were exercises again, and preparations for next day by
candlelight. And in due course there was bed; where, but for that resumption
of the studies which took place in dreams, were rest and sweet
forgetfulness.
Oh Saturdays! Oh happy Saturdays, when Florence always came at noon,
and never would, in any weather, stay away, though Mrs Pipchin snarled and
growled, and worried her bitterly. Those Saturdays were Sabbaths for at
least two little Christians among all the Jews, and did the holy Sabbath
work of strengthening and knitting up a brother's and a sister's love.
Not even Sunday nights - the heavy Sunday nights, whose shadow darkened
the first waking burst of light on Sunday mornings - could mar those
precious Saturdays. Whether it was the great sea-shore, where they sat, and
strolled together; or whether it was only Mrs Pipchin's dull back room, in
which she sang to him so softly, with his drowsy head upon her arm; Paul
never cared. It was Florence. That was all he thought of. So, on Sunday
nights, when the Doctor's dark door stood agape to swallow him up for
another week, the time was come for taking leave of Florence; no one else.
Mrs Wickam had been drafted home to the house in town, and Miss Nipper,
now a smart young woman, had come down. To many a single combat with Mrs
Pipchin, did Miss Nipper gallantly devote herself, and if ever Mrs Pipchin
in all her life had found her match, she had found it now. Miss Nipper threw
away the scabbard the first morning she arose in Mrs Pipchin's house. She
asked and gave no quarter. She said it must be war, and war it was; and Mrs
Pipchin lived from that time in the midst of surprises, harassings, and
defiances, and skirmishing attacks that came bouncing in upon her from the
passage, even in unguarded moments of chops, and carried desolation to her
very toast.
Miss Nipper had returned one Sunday night with Florence, from walking
back with Paul to the Doctor's, when Florence took from her bosom a little
piece of paper, on which she had pencilled down some words.
'See here, Susan,' she said. 'These are the names of the little books
that Paul brings home to do those long exercises with, when he is so tired.
I copied them last night while he was writing.'
'Don't show 'em to me, Miss Floy, if you please,' returned Nipper, 'I'd
as soon see Mrs Pipchin.'
'I want you to buy them for me, Susan, if you will, tomorrow morning. I
have money enough,' said Florence.
'Why, goodness gracious me, Miss Floy,' returned Miss Nipper, 'how can
you talk like that, when you have books upon books already, and masterses
and mississes a teaching of you everything continual, though my belief is
that your Pa, Miss Dombey, never would have learnt you nothing, never would
have thought of it, unless you'd asked him - when be couldn't well refuse;
but giving consent when asked, and offering when unasked, Miss, is quite two
things; I may not have my objections to a young man's keeping company with
me, and when he puts the question, may say "yes," but that's not saying
"would you be so kind as like me."'
'But you can buy me the books, Susan; and you will, when you know why I
want them.'
'Well, Miss, and why do you want 'em?' replied Nipper; adding, in a
lower voice, 'If it was to fling at Mrs Pipchin's head, I'd buy a
cart-load.'
'Paul has a great deal too much to do, Susan,' said Florence, 'I am
sure of it.'
'And well you may be, Miss,' returned her maid, 'and make your mind
quite easy that the willing dear is worked and worked away. If those is
Latin legs,' exclaimed Miss Nipper, with strong feeling - in allusion to
Paul's; 'give me English ones.'
'I am afraid he feels lonely and lost at Doctor Blimber's, Susan,'
pursued Florence, turning away her face.
'Ah,' said Miss Nipper, with great sharpness, 'Oh, them "Blimbers"'
'Don't blame anyone,' said Florence. 'It's a mistake.'
'I say nothing about blame, Miss,' cried Miss Nipper, 'for I know that
you object, but I may wish, Miss, that the family was set to work to make
new roads, and that Miss Blimber went in front and had the pickaxe.'
After this speech, Miss Nipper, who was perfectly serious, wiped her
eyes.
'I think I could perhaps give Paul some help, Susan, if I had these
books,' said Florence, 'and make the coming week a little easier to him. At
least I want to try. So buy them for me, dear, and I will never forget how
kind it was of you to do it!'
It must have been a harder heart than Susan Nipper's that could have
rejected the little purse Florence held out with these words, or the gentle
look of entreaty with which she seconded her petition. Susan put the purse
in her pocket without reply, and trotted out at once upon her errand.
