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'Robin, you can leave us,' said his master, at whose mild tones Robin
started and disappeared, with his eyes fixed on his patron to the last. 'You
don't remember that boy, of course?' he added, when the enmeshed Grinder was
gone.
'No,' said Mr Dombey, with magnificent indifference.
'Not likely that a man like you would. Hardly possible,' murmured
Carker. 'But he is one of that family from whom you took a nurse. Perhaps
you may remember having generously charged yourself with his education?'
'Is it that boy?' said Mr Dombey, with a frown. 'He does little credit
to his education, I believe.'
'Why, he is a young rip, I am afraid,' returned Carker, with a shrug.
'He bears that character. But the truth is, I took him into my service
because, being able to get no other employment, he conceived (had been
taught at home, I daresay) that he had some sort of claim upon you, and was
constantly trying to dog your heels with his petition. And although my
defined and recognised connexion with your affairs is merely of a business
character, still I have that spontaneous interest in everything belonging to
you, that - '
He stopped again, as if to discover whether he had led Mr Dombey far
enough yet. And again, with his chin resting on his hand, he leered at the
picture.
'Carker,' said Mr Dombey, 'I am sensible that you do not limit your - '
'Service,' suggested his smiling entertainer.
'No; I prefer to say your regard,' observed Mr Dombey; very sensible,
as he said so, that he was paying him a handsome and flattering compliment,
'to our mere business relations. Your consideration for my feelings, hopes,
and disappointments, in the little instance you have just now mentioned, is
an example in point. I I am obliged to you, Carker.'
Mr Carker bent his head slowly, and very softly rubbed his hands, as if
he were afraid by any action to disturb the current of Mr Dombey's
confidence.
'Your allusion to it is opportune,' said Mr Dombey, after a little
hesitation; 'for it prepares the way to what I was beginning to say to you,
and reminds me that that involves no absolutely new relations between us,
although it may involve more personal confidence on my part than I have
hitherto - '
'Distinguished me with,' suggested Carker, bending his head again: 'I
will not say to you how honoured I am; for a man like you well knows how
much honour he has in his power to bestow at pleasure.'
'Mrs Dombey and myself,' said Mr Dombey, passing this compliment with
august self-denial, 'are not quite agreed upon some points. We do not appear
to understand each other yet' Mrs Dombey has something to learn.'
'Mrs Dombey is distinguished by many rare attractions; and has been
accustomed, no doubt, to receive much adulation,' said the smooth, sleek
watcher of his slightest look and tone. 'But where there is affection, duty,
and respect, any little mistakes engendered by such causes are soon set
right.'
Mr Dombey's thoughts instinctively flew back to the face that had
looked at him in his wife's dressing-room when an imperious hand was
stretched towards the door; and remembering the affection, duty, and
respect, expressed in it, he felt the blood rush to his own face quite as
plainly as the watchful eyes upon him saw it there.
'Mrs Dombey and myself,' he went on to say, 'had some discussion,
before Mrs Skewton's death, upon the causes of my dissatisfaction; of which
you will have formed a general understanding from having been a witness of
what passed between Mrs Dombey and myself on the evening when you were at
our - at my house.'
'When I so much regretted being present,' said the smiling Carker.
'Proud as a man in my position nay must be of your familiar notice - though
I give you no credit for it; you may do anything you please without losing
caste - and honoured as I was by an early presentation to Mrs Dombey, before
she was made eminent by bearing your name, I almost regretted that night, I
assure you, that I had been the object of such especial good fortune'
That any man could, under any possible circumstances, regret the being
distinguished by his condescension and patronage, was a moral phenomenon
which Mr Dombey could not comprehend. He therefore responded, with a
considerable accession of dignity. 'Indeed! And why, Carker?'
'I fear,' returned the confidential agent, 'that Mrs Dombey, never very
much disposed to regard me with favourable interest - one in my position
could not expect that, from a lady naturally proud, and whose pride becomes
her so well - may not easily forgive my innocent part in that conversation.
Your displeasure is no light matter, you must remember; and to be visited
with it before a third party -
'Carker,' said Mr Dombey, arrogantly; 'I presume that I am the first
consideration?'
'Oh! Can there be a doubt about it?' replied the other, with the
impatience of a man admitting a notorious and incontrovertible fact'
'Mrs Dombey becomes a secondary consideration, when we are both in
question, I imagine,' said Mr Dombey. 'Is that so?'
'Is it so?' returned Carker. 'Do you know better than anyone, that you
have no need to ask?'
'Then I hope, Carker,' said Mr Dombey, 'that your regret in the
acquisition of Mrs Dombey's displeasure, may be almost counterbalanced by
your satisfaction in retaining my confidence and good opinion.'
'I have the misfortune, I find,' returned Carker, 'to have incurred
that displeasure. Mrs Dombey has expressed it to you?'
'Mrs Dombey has expressed various opinions,' said Mr Dombey, with
majestic coldness and indifference, 'in which I do not participate, and
which I am not inclined to discuss, or to recall. I made Mr's Dombey
acquainted, some time since, as I have already told you, with certain points
of domestic deference and submission on which I felt it necessary to insist.
I failed to convince Mrs Dombey of the expediency of her immediately
altering her conduct in those respects, with a view to her own peace and
welfare, and my dignity; and I informed Mrs Dombey that if I should find it
necessary to object or remonstrate again, I should express my opinion to her
through yourself, my confidential agent.'
Blended with the look that Carker bent upon him, was a devilish look at
the picture over his head, that struck upon it like a flash of lightning.
'Now, Carker,' said Mr Dombey, 'I do not hesitate to say to you that I
will carry my point. I am not to be trifled with. Mrs Dombey must understand
that my will is law, and that I cannot allow of one exception to the whole
rule of my life. You will have the goodness to undertake this charge, which,
coming from me, is not unacceptable to you, I hope, whatever regret you may
politely profess - for which I am obliged to you on behalf of Mrs Dombey;
and you will have the goodness, I am persuaded, to discharge it as exactly
as any other commission.'
'You know,' said Mr Carker, 'that you have only to command me.
'I know,' said Mr Dombey, with a majestic indication of assent, 'that I
have only to command you. It is necessary that I should proceed in this. Mrs
Dombey is a lady undoubtedly highly qualified, in many respects, to -
'To do credit even to your choice,' suggested Carker, with a yawning
show of teeth.
'Yes; if you please to adopt that form of words,' said Mr Dombey, in
his tone of state; 'and at present I do not conceive that Mrs Dombey does
that credit to it, to which it is entitled. There is a principle of
opposition in Mrs Dombey that must be eradicated; that must be overcome: Mrs
Dombey does not appear to understand,' said Mr Dombey, forcibly, 'that the
idea of opposition to Me is monstrous and absurd.'
'We, in the City, know you better,' replied Carker, with a smile from
ear to ear.
'You know me better,' said Mr Dombey. 'I hope so. Though, indeed, I am
bound to do Mrs Dombey the justice of saying, however inconsistent it may
seem with her subsequent conduct (which remains unchanged), that on my
expressing my disapprobation and determination to her, with some severity,
on the occasion to which I have referred, my admonition appeared to produce
a very powerful effect.' Mr Dombey delivered himself of those words with
most portentous stateliness. 'I wish you to have the goodness, then, to
inform Mrs Dombey, Carker, from me, that I must recall our former
conversation to her remembrance, in some surprise that it has not yet had
its effect. That I must insist upon her regulating her conduct by the
injunctions laid upon her in that conversation. That I am not satisfied with
her conduct. That I am greatly dissatisfied with it. And that I shall be
under the very disagreeable necessity of making you the bearer of yet more
unwelcome and explicit communications, if she has not the good sense and the
proper feeling to adapt herself to my wishes, as the first Mrs Dombey did,
and, I believe I may add, as any other lady in her place would.'
'The first Mrs Dombey lived very happily,' said Carker.
'The first Mrs Dombey had great good sense,' said Mr Dombey, in a
gentlemanly toleration of the dead, 'and very correct feeling.'
'Is Miss Dombey like her mother, do you think?' said Carker.
Swiftly and darkly, Mr Dombey's face changed. His confidential agent
eyed it keenly.
'I have approached a painful subject,' he said, in a soft regretful
tone of voice, irreconcilable with his eager eye. 'Pray forgive me. I forget
these chains of association in the interest I have. Pray forgive me.'
But for all he said, his eager eye scanned Mr Dombey's downcast face
none the less closely; and then it shot a strange triumphant look at the
picture, as appealing to it to bear witness how he led him on again, and
what was coming.
Carker,' said Mr Dombey, looking here and there upon the table, and
saying in a somewhat altered and more hurried voice, and with a paler lip,
'there is no occasion for apology. You mistake. The association is with the
matter in hand, and not with any recollection, as you suppose. I do not
approve of Mrs Dombey's behaviour towards my daughter.'
'Pardon me,' said Mr Carker, 'I don't quite understand.'
