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panting too, and stamping with rage and eagerness, appeared to be collecting
her energies for another swoop upon him. At this crisis Alice interposed her
voice, but not in the Grinder's favour, by saying,
'Well done, mother. Tear him to pieces!'
'What, young woman!' blubbered Rob; 'are you against me too? What have
I been and done? What am I to be tore to pieces for, I should like to know?
Why do you take and choke a cove who has never done you any harm, neither of
you? Call yourselves females, too!' said the frightened and afflicted
Grinder, with his coat-cuff at his eye. 'I'm surprised at you! Where's your
feminine tenderness?'
'You thankless dog!' gasped Mrs Brown. 'You impudent insulting dog!'
'What have I been and done to go and give you offence, Misses Brown?'
retorted the fearful Rob. 'You was very much attached to me a minute ago.'
'To cut me off with his short answers and his sulky words,' said the
old woman. 'Me! Because I happen to be curious to have a little bit of
gossip about Master and the lady, to dare to play at fast and loose with me!
But I'll talk to you no more, my lad. Now go!'
'I'm sure, Misses Brown,' returned the abject Grinder, 'I never
Insiniwated that I wished to go. Don't talk like that, Misses Brown, if you
please.'
'I won't talk at all,' said Mrs Brown, with an action of her crooked
fingers that made him shrink into half his natural compass in the corner.
'Not another word with him shall pass my lips. He's an ungrateful hound. I
cast him off. Now let him go! And I'll slip those after him that shall talk
too much; that won't be shook away; that'll hang to him like leeches, and
slink arter him like foxes. What! He knows 'em. He knows his old games and
his old ways. If he's forgotten 'em, they'll soon remind him. Now let him
go, and see how he'll do Master's business, and keep Master's secrets, with
such company always following him up and down. Ha, ha, ha! He'll find 'em a
different sort from you and me, Ally; Close as he is with you and me. Now
let him go, now let him go!'
The old woman, to the unspeakable dismay of the Grinder, walked her
twisted figure round and round, in a ring of some four feet in diameter,
constantly repeating these words, and shaking her fist above her head, and
working her mouth about.
'Misses Brown,' pleaded Rob, coming a little out of his corner, 'I'm
sure you wouldn't injure a cove, on second thoughts, and in cold blood,
would you?'
'Don't talk to me,' said Mrs Brown, still wrathfully pursuing her
circle. 'Now let him go, now let him go!'
'Misses Brown,' urged the tormented Grinder, 'I didn't mean to - Oh,
what a thing it is for a cove to get into such a line as this! - I was only
careful of talking, Misses Brown, because I always am, on account of his
being up to everything; but I might have known it wouldn't have gone any
further. I'm sure I'm quite agreeable,' with a wretched face, 'for any
little bit of gossip, Misses Brown. Don't go on like this, if you please.
Oh, couldn't you have the goodness to put in a word for a miserable cove,
here?' said the Grinder, appealing in desperation to the daughter.
'Come, mother, you hear what he says,' she interposed, in her stern
voice, and with an impatient action of her head; 'try him once more, and if
you fall out with him again, ruin him, if you like, and have done with him.'
Mrs Brown, moved as it seemed by this very tender exhortation,
presently began to howl; and softening by degrees, took the apologetic
Grinder to her arms, who embraced her with a face of unutterable woe, and
like a victim as he was, resumed his former seat, close by the side of his
venerable friend, whom he suffered, not without much constrained sweetness
of countenance, combating very expressive physiognomical revelations of an
opposite character to draw his arm through hers, and keep it there.
'And how's Master, deary dear?' said Mrs Brown, when, sitting in this
amicable posture, they had pledged each other.
'Hush! If you'd be so good, Misses Brown, as to speak a little lower,'
Rob implored. 'Why, he's pretty well, thank'ee, I suppose.'
'You're not out of place, Robby?' said Mrs Brown, in a wheedling tone.
'Why, I'm not exactly out of place, nor in,' faltered Rob. 'I - I'm
still in pay, Misses Brown.'
'And nothing to do, Rob?'
'Nothing particular to do just now, Misses Brown, but to - keep my eyes
open, said the Grinder, rolling them in a forlorn way.
'Master abroad, Rob?'
'Oh, for goodness' sake, Misses Brown, couldn't you gossip with a cove
about anything else?' cried the Grinder, in a burst of despair.
The impetuous Mrs Brown rising directly, the tortured Grinder detained
her, stammering 'Ye-es, Misses Brown, I believe he's abroad. What's she
staring at?' he added, in allusion to the daughter, whose eyes were fixed
upon the face that now again looked out behind
'Don't mind her, lad,' said the old woman, holding him closer to
prevent his turning round. 'It's her way - her way. Tell me, Rob. Did you
ever see the lady, deary?'
'Oh, Misses Brown, what lady?' cried the Grinder in a tone of piteous
supplication.
'What lady?' she retorted. 'The lady; Mrs Dombey.'
'Yes, I believe I see her once,' replied Rob.
'The night she went away, Robby, eh?' said the old woman in his ear,
and taking note of every change in his face. 'Aha! I know it was that
night.'
'Well, if you know it was that night, you know, Misses Brown,' replied
Rob, 'it's no use putting pinchers into a cove to make him say so.
'Where did they go that night, Rob? Straight away? How did they go?
Where did you see her? Did she laugh? Did she cry? Tell me all about it,'
cried the old hag, holding him closer yet, patting the hand that was drawn
through his arm against her other hand, and searching every line in his face
with her bleared eyes. 'Come! Begin! I want to be told all about it. What,
Rob, boy! You and me can keep a secret together, eh? We've done so before
now. Where did they go first, Rob?'
The wretched Grinder made a gasp, and a pause.
'Are you dumb?' said the old woman, angrily.
'Lord, Misses Brown, no! You expect a cove to be a flash of lightning.
I wish I was the electric fluency,' muttered the bewildered Grinder. 'I'd
have a shock at somebody, that would settle their business.'
'What do you say?' asked the old woman, with a grin.
'I'm wishing my love to you, Misses Brown,' returned the false Rob,
seeking consolation in the glass. 'Where did they go to first was it? Him
and her, do you mean?'
'Ah!' said the old woman, eagerly. 'Them two.'
'Why, they didn't go nowhere - not together, I mean,' answered Rob.
The old woman looked at him, as though she had a strong impulse upon
her to make another clutch at his head and throat, but was restrained by a
certain dogged mystery in his face.
'That was the art of it,' said the reluctant Grinder; 'that's the way
nobody saw 'em go, or has been able to say how they did go. They went
different ways, I tell you Misses Brown.
'Ay, ay, ay! To meet at an appointed place,' chuckled the old woman,
after a moment's silent and keen scrutiny of his face.
'Why, if they weren't a going to meet somewhere, I suppose they might
as well have stayed at home, mightn't they, Brown?' returned the unwilling
Grinder.
'Well, Rob? Well?' said the old woman, drawing his arm yet tighter
through her own, as if, in her eagerness, she were afraid of his slipping
away.
'What, haven't we talked enough yet, Misses Brown?' returned the
Grinder, who, between his sense of injury, his sense of liquor, and his
sense of being on the rack, had become so lachrymose, that at almost every
answer he scooped his coats into one or other of his eyes, and uttered an
unavailing whine of remonstrance. 'Did she laugh that night, was it? Didn't
you ask if she laughed, Misses Brown?'
'Or cried?' added the old woman, nodding assent.
'Neither,' said the Grinder. 'She kept as steady when she and me - oh,
I see you will have it out of me, Misses Brown! But take your solemn oath
now, that you'll never tell anybody.'
This Mrs Brown very readily did: being naturally Jesuitical; and having
no other intention in the matter than that her concealed visitor should hear
for himself.
'She kept as steady, then, when she and me went down to Southampton,'
said the Grinder, 'as a image. In the morning she was just the same, Misses
Brown. And when she went away in the packet before daylight, by herself - me
pretending to be her servant, and seeing her safe aboard - she was just the
same. Now, are you contented, Misses Brown?'
'No, Rob. Not yet,' answered Mrs Brown, decisively.
'Oh, here's a woman for you!' cried the unfortunate Rob, in an outburst
of feeble lamentation over his own helplessness.
'What did you wish to know next, Misses Brown?'
'What became of Master? Where did he go?' she inquired, still holding
hIm tight, and looking close into his face, with her sharp eyes.
'Upon my soul, I don't know, Misses Brown,' answered Rob.
'Upon my soul I don't know what he did, nor where he went, nor anything
about him I only know what he said to me as a caution to hold my tongue,
when we parted; and I tell you this, Misses Brown, as a friend, that sooner
than ever repeat a word of what we're saying now, you had better take and
shoot yourself, or shut yourself up in this house, and set it a-fire, for
there's nothing he wouldn't do, to be revenged upon you. You don't know him
half as well as I do, Misses Brown. You're never safe from him, I tell you.'
'Haven't I taken an oath,' retorted the old woman, 'and won't I keep
it?'
'Well, I'm sure I hope you will, Misses Brown,' returned Rob, somewhat
doubtfully, and not without a latent threatening in his manner. 'For your
own sake, quite as much as mine'
He looked at her as he gave her this friendly caution, and emphasized
it with a nodding of his head; but finding it uncomfortable to encounter the
yellow face with its grotesque action, and the ferret eyes with their keen
old wintry gaze, so close to his own, he looked down uneasily and sat
skulking in his chair, as if he were trying to bring hImself to a sullen
declaration that he would answer no more questions. The old woman, still
holding him as before, took this opportunity of raising the forefinger of
her right hand, in the air, as a stealthy signal to the concealed observer
to give particular attention to what was about to follow.