The books were not easy to procure; and the answer at several shops
was, either that they were just out of them, or that they never kept them,
or that they had had a great many last month, or that they expected a great
many next week But Susan was not easily baffled in such an enterprise; and
having entrapped a white-haired youth, in a black calico apron, from a
library where she was known, to accompany her in her quest, she led him such
a life in going up and down, that he exerted himself to the utmost, if it
were only to get rid of her; and finally enabled her to return home in
triumph.
With these treasures then, after her own daily lessons were over,
Florence sat down at night to track Paul's footsteps through the thorny ways
of learning; and being possessed of a naturally quick and sound capacity,
and taught by that most wonderful of masters, love, it was not long before
she gained upon Paul's heels, and caught and passed him.
Not a word of this was breathed to Mrs Pipchin: but many a night when
they were all in bed, and when Miss Nipper, with her hair in papers and
herself asleep in some uncomfortable attitude, reposed unconscious by her
side; and when the chinking ashes in the grate were cold and grey; and when
the candles were burnt down and guttering out; - Florence tried so hard to
be a substitute for one small Dombey, that her fortitude and perseverance
might have almost won her a free right to bear the name herself.
And high was her reward, when one Saturday evening, as little Paul was
sitting down as usual to 'resume his studies,' she sat down by his side, and
showed him all that was so rough, made smooth, and all that was so dark,
made clear and plain, before him. It was nothing but a startled look in
Paul's wan face - a flush - a smile - and then a close embrace - but God
knows how her heart leapt up at this rich payment for her trouble.
'Oh, Floy!' cried her brother, 'how I love you! How I love you, Floy!'
'And I you, dear!'
'Oh! I am sure of that, Floy.'
He said no more about it, but all that evening sat close by her, very
quiet; and in the night he called out from his little room within hers,
three or four times, that he loved her.
Regularly, after that, Florence was prepared to sit down with Paul on
Saturday night, and patiently assist him through so much as they could
anticipate together of his next week's work. The cheering thought that he
was labouring on where Florence had just toiled before him, would, of
itself, have been a stimulant to Paul in the perpetual resumption of his
studies; but coupled with the actual lightening of his load, consequent on
this assistance, it saved him, possibly, from sinking underneath the burden
which the fair Cornelia Blimber piled upon his back.
It was not that Miss Blimber meant to be too hard upon him, or that
Doctor Blimber meant to bear too heavily on the young gentlemen in general.
Cornelia merely held the faith in which she had been bred; and the Doctor,
in some partial confusion of his ideas, regarded the young gentlemen as if
they were all Doctors, and were born grown up. Comforted by the applause of
the young gentlemen's nearest relations, and urged on by their blind vanity
and ill-considered haste, it would have been strange if Doctor Blimber had
discovered his mistake, or trimmed his swelling sails to any other tack.
Thus in the case of Paul. When Doctor Blimber said he made great
progress and was naturally clever, Mr Dombey was more bent than ever on his
being forced and crammed. In the case of Briggs, when Doctor Blimber
reported that he did not make great progress yet, and was not naturally
clever, Briggs senior was inexorable in the same purpose. In short, however
high and false the temperature at which the Doctor kept his hothouse, the
owners of the plants were always ready to lend a helping hand at the
bellows, and to stir the fire.
Such spirits as he had in the outset, Paul soon lost of course. But he
retained all that was strange, and old, and thoughtful in his character: and
under circumstances so favourable to the development of those tendencies,
became even more strange, and old, and thoughtful, than before.
The only difference was, that he kept his character to himself. He grew
more thoughtful and reserved, every day; and had no such curiosity in any
living member of the Doctor's household, as he had had in Mrs Pipchin. He
loved to be alone; and in those short intervals when he was not occupied
with his books, liked nothing so well as wandering about the house by
himself, or sitting on the stairs, listening to the great clock in the hall.
He was intimate with all the paperhanging in the house; saw things that no
one else saw in the patterns; found out miniature tigers and lions running
up the bedroom walls, and squinting faces leering in the squares and
diamonds of the floor-cloth.