'Understand then,' returned Mr Dombey, 'that you may make that - that
you will make that, if you please - matter of direct objection from me to
Mrs Dombey. You will please to tell her that her show of devotion for my
daughter is disagreeable to me. It is likely to be noticed. It is likely to
induce people to contrast Mrs Dombey in her relation towards my daughter,
with Mrs Dombey in her relation towards myself. You will have the goodness
to let Mrs Dombey know, plainly, that I object to it; and that I expect her
to defer, immediately, to my objection. Mrs Dombey may be in earnest, or she
may be pursuing a whim, or she may be opposing me; but I object to it in any
case, and in every case. If Mrs Dombey is in earnest, so much the less
reluctant should she be to desist; for she will not serve my daughter by any
such display. If my wife has any superfluous gentleness, and duty over and
above her proper submission to me, she may bestow them where she pleases,
perhaps; but I will have submission first! - Carker,' said Mr Dombey,
checking the unusual emotion with which he had spoken, and falling into a
tone more like that in which he was accustomed to assert his greatness, 'you
will have the goodness not to omit or slur this point, but to consider it a
very important part of your instructions.'
Mr Carker bowed his head, and rising from the table, and standing
thoughtfully before the fire, with his hand to his smooth chin, looked down
at Mr Dombey with the evil slyness of some monkish carving, half human and
half brute; or like a leering face on an old water-spout. Mr Dombey,
recovering his composure by degrees, or cooling his emotion in his sense of
having taken a high position, sat gradually stiffening again, and looking at
the parrot as she swung to and fro, in her great wedding ring.
'I beg your pardon,' said Carker, after a silence, suddenly resuming
his chair, and drawing it opposite to Mr Dombey's, 'but let me understand.
Mrs Dombey is aware of the probability of your making me the organ of your
displeasure?'
'Yes,' replied Mr Dombey. 'I have said so.'
'Yes,' rejoined Carker, quickly; 'but why?'
'Why!' Mr Dombey repeated, not without hesitation. 'Because I told
her.'
'Ay,' replied Carker. 'But why did you tell her? You see,' he continued
with a smile, and softly laying his velvet hand, as a cat might have laid
its sheathed claws, on Mr Dombey's arm; 'if I perfectly understand what is
in your mind, I am so much more likely to be useful, and to have the
happiness of being effectually employed. I think I do understand. I have not
the honour of Mrs Dombey's good opinion. In my position, I have no reason to
expect it; but I take the fact to be, that I have not got it?'
'Possibly not,' said Mr Dombey.
'Consequently,' pursued Carker, 'your making the communications to Mrs
Dombey through me, is sure to be particularly unpalatable to that lady?'
'It appears to me,' said Mr Dombey, with haughty reserve, and yet with
some embarrassment, 'that Mrs Dombey's views upon the subject form no part
of it as it presents itself to you and me, Carker. But it may be so.'
'And - pardon me - do I misconceive you,' said Carker, 'when I think
you descry in this, a likely means of humbling Mrs Dombey's pride - I use
the word as expressive of a quality which, kept within due bounds, adorns
and graces a lady so distinguished for her beauty and accomplishments - and,
not to say of punishing her, but of reducing her to the submission you so
naturally and justly require?'
'I am not accustomed, Carker, as you know,' said Mr Dombey, 'to give
such close reasons for any course of conduct I think proper to adopt, but I
will gainsay nothing of this. If you have any objection to found upon it,
that is indeed another thing, and the mere statement that you have one will
be sufficient. But I have not supposed, I confess, that any confidence I
could entrust to you, would be likely to degrade you - '
'Oh! I degraded!' exclaimed Carker. 'In your service!'
'or to place you,' pursued Mr Dombey, 'in a false position.'
'I in a false position!' exclaimed Carker. 'I shall be proud -
delighted - to execute your trust. I could have wished, I own, to have given
the lady at whose feet I would lay my humble duty and devotion - for is she
not your wife! - no new cause of dislike; but a wish from you is, of course,
paramount to every other consideration on earth. Besides, when Mrs Dombey is
converted from these little errors of judgment, incidental, I would presume
to say, to the novelty of her situation, I shall hope that she will perceive
in the slight part I take, only a grain - my removed and different sphere
gives room for little more - of the respect for you, and sacrifice of all
considerations to you, of which it will be her pleasure and privilege to
garner up a great store every day.'
Mr Dombey seemed, at the moment, again to see her with her hand
stretched out towards the door, and again to hear through the mild speech of
his confidential agent an echo of the words, 'Nothing can make us stranger
to each other than we are henceforth!' But he shook off the fancy, and did
not shake in his resolution, and said, 'Certainly, no doubt.'
'There is nothing more,' quoth Carker, drawing his chair back to its
old place - for they had taken little breakfast as yet- and pausing for an
answer before he sat down.
'Nothing,' said Mr Dombey, 'but this. You will be good enough to
observe, Carker, that no message to Mrs Dombey with which you are or may be
charged, admits of reply. You will be good enough to bring me no reply. Mrs
Dombey is informed that it does not become me to temporise or treat upon any
matter that is at issue between us, and that what I say is final.'
Mr Carker signIfied his understanding of these credentials, and they
fell to breakfast with what appetite they might. The Grinder also, in due
time reappeared, keeping his eyes upon his master without a moment's
respite, and passing the time in a reverie of worshipful tenor. Breakfast
concluded, Mr Dombey's horse was ordered out again, and Mr Carker mounting
his own, they rode off for the City together.
Mr Carker was in capital spirits, and talked much. Mr Dombey received
his conversation with the sovereign air of a man who had a right to be
talked to, and occasionally condescended to throw in a few words to carry on
the conversation. So they rode on characteristically enough. But Mr Dombey,
in his dignity, rode with very long stirrups, and a very loose rein, and
very rarely deigned to look down to see where his horse went. In consequence
of which it happened that Mr Dombey's horse, while going at a round trot,
stumbled on some loose stones, threw him, rolled over him, and lashing out
with his iron-shod feet, in his struggles to get up, kicked him.
Mr Carker, quick of eye, steady of hand, and a good horseman, was
afoot, and had the struggling animal upon his legs and by the bridle, in a
moment. Otherwise that morning's confidence would have been Mr Dombey's
last. Yet even with the flush and hurry of this action red upon him, he bent
over his prostrate chief with every tooth disclosed, and muttered as he
stooped down, 'I have given good cause of offence to Mrs Dombey now, if she
knew it!'
Mr Dombey being insensible, and bleeding from the head and face, was
carried by certain menders of the road, under Carker's direction, to the
nearest public-house, which was not far off, and where he was soon attended
by divers surgeons, who arrived in quick succession from all parts, and who
seemed to come by some mysterious instinct, as vultures are said to gather
about a camel who dies in the desert. After being at some pains to restore
him to consciousness, these gentlemen examined into the nature of his
injuries.
One surgeon who lived hard by was strong for a compound fracture of the
leg, which was the landlord's opinion also; but two surgeons who lived at a
distance, and were only in that neighbourhood by accident, combated this
opinion so disinterestedly, that it was decided at last that the patient,
though severely cut and bruised, had broken no bones but a lesser rib or so,
and might be carefully taken home before night. His injuries being dressed
and bandaged, which was a long operation, and he at length left to repose,
Mr Carker mounted his horse again, and rode away to carry the intelligence
home.
Crafty and cruel as his face was at the best of times, though it was a
sufficiently fair face as to form and regularity of feature, it was at its
worst when he set forth on this errand; animated by the craft and cruelty of
thoughts within him, suggestions of remote possibility rather than of design
or plot, that made him ride as if he hunted men and women. Drawing rein at
length, and slackening in his speed, as he came into the more public roads,
he checked his white-legged horse into picking his way along as usual, and
hid himself beneath his sleek, hushed, crouched manner, and his ivory smile,
as he best could.
He rode direct to Mr Dombey's house, alighted at the door, and begged
to see Mrs Dombey on an affair of importance. The servant who showed him to
Mr Dombey's own room, soon returned to say that it was not Mrs Dombey's hour
for receiving visitors, and that he begged pardon for not having mentioned
it before.
Mr Carker, who was quite prepared for a cold reception, wrote upon a
card that he must take the liberty of pressing for an interview, and that he
would not be so bold as to do so, for the second time (this he underlined),
if he were not equally sure of the occasion being sufficient for his
justification. After a trifling delay, Mrs Dombey's maid appeared, and
conducted him to a morning room upstairs, where Edith and Florence were
together.
He had never thought Edith half so beautiful before. Much as he admired
the graces of her face and form, and freshly as they dwelt within his
sensual remembrance, he had never thought her half so beautiful.
Her glance fell haughtily upon him in the doorway; but he looked at
Florence - though only in the act of bending his head, as he came in - with
some irrepressible expression of the new power he held; and it was his
triumph to see the glance droop and falter, and to see that Edith half rose
up to receive him.
He was very sorry, he was deeply grieved; he couldn't say with what
unwillingness he came to prepare her for the intelligence of a very slight
accident. He entreated Mrs Dombey to compose herself. Upon his sacred word
of honour, there was no cause of alarm. But Mr Dombey -
Florence uttered a sudden cry. He did not look at her, but at Edith.
Edith composed and reassured her. She uttered no cry of distress. No, no.
Mr Dombey had met with an accident in riding. His horse had slipped,
and he had been thrown.
Florence wildly exclaimed that he was badly hurt; that he was killed!
No. Upon his honour, Mr Dombey, though stunned at first, was soon
recovered, and though certainly hurt was in no kind of danger. If this were
not the truth, he, the distressed intruder, never could have had the courage
to present himself before Mrs Dombey. It was the truth indeed, he solemnly
assured her.
All this he said as if he were answering Edith, and not Florence, and
with his eyes and his smile fastened on Edith.
He then went on to tell her where Mr Dombey was lying, and to request
that a carriage might be placed at his disposal to bring him home.
'Mama,' faltered Florence in tears, 'if I might venture to go!'