'Rob,' she said, in her most coaxing tone.
'Good gracious, Misses Brown, what's the matter now?' returned the
exasperated Grinder.
'Rob! where did the lady and Master appoint to meet?'
Rob shuffled more and more, and looked up and looked down, and bit his
thumb, and dried it on his waistcoat, and finally said, eyeing his tormentor
askance, 'How should I know, Misses Brown?'
The old woman held up her finger again, as before, and replying, 'Come,
lad! It's no use leading me to that, and there leaving me. I want to know'
waited for his answer. Rob, after a discomfited pause, suddenly broke out
with, 'How can I pronounce the names of foreign places, Mrs Brown? What an
unreasonable woman you are!'
'But you have heard it said, Robby,' she retorted firmly, 'and you know
what it sounded like. Come!'
'I never heard it said, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder.
'Then,' retorted the old woman quickly, 'you have seen it written, and
you can spell it.'
Rob, with a petulant exclamation between laughing and crying - for he
was penetrated with some admiration of Mrs Brown's cunning, even through
this persecution - after some reluctant fumbling in his waistcoat pocket,
produced from it a little piece of chalk. The old woman's eyes sparkled when
she saw it between his thumb and finger, and hastily clearing a space on the
deal table, that he might write the word there, she once more made her
signal with a shaking hand.
'Now I tell you beforehand what it is, Misses Brown,' said Rob, 'it's
no use asking me anything else. I won't answer anything else; I can't. How
long it was to be before they met, or whose plan it was that they was to go
away alone, I don't know no more than you do. I don't know any more about
it. If I was to tell you how I found out this word, you'd believe that.
Shall I tell you, Misses Brown?'
'Yes, Rob.'
'Well then, Misses Brown. The way - now you won't ask any more, you
know?' said Rob, turning his eyes, which were now fast getting drowsy and
stupid, upon her.
'Not another word,' said Mrs Brown.
'Well then, the way was this. When a certain person left the lady with
me, he put a piece of paper with a direction written on it in the lady's
hand, saying it was in case she should forget. She wasn't afraid of
forgetting, for she tore it up as soon as his back was turned, and when I
put up the carriage steps, I shook out one of the pieces - she sprinkled the
rest out of the window, I suppose, for there was none there afterwards,
though I looked for 'em. There was only one word on it, and that was this,
if you must and will know. But remember! You're upon your oath, Misses
Brown!'
Mrs Brown knew that, she said. Rob, having nothing more to say, began
to chalk, slowly and laboriously, on the table.
'"D,"' the old woman read aloud, when he had formed the letter.
'Will you hold your tongue, Misses Brown?' he exclaimed, covering it
with his hand, and turning impatiently upon her. 'I won't have it read out.
Be quiet, will you!'
'Then write large, Rob,' she returned, repeating her secret signal;
'for my eyes are not good, even at print.'
Muttering to himself, and returning to his work with an ill will, Rob
went on with the word. As he bent his head down, the person for whose
information he so unconsciously laboured, moved from the door behind him to
within a short stride of his shoulder, and looked eagerly towards the
creeping track of his hand upon the table. At the same time, Alice, from her
opposite chair, watched it narrowly as it shaped the letters, and repeated
each one on her lips as he made it, without articulating it aloud. At the
end of every letter her eyes and Mr Dombey's met, as if each of them sought
to be confirmed by the other; and thus they both spelt D.I.J.O.N.
'There!' said the Grinder, moistening the palm of his hand hastily, to
obliterate the word; and not content with smearing it out, rubbing and
planing all trace of it away with his coat-sleeve, until the very colour of
the chalk was gone from the table. 'Now, I hope you're contented, Misses
Brown!'
The old woman, in token of her being so, released his arm and patted
his back; and the Grinder, overcome with mortification, cross-examination,
and liquor, folded his arms on the table, laid his head upon them, and fell
asleep.
Not until he had been heavily asleep some time, and was snoring
roundly, did the old woman turn towards the door where Mr Dombey stood
concealed, and beckon him to come through the room, and pass out. Even then,
she hovered over Rob, ready to blind him with her hands, or strike his head
down, if he should raise it while the secret step was crossing to the door.
But though her glance took sharp cognizance of the sleeper, it was sharp too
for the waking man; and when he touched her hand with his, and in spite of
all his caution, made a chinking, golden sound, it was as bright and greedy
as a raven's.
The daughter's dark gaze followed him to the door, and noted well how
pale he was, and how his hurried tread indicated that the least delay was an
insupportable restraint upon him, and how he was burning to be active and
away. As he closed the door behind him, she looked round at her mother. The
old woman trotted to her; opened her hand to show what was within; and,
tightly closing it again in her jealousy and avarice, whispered:
'What will he do, Ally?'
'Mischief,' said the daughter.
'Murder?' asked the old woman.
'He's a madman, in his wounded pride, and may do that, for anything we
can say, or he either.'
Her glance was brighter than her mother's, and the fire that shone in
it was fiercer; but her face was colourless, even to her lips
They said no more, but sat apart; the mother communing with her money;
the daughter with her thoughts; the glance of each, shining in the gloom of
the feebly lighted room. Rob slept and snored. The disregarded parrot only
was in action. It twisted and pulled at the wires of its cage, with its
crooked beak, and crawled up to the dome, and along its roof like a fly, and
down again head foremost, and shook, and bit, and rattled at every slender
bar, as if it knew its master's danger, and was wild to force a passage out,
and fly away to warn him of it.
More Intelligence
There were two of the traitor's own blood - his renounced brother and
sister - on whom the weight of his guilt rested almost more heavily, at this
time, than on the man whom he had so deeply injured. Prying and tormenting
as the world was, it did Mr Dombey the service of nerving him to pursuit and
revenge. It roused his passion, stung his pride, twisted the one idea of his
life into a new shape, and made some gratification of his wrath, the object
into which his whole intellectual existence resolved itself. All the
stubbornness and implacability of his nature, all its hard impenetrable
quality, all its gloom and moroseness, all its exaggerated sense of personal
importance, all its jealous disposition to resent the least flaw in the
ample recognition of his importance by others, set this way like many
streams united into one, and bore him on upon their tide. The most
impetuously passionate and violently impulsive of mankind would have been a
milder enemy to encounter than the sullen Mr Dombey wrought to this. A wild
beast would have been easier turned or soothed than the grave gentleman
without a wrinkle in his starched cravat.
But the very intensity of his purpose became almost a substitute for
action in it. While he was yet uninformed of the traitor's retreat, it
served to divert his mind from his own calamity, and to entertain it with
another prospect. The brother and sister of his false favourite had no such
relief; everything in their history, past and present, gave his delinquency
a more afflicting meaning to them.
The sister may have sometimes sadly thought that if she had remained
with him, the companion and friend she had been once, he might have escaped
the crime into which he had fallen. If she ever thought so, it was still
without regret for what she had done, without the least doubt of her duty,
without any pricing or enhancing of her self-devotion. But when this
possibility presented itself to the erring and repentant brother, as it
sometimes did, it smote upon his heart with such a keen, reproachful touch
as he could hardly bear. No idea of retort upon his cruel brother came into
his mind. New accusation of himself, fresh inward lamentings over his own
unworthiness, and the ruin in which it was at once his consolation and his
self-reproach that he did not stand alone, were the sole kind of reflections
to which the discovery gave rise in him.
It was on the very same day whose evening set upon the last chapter,
and when Mr Dombey's world was busiest with the elopement of his wife, that
the window of the room in which the brother and sister sat at their early
breakfast, was darkened by the unexpected shadow of a man coming to the
little porch: which man was Perch the Messenger.
'I've stepped over from Balls Pond at a early hour,' said Mr Perch,
confidentially looking in at the room door, and stopping on the mat to wipe
his shoes all round, which had no mud upon them, 'agreeable to my
instructions last night. They was, to be sure and bring a note to you, Mr
Carker, before you went out in the morning. I should have been here a good
hour and a half ago,' said Mr Perch, meekly, 'but fOr the state of health of
Mrs P., who I thought I should have lost in the night, I do assure you, five
distinct times.'
'Is your wife so ill?' asked Harriet.
'Why, you see,' said Mr Perch, first turning round to shut the door
carefully, 'she takes what has happened in our House so much to heart, Miss.
Her nerves is so very delicate, you see, and soon unstrung. Not but what the
strongest nerves had good need to be shook, I'm sure. You feel it very much
yourself, no doubts.
Harriet repressed a sigh, and glanced at her brother.
'I'm sure I feel it myself, in my humble way,' Mr Perch went on to say,
with a shake of his head, 'in a manner I couldn't have believed if I hadn't
been called upon to undergo. It has almost the effect of drink upon me. I
literally feels every morning as if I had been taking more than was good for
me over-night.'
Mr Perch's appearance corroborated this recital of his symptoms. There
was an air of feverish lassitude about it, that seemed referable to drams;
and, which, in fact, might no doubt have been traced to those numerous
discoveries of himself in the bars of public-houses, being treated and
questioned, which he was in the daily habit of making.
'Therefore I can judge,' said Mr Perch, shaking his head and speaking
in a silvery murmur, 'of the feelings of such as is at all peculiarly
sitiwated in this most painful rewelation.'