The solitary child lived on, surrounded by this arabesque work of his
musing fancy, and no one understood him. Mrs Blimber thought him 'odd,' and
sometimes the servants said among themselves that little Dombey 'moped;' but
that was all.
Unless young Toots had some idea on the subject, to the expression of
which he was wholly unequal. Ideas, like ghosts (according to the common
notion of ghosts), must be spoken to a little before they will explain
themselves; and Toots had long left off asking any questions of his own
mind. Some mist there may have been, issuing from that leaden casket, his
cranium, which, if it could have taken shape and form, would have become a
genie; but it could not; and it only so far followed the example of the
smoke in the Arabian story, as to roll out in a thick cloud, and there hang
and hover. But it left a little figure visible upon a lonely shore, and
Toots was always staring at it.
'How are you?' he would say to Paul, fifty times a day. 'Quite well,
Sir, thank you,' Paul would answer. 'Shake hands,' would be Toots's next
advance.
Which Paul, of course, would immediately do. Mr Toots generally said
again, after a long interval of staring and hard breathing, 'How are you?'
To which Paul again replied, 'Quite well, Sir, thank you.'
One evening Mr Toots was sitting at his desk, oppressed by
correspondence, when a great purpose seemed to flash upon him. He laid down
his pen, and went off to seek Paul, whom he found at last, after a long
search, looking through the window of his little bedroom.
'I say!' cried Toots, speaking the moment he entered the room, lest he
should forget it; 'what do you think about?'
'Oh! I think about a great many things,' replied Paul.
'Do you, though?' said Toots, appearing to consider that fact in itself
surprising. 'If you had to die,' said Paul, looking up into his face - Mr
Toots started, and seemed much disturbed.
'Don't you think you would rather die on a moonlight night, when the
sky was quite clear, and the wind blowing, as it did last night?'
Mr Toots said, looking doubtfully at Paul, and shaking his head, that
he didn't know about that.
'Not blowing, at least,' said Paul, 'but sounding in the air like the
sea sounds in the shells. It was a beautiful night. When I had listened to
the water for a long time, I got up and looked out. There was a boat over
there, in the full light of the moon; a boat with a sail.'
The child looked at him so steadfastly, and spoke so earnestly, that Mr
Toots, feeling himself called upon to say something about this boat, said,
'Smugglers.' But with an impartial remembrance of there being two sides to
every question, he added, 'or Preventive.'
'A boat with a sail,' repeated Paul, 'in the full light of the moon.
The sail like an arm, all silver. It went away into the distance, and what
do you think it seemed to do as it moved with the waves?'
'Pitch,' said Mr Toots.
'It seemed to beckon,' said the child, 'to beckon me to come! - There
she is! There she is!'
Toots was almost beside himself with dismay at this sudden exclamation,
after what had gone before, and cried 'Who?'
'My sister Florence!' cried Paul, 'looking up here, and waving her
hand. She sees me - she sees me! Good-night, dear, good-night, good-night.'
His quick transition to a state of unbounded pleasure, as he stood at
his window, kissing and clapping his hands: and the way in which the light
retreated from his features as she passed out of his view, and left a
patient melancholy on the little face: were too remarkable wholly to escape
even Toots's notice. Their interview being interrupted at this moment by a
visit from Mrs Pipchin, who usually brought her black skirts to bear upon
Paul just before dusk, once or twice a week, Toots had no opportunity of
improving the occasion: but it left so marked an impression on his mind that
he twice returned, after having exchanged the usual salutations, to ask Mrs
Pipchin how she did. This the irascible old lady conceived to be a deeply
devised and long-meditated insult, originating in the diabolical invention
of the weak-eyed young man downstairs, against whom she accordingly lodged a
formal complaint with Doctor Blimber that very night; who mentioned to the
young man that if he ever did it again, he should be obliged to part with
him.
The evenings being longer now, Paul stole up to his window every
evening to look out for Florence. She always passed and repassed at a
certain time, until she saw him; and their mutual recognition was a gleam of
sunshine in Paul's daily life. Often after dark, one other figure walked
alone before the Doctor's house. He rarely joined them on the Saturdays now.
He could not bear it. He would rather come unrecognised, and look up at the
windows where his son was qualifying for a man; and wait, and watch, and
plan, and hope.