Mr Carker, having his eyes on Edith when he heard these words, gave her
a secret look and slightly shook his head. He saw how she battled with
herself before she answered him with her handsome eyes, but he wrested the
answer from her - he showed her that he would have it, or that he would
speak and cut Florence to the heart - and she gave it to him. As he had
looked at the picture in the morning, so he looked at her afterwards, when
she turned her eyes away.
'I am directed to request,' he said, 'that the new housekeeper - Mrs
Pipchin, I think, is the name - '
Nothing escaped him. He saw in an instant, that she was another slight
of Mr Dombey's on his wife.
' - may be informed that Mr Dombey wishes to have his bed prepared in
his own apartments downstairs, as he prefers those rooms to any other. I
shall return to Mr Dombey almost immediately. That every possible attention
has been paid to his comfort, and that he is the object of every possible
solicitude, I need not assure you, Madam. Let me again say, there is no
cause for the least alarm. Even you may be quite at ease, believe me.'
He bowed himself out, with his extremest show of deference and
conciliation; and having returned to Mr Dombey's room, and there arranged
for a carriage being sent after him to the City, mounted his horse again,
and rode slowly thither. He was very thoughtful as he went along, and very
thoughtful there, and very thoughtful in the carriage on his way back to the
place where Mr Dombey had been left. It was only when sitting by that
gentleman's couch that he was quite himself again, and conscious of his
teeth.
About the time of twilight, Mr Dombey, grievously afflicted with aches
and pains, was helped into his carriage, and propped with cloaks and pillows
on one side of it, while his confidential agent bore him company upon the
other. As he was not to be shaken, they moved at little more than a foot
pace; and hence it was quite dark when he was brought home. Mrs Pipchin,
bitter and grim, and not oblivious of the Peruvian mines, as the
establishment in general had good reason to know, received him at the door,
and freshened the domestics with several little sprinklings of wordy
vinegar, while they assisted in conveying him to his room. Mr Carker
remained in attendance until he was safe in bed, and then, as he declined to
receive any female visitor, but the excellent Ogress who presided over his
household, waited on Mrs Dombey once more, with his report on her lord's
condition.
He again found Edith alone with Florence, and he again addressed the
whole of his soothing speech to Edith, as if she were a prey to the
liveliest and most affectionate anxieties. So earnest he was in his
respectful sympathy, that on taking leave, he ventured - with one more
glance towards Florence at the moment - to take her hand, and bending over
it, to touch it with his lips.
Edith did not withdraw the hand, nor did she strike his fair face with
it, despite the flush upon her cheek, the bright light in her eyes, and the
dilation of her whole form. But when she was alone in her own room, she
struck it on the marble chimney-shelf, so that, at one blow, it was bruised,
and bled; and held it from her, near the shining fire, as if she could have
thrust it in and burned it'
Far into the night she sat alone, by the sinking blaze, in dark and
threatening beauty, watching the murky shadows looming on the wall, as if
her thoughts were tangible, and cast them there. Whatever shapes of outrage
and affront, and black foreshadowings of things that might happen,
flickered, indistinct and giant-like, before her, one resented figure
marshalled them against her. And that figure was her husband.
The Watches of the Night
Florence, long since awakened from her dream, mournfully observed the
estrangement between her father and Edith, and saw it widen more and more,
and knew that there was greater bitterness between them every day. Each
day's added knowledge deepened the shade upon her love and hope, roused up
the old sorrow that had slumbered for a little time, and made it even
heavier to bear than it had been before.
It had been hard - how hard may none but Florence ever know! - to have
the natural affection of a true and earnest nature turned to agony; and
slight, or stern repulse, substituted for the tenderest protection and the
dearest care. It had been hard to feel in her deep heart what she had felt,
and never know the happiness of one touch of response. But it was much more
hard to be compelled to doubt either her father or Edith, so affectionate
and dear to her, and to think of her love for each of them, by turns, with
fear, distrust, and wonder.
Yet Florence now began to do so; and the doing of it was a task imposed
upon her by the very purity of her soul, as one she could not fly from. She
saw her father cold and obdurate to Edith, as to her; hard, inflexible,
unyielding. Could it be, she asked herself with starting tears, that her own
dear mother had been made unhappy by such treatment, and had pined away and
died? Then she would think how proud and stately Edith was to everyone but
her, with what disdain she treated him, how distantly she kept apart from
him, and what she had said on the night when they came home; and quickly it
would come on Florence, almost as a crime, that she loved one who was set in
opposition to her father, and that her father knowing of it, must think of
her in his solitary room as the unnatural child who added this wrong to the
old fault, so much wept for, of never having won his fatherly affection from
her birth. The next kind word from Edith, the next kind glance, would shake
these thoughts again, and make them seem like black ingratitude; for who but
she had cheered the drooping heart of Florence, so lonely and so hurt, and
been its best of comforters! Thus, with her gentle nature yearning to them
both, feeling for the misery of both, and whispering doubts of her own duty
to both, Florence in her wider and expanded love, and by the side of Edith,
endured more than when she had hoarded up her undivided secret in the
mournful house, and her beautiful Mama had never dawned upon it.
One exquisite unhappiness that would have far outweighed this, Florence
was spared. She never had the least suspicion that Edith by her tenderness
for her widened the separation from her father, or gave him new cause of
dislike. If Florence had conceived the possIbility of such an effect being
wrought by such a cause, what grief she would have felt, what sacrifice she
would have tried to make, poor loving girl, how fast and sure her quiet
passage might have been beneath it to the presence of that higher Father who
does not reject his children's love, or spurn their tried and broken hearts,
Heaven knows! But it was otherwise, and that was well.
No word was ever spoken between Florence and Edith now, on these
subjects. Edith had said there ought to be between them, in that wise, a
division and a silence like the grave itself: and Florence felt she was
right'
In this state of affairs her father was brought home, suffering and
disabled; and gloomily retired to his own rooms, where he was tended by
servants, not approached by Edith, and had no friend or companion but Mr
Carker, who withdrew near midnight.
'And nice company he is, Miss Floy,' said Susan Nipper. 'Oh, he's a
precious piece of goods! If ever he wants a character don't let him come to
me whatever he does, that's all I tell him.'
'Dear Susan,' urged Florence, 'don't!'
'Oh, it's very well to say "don't" Miss Floy,' returned the Nipper,
much exasperated; 'but raly begging your pardon we're coming to such passes
that it turns all the blood in a person's body into pins and needles, with
their pints all ways. Don't mistake me, Miss Floy, I don't mean nothing
again your ma-in-law who has always treated me as a lady should though she
is rather high I must say not that I have any right to object to that
particular, but when we come to Mrs Pipchinses and having them put over us
and keeping guard at your Pa's door like crocodiles (only make us thankful
that they lay no eggs!) we are a growing too outrageous!'
'Papa thinks well of Mrs Pipchin, Susan,' returned Florence, 'and has a
right to choose his housekeeper, you know. Pray don't!'
'Well Miss Floy,' returned the Nipper, 'when you say don't, I never do
I hope but Mrs Pipchin acts like early gooseberries upon me Miss, and
nothing less.'
Susan was unusually emphatic and destitute of punctuation in her
discourse on this night, which was the night of Mr Dombey's being brought
home, because, having been sent downstairs by Florence to inquire after him,
she had been obliged to deliver her message to her mortal enemy Mrs Pipchin;
who, without carrying it in to Mr Dombey, had taken upon herself to return
what Miss Nipper called a huffish answer, on her own responsibility. This,
Susan Nipper construed into presumption on the part of that exemplary
sufferer by the Peruvian mines, and a deed of disparagement upon her young
lady, that was not to be forgiven; and so far her emphatic state was
special. But she had been in a condition of greatly increased suspicion and
distrust, ever since the marriage; for, like most persons of her quality of
mind, who form a strong and sincere attachment to one in the different
station which Florence occupied, Susan was very jealous, and her jealousy
naturally attached to Edith, who divided her old empire, and came between
them. Proud and glad as Susan Nipper truly was, that her young mistress
should be advanced towards her proper place in the scene of her old neglect,
and that she should have her father's handsome wife for her companion and
protectress, she could not relinquish any part of her own dominion to the
handsome wife, without a grudge and a vague feeling of ill-will, for which
she did not fail to find a disinterested justification in her sharp
perception of the pride and passion of the lady's character. From the
background to which she had necessarily retired somewhat, since the
marriage, Miss Nipper looked on, therefore, at domestic affairs in general,
with a resolute conviction that no good would come of Mrs Dombey: always
being very careful to publish on all possible occasions, that she had
nothing to say against her.
'Susan,' said Florence, who was sitting thoughtfully at her table, 'it
is very late. I shall want nothing more to-night.'
'Ah, Miss Floy!' returned the Nipper, 'I'm sure I often wish for them
old times when I sat up with you hours later than this and fell asleep
through being tired out when you was as broad awake as spectacles, but
you've ma's-in-law to come and sit with you now Miss Floy and I'm thankful
for it I'm sure. I've not a word to say against 'em.'
'I shall not forget who was my old companion when I had none, Susan,'
returned Florence, gently, 'never!' And looking up, she put her arm round
the neck of her humble friend, drew her face down to hers, and bidding her
good-night, kissed it; which so mollified Miss Nipper, that she fell a
sobbing.
'Now my dear Miss Floy, said Susan, 'let me go downstairs again and see
how your Pa is, I know you're wretched about him, do let me go downstairs
again and knock at his door my own self.'