Here Mr Perch waited to be confided in; and receiving no confidence,
coughed behind his hand. This leading to nothing, he coughed behind his hat;
and that leading to nothing, he put his hat on the ground and sought in his
breast pocket for the letter.
'If I rightly recollect, there was no answer,' said Mr Perch, with an
affable smile; 'but perhaps you'll be so good as cast your eye over it,
Sir.'
John Carker broke the seal, which was Mr Dombey's, and possessing
himself of the contents, which were very brief, replied,
'No. No answer is expected.'
'Then I shall wish you good morning, Miss,' said Perch, taking a step
toward the door, and hoping, I'm sure, that you'll not permit yourself to be
more reduced in mind than you can help, by the late painful rewelation. The
Papers,' said Mr Perch, taking two steps back again, and comprehensively
addressing both the brother and sister in a whisper of increased mystery,
'is more eager for news of it than you'd suppose possible. One of the Sunday
ones, in a blue cloak and a white hat, that had previously offered for to
bribe me - need I say with what success? - was dodging about our court last
night as late as twenty minutes after eight o'clock. I see him myself, with
his eye at the counting-house keyhole, which being patent is impervious.
Another one,' said Mr Perch, 'with military frogs, is in the parlour of the
King's Arms all the blessed day. I happened, last week, to let a little
obserwation fall there, and next morning, which was Sunday, I see it worked
up in print, in a most surprising manner.'
Mr Perch resorted to his breast pocket, as if to produce the paragraph
but receiving no encouragement, pulled out his beaver gloves, picked up his
hat, and took his leave; and before it was high noon, Mr Perch had related
to several select audiences at the King's Arms and elsewhere, how Miss
Carker, bursting into tears, had caught him by both hands, and said, 'Oh!
dear dear Perch, the sight of you is all the comfort I have left!' and how
Mr John Carker had said, in an awful voice, 'Perch, I disown him. Never let
me hear hIm mentioned as a brother more!'
'Dear John,' said Harriet, when they were left alone, and had remained
silent for some few moments. 'There are bad tidings in that letter.'
'Yes. But nothing unexpected,' he replied. 'I saw the writer
yesterday.'
'The writer?'
'Mr Dombey. He passed twice through the Counting House while I was
there. I had been able to avoid him before, but of course could not hope to
do that long. I know how natural it was that he should regard my presence as
something offensive; I felt it must be so, myself.'
'He did not say so?'
'No; he said nothing: but I saw that his glance rested on me for a
moment, and I was prepared for what would happen - for what has happened. I
am dismissed!'
She looked as little shocked and as hopeful as she could, but it was
distressing news, for many reasons.
'"I need not tell you"' said John Carker, reading the letter, '"why
your name would henceforth have an unnatural sound, in however remote a
connexion with mine, or why the daily sight of anyone who bears it, would be
unendurable to me. I have to notify the cessation of all engagements between
us, from this date, and to request that no renewal of any communication with
me, or my establishment, be ever attempted by you." - Enclosed is an
equivalent in money to a generously long notice, and this is my discharge."
Heaven knows, Harriet, it is a lenient and considerate one, when we remember
all!'
'If it be lenient and considerate to punish you at all, John, for the
misdeed of another,' she replied gently, 'yes.'
'We have been an ill-omened race to him,' said John Carker. 'He has
reason to shrink from the sound of our name, and to think that there is
something cursed and wicked in our blood. I should almost think it too,
Harriet, but for you.'
'Brother, don't speak like this. If you have any special reason, as you
say you have, and think you have - though I say, No!- to love me, spare me
the hearing of such wild mad words!'
He covered his face with both his hands; but soon permitted her, coming
near him, to take one in her own.
'After so many years, this parting is a melancholy thing, I know,' said
his sister, 'and the cause of it is dreadful to us both. We have to live,
too, and must look about us for the means. Well, well! We can do so,
undismayed. It is our pride, not our trouble, to strive, John, and to strive
together!'
A smile played on her lips, as she kissed his cheek, and entreated him
to be of of good cheer.
'Oh, dearest sister! Tied, of your own noble will, to a ruined man!
whose reputation is blighted; who has no friend himself, and has driven
every friend of yours away!'
'John!' she laid her hand hastily upon his lips, 'for my sake! In
remembrance of our long companionship!' He was silent 'Now, let me tell you,
dear,' quietly sitting by his side, 'I have, as you have, expected this; and
when I have been thinking of it, and fearing that it would happen, and
preparing myself for it, as well as I could, I have resolved to tell you, if
it should be so, that I have kept a secret from you, and that we have a
friend.'
'What's our friend's name, Harriet?' he answered with a sorrowful
smile.
'Indeed, I don't know, but he once made a very earnest protestation to
me of his friendship and his wish to serve us: and to this day I believe
'him.'
'Harriet!' exclaimed her wondering brother, 'where does this friend
live?'
'Neither do I know that,' she returned. 'But he knows us both, and our
history - all our little history, John. That is the reason why, at his own
suggestion, I have kept the secret of his coming, here, from you, lest his
acquaintance with it should distress you.
'Here! Has he been here, Harriet?'
'Here, in this room. Once.'
'What kind of man?'
'Not young. "Grey-headed," as he said, "and fast growing greyer." But
generous, and frank, and good, I am sure.'
'And only seen once, Harriet?'
'In this room only once,' said his sister, with the slightest and most
transient glow upon her cheek; 'but when here, he entreated me to suffer him
to see me once a week as he passed by, in token of our being well, and
continuing to need nothing at his hands. For I told him, when he proffered
us any service he could render - which was the object of his visit - that we
needed nothing.'
'And once a week - '
'Once every week since then, and always on the same day, and at the
same hour, he his gone past; always on foot; always going in the same
direction - towards London; and never pausing longer than to bow to me, and
wave his hand cheerfully, as a kind guardian might. He made that promise
when he proposed these curious interviews, and has kept it so faithfully and
pleasantly, that if I ever felt any trifling uneasiness about them in the
beginning (which I don't think I did, John; his manner was so plain and
true) It very soon vanished, and left me quite glad when the day was coming.
Last Monday - the first since this terrible event - he did not go by; and I
have wondered whether his absence can have been in any way connected with
what has happened.'
'How?' inquired her brother.
'I don't know how. I have only speculated on the coincidence; I have
not tried to account for it. I feel sure he will return. When he does, dear
John, let me tell him that I have at last spoken to you, and let me bring
you together. He will certainly help us to a new livelihood. His entreaty
was that he might do something to smooth my life and yours; and I gave him
my promise that if we ever wanted a friend, I would remember him.'
'Then his name was to be no secret, 'Harriet,' said her brother, who
had listened with close attention, 'describe this gentleman to me. I surely
ought to know one who knows me so well.'
His sister painted, as vividly as she could, the features, stature, and
dress of her visitor; but John Carker, either from having no knowledge of
the original, or from some fault in her description, or from some
abstraction of his thoughts as he walked to and fro, pondering, could not
recognise the portrait she presented to him.
However, it was agreed between them that he should see the original
when he next appeared. This concluded, the sister applied herself, with a
less anxious breast, to her domestic occupations; and the grey-haired man,
late Junior of Dombey's, devoted the first day of his unwonted liberty to
working in the garden.
It was quite late at night, and the brother was reading aloud while the
sister plied her needle, when they were interrupted by a knocking at the
door. In the atmosphere of vague anxiety and dread that lowered about them
in connexion with their fugitive brother, this sound, unusual there, became
almost alarming. The brother going to the door, the sister sat and listened
timidly. Someone spoke to him, and he replied and seemed surprised; and
after a few words, the two approached together.
'Harriet,' said her brother, lighting in their late visitor, and
speaking in a low voice, 'Mr Morfin - the gentleman so long in Dombey's
House with James.'
His sister started back, as if a ghost had entered. In the doorway
stood the unknown friend, with the dark hair sprinkled with grey, the ruddy
face, the broad clear brow, and hazel eyes, whose secret she had kept so
long!
'John!' she said, half-breathless. 'It is the gentleman I told you of,
today!'
'The gentleman, Miss Harriet,' said the visitor, coming in - for he had
stopped a moment in the doorway - 'is greatly relieved to hear you say that:
he has been devising ways and means, all the way here, of explaining
himself, and has been satisfied with none. Mr John, I am not quite a
stranger here. You were stricken with astonishment when you saw me at your
door just now. I observe you are more astonished at present. Well! That's
reasonable enough under existing circumstances. If we were not such
creatures of habit as we are, we shouldn't have reason to be astonished half
so often.'
By this time, he had greeted Harriet with that able mingling of
cordiality and respect which she recollected so well, and had sat down near
her, pulled off his gloves, and thrown them into his hat upon the table.
'There's nothing astonishing,' he said, 'in my having conceived a
desire to see your sister, Mr John, or in my having gratified it in my own
way. As to the regularity of my visits since (which she may have mentioned
to you), there is nothing extraordinary in that. They soon grew into a
habit; and we are creatures of habit - creatures of habit!'