Oh! could he but have seen, or seen as others did, the slight spare boy
above, watching the waves and clouds at twilight, with his earnest eyes, and
breasting the window of his solitary cage when birds flew by, as if he would
have emulated them, and soared away!
Shipping Intelligence and Office Business
Mr Dombey's offices were in a court where there was an old-established
stall of choice fruit at the corner: where perambulating merchants, of both
sexes, offered for sale at any time between the hours of ten and five,
slippers, pocket-books, sponges, dogs' collars, and Windsor soap; and
sometimes a pointer or an oil-painting.
The pointer always came that way, with a view to the Stock Exchange,
where a sporting taste (originating generally in bets of new hats) is much
in vogue. The other commodities were addressed to the general public; but
they were never offered by the vendors to Mr Dombey. When he appeared, the
dealers in those wares fell off respectfully. The principal slipper and
dogs' collar man - who considered himself a public character, and whose
portrait was screwed on to an artist's door in Cheapside - threw up his
forefinger to the brim of his hat as Mr Dombey went by. The ticket-porter,
if he were not absent on a job, always ran officiously before, to open Mr
Dombey's office door as wide as possible, and hold it open, with his hat
off, while he entered.
The clerks within were not a whit behind-hand in their demonstrations
of respect. A solemn hush prevailed, as Mr Dombey passed through the outer
office. The wit of the Counting-House became in a moment as mute as the row
of leathern fire-buckets hanging up behind him. Such vapid and flat daylight
as filtered through the ground-glass windows and skylights, leaving a black
sediment upon the panes, showed the books and papers, and the figures
bending over them, enveloped in a studious gloom, and as much abstracted in
appearance, from the world without, as if they were assembled at the bottom
of the sea; while a mouldy little strong room in the obscure perspective,
where a shaded lamp was always burning, might have represented the cavern of
some ocean monster, looking on with a red eye at these mysteries of the
deep.
When Perch the messenger, whose place was on a little bracket, like a
timepiece, saw Mr Dombey come in - or rather when he felt that he was
coming, for he had usually an instinctive sense of his approach - he hurried
into Mr Dombey's room, stirred the fire, carried fresh coals from the bowels
of the coal-box, hung the newspaper to air upon the fender, put the chair
ready, and the screen in its place, and was round upon his heel on the
instant of Mr Dombey's entrance, to take his great-coat and hat, and hang
them up. Then Perch took the newspaper, and gave it a turn or two in his
hands before the fire, and laid it, deferentially, at Mr Dombey's elbow. And
so little objection had Perch to being deferential in the last degree, that
if he might have laid himself at Mr Dombey's feet, or might have called him
by some such title as used to be bestowed upon the Caliph Haroun Alraschid,
he would have been all the better pleased.
As this honour would have been an innovation and an experiment, Perch
was fain to content himself by expressing as well as he could, in his
manner, You are the light of my Eyes. You are the Breath of my Soul. You are
the commander of the Faithful Perch! With this imperfect happiness to cheer
him, he would shut the door softly, walk away on tiptoe, and leave his great
chief to be stared at, through a dome-shaped window in the leads, by ugly
chimney-pots and backs of houses, and especially by the bold window of a
hair-cutting saloon on a first floor, where a waxen effigy, bald as a
Mussulman in the morning, and covered, after eleven o'clock in the day, with
luxuriant hair and whiskers in the latest Christian fashion, showed him the
wrong side of its head for ever.
Between Mr Dombey and the common world, as it was accessible through
the medium of the outer office - to which Mr Dombey's presence in his own
room may be said to have struck like damp, or cold air - there were two
degrees of descent. Mr Carker in his own office was the first step; Mr
Morfin, in his own office, was the second. Each of these gentlemen occupied
a little chamber like a bath-room, opening from the passage outside Mr
Dombey's door. Mr Carker, as Grand Vizier, inhabited the room that was
nearest to the Sultan. Mr Morfin, as an officer of inferior state, inhabited
the room that was nearest to the clerks.