'No,' said Florence, 'go to bed. We shall hear more in the morning. I
will inquire myself in the morning. Mama has been down, I daresay;' Florence
blushed, for she had no such hope; 'or is there now, perhaps. Good-night!'
Susan was too much softened to express her private opinion on the
probability of Mrs Dombey's being in attendance on her husband, and silently
withdrew. Florence left alone, soon hid her head upon her hands as she had
often done in other days, and did not restrain the tears from coursing down
her face. The misery of this domestic discord and unhappiness; the withered
hope she cherished now, if hope it could be called, of ever being taken to
her father's heart; her doubts and fears between the two; the yearning of
her innocent breast to both; the heavy disappointment and regret of such an
end as this, to what had been a vision of bright hope and promise to her;
all crowded on her mind and made her tears flow fast. Her mother and her
brother dead, her father unmoved towards her, Edith opposed to him and
casting him away, but loving her, and loved by her, it seemed as if her
affection could never prosper, rest where it would. That weak thought was
soon hushed, but the thoughts in which it had arisen were too true and
strong to be dismissed with it; and they made the night desolate.
Among such reflections there rose up, as there had risen up all day,
the image of her father, wounded and in pain, alone in his own room,
untended by those who should be nearest to him, and passing the tardy hours
in lonely suffering. A frightened thought which made her start and clasp her
hands - though it was not a new one in her mind - that he might die, and
never see her or pronounce her name, thrilled her whole frame. In her
agitation she thought, and trembled while she thought, of once more stealing
downstairs, and venturing to his door.
She listened at her own. The house was quiet, and all the lights were
out. It was a long, long time, she thought, since she used to make her
nightly pilgrimages to his door! It was a long, long time, she tried to
think, since she had entered his room at midnight, and he had led her back
to the stair-foot!
With the same child's heart within her, as of old: even with the
child's sweet timid eyes and clustering hair: Florence, as strange to her
father in her early maiden bloom, as in her nursery time, crept down the
staircase listening as she went, and drew near to his room. No one was
stirring in the house. The door was partly open to admit air; and all was so
still within, that she could hear the burning of the fire, and count the
ticking of the clock that stood upon the chimney-piece.
She looked in. In that room, the housekeeper wrapped in a blanket was
fast asleep in an easy chair before the fire. The doors between it and the
next were partly closed, and a screen was drawn before them; but there was a
light there, and it shone upon the cornice of his bed. All was so very still
that she could hear from his breathing that he was asleep. This gave her
courage to pass round the screen, and look into his chamber.
It was as great a start to come upon his sleeping face as if she had
not expected to see it. Florence stood arrested on the spot, and if he had
awakened then, must have remained there.
There was a cut upon his forehead, and they had been wetting his hair,
which lay bedabbled and entangled on the pillow. One of his arms, resting
outside the bed, was bandaged up, and he was very white. But it was not
this, that after the first quick glance, and first assurance of his sleeping
quietly, held Florence rooted to the ground. It was something very different
from this, and more than this, that made him look so solemn in her eye
She had never seen his face in all her life, but there had been upon it
- or she fancied so - some disturbing consciousness of her. She had never
seen his face in all her life, but hope had sunk within her, and her timid
glance had dropped before its stern, unloving, and repelling harshness. As
she looked upon it now, she saw it, for the first time, free from the cloud
that had darkened her childhood. Calm, tranquil night was reigning in its
stead. He might have gone to sleep, for anything she saw there, blessing
her.
Awake, unkind father! Awake, now, sullen man! The time is flitting by;
the hour is coming with an angry tread. Awake!
There was no change upon his face; and as she watched it, awfully, its
motionless reponse recalled the faces that were gone. So they looked, so
would he; so she, his weeping child, who should say when! so all the world
of love and hatred and indifference around them! When that time should come,
it would not be the heavier to him, for this that she was going to do; and
it might fall something lighter upon her.
She stole close to the bed, and drawing in her breath, bent down, and
softly kissed him on the face, and laid her own for one brief moment by its
side, and put the arm, with which she dared not touch him, round about him
on the pillow.
Awake, doomed man, while she is near! The time is flitting by; the hour
is coming with an angry tread; its foot is in the house. Awake!
In her mind, she prayed to God to bless her father, and to soften him
towards her, if it might be so; and if not, to forgive him if he was wrong,
and pardon her the prayer which almost seemed impiety. And doing so, and
looking back at him with blinded eyes, and stealing timidly away, passed out
of his room, and crossed the other, and was gone.
He may sleep on now. He may sleep on while he may. But let him look for
that slight figure when he wakes, and find it near him when the hour is
come!
Sad and grieving was the heart of Florence, as she crept upstairs. The
quiet house had grown more dismal since she came down. The sleep she had
been looking on, in the dead of night, had the solemnity to her of death and
life in one. The secrecy and silence of her own proceeding made the night
secret, silent, and oppressive. She felt unwilling, almost unable, to go on
to her own chamber; and turnIng into the drawing-rooms, where the clouded
moon was shining through the blinds, looked out into the empty streets.
The wind was blowing drearily. The lamps looked pale, and shook as if
they were cold. There was a distant glimmer of something that was not quite
darkness, rather than of light, in the sky; and foreboding night was
shivering and restless, as the dying are who make a troubled end. Florence
remembered how, as a watcher, by a sick-bed, she had noted this bleak time,
and felt its influence, as if in some hidden natural antipathy to it; and
now it was very, very gloomy.
Her Mama had not come to her room that night, which was one cause of
her having sat late out of her bed. In her general uneasiness, no less than
in her ardent longing to have somebody to speak to, and to break the spell
of gloom and silence, Florence directed her steps towards the chamber where
she slept.
The door was not fastened within, and yielded smoothly to her
hesitating hand. She was surprised to find a bright light burning; still
more surprised, on looking in, to see that her Mama, but partially
undressed, was sitting near the ashes of the fire, which had crumbled and
dropped away. Her eyes were intently bent upon the air; and in their light,
and in her face, and in her form, and in the grasp with which she held the
elbows of her chair as if about to start up, Florence saw such fierce
emotion that it terrified her.
'Mama!' she cried, 'what is the matter?'
Edith started; looking at her with such a strange dread in her face,
that Florence was more frightened than before.
'Mama!' said Florence, hurriedly advancing. 'Dear Mama! what is the
matter?'
'I have not been well,' said Edith, shaking, and still looking at her
in the same strange way. 'I have had had dreams, my love.'
'And not yet been to bed, Mama?'
'No,' she returned. 'Half-waking dreams.'
Her features gradually softened; and suffering Florence to come closer
to her, within her embrace, she said in a tender manner, 'But what does my
bird do here? What does my bird do here?'
'I have been uneasy, Mama, in not seeing you to-night, and in not
knowing how Papa was; and I - '
Florence stopped there, and said no more.
'Is it late?' asked Edith, fondly putting back the curls that mingled
with her own dark hair, and strayed upon her face.
'Very late. Near day.'
'Near day!' she repeated in surprise.
'Dear Mama, what have you done to your hand?' said Florence.
Edith drew it suddenly away, and, for a moment, looked at her with the
same strange dread (there was a sort of wild avoidance in it) as before; but
she presently said, 'Nothing, nothing. A blow.' And then she said, 'My
Florence!' and then her bosom heaved, and she was weeping passionately.
'Mama!' said Florence. 'Oh Mama, what can I do, what should I do, to
make us happier? Is there anything?'
'Nothing,' she replied.
'Are you sure of that? Can it never be? If I speak now of what is in my
thoughts, in spite of what we have agreed,' said Florence, 'you will not
blame me, will you?'
'It is useless,' she replied, 'useless. I have told you, dear, that I
have had bad dreams. Nothing can change them, or prevent them coming back.'
'I do not understand,' said Florence, gazing on her agitated face which
seemed to darken as she looked.
'I have dreamed,' said Edith in a low voice, 'of a pride that is all
powerless for good, all powerful for evil; of a pride that has been galled
and goaded, through many shameful years, and has never recoiled except upon
itself; a pride that has debased its owner with the consciousness of deep
humiliation, and never helped its owner boldly to resent it or avoid it, or
to say, "This shall not be!" a pride that, rightly guided, might have led
perhaps to better things, but which, misdirected and perverted, like all
else belonging to the same possessor, has been self-contempt, mere hardihood
and ruin.'
She neither looked nor spoke to Florence now, but went on as if she
were alone.
'I have dreamed,' she said, 'of such indifference and callousness,
arising from this self-contempt; this wretched, inefficient, miserable
pride; that it has gone on with listless steps even to the altar, yielding
to the old, familiar, beckoning finger, - oh mother, oh mother! - while it
spurned it; and willing to be hateful to itself for once and for all, rather
than to be stung daily in some new form. Mean, poor thing!'
And now with gathering and darkening emotion, she looked as she had
looked when Florence entered.
'And I have dreamed,' she said, 'that in a first late effort to achieve
a purpose, it has been trodden on, and trodden down by a base foot, but
turns and looks upon him. I have dreamed that it is wounded, hunted, set
upon by dogs, but that it stands at hay, and will not yield; no, that it
cannot if it would; but that it is urged on to hate
Her clenched hand tightened on the trembling arm she had in hers, and
as she looked down on the alarmed and wondering face, frown subsided. 'Oh
Florence!' she said, 'I think I have been nearly mad to-night!' and humbled
her proud head upon her neck and wept again.
started and disappeared, with his eyes fixed on his patron to the last. 'You
don't remember that boy, of course?' he added, when the enmeshed Grinder was
gone.