Putting his hands into his pockets, and leaning back in his chair, he
looked at the brother and sister as if it were interesting to him to see
them together; and went on to say, with a kind of irritable thoughtfulness:
'It's this same habit that confirms some of us, who are capable of
better things, in Lucifer's own pride and stubbornness - that confirms and
deepens others of us in villainy - more of us in indifference - that hardens
us from day to day, according to the temper of our clay, like images, and
leaves us as susceptible as images to new impressions and convictions. You
shall judge of its influence on me, John. For more years than I need name, I
had my small, and exactly defined share, in the management of Dombey's
House, and saw your brother (who has proved himself a scoundrel! Your sister
will forgive my being obliged to mention it) extending and extending his
influence, until the business and its owner were his football; and saw you
toiling at your obscure desk every day; and was quite content to be as
little troubled as I might be, out of my own strip of duty, and to let
everything about me go on, day by day, unquestioned, like a great machine -
that was its habit and mine - and to take it all for granted, and consider
it all right. My Wednesday nights came regularly round, our quartette
parties came regularly off, my violoncello was in good tune, and there was
nothing wrong in my world - or if anything not much - or little or much, it
was no affair of mine.'
'I can answer for your being more respected and beloved during all that
time than anybody in the House, Sir,' said John Carker.
'Pooh! Good-natured and easy enough, I daresay,'returned the other, 'a
habit I had. It suited the Manager; it suited the man he managed: it suited
me best of all. I did what was allotted to me to do, made no court to either
of them, and was glad to occupy a station in which none was required. So I
should have gone on till now, but that my room had a thin wall. You can tell
your sister that it was divided from the Manager's room by a wainscot
partition.'
'They were adjoining rooms; had been one, Perhaps, originally; and were
separated, as Mr Morfin says,' said her brother, looking back to him for the
resumption of his explanation.
'I have whistled, hummed tunes, gone accurately through the whole of
Beethoven's Sonata in B,' to let him know that I was within hearing,' said
Mr Morfin; 'but he never heeded me. It happened seldom enough that I was
within hearing of anything of a private nature, certainly. But when I was,
and couldn't otherwise avoid knowing something of it, I walked out. I walked
out once, John, during a conversation between two brothers, to which, in the
beginning, young Walter Gay was a party. But I overheard some of it before I
left the room. You remember it sufficiently, perhaps, to tell your sister
what its nature was?'
'It referred, Harriet,' said her brother in a low voice, 'to the past,
and to our relative positions in the House.'
'Its matter was not new to me, but was presented in a new aspect. It
shook me in my habit - the habit of nine-tenths of the world - of believing
that all was right about me, because I was used to it,' said their visitor;
'and induced me to recall the history of the two brothers, and to ponder on
it. I think it was almost the first time in my life when I fell into this
train of reflection - how will many things that are familiar, and quite
matters of course to us now, look, when we come to see them from that new
and distant point of view which we must all take up, one day or other? I was
something less good-natured, as the phrase goes, after that morning, less
easy and complacent altogether.'
He sat for a minute or so, drumming with one hand on the table; and
resumed in a hurry, as if he were anxious to get rid of his confession.
'Before I knew what to do, or whether I could do anything, there was a
second conversation between the same two brothers, in which their sister was
mentioned. I had no scruples of conscience in suffering all the waifs and
strays of that conversation to float to me as freely as they would. I
considered them mine by right. After that, I came here to see the sister for
myself. The first time I stopped at the garden gate, I made a pretext of
inquiring into the character of a poor neighbour; but I wandered out of that
tract, and I think Miss Harriet mistrusted me. The second time I asked leave
to come in; came in; and said what I wished to say. Your sister showed me
reasons which I dared not dispute, for receiving no assistance from me then;
but I established a means of communication between us, which remained
unbroken until within these few days, when I was prevented, by important
matters that have lately devolved upon me, from maintaining them'
'How little I have suspected this,' said John Carker, 'when I have seen
you every day, Sir! If Harriet could have guessed your name - '
'Why, to tell you the truth, John,' interposed the visitor, 'I kept it
to myself for two reasons. I don't know that the first might have been
binding alone; but one has no business to take credit for good intentions,
and I made up my mind, at all events, not to disclose myself until I should
be able to do you some real service or other. My second reason was, that I
always hoped there might be some lingering possibility of your brother's
relenting towards you both; and in that case, I felt that where there was
the chance of a man of his suspicious, watchful character, discovering that
you had been secretly befriended by me, there was the chance of a new and
fatal cause of division. I resolved, to be sure, at the risk of turning his
displeasure against myself - which would have been no matter - to watch my
opportunity of serving you with the head of the House; but the distractions
of death, courtship, marriage, and domestic unhappiness, have left us no
head but your brother for this long, long time. And it would have been
better for us,' said the visitor, dropping his voice, 'to have been a
lifeless trunk.'
He seemed conscious that these latter words had escaped hIm against his
will, and stretching out a hand to the brother, and a hand to the sister,
continued: 'All I could desire to say, and more, I have now said. All I mean
goes beyond words, as I hope you understand and believe. The time has come,
John - though most unfortunately and unhappily come - when I may help you
without interfering with that redeeming struggle, which has lasted through
so many years; since you were discharged from it today by no act of your
own. It is late; I need say no more to-night. You will guard the treasure
you have here, without advice or reminder from me.'
With these words he rose to go.
'But go you first, John,' he said goodhumouredly, 'with a light,
without saying what you want to say, whatever that maybe;' John Carker's
heart was full, and he would have relieved it in speech,' if he could; 'and
let me have a word with your sister. We have talked alone before, and in
this room too; though it looks more natural with you here.'
Following him out with his eyes, he turned kindly to Harriet, and said
in a lower voice, and with an altered and graver manner:
'You wish to ask me something of the man whose sister it is your
misfortune to be.'
'I dread to ask,' said Harriet.
'You have looked so earnestly at me more than once,' rejoined the
visitor, 'that I think I can divine your question. Has he taken money? Is it
that?'
'Yes.'
'He has not.'
'I thank Heaven!' said Harriet. 'For the sake of John.'
'That he has abused his trust in many ways,' said Mr Morfin; 'that he
has oftener dealt and speculated to advantage for himself, than for the
House he represented; that he has led the House on, to prodigious ventures,
often resulting in enormous losses; that he has always pampered the vanity
and ambition of his employer, when it was his duty to have held them in
check, and shown, as it was in his power to do, to what they tended here or
there; will not, perhaps, surprise you now. Undertakings have been entered
on, to swell the reputation of the House for vast resources, and to exhibit
it in magnificent contrast to other merchants' Houses, of which it requires
a steady head to contemplate the possibly - a few disastrous changes of
affairs might render them the probably - ruinous consequences. In the midst
of the many transactions of the House, in most parts of the world: a great
labyrinth of which only he has held the clue: he has had the opportunity,
and he seems to have used it, of keeping the various results afloat, when
ascertained, and substituting estimates and generalities for facts. But
latterly - you follow me, Miss Harriet?'
'Perfectly, perfectly,' she answered, with her frightened face fixed on
his. 'Pray tell me all the worst at once.
'Latterly, he appears to have devoted the greatest pains to making
these results so plain and clear, that reference to the private books
enables one to grasp them, numerous and varying as they are, with
extraordinary ease. As if he had resolved to show his employer at one broad
view what has been brought upon him by ministration to his ruling passion!
That it has been his constant practice to minister to that passion basely,
and to flatter it corruptly, is indubitable. In that, his criminality, as it
is connected with the affairs of the House, chiefly consists.'
'One other word before you leave me, dear Sir,' said Harriet. 'There is
no danger in all this?'
'How danger?' he returned, with a little hesitation.
'To the credit of the House?'
'I cannot help answering you plainly, and trusting you completely,'
said Mr Morfin, after a moment's survey of her face.
'You may. Indeed you may!'
'I am sure I may. Danger to the House's credit? No; none There may be
difficulty, greater or less difficulty, but no danger, unless - unless,
indeed - the head of the House, unable to bring his mind to the reduction of
its enterprises, and positively refusing to believe that it is, or can be,
in any position but the position in which he has always represented it to
himself, should urge it beyond its strength. Then it would totter.'
'But there is no apprehension of that?' said Harriet.
'There shall be no half-confidence,' he replied, shaking her hand,
'between us. Mr Dombey is unapproachable by anyone, and his state of mind is
haughty, rash, unreasonable, and ungovernable, now. But he is disturbed and
agitated now beyond all common bounds, and it may pass. You now know all,
both worst and best. No more to-night, and good-night!'
With that he kissed her hand, and, passing out to the door where her
brother stood awaiting his coming, put him cheerfully aside when he essayed
to speak; told him that, as they would see each other soon and often, he
might speak at another time, if he would, but there was no leisure for it
then; and went away at a round pace, in order that no word of gratitude
might follow him.
The brother and sister sat conversing by the fireside, until it was
almost day; made sleepless by this glimpse of the new world that opened
before them, and feeling like two people shipwrecked long ago, upon a
solitary coast, to whom a ship had come at last, when they were old in
resignation, and had lost all thought of any other home. But another and
different kind of disquietude kept them waking too. The darkness out of
which this light had broken on them gathered around; and the shadow of their
guilty brother was in the house where his foot had never trod.
Nor was it to be driven out, nor did it fade before the sun. Next
morning it was there; at noon; at night Darkest and most distinct at night,
as is now to be told.
John Carker had gone out, in pursuance of a letter of appointment from
their friend, and Harriet was left in the house alone. She had been alone
some hours. A dull, grave evening, and a deepening twilight, were not
favourable to the removal of the oppression on her spirits. The idea of this
brother, long unseen and unknown, flitted about her in frightful shapes He
was dead, dying, calling to her, staring at her, frowning on her. The
pictures in her mind were so obtrusive and exact that, as the twilight
deepened, she dreaded to raise her head and look at the dark corners of the
her energies for another swoop upon him. At this crisis Alice interposed her
voice, but not in the Grinder's favour, by saying,
'Well done, mother. Tear him to pieces!'