The gentleman last mentioned was a cheerful-looking, hazel-eyed elderly
bachelor: gravely attired, as to his upper man, in black; and as to his
legs, in pepper-and-salt colour. His dark hair was just touched here and
there with specks of gray, as though the tread of Time had splashed it; and
his whiskers were already white. He had a mighty respect for Mr Dombey, and
rendered him due homage; but as he was of a genial temper himself, and never
wholly at his ease in that stately presence, he was disquieted by no
jealousy of the many conferences enjoyed by Mr Carker, and felt a secret
satisfaction in having duties to discharge, which rarely exposed him to be
singled out for such distinction. He was a great musical amateur in his way
- after business; and had a paternal affection for his violoncello, which
was once in every week transported from Islington, his place of abode, to a
certain club-room hard by the Bank, where quartettes of the most tormenting
and excruciating nature were executed every Wednesday evening by a private
party.
Mr Carker was a gentleman thirty-eight or forty years old, of a florid
complexion, and with two unbroken rows of glistening teeth, whose regularity
and whiteness were quite distressing. It was impossible to escape the
observation of them, for he showed them whenever he spoke; and bore so wide
a smile upon his countenance (a smile, however, very rarely, indeed,
extending beyond his mouth), that there was something in it like the snarl
of a cat. He affected a stiff white cravat, after the example of his
principal, and was always closely buttoned up and tightly dressed. His
manner towards Mr Dombey was deeply conceived and perfectly expressed. He
was familiar with him, in the very extremity of his sense of the distance
between them. 'Mr Dombey, to a man in your position from a man in mine,
there is no show of subservience compatible with the transaction of business
between us, that I should think sufficient. I frankly tell you, Sir, I give
it up altogether. I feel that I could not satisfy my own mind; and Heaven
knows, Mr Dombey, you can afford to dispense with the endeavour.' If he had
carried these words about with him printed on a placard, and had constantly
offered it to Mr Dombey's perusal on the breast of his coat, he could not
have been more explicit than he was.
This was Carker the Manager. Mr Carker the Junior, Walter's friend, was
his brother; two or three years older than he, but widely removed in
station. The younger brother's post was on the top of the official ladder;
the elder brother's at the bottom. The elder brother never gained a stave,
or raised his foot to mount one. Young men passed above his head, and rose
and rose; but he was always at the bottom. He was quite resigned to occupy
that low condition: never complained of it: and certainly never hoped to
escape from it.
'How do you do this morning?' said Mr Carker the Manager, entering Mr
Dombey's room soon after his arrival one day: with a bundle of papers in his
hand.
'How do you do, Carker?' said Mr Dombey.
'Coolish!' observed Carker, stirring the fire.
'Rather,' said Mr Dombey.
'Any news of the young gentleman who is so important to us all?' asked
Carker, with his whole regiment of teeth on parade.
'Yes - not direct news- I hear he's very well,' said Mr Dombey. Who had
come from Brighton over-night. But no one knew It.
'Very well, and becoming a great scholar, no doubt?' observed the
Manager.
'I hope so,' returned Mr Dombey.
'Egad!' said Mr Carker, shaking his head, 'Time flies!'
'I think so, sometimes,' returned Mr Dombey, glancing at his newspaper.
'Oh! You! You have no reason to think so,' observed Carker. 'One who
sits on such an elevation as yours, and can sit there, unmoved, in all
seasons - hasn't much reason to know anything about the flight of time. It's
men like myself, who are low down and are not superior in circumstances, and
who inherit new masters in the course of Time, that have cause to look about
us. I shall have a rising sun to worship, soon.'
'Time enough, time enough, Carker!' said Mr Dombey, rising from his
chair, and standing with his back to the fire. 'Have you anything there for
me?'
'I don't know that I need trouble you,' returned Carker, turning over
the papers in his hand. 'You have a committee today at three, you know.'
'And one at three, three-quarters,' added Mr Dombey.
'Catch you forgetting anything!' exclaimed Carker, still turning over
his papers. 'If Mr Paul inherits your memory, he'll be a troublesome
customer in the House. One of you is enough'
'You have an accurate memory of your own,' said Mr Dombey.
'Oh! I!' returned the manager. 'It's the only capital of a man like
me.'
Mr Dombey did not look less pompous or at all displeased, as he stood
leaning against the chimney-piece, surveying his (of course unconscious)
clerk, from head to foot. The stiffness and nicety of Mr Carker's dress, and
a certain arrogance of manner, either natural to him or imitated from a
pattern not far off, gave great additional effect to his humility. He seemed
a man who would contend against the power that vanquished him, if he could,
but who was utterly borne down by the greatness and superiority of Mr
Dombey.