'No,' said Mr Dombey, with magnificent indifference.
'Not likely that a man like you would. Hardly possible,' murmured
Carker. 'But he is one of that family from whom you took a nurse. Perhaps
you may remember having generously charged yourself with his education?'
'Is it that boy?' said Mr Dombey, with a frown. 'He does little credit
to his education, I believe.'
'Why, he is a young rip, I am afraid,' returned Carker, with a shrug.
'He bears that character. But the truth is, I took him into my service
because, being able to get no other employment, he conceived (had been
taught at home, I daresay) that he had some sort of claim upon you, and was
constantly trying to dog your heels with his petition. And although my
defined and recognised connexion with your affairs is merely of a business
character, still I have that spontaneous interest in everything belonging to
you, that - '
He stopped again, as if to discover whether he had led Mr Dombey far
enough yet. And again, with his chin resting on his hand, he leered at the
picture.
'Carker,' said Mr Dombey, 'I am sensible that you do not limit your - '
'Service,' suggested his smiling entertainer.
'No; I prefer to say your regard,' observed Mr Dombey; very sensible,
as he said so, that he was paying him a handsome and flattering compliment,
'to our mere business relations. Your consideration for my feelings, hopes,
and disappointments, in the little instance you have just now mentioned, is
an example in point. I I am obliged to you, Carker.'
Mr Carker bent his head slowly, and very softly rubbed his hands, as if
he were afraid by any action to disturb the current of Mr Dombey's
confidence.
'Your allusion to it is opportune,' said Mr Dombey, after a little
hesitation; 'for it prepares the way to what I was beginning to say to you,
and reminds me that that involves no absolutely new relations between us,
although it may involve more personal confidence on my part than I have
hitherto - '
'Distinguished me with,' suggested Carker, bending his head again: 'I
will not say to you how honoured I am; for a man like you well knows how
much honour he has in his power to bestow at pleasure.'
'Mrs Dombey and myself,' said Mr Dombey, passing this compliment with
august self-denial, 'are not quite agreed upon some points. We do not appear
to understand each other yet' Mrs Dombey has something to learn.'
'Mrs Dombey is distinguished by many rare attractions; and has been
accustomed, no doubt, to receive much adulation,' said the smooth, sleek
watcher of his slightest look and tone. 'But where there is affection, duty,
and respect, any little mistakes engendered by such causes are soon set
right.'
Mr Dombey's thoughts instinctively flew back to the face that had
looked at him in his wife's dressing-room when an imperious hand was
stretched towards the door; and remembering the affection, duty, and
respect, expressed in it, he felt the blood rush to his own face quite as
plainly as the watchful eyes upon him saw it there.
'Mrs Dombey and myself,' he went on to say, 'had some discussion,
before Mrs Skewton's death, upon the causes of my dissatisfaction; of which
you will have formed a general understanding from having been a witness of
what passed between Mrs Dombey and myself on the evening when you were at
our - at my house.'
'When I so much regretted being present,' said the smiling Carker.
'Proud as a man in my position nay must be of your familiar notice - though
I give you no credit for it; you may do anything you please without losing
caste - and honoured as I was by an early presentation to Mrs Dombey, before
she was made eminent by bearing your name, I almost regretted that night, I
assure you, that I had been the object of such especial good fortune'
That any man could, under any possible circumstances, regret the being
distinguished by his condescension and patronage, was a moral phenomenon
which Mr Dombey could not comprehend. He therefore responded, with a
considerable accession of dignity. 'Indeed! And why, Carker?'
'I fear,' returned the confidential agent, 'that Mrs Dombey, never very
much disposed to regard me with favourable interest - one in my position
could not expect that, from a lady naturally proud, and whose pride becomes
her so well - may not easily forgive my innocent part in that conversation.
Your displeasure is no light matter, you must remember; and to be visited
with it before a third party -
'Carker,' said Mr Dombey, arrogantly; 'I presume that I am the first
consideration?'
'Oh! Can there be a doubt about it?' replied the other, with the
impatience of a man admitting a notorious and incontrovertible fact'
'Mrs Dombey becomes a secondary consideration, when we are both in
question, I imagine,' said Mr Dombey. 'Is that so?'
'Is it so?' returned Carker. 'Do you know better than anyone, that you
have no need to ask?'
'Then I hope, Carker,' said Mr Dombey, 'that your regret in the
acquisition of Mrs Dombey's displeasure, may be almost counterbalanced by
your satisfaction in retaining my confidence and good opinion.'
'I have the misfortune, I find,' returned Carker, 'to have incurred
that displeasure. Mrs Dombey has expressed it to you?'
'Mrs Dombey has expressed various opinions,' said Mr Dombey, with
majestic coldness and indifference, 'in which I do not participate, and
which I am not inclined to discuss, or to recall. I made Mr's Dombey
acquainted, some time since, as I have already told you, with certain points
of domestic deference and submission on which I felt it necessary to insist.
I failed to convince Mrs Dombey of the expediency of her immediately
altering her conduct in those respects, with a view to her own peace and
welfare, and my dignity; and I informed Mrs Dombey that if I should find it
necessary to object or remonstrate again, I should express my opinion to her
through yourself, my confidential agent.'
Blended with the look that Carker bent upon him, was a devilish look at
the picture over his head, that struck upon it like a flash of lightning.
'Now, Carker,' said Mr Dombey, 'I do not hesitate to say to you that I
will carry my point. I am not to be trifled with. Mrs Dombey must understand
that my will is law, and that I cannot allow of one exception to the whole
rule of my life. You will have the goodness to undertake this charge, which,
coming from me, is not unacceptable to you, I hope, whatever regret you may
politely profess - for which I am obliged to you on behalf of Mrs Dombey;
and you will have the goodness, I am persuaded, to discharge it as exactly
as any other commission.'
'You know,' said Mr Carker, 'that you have only to command me.
'I know,' said Mr Dombey, with a majestic indication of assent, 'that I
have only to command you. It is necessary that I should proceed in this. Mrs
Dombey is a lady undoubtedly highly qualified, in many respects, to -
'To do credit even to your choice,' suggested Carker, with a yawning
show of teeth.
'Yes; if you please to adopt that form of words,' said Mr Dombey, in
his tone of state; 'and at present I do not conceive that Mrs Dombey does
that credit to it, to which it is entitled. There is a principle of
opposition in Mrs Dombey that must be eradicated; that must be overcome: Mrs
Dombey does not appear to understand,' said Mr Dombey, forcibly, 'that the
idea of opposition to Me is monstrous and absurd.'
'We, in the City, know you better,' replied Carker, with a smile from
ear to ear.
'You know me better,' said Mr Dombey. 'I hope so. Though, indeed, I am
bound to do Mrs Dombey the justice of saying, however inconsistent it may
seem with her subsequent conduct (which remains unchanged), that on my
expressing my disapprobation and determination to her, with some severity,
on the occasion to which I have referred, my admonition appeared to produce
a very powerful effect.' Mr Dombey delivered himself of those words with
most portentous stateliness. 'I wish you to have the goodness, then, to
inform Mrs Dombey, Carker, from me, that I must recall our former
conversation to her remembrance, in some surprise that it has not yet had
its effect. That I must insist upon her regulating her conduct by the
injunctions laid upon her in that conversation. That I am not satisfied with
her conduct. That I am greatly dissatisfied with it. And that I shall be
under the very disagreeable necessity of making you the bearer of yet more
unwelcome and explicit communications, if she has not the good sense and the
proper feeling to adapt herself to my wishes, as the first Mrs Dombey did,
and, I believe I may add, as any other lady in her place would.'
'The first Mrs Dombey lived very happily,' said Carker.
'The first Mrs Dombey had great good sense,' said Mr Dombey, in a
gentlemanly toleration of the dead, 'and very correct feeling.'
'Is Miss Dombey like her mother, do you think?' said Carker.
Swiftly and darkly, Mr Dombey's face changed. His confidential agent
eyed it keenly.
'I have approached a painful subject,' he said, in a soft regretful
tone of voice, irreconcilable with his eager eye. 'Pray forgive me. I forget
these chains of association in the interest I have. Pray forgive me.'
But for all he said, his eager eye scanned Mr Dombey's downcast face
none the less closely; and then it shot a strange triumphant look at the
picture, as appealing to it to bear witness how he led him on again, and
what was coming.
Carker,' said Mr Dombey, looking here and there upon the table, and
saying in a somewhat altered and more hurried voice, and with a paler lip,
'there is no occasion for apology. You mistake. The association is with the
matter in hand, and not with any recollection, as you suppose. I do not
approve of Mrs Dombey's behaviour towards my daughter.'
'Pardon me,' said Mr Carker, 'I don't quite understand.'
'Understand then,' returned Mr Dombey, 'that you may make that - that
you will make that, if you please - matter of direct objection from me to
Mrs Dombey. You will please to tell her that her show of devotion for my
daughter is disagreeable to me. It is likely to be noticed. It is likely to
induce people to contrast Mrs Dombey in her relation towards my daughter,
with Mrs Dombey in her relation towards myself. You will have the goodness
to let Mrs Dombey know, plainly, that I object to it; and that I expect her
to defer, immediately, to my objection. Mrs Dombey may be in earnest, or she
may be pursuing a whim, or she may be opposing me; but I object to it in any
case, and in every case. If Mrs Dombey is in earnest, so much the less
reluctant should she be to desist; for she will not serve my daughter by any
such display. If my wife has any superfluous gentleness, and duty over and
above her proper submission to me, she may bestow them where she pleases,
perhaps; but I will have submission first! - Carker,' said Mr Dombey,
checking the unusual emotion with which he had spoken, and falling into a
tone more like that in which he was accustomed to assert his greatness, 'you
will have the goodness not to omit or slur this point, but to consider it a
very important part of your instructions.'