'What, young woman!' blubbered Rob; 'are you against me too? What have
I been and done? What am I to be tore to pieces for, I should like to know?
Why do you take and choke a cove who has never done you any harm, neither of
you? Call yourselves females, too!' said the frightened and afflicted
Grinder, with his coat-cuff at his eye. 'I'm surprised at you! Where's your
feminine tenderness?'
'You thankless dog!' gasped Mrs Brown. 'You impudent insulting dog!'
'What have I been and done to go and give you offence, Misses Brown?'
retorted the fearful Rob. 'You was very much attached to me a minute ago.'
'To cut me off with his short answers and his sulky words,' said the
old woman. 'Me! Because I happen to be curious to have a little bit of
gossip about Master and the lady, to dare to play at fast and loose with me!
But I'll talk to you no more, my lad. Now go!'
'I'm sure, Misses Brown,' returned the abject Grinder, 'I never
Insiniwated that I wished to go. Don't talk like that, Misses Brown, if you
please.'
'I won't talk at all,' said Mrs Brown, with an action of her crooked
fingers that made him shrink into half his natural compass in the corner.
'Not another word with him shall pass my lips. He's an ungrateful hound. I
cast him off. Now let him go! And I'll slip those after him that shall talk
too much; that won't be shook away; that'll hang to him like leeches, and
slink arter him like foxes. What! He knows 'em. He knows his old games and
his old ways. If he's forgotten 'em, they'll soon remind him. Now let him
go, and see how he'll do Master's business, and keep Master's secrets, with
such company always following him up and down. Ha, ha, ha! He'll find 'em a
different sort from you and me, Ally; Close as he is with you and me. Now
let him go, now let him go!'
The old woman, to the unspeakable dismay of the Grinder, walked her
twisted figure round and round, in a ring of some four feet in diameter,
constantly repeating these words, and shaking her fist above her head, and
working her mouth about.
'Misses Brown,' pleaded Rob, coming a little out of his corner, 'I'm
sure you wouldn't injure a cove, on second thoughts, and in cold blood,
would you?'
'Don't talk to me,' said Mrs Brown, still wrathfully pursuing her
circle. 'Now let him go, now let him go!'
'Misses Brown,' urged the tormented Grinder, 'I didn't mean to - Oh,
what a thing it is for a cove to get into such a line as this! - I was only
careful of talking, Misses Brown, because I always am, on account of his
being up to everything; but I might have known it wouldn't have gone any
further. I'm sure I'm quite agreeable,' with a wretched face, 'for any
little bit of gossip, Misses Brown. Don't go on like this, if you please.
Oh, couldn't you have the goodness to put in a word for a miserable cove,
here?' said the Grinder, appealing in desperation to the daughter.
'Come, mother, you hear what he says,' she interposed, in her stern
voice, and with an impatient action of her head; 'try him once more, and if
you fall out with him again, ruin him, if you like, and have done with him.'
Mrs Brown, moved as it seemed by this very tender exhortation,
presently began to howl; and softening by degrees, took the apologetic
Grinder to her arms, who embraced her with a face of unutterable woe, and
like a victim as he was, resumed his former seat, close by the side of his
venerable friend, whom he suffered, not without much constrained sweetness
of countenance, combating very expressive physiognomical revelations of an
opposite character to draw his arm through hers, and keep it there.
'And how's Master, deary dear?' said Mrs Brown, when, sitting in this
amicable posture, they had pledged each other.
'Hush! If you'd be so good, Misses Brown, as to speak a little lower,'
Rob implored. 'Why, he's pretty well, thank'ee, I suppose.'
'You're not out of place, Robby?' said Mrs Brown, in a wheedling tone.
'Why, I'm not exactly out of place, nor in,' faltered Rob. 'I - I'm
still in pay, Misses Brown.'
'And nothing to do, Rob?'
'Nothing particular to do just now, Misses Brown, but to - keep my eyes
open, said the Grinder, rolling them in a forlorn way.
'Master abroad, Rob?'
'Oh, for goodness' sake, Misses Brown, couldn't you gossip with a cove
about anything else?' cried the Grinder, in a burst of despair.
The impetuous Mrs Brown rising directly, the tortured Grinder detained
her, stammering 'Ye-es, Misses Brown, I believe he's abroad. What's she
staring at?' he added, in allusion to the daughter, whose eyes were fixed
upon the face that now again looked out behind
'Don't mind her, lad,' said the old woman, holding him closer to
prevent his turning round. 'It's her way - her way. Tell me, Rob. Did you
ever see the lady, deary?'
'Oh, Misses Brown, what lady?' cried the Grinder in a tone of piteous
supplication.
'What lady?' she retorted. 'The lady; Mrs Dombey.'
'Yes, I believe I see her once,' replied Rob.
'The night she went away, Robby, eh?' said the old woman in his ear,
and taking note of every change in his face. 'Aha! I know it was that
night.'
'Well, if you know it was that night, you know, Misses Brown,' replied
Rob, 'it's no use putting pinchers into a cove to make him say so.
'Where did they go that night, Rob? Straight away? How did they go?
Where did you see her? Did she laugh? Did she cry? Tell me all about it,'
cried the old hag, holding him closer yet, patting the hand that was drawn
through his arm against her other hand, and searching every line in his face
with her bleared eyes. 'Come! Begin! I want to be told all about it. What,
Rob, boy! You and me can keep a secret together, eh? We've done so before
now. Where did they go first, Rob?'
The wretched Grinder made a gasp, and a pause.
'Are you dumb?' said the old woman, angrily.
'Lord, Misses Brown, no! You expect a cove to be a flash of lightning.
I wish I was the electric fluency,' muttered the bewildered Grinder. 'I'd
have a shock at somebody, that would settle their business.'
'What do you say?' asked the old woman, with a grin.
'I'm wishing my love to you, Misses Brown,' returned the false Rob,
seeking consolation in the glass. 'Where did they go to first was it? Him
and her, do you mean?'
'Ah!' said the old woman, eagerly. 'Them two.'
'Why, they didn't go nowhere - not together, I mean,' answered Rob.
The old woman looked at him, as though she had a strong impulse upon
her to make another clutch at his head and throat, but was restrained by a
certain dogged mystery in his face.
'That was the art of it,' said the reluctant Grinder; 'that's the way
nobody saw 'em go, or has been able to say how they did go. They went
different ways, I tell you Misses Brown.
'Ay, ay, ay! To meet at an appointed place,' chuckled the old woman,
after a moment's silent and keen scrutiny of his face.
'Why, if they weren't a going to meet somewhere, I suppose they might
as well have stayed at home, mightn't they, Brown?' returned the unwilling
Grinder.
'Well, Rob? Well?' said the old woman, drawing his arm yet tighter
through her own, as if, in her eagerness, she were afraid of his slipping
away.
'What, haven't we talked enough yet, Misses Brown?' returned the
Grinder, who, between his sense of injury, his sense of liquor, and his
sense of being on the rack, had become so lachrymose, that at almost every
answer he scooped his coats into one or other of his eyes, and uttered an
unavailing whine of remonstrance. 'Did she laugh that night, was it? Didn't
you ask if she laughed, Misses Brown?'
'Or cried?' added the old woman, nodding assent.
'Neither,' said the Grinder. 'She kept as steady when she and me - oh,
I see you will have it out of me, Misses Brown! But take your solemn oath
now, that you'll never tell anybody.'
This Mrs Brown very readily did: being naturally Jesuitical; and having
no other intention in the matter than that her concealed visitor should hear
for himself.
'She kept as steady, then, when she and me went down to Southampton,'
said the Grinder, 'as a image. In the morning she was just the same, Misses
Brown. And when she went away in the packet before daylight, by herself - me
pretending to be her servant, and seeing her safe aboard - she was just the
same. Now, are you contented, Misses Brown?'
'No, Rob. Not yet,' answered Mrs Brown, decisively.
'Oh, here's a woman for you!' cried the unfortunate Rob, in an outburst
of feeble lamentation over his own helplessness.
'What did you wish to know next, Misses Brown?'
'What became of Master? Where did he go?' she inquired, still holding
hIm tight, and looking close into his face, with her sharp eyes.
'Upon my soul, I don't know, Misses Brown,' answered Rob.
'Upon my soul I don't know what he did, nor where he went, nor anything
about him I only know what he said to me as a caution to hold my tongue,
when we parted; and I tell you this, Misses Brown, as a friend, that sooner
than ever repeat a word of what we're saying now, you had better take and
shoot yourself, or shut yourself up in this house, and set it a-fire, for
there's nothing he wouldn't do, to be revenged upon you. You don't know him
half as well as I do, Misses Brown. You're never safe from him, I tell you.'
'Haven't I taken an oath,' retorted the old woman, 'and won't I keep
it?'
'Well, I'm sure I hope you will, Misses Brown,' returned Rob, somewhat
doubtfully, and not without a latent threatening in his manner. 'For your
own sake, quite as much as mine'
He looked at her as he gave her this friendly caution, and emphasized
it with a nodding of his head; but finding it uncomfortable to encounter the
yellow face with its grotesque action, and the ferret eyes with their keen
old wintry gaze, so close to his own, he looked down uneasily and sat
skulking in his chair, as if he were trying to bring hImself to a sullen
declaration that he would answer no more questions. The old woman, still
holding him as before, took this opportunity of raising the forefinger of
her right hand, in the air, as a stealthy signal to the concealed observer
to give particular attention to what was about to follow.