'Is Morfin here?' asked Mr Dombey after a short pause, during which Mr
Carker had been fluttering his papers, and muttering little abstracts of
their contents to himself.
'Morfin's here,' he answered, looking up with his widest and almost
sudden smile; 'humming musical recollections - of his last night's quartette
party, I suppose - through the walls between us, and driving me half mad. I
wish he'd make a bonfire of his violoncello, and burn his music-books in
it.'
'You respect nobody, Carker, I think,' said Mr Dombey.
'No?' inquired Carker, with another wide and most feline show of his
teeth. 'Well! Not many people, I believe. I wouldn't answer perhaps,' he
murmured, as if he were only thinking it, 'for more than one.'
A dangerous quality, if real; and a not less dangerous one, if feigned.
But Mr Dombey hardly seemed to think so, as he still stood with his back to
the fire, drawn up to his full height, and looking at his head-clerk with a
dignified composure, in which there seemed to lurk a stronger latent sense
of power than usual.
'Talking of Morfin,' resumed Mr Carker, taking out one paper from the
rest, 'he reports a junior dead in the agency at Barbados, and proposes to
reserve a passage in the Son and Heir - she'll sail in a month or so - for
the successor. You don't care who goes, I suppose? We have nobody of that
sort here.'
Mr Dombey shook his head with supreme indifference.
'It's no very precious appointment,' observed Mr Carker, taking up a
pen, with which to endorse a memorandum on the back of the paper. 'I hope he
may bestow it on some orphan nephew of a musical friend. It may perhaps stop
his fiddle-playing, if he has a gift that way. Who's that? Come in!'
'I beg your pardon, Mr Carker. I didn't know you were here, Sir,'
answered Walter; appearing with some letters in his hand, unopened, and
newly arrived. 'Mr Carker the junior, Sir - '
At the mention of this name, Mr Carker the Manager was or affected to
be, touched to the quick with shame and humiliation. He cast his eyes full
on Mr Dombey with an altered and apologetic look, abased them on the ground,
and remained for a moment without speaking.
'I thought, Sir,' he said suddenly and angrily, turning on Walter,
'that you had been before requested not to drag Mr Carker the Junior into
your conversation.'
'I beg your pardon,' returned Walter. 'I was only going to say that Mr
Carker the Junior had told me he believed you were gone out, or I should not
have knocked at the door when you were engaged with Mr Dombey. These are
letters for Mr Dombey, Sir.'
'Very well, Sir,' returned Mr Carker the Manager, plucking them sharply
from his hand. 'Go about your business.'
But in taking them with so little ceremony, Mr Carker dropped one on
the floor, and did not see what he had done; neither did Mr Dombey observe
the letter lying near his feet. Walter hesitated for a moment, thinking that
one or other of them would notice it; but finding that neither did, he
stopped, came back, picked it up, and laid it himself on Mr Dombey's desk.
The letters were post-letters; and it happened that the one in question was
Mrs Pipchin's regular report, directed as usual - for Mrs Pipchin was but an
indifferent penwoman - by Florence. Mr Dombey, having his attention silently
called to this letter by Walter, started, and looked fiercely at him, as if
he believed that he had purposely selected it from all the rest.
'You can leave the room, Sir!' said Mr Dombey, haughtily.
He crushed the letter in his hand; and having watched Walter out at the
door, put it in his pocket without breaking the seal.
'These continual references to Mr Carker the Junior,' Mr Carker the
Manager began, as soon as they were alone, 'are, to a man in my position,
uttered before one in yours, so unspeakably distressing - '
'Nonsense, Carker,' Mr Dombey interrupted. 'You are too sensitive.'
'I am sensitive,' he returned. 'If one in your position could by any
possibility imagine yourself in my place: which you cannot: you would be so
too.'
As Mr Dombey's thoughts were evidently pursuing some other subject, his
discreet ally broke off here, and stood with his teeth ready to present to
him, when he should look up.
'You want somebody to send to the West Indies, you were saying,'
observed Mr Dombey, hurriedly.
'Yes,' replied Carker.
'Send young Gay.'
'Good, very good indeed. Nothing easier,' said Mr Carker, without any
show of surprise, and taking up the pen to re-endorse the letter, as coolly
as he had done before. '"Send young Gay."'