Mr Carker bowed his head, and rising from the table, and standing
thoughtfully before the fire, with his hand to his smooth chin, looked down
at Mr Dombey with the evil slyness of some monkish carving, half human and
half brute; or like a leering face on an old water-spout. Mr Dombey,
recovering his composure by degrees, or cooling his emotion in his sense of
having taken a high position, sat gradually stiffening again, and looking at
the parrot as she swung to and fro, in her great wedding ring.
'I beg your pardon,' said Carker, after a silence, suddenly resuming
his chair, and drawing it opposite to Mr Dombey's, 'but let me understand.
Mrs Dombey is aware of the probability of your making me the organ of your
displeasure?'
'Yes,' replied Mr Dombey. 'I have said so.'
'Yes,' rejoined Carker, quickly; 'but why?'
'Why!' Mr Dombey repeated, not without hesitation. 'Because I told
her.'
'Ay,' replied Carker. 'But why did you tell her? You see,' he continued
with a smile, and softly laying his velvet hand, as a cat might have laid
its sheathed claws, on Mr Dombey's arm; 'if I perfectly understand what is
in your mind, I am so much more likely to be useful, and to have the
happiness of being effectually employed. I think I do understand. I have not
the honour of Mrs Dombey's good opinion. In my position, I have no reason to
expect it; but I take the fact to be, that I have not got it?'
'Possibly not,' said Mr Dombey.
'Consequently,' pursued Carker, 'your making the communications to Mrs
Dombey through me, is sure to be particularly unpalatable to that lady?'
'It appears to me,' said Mr Dombey, with haughty reserve, and yet with
some embarrassment, 'that Mrs Dombey's views upon the subject form no part
of it as it presents itself to you and me, Carker. But it may be so.'
'And - pardon me - do I misconceive you,' said Carker, 'when I think
you descry in this, a likely means of humbling Mrs Dombey's pride - I use
the word as expressive of a quality which, kept within due bounds, adorns
and graces a lady so distinguished for her beauty and accomplishments - and,
not to say of punishing her, but of reducing her to the submission you so
naturally and justly require?'
'I am not accustomed, Carker, as you know,' said Mr Dombey, 'to give
such close reasons for any course of conduct I think proper to adopt, but I
will gainsay nothing of this. If you have any objection to found upon it,
that is indeed another thing, and the mere statement that you have one will
be sufficient. But I have not supposed, I confess, that any confidence I
could entrust to you, would be likely to degrade you - '
'Oh! I degraded!' exclaimed Carker. 'In your service!'
'or to place you,' pursued Mr Dombey, 'in a false position.'
'I in a false position!' exclaimed Carker. 'I shall be proud -
delighted - to execute your trust. I could have wished, I own, to have given
the lady at whose feet I would lay my humble duty and devotion - for is she
not your wife! - no new cause of dislike; but a wish from you is, of course,
paramount to every other consideration on earth. Besides, when Mrs Dombey is
converted from these little errors of judgment, incidental, I would presume
to say, to the novelty of her situation, I shall hope that she will perceive
in the slight part I take, only a grain - my removed and different sphere
gives room for little more - of the respect for you, and sacrifice of all
considerations to you, of which it will be her pleasure and privilege to
garner up a great store every day.'
Mr Dombey seemed, at the moment, again to see her with her hand
stretched out towards the door, and again to hear through the mild speech of
his confidential agent an echo of the words, 'Nothing can make us stranger
to each other than we are henceforth!' But he shook off the fancy, and did
not shake in his resolution, and said, 'Certainly, no doubt.'
'There is nothing more,' quoth Carker, drawing his chair back to its
old place - for they had taken little breakfast as yet- and pausing for an
answer before he sat down.
'Nothing,' said Mr Dombey, 'but this. You will be good enough to
observe, Carker, that no message to Mrs Dombey with which you are or may be
charged, admits of reply. You will be good enough to bring me no reply. Mrs
Dombey is informed that it does not become me to temporise or treat upon any
matter that is at issue between us, and that what I say is final.'
Mr Carker signIfied his understanding of these credentials, and they
fell to breakfast with what appetite they might. The Grinder also, in due
time reappeared, keeping his eyes upon his master without a moment's
respite, and passing the time in a reverie of worshipful tenor. Breakfast
concluded, Mr Dombey's horse was ordered out again, and Mr Carker mounting
his own, they rode off for the City together.
Mr Carker was in capital spirits, and talked much. Mr Dombey received
his conversation with the sovereign air of a man who had a right to be
talked to, and occasionally condescended to throw in a few words to carry on
the conversation. So they rode on characteristically enough. But Mr Dombey,
in his dignity, rode with very long stirrups, and a very loose rein, and
very rarely deigned to look down to see where his horse went. In consequence
of which it happened that Mr Dombey's horse, while going at a round trot,
stumbled on some loose stones, threw him, rolled over him, and lashing out
with his iron-shod feet, in his struggles to get up, kicked him.
Mr Carker, quick of eye, steady of hand, and a good horseman, was
afoot, and had the struggling animal upon his legs and by the bridle, in a
moment. Otherwise that morning's confidence would have been Mr Dombey's
last. Yet even with the flush and hurry of this action red upon him, he bent
over his prostrate chief with every tooth disclosed, and muttered as he
stooped down, 'I have given good cause of offence to Mrs Dombey now, if she
knew it!'
Mr Dombey being insensible, and bleeding from the head and face, was
carried by certain menders of the road, under Carker's direction, to the
nearest public-house, which was not far off, and where he was soon attended
by divers surgeons, who arrived in quick succession from all parts, and who
seemed to come by some mysterious instinct, as vultures are said to gather
about a camel who dies in the desert. After being at some pains to restore
him to consciousness, these gentlemen examined into the nature of his
injuries.
One surgeon who lived hard by was strong for a compound fracture of the
leg, which was the landlord's opinion also; but two surgeons who lived at a
distance, and were only in that neighbourhood by accident, combated this
opinion so disinterestedly, that it was decided at last that the patient,
though severely cut and bruised, had broken no bones but a lesser rib or so,
and might be carefully taken home before night. His injuries being dressed
and bandaged, which was a long operation, and he at length left to repose,
Mr Carker mounted his horse again, and rode away to carry the intelligence
home.
Crafty and cruel as his face was at the best of times, though it was a
sufficiently fair face as to form and regularity of feature, it was at its
worst when he set forth on this errand; animated by the craft and cruelty of
thoughts within him, suggestions of remote possibility rather than of design
or plot, that made him ride as if he hunted men and women. Drawing rein at
length, and slackening in his speed, as he came into the more public roads,
he checked his white-legged horse into picking his way along as usual, and
hid himself beneath his sleek, hushed, crouched manner, and his ivory smile,
as he best could.
He rode direct to Mr Dombey's house, alighted at the door, and begged
to see Mrs Dombey on an affair of importance. The servant who showed him to
Mr Dombey's own room, soon returned to say that it was not Mrs Dombey's hour
for receiving visitors, and that he begged pardon for not having mentioned
it before.
Mr Carker, who was quite prepared for a cold reception, wrote upon a
card that he must take the liberty of pressing for an interview, and that he
would not be so bold as to do so, for the second time (this he underlined),
if he were not equally sure of the occasion being sufficient for his
justification. After a trifling delay, Mrs Dombey's maid appeared, and
conducted him to a morning room upstairs, where Edith and Florence were
together.
He had never thought Edith half so beautiful before. Much as he admired
the graces of her face and form, and freshly as they dwelt within his
sensual remembrance, he had never thought her half so beautiful.
Her glance fell haughtily upon him in the doorway; but he looked at
Florence - though only in the act of bending his head, as he came in - with
some irrepressible expression of the new power he held; and it was his
triumph to see the glance droop and falter, and to see that Edith half rose
up to receive him.
He was very sorry, he was deeply grieved; he couldn't say with what
unwillingness he came to prepare her for the intelligence of a very slight
accident. He entreated Mrs Dombey to compose herself. Upon his sacred word
of honour, there was no cause of alarm. But Mr Dombey -
Florence uttered a sudden cry. He did not look at her, but at Edith.
Edith composed and reassured her. She uttered no cry of distress. No, no.
Mr Dombey had met with an accident in riding. His horse had slipped,
and he had been thrown.
Florence wildly exclaimed that he was badly hurt; that he was killed!
No. Upon his honour, Mr Dombey, though stunned at first, was soon
recovered, and though certainly hurt was in no kind of danger. If this were
not the truth, he, the distressed intruder, never could have had the courage
to present himself before Mrs Dombey. It was the truth indeed, he solemnly
assured her.
All this he said as if he were answering Edith, and not Florence, and
with his eyes and his smile fastened on Edith.
He then went on to tell her where Mr Dombey was lying, and to request
that a carriage might be placed at his disposal to bring him home.
'Mama,' faltered Florence in tears, 'if I might venture to go!'