'Rob,' she said, in her most coaxing tone.
'Good gracious, Misses Brown, what's the matter now?' returned the
exasperated Grinder.
'Rob! where did the lady and Master appoint to meet?'
Rob shuffled more and more, and looked up and looked down, and bit his
thumb, and dried it on his waistcoat, and finally said, eyeing his tormentor
askance, 'How should I know, Misses Brown?'
The old woman held up her finger again, as before, and replying, 'Come,
lad! It's no use leading me to that, and there leaving me. I want to know'
waited for his answer. Rob, after a discomfited pause, suddenly broke out
with, 'How can I pronounce the names of foreign places, Mrs Brown? What an
unreasonable woman you are!'
'But you have heard it said, Robby,' she retorted firmly, 'and you know
what it sounded like. Come!'
'I never heard it said, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder.
'Then,' retorted the old woman quickly, 'you have seen it written, and
you can spell it.'
Rob, with a petulant exclamation between laughing and crying - for he
was penetrated with some admiration of Mrs Brown's cunning, even through
this persecution - after some reluctant fumbling in his waistcoat pocket,
produced from it a little piece of chalk. The old woman's eyes sparkled when
she saw it between his thumb and finger, and hastily clearing a space on the
deal table, that he might write the word there, she once more made her
signal with a shaking hand.
'Now I tell you beforehand what it is, Misses Brown,' said Rob, 'it's
no use asking me anything else. I won't answer anything else; I can't. How
long it was to be before they met, or whose plan it was that they was to go
away alone, I don't know no more than you do. I don't know any more about
it. If I was to tell you how I found out this word, you'd believe that.
Shall I tell you, Misses Brown?'
'Yes, Rob.'
'Well then, Misses Brown. The way - now you won't ask any more, you
know?' said Rob, turning his eyes, which were now fast getting drowsy and
stupid, upon her.
'Not another word,' said Mrs Brown.
'Well then, the way was this. When a certain person left the lady with
me, he put a piece of paper with a direction written on it in the lady's
hand, saying it was in case she should forget. She wasn't afraid of
forgetting, for she tore it up as soon as his back was turned, and when I
put up the carriage steps, I shook out one of the pieces - she sprinkled the
rest out of the window, I suppose, for there was none there afterwards,
though I looked for 'em. There was only one word on it, and that was this,
if you must and will know. But remember! You're upon your oath, Misses
Brown!'
Mrs Brown knew that, she said. Rob, having nothing more to say, began
to chalk, slowly and laboriously, on the table.
'"D,"' the old woman read aloud, when he had formed the letter.
'Will you hold your tongue, Misses Brown?' he exclaimed, covering it
with his hand, and turning impatiently upon her. 'I won't have it read out.
Be quiet, will you!'
'Then write large, Rob,' she returned, repeating her secret signal;
'for my eyes are not good, even at print.'
Muttering to himself, and returning to his work with an ill will, Rob
went on with the word. As he bent his head down, the person for whose
information he so unconsciously laboured, moved from the door behind him to
within a short stride of his shoulder, and looked eagerly towards the
creeping track of his hand upon the table. At the same time, Alice, from her
opposite chair, watched it narrowly as it shaped the letters, and repeated
each one on her lips as he made it, without articulating it aloud. At the
end of every letter her eyes and Mr Dombey's met, as if each of them sought
to be confirmed by the other; and thus they both spelt D.I.J.O.N.
'There!' said the Grinder, moistening the palm of his hand hastily, to
obliterate the word; and not content with smearing it out, rubbing and
planing all trace of it away with his coat-sleeve, until the very colour of
the chalk was gone from the table. 'Now, I hope you're contented, Misses
Brown!'
The old woman, in token of her being so, released his arm and patted
his back; and the Grinder, overcome with mortification, cross-examination,
and liquor, folded his arms on the table, laid his head upon them, and fell
asleep.
Not until he had been heavily asleep some time, and was snoring
roundly, did the old woman turn towards the door where Mr Dombey stood
concealed, and beckon him to come through the room, and pass out. Even then,
she hovered over Rob, ready to blind him with her hands, or strike his head
down, if he should raise it while the secret step was crossing to the door.
But though her glance took sharp cognizance of the sleeper, it was sharp too
for the waking man; and when he touched her hand with his, and in spite of
all his caution, made a chinking, golden sound, it was as bright and greedy
as a raven's.
The daughter's dark gaze followed him to the door, and noted well how
pale he was, and how his hurried tread indicated that the least delay was an
insupportable restraint upon him, and how he was burning to be active and
away. As he closed the door behind him, she looked round at her mother. The
old woman trotted to her; opened her hand to show what was within; and,
tightly closing it again in her jealousy and avarice, whispered:
'What will he do, Ally?'
'Mischief,' said the daughter.
'Murder?' asked the old woman.
'He's a madman, in his wounded pride, and may do that, for anything we
can say, or he either.'
Her glance was brighter than her mother's, and the fire that shone in
it was fiercer; but her face was colourless, even to her lips
They said no more, but sat apart; the mother communing with her money;
the daughter with her thoughts; the glance of each, shining in the gloom of
the feebly lighted room. Rob slept and snored. The disregarded parrot only
was in action. It twisted and pulled at the wires of its cage, with its
crooked beak, and crawled up to the dome, and along its roof like a fly, and
down again head foremost, and shook, and bit, and rattled at every slender
bar, as if it knew its master's danger, and was wild to force a passage out,
and fly away to warn him of it.
More Intelligence
There were two of the traitor's own blood - his renounced brother and
sister - on whom the weight of his guilt rested almost more heavily, at this
time, than on the man whom he had so deeply injured. Prying and tormenting
as the world was, it did Mr Dombey the service of nerving him to pursuit and
revenge. It roused his passion, stung his pride, twisted the one idea of his
life into a new shape, and made some gratification of his wrath, the object
into which his whole intellectual existence resolved itself. All the
stubbornness and implacability of his nature, all its hard impenetrable
quality, all its gloom and moroseness, all its exaggerated sense of personal
importance, all its jealous disposition to resent the least flaw in the
ample recognition of his importance by others, set this way like many
streams united into one, and bore him on upon their tide. The most
impetuously passionate and violently impulsive of mankind would have been a
milder enemy to encounter than the sullen Mr Dombey wrought to this. A wild
beast would have been easier turned or soothed than the grave gentleman
without a wrinkle in his starched cravat.
But the very intensity of his purpose became almost a substitute for
action in it. While he was yet uninformed of the traitor's retreat, it
served to divert his mind from his own calamity, and to entertain it with
another prospect. The brother and sister of his false favourite had no such
relief; everything in their history, past and present, gave his delinquency
a more afflicting meaning to them.
The sister may have sometimes sadly thought that if she had remained
with him, the companion and friend she had been once, he might have escaped
the crime into which he had fallen. If she ever thought so, it was still
without regret for what she had done, without the least doubt of her duty,
without any pricing or enhancing of her self-devotion. But when this
possibility presented itself to the erring and repentant brother, as it
sometimes did, it smote upon his heart with such a keen, reproachful touch
as he could hardly bear. No idea of retort upon his cruel brother came into
his mind. New accusation of himself, fresh inward lamentings over his own
unworthiness, and the ruin in which it was at once his consolation and his
self-reproach that he did not stand alone, were the sole kind of reflections
to which the discovery gave rise in him.
It was on the very same day whose evening set upon the last chapter,
and when Mr Dombey's world was busiest with the elopement of his wife, that
the window of the room in which the brother and sister sat at their early
breakfast, was darkened by the unexpected shadow of a man coming to the
little porch: which man was Perch the Messenger.
'I've stepped over from Balls Pond at a early hour,' said Mr Perch,
confidentially looking in at the room door, and stopping on the mat to wipe
his shoes all round, which had no mud upon them, 'agreeable to my
instructions last night. They was, to be sure and bring a note to you, Mr
Carker, before you went out in the morning. I should have been here a good
hour and a half ago,' said Mr Perch, meekly, 'but fOr the state of health of
Mrs P., who I thought I should have lost in the night, I do assure you, five
distinct times.'
'Is your wife so ill?' asked Harriet.
'Why, you see,' said Mr Perch, first turning round to shut the door
carefully, 'she takes what has happened in our House so much to heart, Miss.
Her nerves is so very delicate, you see, and soon unstrung. Not but what the
strongest nerves had good need to be shook, I'm sure. You feel it very much
yourself, no doubts.
Harriet repressed a sigh, and glanced at her brother.
'I'm sure I feel it myself, in my humble way,' Mr Perch went on to say,
with a shake of his head, 'in a manner I couldn't have believed if I hadn't
been called upon to undergo. It has almost the effect of drink upon me. I
literally feels every morning as if I had been taking more than was good for
me over-night.'
Mr Perch's appearance corroborated this recital of his symptoms. There
was an air of feverish lassitude about it, that seemed referable to drams;
and, which, in fact, might no doubt have been traced to those numerous
discoveries of himself in the bars of public-houses, being treated and
questioned, which he was in the daily habit of making.
'Therefore I can judge,' said Mr Perch, shaking his head and speaking
in a silvery murmur, 'of the feelings of such as is at all peculiarly
sitiwated in this most painful rewelation.'