'Call him back,' said Mr Dombey.
Mr Carker was quick to do so, and Walter was quick to return.
'Gay,' said Mr Dombey, turning a little to look at him over his
shoulder. 'Here is a -
'An opening,' said Mr Carker, with his mouth stretched to the utmost.
'In the West Indies. At Barbados. I am going to send you,' said Mr
Dombey, scorning to embellish the bare truth, 'to fill a junior situation in
the counting-house at Barbados. Let your Uncle know from me, that I have
chosen you to go to the West Indies.'
Walter's breath was so completely taken away by his astonishment, that
he could hardly find enough for the repetition of the words 'West Indies.'
'Somebody must go,' said Mr Dombey, 'and you are young and healthy, and
your Uncle's circumstances are not good. Tell your Uncle that you are
appointed. You will not go yet. There will be an interval of a month - or
two perhaps.'
'Shall I remain there, Sir?' inquired Walter.
'Will you remain there, Sir!' repeated Mr Dombey, turning a little more
round towards him. 'What do you mean? What does he mean, Carker?'
'Live there, Sir,' faltered Walter.
'Certainly,' returned Mr Dombey.
Walter bowed.
'That's all,' said Mr Dombey, resuming his letters. 'You will explain
to him in good time about the usual outfit and so forth, Carker, of course.
He needn't wait, Carker.'
'You needn't wait, Gay,' observed Mr Carker: bare to the gums.
'Unless,' said Mr Dombey, stopping in his reading without looking off
the letter, and seeming to listen. 'Unless he has anything to say.'
'No, Sir,' returned Walter, agitated and confused, and almost stunned,
as an infinite variety of pictures presented themselves to his mind; among
which Captain Cuttle, in his glazed hat, transfixed with astonishment at Mrs
MacStinger's, and his uncle bemoaning his loss in the little back parlour,
held prominent places. 'I hardly know - I - I am much obliged, Sir.'
'He needn't wait, Carker,' said Mr Dombey.
And as Mr Carker again echoed the words, and also collected his papers
as if he were going away too, Walter felt that his lingering any longer
would be an unpardonable intrusion - especially as he had nothing to say -
and therefore walked out quite confounded.
Going along the passage, with the mingled consciousness and
helplessness of a dream, he heard Mr Dombey's door shut again, as Mr Carker
came out: and immediately afterwards that gentleman called to him.
'Bring your friend Mr Carker the Junior to my room, Sir, if you
please.'
Walter went to the outer office and apprised Mr Carker the Junior of
his errand, who accordingly came out from behind a partition where he sat
alone in one corner, and returned with him to the room of Mr Carker the
Manager.
That gentleman was standing with his back to the fire, and his hands
under his coat-tails, looking over his white cravat, as unpromisingly as Mr
Dombey himself could have looked. He received them without any change in his
attitude or softening of his harsh and black expression: merely signing to
Walter to close the door.
'John Carker,' said the Manager, when this was done, turning suddenly
upon his brother, with his two rows of teeth bristling as if he would have
bitten him, 'what is the league between you and this young man, in virtue of
which I am haunted and hunted by the mention of your name? Is it not enough
for you, John Carker, that I am your near relation, and can't detach myself
from that - '
'Say disgrace, James,' interposed the other in a low voice, finding
that he stammered for a word. 'You mean it, and have reason, say disgrace.'
'From that disgrace,' assented his brother with keen emphasis, 'but is
the fact to be blurted out and trumpeted, and proclaimed continually in the
presence of the very House! In moments of confidence too? Do you think your
name is calculated to harmonise in this place with trust and confidence,
John Carker?'
'No,' returned the other. 'No, James. God knows I have no such
thought.'
'What is your thought, then?' said his brother, 'and why do you thrust
yourself in my way? Haven't you injured me enough already?'
'I have never injured you, James, wilfully.'
'You are my brother,' said the Manager. 'That's injury enough.'
'I wish I could undo it, James.'
'I wish you could and would.'