Mr Carker, having his eyes on Edith when he heard these words, gave her
a secret look and slightly shook his head. He saw how she battled with
herself before she answered him with her handsome eyes, but he wrested the
answer from her - he showed her that he would have it, or that he would
speak and cut Florence to the heart - and she gave it to him. As he had
looked at the picture in the morning, so he looked at her afterwards, when
she turned her eyes away.
'I am directed to request,' he said, 'that the new housekeeper - Mrs
Pipchin, I think, is the name - '
Nothing escaped him. He saw in an instant, that she was another slight
of Mr Dombey's on his wife.
' - may be informed that Mr Dombey wishes to have his bed prepared in
his own apartments downstairs, as he prefers those rooms to any other. I
shall return to Mr Dombey almost immediately. That every possible attention
has been paid to his comfort, and that he is the object of every possible
solicitude, I need not assure you, Madam. Let me again say, there is no
cause for the least alarm. Even you may be quite at ease, believe me.'
He bowed himself out, with his extremest show of deference and
conciliation; and having returned to Mr Dombey's room, and there arranged
for a carriage being sent after him to the City, mounted his horse again,
and rode slowly thither. He was very thoughtful as he went along, and very
thoughtful there, and very thoughtful in the carriage on his way back to the
place where Mr Dombey had been left. It was only when sitting by that
gentleman's couch that he was quite himself again, and conscious of his
teeth.
About the time of twilight, Mr Dombey, grievously afflicted with aches
and pains, was helped into his carriage, and propped with cloaks and pillows
on one side of it, while his confidential agent bore him company upon the
other. As he was not to be shaken, they moved at little more than a foot
pace; and hence it was quite dark when he was brought home. Mrs Pipchin,
bitter and grim, and not oblivious of the Peruvian mines, as the
establishment in general had good reason to know, received him at the door,
and freshened the domestics with several little sprinklings of wordy
vinegar, while they assisted in conveying him to his room. Mr Carker
remained in attendance until he was safe in bed, and then, as he declined to
receive any female visitor, but the excellent Ogress who presided over his
household, waited on Mrs Dombey once more, with his report on her lord's
condition.
He again found Edith alone with Florence, and he again addressed the
whole of his soothing speech to Edith, as if she were a prey to the
liveliest and most affectionate anxieties. So earnest he was in his
respectful sympathy, that on taking leave, he ventured - with one more
glance towards Florence at the moment - to take her hand, and bending over
it, to touch it with his lips.
Edith did not withdraw the hand, nor did she strike his fair face with
it, despite the flush upon her cheek, the bright light in her eyes, and the
dilation of her whole form. But when she was alone in her own room, she
struck it on the marble chimney-shelf, so that, at one blow, it was bruised,
and bled; and held it from her, near the shining fire, as if she could have
thrust it in and burned it'
Far into the night she sat alone, by the sinking blaze, in dark and
threatening beauty, watching the murky shadows looming on the wall, as if
her thoughts were tangible, and cast them there. Whatever shapes of outrage
and affront, and black foreshadowings of things that might happen,
flickered, indistinct and giant-like, before her, one resented figure
marshalled them against her. And that figure was her husband.
The Watches of the Night
Florence, long since awakened from her dream, mournfully observed the
estrangement between her father and Edith, and saw it widen more and more,
and knew that there was greater bitterness between them every day. Each
day's added knowledge deepened the shade upon her love and hope, roused up
the old sorrow that had slumbered for a little time, and made it even
heavier to bear than it had been before.
It had been hard - how hard may none but Florence ever know! - to have
the natural affection of a true and earnest nature turned to agony; and
slight, or stern repulse, substituted for the tenderest protection and the
dearest care. It had been hard to feel in her deep heart what she had felt,
and never know the happiness of one touch of response. But it was much more
hard to be compelled to doubt either her father or Edith, so affectionate
and dear to her, and to think of her love for each of them, by turns, with
fear, distrust, and wonder.
Yet Florence now began to do so; and the doing of it was a task imposed
upon her by the very purity of her soul, as one she could not fly from. She
saw her father cold and obdurate to Edith, as to her; hard, inflexible,
unyielding. Could it be, she asked herself with starting tears, that her own
dear mother had been made unhappy by such treatment, and had pined away and
died? Then she would think how proud and stately Edith was to everyone but
her, with what disdain she treated him, how distantly she kept apart from
him, and what she had said on the night when they came home; and quickly it
would come on Florence, almost as a crime, that she loved one who was set in
opposition to her father, and that her father knowing of it, must think of
her in his solitary room as the unnatural child who added this wrong to the
old fault, so much wept for, of never having won his fatherly affection from
her birth. The next kind word from Edith, the next kind glance, would shake
these thoughts again, and make them seem like black ingratitude; for who but
she had cheered the drooping heart of Florence, so lonely and so hurt, and
been its best of comforters! Thus, with her gentle nature yearning to them
both, feeling for the misery of both, and whispering doubts of her own duty
to both, Florence in her wider and expanded love, and by the side of Edith,
endured more than when she had hoarded up her undivided secret in the
mournful house, and her beautiful Mama had never dawned upon it.
One exquisite unhappiness that would have far outweighed this, Florence
was spared. She never had the least suspicion that Edith by her tenderness
for her widened the separation from her father, or gave him new cause of
dislike. If Florence had conceived the possIbility of such an effect being
wrought by such a cause, what grief she would have felt, what sacrifice she
would have tried to make, poor loving girl, how fast and sure her quiet
passage might have been beneath it to the presence of that higher Father who
does not reject his children's love, or spurn their tried and broken hearts,
Heaven knows! But it was otherwise, and that was well.
No word was ever spoken between Florence and Edith now, on these
subjects. Edith had said there ought to be between them, in that wise, a
division and a silence like the grave itself: and Florence felt she was
right'
In this state of affairs her father was brought home, suffering and
disabled; and gloomily retired to his own rooms, where he was tended by
servants, not approached by Edith, and had no friend or companion but Mr
Carker, who withdrew near midnight.
'And nice company he is, Miss Floy,' said Susan Nipper. 'Oh, he's a
precious piece of goods! If ever he wants a character don't let him come to
me whatever he does, that's all I tell him.'
'Dear Susan,' urged Florence, 'don't!'
'Oh, it's very well to say "don't" Miss Floy,' returned the Nipper,
much exasperated; 'but raly begging your pardon we're coming to such passes
that it turns all the blood in a person's body into pins and needles, with
their pints all ways. Don't mistake me, Miss Floy, I don't mean nothing
again your ma-in-law who has always treated me as a lady should though she
is rather high I must say not that I have any right to object to that
particular, but when we come to Mrs Pipchinses and having them put over us
and keeping guard at your Pa's door like crocodiles (only make us thankful
that they lay no eggs!) we are a growing too outrageous!'
'Papa thinks well of Mrs Pipchin, Susan,' returned Florence, 'and has a
right to choose his housekeeper, you know. Pray don't!'
'Well Miss Floy,' returned the Nipper, 'when you say don't, I never do
I hope but Mrs Pipchin acts like early gooseberries upon me Miss, and
nothing less.'
Susan was unusually emphatic and destitute of punctuation in her
discourse on this night, which was the night of Mr Dombey's being brought
home, because, having been sent downstairs by Florence to inquire after him,
she had been obliged to deliver her message to her mortal enemy Mrs Pipchin;
who, without carrying it in to Mr Dombey, had taken upon herself to return
what Miss Nipper called a huffish answer, on her own responsibility. This,
Susan Nipper construed into presumption on the part of that exemplary
sufferer by the Peruvian mines, and a deed of disparagement upon her young
lady, that was not to be forgiven; and so far her emphatic state was
special. But she had been in a condition of greatly increased suspicion and
distrust, ever since the marriage; for, like most persons of her quality of
mind, who form a strong and sincere attachment to one in the different
station which Florence occupied, Susan was very jealous, and her jealousy
naturally attached to Edith, who divided her old empire, and came between
them. Proud and glad as Susan Nipper truly was, that her young mistress
should be advanced towards her proper place in the scene of her old neglect,
and that she should have her father's handsome wife for her companion and
protectress, she could not relinquish any part of her own dominion to the
handsome wife, without a grudge and a vague feeling of ill-will, for which
she did not fail to find a disinterested justification in her sharp
perception of the pride and passion of the lady's character. From the
background to which she had necessarily retired somewhat, since the
marriage, Miss Nipper looked on, therefore, at domestic affairs in general,
with a resolute conviction that no good would come of Mrs Dombey: always
being very careful to publish on all possible occasions, that she had
nothing to say against her.
'Susan,' said Florence, who was sitting thoughtfully at her table, 'it
is very late. I shall want nothing more to-night.'
'Ah, Miss Floy!' returned the Nipper, 'I'm sure I often wish for them
old times when I sat up with you hours later than this and fell asleep
through being tired out when you was as broad awake as spectacles, but
you've ma's-in-law to come and sit with you now Miss Floy and I'm thankful
for it I'm sure. I've not a word to say against 'em.'
'I shall not forget who was my old companion when I had none, Susan,'
returned Florence, gently, 'never!' And looking up, she put her arm round
the neck of her humble friend, drew her face down to hers, and bidding her
good-night, kissed it; which so mollified Miss Nipper, that she fell a
sobbing.
'Now my dear Miss Floy, said Susan, 'let me go downstairs again and see
how your Pa is, I know you're wretched about him, do let me go downstairs
again and knock at his door my own self.'