Here Mr Perch waited to be confided in; and receiving no confidence,
coughed behind his hand. This leading to nothing, he coughed behind his hat;
and that leading to nothing, he put his hat on the ground and sought in his
breast pocket for the letter.
'If I rightly recollect, there was no answer,' said Mr Perch, with an
affable smile; 'but perhaps you'll be so good as cast your eye over it,
Sir.'
John Carker broke the seal, which was Mr Dombey's, and possessing
himself of the contents, which were very brief, replied,
'No. No answer is expected.'
'Then I shall wish you good morning, Miss,' said Perch, taking a step
toward the door, and hoping, I'm sure, that you'll not permit yourself to be
more reduced in mind than you can help, by the late painful rewelation. The
Papers,' said Mr Perch, taking two steps back again, and comprehensively
addressing both the brother and sister in a whisper of increased mystery,
'is more eager for news of it than you'd suppose possible. One of the Sunday
ones, in a blue cloak and a white hat, that had previously offered for to
bribe me - need I say with what success? - was dodging about our court last
night as late as twenty minutes after eight o'clock. I see him myself, with
his eye at the counting-house keyhole, which being patent is impervious.
Another one,' said Mr Perch, 'with military frogs, is in the parlour of the
King's Arms all the blessed day. I happened, last week, to let a little
obserwation fall there, and next morning, which was Sunday, I see it worked
up in print, in a most surprising manner.'
Mr Perch resorted to his breast pocket, as if to produce the paragraph
but receiving no encouragement, pulled out his beaver gloves, picked up his
hat, and took his leave; and before it was high noon, Mr Perch had related
to several select audiences at the King's Arms and elsewhere, how Miss
Carker, bursting into tears, had caught him by both hands, and said, 'Oh!
dear dear Perch, the sight of you is all the comfort I have left!' and how
Mr John Carker had said, in an awful voice, 'Perch, I disown him. Never let
me hear hIm mentioned as a brother more!'
'Dear John,' said Harriet, when they were left alone, and had remained
silent for some few moments. 'There are bad tidings in that letter.'
'Yes. But nothing unexpected,' he replied. 'I saw the writer
yesterday.'
'The writer?'
'Mr Dombey. He passed twice through the Counting House while I was
there. I had been able to avoid him before, but of course could not hope to
do that long. I know how natural it was that he should regard my presence as
something offensive; I felt it must be so, myself.'
'He did not say so?'
'No; he said nothing: but I saw that his glance rested on me for a
moment, and I was prepared for what would happen - for what has happened. I
am dismissed!'
She looked as little shocked and as hopeful as she could, but it was
distressing news, for many reasons.
'"I need not tell you"' said John Carker, reading the letter, '"why
your name would henceforth have an unnatural sound, in however remote a
connexion with mine, or why the daily sight of anyone who bears it, would be
unendurable to me. I have to notify the cessation of all engagements between
us, from this date, and to request that no renewal of any communication with
me, or my establishment, be ever attempted by you." - Enclosed is an
equivalent in money to a generously long notice, and this is my discharge."
Heaven knows, Harriet, it is a lenient and considerate one, when we remember
all!'
'If it be lenient and considerate to punish you at all, John, for the
misdeed of another,' she replied gently, 'yes.'
'We have been an ill-omened race to him,' said John Carker. 'He has
reason to shrink from the sound of our name, and to think that there is
something cursed and wicked in our blood. I should almost think it too,
Harriet, but for you.'
'Brother, don't speak like this. If you have any special reason, as you
say you have, and think you have - though I say, No!- to love me, spare me
the hearing of such wild mad words!'
He covered his face with both his hands; but soon permitted her, coming
near him, to take one in her own.
'After so many years, this parting is a melancholy thing, I know,' said
his sister, 'and the cause of it is dreadful to us both. We have to live,
too, and must look about us for the means. Well, well! We can do so,
undismayed. It is our pride, not our trouble, to strive, John, and to strive
together!'
A smile played on her lips, as she kissed his cheek, and entreated him
to be of of good cheer.
'Oh, dearest sister! Tied, of your own noble will, to a ruined man!
whose reputation is blighted; who has no friend himself, and has driven
every friend of yours away!'
'John!' she laid her hand hastily upon his lips, 'for my sake! In
remembrance of our long companionship!' He was silent 'Now, let me tell you,
dear,' quietly sitting by his side, 'I have, as you have, expected this; and
when I have been thinking of it, and fearing that it would happen, and
preparing myself for it, as well as I could, I have resolved to tell you, if
it should be so, that I have kept a secret from you, and that we have a
friend.'
'What's our friend's name, Harriet?' he answered with a sorrowful
smile.
'Indeed, I don't know, but he once made a very earnest protestation to
me of his friendship and his wish to serve us: and to this day I believe
'him.'
'Harriet!' exclaimed her wondering brother, 'where does this friend
live?'
'Neither do I know that,' she returned. 'But he knows us both, and our
history - all our little history, John. That is the reason why, at his own
suggestion, I have kept the secret of his coming, here, from you, lest his
acquaintance with it should distress you.
'Here! Has he been here, Harriet?'
'Here, in this room. Once.'
'What kind of man?'
'Not young. "Grey-headed," as he said, "and fast growing greyer." But
generous, and frank, and good, I am sure.'
'And only seen once, Harriet?'
'In this room only once,' said his sister, with the slightest and most
transient glow upon her cheek; 'but when here, he entreated me to suffer him
to see me once a week as he passed by, in token of our being well, and
continuing to need nothing at his hands. For I told him, when he proffered
us any service he could render - which was the object of his visit - that we
needed nothing.'
'And once a week - '
'Once every week since then, and always on the same day, and at the
same hour, he his gone past; always on foot; always going in the same
direction - towards London; and never pausing longer than to bow to me, and
wave his hand cheerfully, as a kind guardian might. He made that promise
when he proposed these curious interviews, and has kept it so faithfully and
pleasantly, that if I ever felt any trifling uneasiness about them in the
beginning (which I don't think I did, John; his manner was so plain and
true) It very soon vanished, and left me quite glad when the day was coming.
Last Monday - the first since this terrible event - he did not go by; and I
have wondered whether his absence can have been in any way connected with
what has happened.'
'How?' inquired her brother.
'I don't know how. I have only speculated on the coincidence; I have
not tried to account for it. I feel sure he will return. When he does, dear
John, let me tell him that I have at last spoken to you, and let me bring
you together. He will certainly help us to a new livelihood. His entreaty
was that he might do something to smooth my life and yours; and I gave him
my promise that if we ever wanted a friend, I would remember him.'
'Then his name was to be no secret, 'Harriet,' said her brother, who
had listened with close attention, 'describe this gentleman to me. I surely
ought to know one who knows me so well.'
His sister painted, as vividly as she could, the features, stature, and
dress of her visitor; but John Carker, either from having no knowledge of
the original, or from some fault in her description, or from some
abstraction of his thoughts as he walked to and fro, pondering, could not
recognise the portrait she presented to him.
However, it was agreed between them that he should see the original
when he next appeared. This concluded, the sister applied herself, with a
less anxious breast, to her domestic occupations; and the grey-haired man,
late Junior of Dombey's, devoted the first day of his unwonted liberty to
working in the garden.
It was quite late at night, and the brother was reading aloud while the
sister plied her needle, when they were interrupted by a knocking at the
door. In the atmosphere of vague anxiety and dread that lowered about them
in connexion with their fugitive brother, this sound, unusual there, became
almost alarming. The brother going to the door, the sister sat and listened
timidly. Someone spoke to him, and he replied and seemed surprised; and
after a few words, the two approached together.
'Harriet,' said her brother, lighting in their late visitor, and
speaking in a low voice, 'Mr Morfin - the gentleman so long in Dombey's
House with James.'
His sister started back, as if a ghost had entered. In the doorway
stood the unknown friend, with the dark hair sprinkled with grey, the ruddy
face, the broad clear brow, and hazel eyes, whose secret she had kept so
long!
'John!' she said, half-breathless. 'It is the gentleman I told you of,
today!'
'The gentleman, Miss Harriet,' said the visitor, coming in - for he had
stopped a moment in the doorway - 'is greatly relieved to hear you say that:
he has been devising ways and means, all the way here, of explaining
himself, and has been satisfied with none. Mr John, I am not quite a
stranger here. You were stricken with astonishment when you saw me at your
door just now. I observe you are more astonished at present. Well! That's
reasonable enough under existing circumstances. If we were not such
creatures of habit as we are, we shouldn't have reason to be astonished half
so often.'
By this time, he had greeted Harriet with that able mingling of
cordiality and respect which she recollected so well, and had sat down near
her, pulled off his gloves, and thrown them into his hat upon the table.
'There's nothing astonishing,' he said, 'in my having conceived a
desire to see your sister, Mr John, or in my having gratified it in my own
way. As to the regularity of my visits since (which she may have mentioned
to you), there is nothing extraordinary in that. They soon grew into a
habit; and we are creatures of habit - creatures of habit!'