During this conversation, Walter had looked from one brother to the
other, with pain and amazement. He who was the Senior in years, and Junior
in the House, stood, with his eyes cast upon the ground, and his head bowed,
humbly listening to the reproaches of the other. Though these were rendered
very bitter by the tone and look with which they were accompanied, and by
the presence of Walter whom they so much surprised and shocked, he entered
no other protest against them than by slightly raising his right hand in a
deprecatory manner, as if he would have said, 'Spare me!' So, had they been
blows, and he a brave man, under strong constraint, and weakened by bodily
suffering, he might have stood before the executioner.
Generous and quick in all his emotions, and regarding himself as the
innocent occasion of these taunts, Walter now struck in, with all the
earnestness he felt.
'Mr Carker,' he said, addressing himself to the Manager. 'Indeed,
indeed, this is my fault solely. In a kind of heedlessness, for which I
cannot blame myself enough, I have, I have no doubt, mentioned Mr Carker the
Junior much oftener than was necessary; and have allowed his name sometimes
to slip through my lips, when it was against your expressed wish. But it has
been my own mistake, Sir. We have never exchanged one word upon the subject
- very few, indeed, on any subject. And it has not been,' added Walter,
after a moment's pause, 'all heedlessness on my part, Sir; for I have felt
an interest in Mr Carker ever since I have been here, and have hardly been
able to help speaking of him sometimes, when I have thought of him so much!'
Walter said this from his soul, and with the very breath of honour. For
he looked upon the bowed head, and the downcast eyes, and upraised hand, and
thought, 'I have felt it; and why should I not avow it in behalf of this
unfriended, broken man!'
Mr Carker the Manager looked at him, as he spoke, and when he had
finished speaking, with a smile that seemed to divide his face into two
parts.
'You are an excitable youth, Gay,' he said; 'and should endeavour to
cool down a little now, for it would be unwise to encourage feverish
predispositions. Be as cool as you can, Gay. Be as cool as you can. You
might have asked Mr John Carker himself (if you have not done so) whether he
claims to be, or is, an object of such strong interest.'
'James, do me justice,' said his brother. 'I have claimed nothing; and
I claim nothing. Believe me, on my -
'Honour?' said his brother, with another smile, as he warmed himself
before the fire.
'On my Me - on my fallen life!' returned the other, in the same low
voice, but with a deeper stress on his words than he had yet seemed capable
of giving them. 'Believe me, I have held myself aloof, and kept alone. This
has been unsought by me. I have avoided him and everyone.
'Indeed, you have avoided me, Mr Carker,' said Walter, with the tears
rising to his eyes; so true was his compassion. 'I know it, to my
disappointment and regret. When I first came here, and ever since, I am sure
I have tried to be as much your friend, as one of my age could presume to
be; but it has been of no use.
'And observe,' said the Manager, taking him up quickly, 'it will be of
still less use, Gay, if you persist in forcing Mr John Carker's name on
people's attention. That is not the way to befriend Mr John Carker. Ask him
if he thinks it is.'
'It is no service to me,' said the brother. 'It only leads to such a
conversation as the present, which I need not say I could have well spared.
No one can be a better friend to me:' he spoke here very distinctly, as if
he would impress it upon Walter: 'than in forgetting me, and leaving me to
go my way, unquestioned and unnoticed.'
'Your memory not being retentive, Gay, of what you are told by others,'
said Mr Carker the Manager, warming himself with great and increased
satisfaction, 'I thought it well that you should be told this from the best
authority,' nodding towards his brother. 'You are not likely to forget it
now, I hope. That's all, Gay. You can go.
Walter passed out at the door, and was about to close it after him,
when, hearing the voices of the brothers again, and also the mention of his
own name, he stood irresolutely, with his hand upon the lock, and the door
ajar, uncertain whether to return or go away. In this position he could not
help overhearing what followed.
'Think of me more leniently, if you can, James,' said John Carker,
'when I tell you I have had - how could I help having, with my history,
written here' - striking himself upon the breast - 'my whole heart awakened
by my observation of that boy, Walter Gay. I saw in him when he first came
here, almost my other self.'
'Your other self!' repeated the Manager, disdainfully.
'Not as I am, but as I was when I first came here too; as sanguine,
giddy, youthful, inexperienced; flushed with the same restless and
adventurous fancies; and full of the same qualities, fraught with the same
capacity of leading on to good or evil.'
'I hope not,' said his brother, with some hidden and sarcastic meaning
in his tone.
'You strike me sharply; and your hand is steady, and your thrust is