'No,' said Florence, 'go to bed. We shall hear more in the morning. I
will inquire myself in the morning. Mama has been down, I daresay;' Florence
blushed, for she had no such hope; 'or is there now, perhaps. Good-night!'
Susan was too much softened to express her private opinion on the
probability of Mrs Dombey's being in attendance on her husband, and silently
withdrew. Florence left alone, soon hid her head upon her hands as she had
often done in other days, and did not restrain the tears from coursing down
her face. The misery of this domestic discord and unhappiness; the withered
hope she cherished now, if hope it could be called, of ever being taken to
her father's heart; her doubts and fears between the two; the yearning of
her innocent breast to both; the heavy disappointment and regret of such an
end as this, to what had been a vision of bright hope and promise to her;
all crowded on her mind and made her tears flow fast. Her mother and her
brother dead, her father unmoved towards her, Edith opposed to him and
casting him away, but loving her, and loved by her, it seemed as if her
affection could never prosper, rest where it would. That weak thought was
soon hushed, but the thoughts in which it had arisen were too true and
strong to be dismissed with it; and they made the night desolate.
Among such reflections there rose up, as there had risen up all day,
the image of her father, wounded and in pain, alone in his own room,
untended by those who should be nearest to him, and passing the tardy hours
in lonely suffering. A frightened thought which made her start and clasp her
hands - though it was not a new one in her mind - that he might die, and
never see her or pronounce her name, thrilled her whole frame. In her
agitation she thought, and trembled while she thought, of once more stealing
downstairs, and venturing to his door.
She listened at her own. The house was quiet, and all the lights were
out. It was a long, long time, she thought, since she used to make her
nightly pilgrimages to his door! It was a long, long time, she tried to
think, since she had entered his room at midnight, and he had led her back
to the stair-foot!
With the same child's heart within her, as of old: even with the
child's sweet timid eyes and clustering hair: Florence, as strange to her
father in her early maiden bloom, as in her nursery time, crept down the
staircase listening as she went, and drew near to his room. No one was
stirring in the house. The door was partly open to admit air; and all was so
still within, that she could hear the burning of the fire, and count the
ticking of the clock that stood upon the chimney-piece.
She looked in. In that room, the housekeeper wrapped in a blanket was
fast asleep in an easy chair before the fire. The doors between it and the
next were partly closed, and a screen was drawn before them; but there was a
light there, and it shone upon the cornice of his bed. All was so very still
that she could hear from his breathing that he was asleep. This gave her
courage to pass round the screen, and look into his chamber.
It was as great a start to come upon his sleeping face as if she had
not expected to see it. Florence stood arrested on the spot, and if he had
awakened then, must have remained there.
There was a cut upon his forehead, and they had been wetting his hair,
which lay bedabbled and entangled on the pillow. One of his arms, resting
outside the bed, was bandaged up, and he was very white. But it was not
this, that after the first quick glance, and first assurance of his sleeping
quietly, held Florence rooted to the ground. It was something very different
from this, and more than this, that made him look so solemn in her eye
She had never seen his face in all her life, but there had been upon it
- or she fancied so - some disturbing consciousness of her. She had never
seen his face in all her life, but hope had sunk within her, and her timid
glance had dropped before its stern, unloving, and repelling harshness. As
she looked upon it now, she saw it, for the first time, free from the cloud
that had darkened her childhood. Calm, tranquil night was reigning in its
stead. He might have gone to sleep, for anything she saw there, blessing
her.
Awake, unkind father! Awake, now, sullen man! The time is flitting by;
the hour is coming with an angry tread. Awake!
There was no change upon his face; and as she watched it, awfully, its
motionless reponse recalled the faces that were gone. So they looked, so
would he; so she, his weeping child, who should say when! so all the world
of love and hatred and indifference around them! When that time should come,
it would not be the heavier to him, for this that she was going to do; and
it might fall something lighter upon her.
She stole close to the bed, and drawing in her breath, bent down, and
softly kissed him on the face, and laid her own for one brief moment by its
side, and put the arm, with which she dared not touch him, round about him
on the pillow.
Awake, doomed man, while she is near! The time is flitting by; the hour
is coming with an angry tread; its foot is in the house. Awake!
In her mind, she prayed to God to bless her father, and to soften him
towards her, if it might be so; and if not, to forgive him if he was wrong,
and pardon her the prayer which almost seemed impiety. And doing so, and
looking back at him with blinded eyes, and stealing timidly away, passed out
of his room, and crossed the other, and was gone.
He may sleep on now. He may sleep on while he may. But let him look for
that slight figure when he wakes, and find it near him when the hour is
come!
Sad and grieving was the heart of Florence, as she crept upstairs. The
quiet house had grown more dismal since she came down. The sleep she had
been looking on, in the dead of night, had the solemnity to her of death and
life in one. The secrecy and silence of her own proceeding made the night
secret, silent, and oppressive. She felt unwilling, almost unable, to go on
to her own chamber; and turnIng into the drawing-rooms, where the clouded
moon was shining through the blinds, looked out into the empty streets.
The wind was blowing drearily. The lamps looked pale, and shook as if
they were cold. There was a distant glimmer of something that was not quite
darkness, rather than of light, in the sky; and foreboding night was
shivering and restless, as the dying are who make a troubled end. Florence
remembered how, as a watcher, by a sick-bed, she had noted this bleak time,
and felt its influence, as if in some hidden natural antipathy to it; and
now it was very, very gloomy.
Her Mama had not come to her room that night, which was one cause of
her having sat late out of her bed. In her general uneasiness, no less than
in her ardent longing to have somebody to speak to, and to break the spell
of gloom and silence, Florence directed her steps towards the chamber where
she slept.
The door was not fastened within, and yielded smoothly to her
hesitating hand. She was surprised to find a bright light burning; still
more surprised, on looking in, to see that her Mama, but partially
undressed, was sitting near the ashes of the fire, which had crumbled and
dropped away. Her eyes were intently bent upon the air; and in their light,
and in her face, and in her form, and in the grasp with which she held the
elbows of her chair as if about to start up, Florence saw such fierce
emotion that it terrified her.
'Mama!' she cried, 'what is the matter?'
Edith started; looking at her with such a strange dread in her face,
that Florence was more frightened than before.
'Mama!' said Florence, hurriedly advancing. 'Dear Mama! what is the
matter?'
'I have not been well,' said Edith, shaking, and still looking at her
in the same strange way. 'I have had had dreams, my love.'
'And not yet been to bed, Mama?'
'No,' she returned. 'Half-waking dreams.'
Her features gradually softened; and suffering Florence to come closer
to her, within her embrace, she said in a tender manner, 'But what does my
bird do here? What does my bird do here?'
'I have been uneasy, Mama, in not seeing you to-night, and in not
knowing how Papa was; and I - '
Florence stopped there, and said no more.
'Is it late?' asked Edith, fondly putting back the curls that mingled
with her own dark hair, and strayed upon her face.
'Very late. Near day.'
'Near day!' she repeated in surprise.
'Dear Mama, what have you done to your hand?' said Florence.
Edith drew it suddenly away, and, for a moment, looked at her with the
same strange dread (there was a sort of wild avoidance in it) as before; but
she presently said, 'Nothing, nothing. A blow.' And then she said, 'My
Florence!' and then her bosom heaved, and she was weeping passionately.
'Mama!' said Florence. 'Oh Mama, what can I do, what should I do, to
make us happier? Is there anything?'
'Nothing,' she replied.
'Are you sure of that? Can it never be? If I speak now of what is in my
thoughts, in spite of what we have agreed,' said Florence, 'you will not
blame me, will you?'
'It is useless,' she replied, 'useless. I have told you, dear, that I
have had bad dreams. Nothing can change them, or prevent them coming back.'
'I do not understand,' said Florence, gazing on her agitated face which
seemed to darken as she looked.
'I have dreamed,' said Edith in a low voice, 'of a pride that is all
powerless for good, all powerful for evil; of a pride that has been galled
and goaded, through many shameful years, and has never recoiled except upon
itself; a pride that has debased its owner with the consciousness of deep
humiliation, and never helped its owner boldly to resent it or avoid it, or
to say, "This shall not be!" a pride that, rightly guided, might have led
perhaps to better things, but which, misdirected and perverted, like all
else belonging to the same possessor, has been self-contempt, mere hardihood
and ruin.'
She neither looked nor spoke to Florence now, but went on as if she
were alone.
'I have dreamed,' she said, 'of such indifference and callousness,
arising from this self-contempt; this wretched, inefficient, miserable
pride; that it has gone on with listless steps even to the altar, yielding
to the old, familiar, beckoning finger, - oh mother, oh mother! - while it
spurned it; and willing to be hateful to itself for once and for all, rather
than to be stung daily in some new form. Mean, poor thing!'
And now with gathering and darkening emotion, she looked as she had
looked when Florence entered.
'And I have dreamed,' she said, 'that in a first late effort to achieve
a purpose, it has been trodden on, and trodden down by a base foot, but
turns and looks upon him. I have dreamed that it is wounded, hunted, set
upon by dogs, but that it stands at hay, and will not yield; no, that it
cannot if it would; but that it is urged on to hate
Her clenched hand tightened on the trembling arm she had in hers, and
as she looked down on the alarmed and wondering face, frown subsided. 'Oh
Florence!' she said, 'I think I have been nearly mad to-night!' and humbled
her proud head upon her neck and wept again.