Putting his hands into his pockets, and leaning back in his chair, he
looked at the brother and sister as if it were interesting to him to see
them together; and went on to say, with a kind of irritable thoughtfulness:
'It's this same habit that confirms some of us, who are capable of
better things, in Lucifer's own pride and stubbornness - that confirms and
deepens others of us in villainy - more of us in indifference - that hardens
us from day to day, according to the temper of our clay, like images, and
leaves us as susceptible as images to new impressions and convictions. You
shall judge of its influence on me, John. For more years than I need name, I
had my small, and exactly defined share, in the management of Dombey's
House, and saw your brother (who has proved himself a scoundrel! Your sister
will forgive my being obliged to mention it) extending and extending his
influence, until the business and its owner were his football; and saw you
toiling at your obscure desk every day; and was quite content to be as
little troubled as I might be, out of my own strip of duty, and to let
everything about me go on, day by day, unquestioned, like a great machine -
that was its habit and mine - and to take it all for granted, and consider
it all right. My Wednesday nights came regularly round, our quartette
parties came regularly off, my violoncello was in good tune, and there was
nothing wrong in my world - or if anything not much - or little or much, it
was no affair of mine.'
'I can answer for your being more respected and beloved during all that
time than anybody in the House, Sir,' said John Carker.
'Pooh! Good-natured and easy enough, I daresay,'returned the other, 'a
habit I had. It suited the Manager; it suited the man he managed: it suited
me best of all. I did what was allotted to me to do, made no court to either
of them, and was glad to occupy a station in which none was required. So I
should have gone on till now, but that my room had a thin wall. You can tell
your sister that it was divided from the Manager's room by a wainscot
partition.'
'They were adjoining rooms; had been one, Perhaps, originally; and were
separated, as Mr Morfin says,' said her brother, looking back to him for the
resumption of his explanation.
'I have whistled, hummed tunes, gone accurately through the whole of
Beethoven's Sonata in B,' to let him know that I was within hearing,' said
Mr Morfin; 'but he never heeded me. It happened seldom enough that I was
within hearing of anything of a private nature, certainly. But when I was,
and couldn't otherwise avoid knowing something of it, I walked out. I walked
out once, John, during a conversation between two brothers, to which, in the
beginning, young Walter Gay was a party. But I overheard some of it before I
left the room. You remember it sufficiently, perhaps, to tell your sister
what its nature was?'
'It referred, Harriet,' said her brother in a low voice, 'to the past,
and to our relative positions in the House.'
'Its matter was not new to me, but was presented in a new aspect. It
shook me in my habit - the habit of nine-tenths of the world - of believing
that all was right about me, because I was used to it,' said their visitor;
'and induced me to recall the history of the two brothers, and to ponder on
it. I think it was almost the first time in my life when I fell into this
train of reflection - how will many things that are familiar, and quite
matters of course to us now, look, when we come to see them from that new
and distant point of view which we must all take up, one day or other? I was
something less good-natured, as the phrase goes, after that morning, less
easy and complacent altogether.'
He sat for a minute or so, drumming with one hand on the table; and
resumed in a hurry, as if he were anxious to get rid of his confession.
'Before I knew what to do, or whether I could do anything, there was a
second conversation between the same two brothers, in which their sister was
mentioned. I had no scruples of conscience in suffering all the waifs and
strays of that conversation to float to me as freely as they would. I
considered them mine by right. After that, I came here to see the sister for
myself. The first time I stopped at the garden gate, I made a pretext of
inquiring into the character of a poor neighbour; but I wandered out of that
tract, and I think Miss Harriet mistrusted me. The second time I asked leave
to come in; came in; and said what I wished to say. Your sister showed me
reasons which I dared not dispute, for receiving no assistance from me then;
but I established a means of communication between us, which remained
unbroken until within these few days, when I was prevented, by important
matters that have lately devolved upon me, from maintaining them'
'How little I have suspected this,' said John Carker, 'when I have seen
you every day, Sir! If Harriet could have guessed your name - '
'Why, to tell you the truth, John,' interposed the visitor, 'I kept it
to myself for two reasons. I don't know that the first might have been
binding alone; but one has no business to take credit for good intentions,
and I made up my mind, at all events, not to disclose myself until I should
be able to do you some real service or other. My second reason was, that I
always hoped there might be some lingering possibility of your brother's
relenting towards you both; and in that case, I felt that where there was
the chance of a man of his suspicious, watchful character, discovering that
you had been secretly befriended by me, there was the chance of a new and
fatal cause of division. I resolved, to be sure, at the risk of turning his
displeasure against myself - which would have been no matter - to watch my
opportunity of serving you with the head of the House; but the distractions
of death, courtship, marriage, and domestic unhappiness, have left us no
head but your brother for this long, long time. And it would have been
better for us,' said the visitor, dropping his voice, 'to have been a
lifeless trunk.'
He seemed conscious that these latter words had escaped hIm against his
will, and stretching out a hand to the brother, and a hand to the sister,
continued: 'All I could desire to say, and more, I have now said. All I mean
goes beyond words, as I hope you understand and believe. The time has come,
John - though most unfortunately and unhappily come - when I may help you
without interfering with that redeeming struggle, which has lasted through
so many years; since you were discharged from it today by no act of your
own. It is late; I need say no more to-night. You will guard the treasure
you have here, without advice or reminder from me.'
With these words he rose to go.
'But go you first, John,' he said goodhumouredly, 'with a light,
without saying what you want to say, whatever that maybe;' John Carker's
heart was full, and he would have relieved it in speech,' if he could; 'and
let me have a word with your sister. We have talked alone before, and in
this room too; though it looks more natural with you here.'
Following him out with his eyes, he turned kindly to Harriet, and said
in a lower voice, and with an altered and graver manner:
'You wish to ask me something of the man whose sister it is your
misfortune to be.'
'I dread to ask,' said Harriet.
'You have looked so earnestly at me more than once,' rejoined the
visitor, 'that I think I can divine your question. Has he taken money? Is it
that?'
'Yes.'
'He has not.'
'I thank Heaven!' said Harriet. 'For the sake of John.'
'That he has abused his trust in many ways,' said Mr Morfin; 'that he
has oftener dealt and speculated to advantage for himself, than for the
House he represented; that he has led the House on, to prodigious ventures,
often resulting in enormous losses; that he has always pampered the vanity
and ambition of his employer, when it was his duty to have held them in
check, and shown, as it was in his power to do, to what they tended here or
there; will not, perhaps, surprise you now. Undertakings have been entered
on, to swell the reputation of the House for vast resources, and to exhibit
it in magnificent contrast to other merchants' Houses, of which it requires
a steady head to contemplate the possibly - a few disastrous changes of
affairs might render them the probably - ruinous consequences. In the midst
of the many transactions of the House, in most parts of the world: a great
labyrinth of which only he has held the clue: he has had the opportunity,
and he seems to have used it, of keeping the various results afloat, when
ascertained, and substituting estimates and generalities for facts. But
latterly - you follow me, Miss Harriet?'
'Perfectly, perfectly,' she answered, with her frightened face fixed on
his. 'Pray tell me all the worst at once.
'Latterly, he appears to have devoted the greatest pains to making
these results so plain and clear, that reference to the private books
enables one to grasp them, numerous and varying as they are, with
extraordinary ease. As if he had resolved to show his employer at one broad
view what has been brought upon him by ministration to his ruling passion!
That it has been his constant practice to minister to that passion basely,
and to flatter it corruptly, is indubitable. In that, his criminality, as it
is connected with the affairs of the House, chiefly consists.'
'One other word before you leave me, dear Sir,' said Harriet. 'There is
no danger in all this?'
'How danger?' he returned, with a little hesitation.
'To the credit of the House?'
'I cannot help answering you plainly, and trusting you completely,'
said Mr Morfin, after a moment's survey of her face.
'You may. Indeed you may!'
'I am sure I may. Danger to the House's credit? No; none There may be
difficulty, greater or less difficulty, but no danger, unless - unless,
indeed - the head of the House, unable to bring his mind to the reduction of
its enterprises, and positively refusing to believe that it is, or can be,
in any position but the position in which he has always represented it to
himself, should urge it beyond its strength. Then it would totter.'
'But there is no apprehension of that?' said Harriet.
'There shall be no half-confidence,' he replied, shaking her hand,
'between us. Mr Dombey is unapproachable by anyone, and his state of mind is
haughty, rash, unreasonable, and ungovernable, now. But he is disturbed and
agitated now beyond all common bounds, and it may pass. You now know all,
both worst and best. No more to-night, and good-night!'
With that he kissed her hand, and, passing out to the door where her
brother stood awaiting his coming, put him cheerfully aside when he essayed
to speak; told him that, as they would see each other soon and often, he
might speak at another time, if he would, but there was no leisure for it
then; and went away at a round pace, in order that no word of gratitude
might follow him.
The brother and sister sat conversing by the fireside, until it was
almost day; made sleepless by this glimpse of the new world that opened
before them, and feeling like two people shipwrecked long ago, upon a
solitary coast, to whom a ship had come at last, when they were old in
resignation, and had lost all thought of any other home. But another and
different kind of disquietude kept them waking too. The darkness out of
which this light had broken on them gathered around; and the shadow of their
guilty brother was in the house where his foot had never trod.
Nor was it to be driven out, nor did it fade before the sun. Next
morning it was there; at noon; at night Darkest and most distinct at night,
as is now to be told.
John Carker had gone out, in pursuance of a letter of appointment from
their friend, and Harriet was left in the house alone. She had been alone
some hours. A dull, grave evening, and a deepening twilight, were not
favourable to the removal of the oppression on her spirits. The idea of this
brother, long unseen and unknown, flitted about her in frightful shapes He
was dead, dying, calling to her, staring at her, frowning on her. The
pictures in her mind were so obtrusive and exact that, as the twilight
deepened, she dreaded to raise her head and look at the dark corners of the