Chapter 42. Confidential and Accidental

Dombey and Son

by Charles Dickens

Attired no more in Captain Cuttle's sable slops and sou'-wester
hat, but dressed in a substantial suit of brown livery, which, while
it affected to be a very sober and demure livery indeed, was really
as self-satisfied and confident a one as tailor need desire to make,
Rob the Grinder, thus transformed as to his outer man, and all
regardless within of the Captain and the Midshipman, except when he
devoted a few minutes of his leisure time to crowing over those
inseparable worthies, and recalling, with much applauding music from
that brazen instrument, his conscience, the triumphant manner in
which he had disembarrassed himself of their company, now served his
patron, Mr Carker. Inmate of Mr Carker's house, and serving about his
person, Rob kept his round eyes on the white teeth with fear and
trembling, and felt that he had need to open them wider than ever.

He could not have quaked more, through his whole being, before
the teeth, though he had come into the service of some powerful
enchanter, and they had been his strongest spells. The boy had a
sense of power and authority in this patron of his that engrossed his
whole attention and exacted his most implicit submission and
obedience. He hardly considered himself safe in thinking about him
when he was absent, lest he should feel himself immediately taken by
the throat again, as on the morning when he first became bound to
him, and should see every one of the teeth finding him out, and
taxing him with every fancy of his mind. Face to face with him, Rob
had no more doubt that Mr Carker read his secret thoughts, or that he
could read them by the least exertion of his will if he were so
inclined, than he had that Mr Carker saw him when he looked at him.
The ascendancy was so complete, and held him in such enthralment,
that, hardly daring to think at all, but with his mind filled with a
constantly dilating impression of his patron's irresistible command
over him, and power of doing anything with him, he would stand
watching his pleasure, and trying to anticipate his orders, in a
state of mental suspension, as to all other things.

Rob had not informed himself perhaps - in his then state of mind
it would have been an act of no common temerity to inquire - whether
he yielded so completely to this influence in any part, because he
had floating suspicions of his patron's being a master of certain
treacherous arts in which he had himself been a poor scholar at the
Grinders' School. But certainly Rob admired him, as well as feared
him. Mr Carker, perhaps, was better acquainted with the sources of
his power, which lost nothing by his management of it.

On the very night when he left the Captain's service, Rob, after
disposing of his pigeons, and even making a bad bargain in his hurry,
had gone straight down to Mr Carker's house, and hotly presented
himself before his new master with a glowing face that seemed to
expect commendation.

'What, scapegrace!' said Mr Carker, glancing at his bundle 'Have
you left your situation and come to me?'

'Oh if you please, Sir,' faltered Rob, 'you said, you know, when
I come here last - '

'I said,' returned Mr Carker, 'what did I say?'

'If you please, Sir, you didn't say nothing at all, Sir,'
returned Rob, warned by the manner of this inquiry, and very much
disconcerted.

His patron looked at him with a wide display of gums, and
shaking his forefinger, observed:

'You'll come to an evil end, my vagabond friend, I foresee.
There's ruin in store for you.

'Oh if you please, don't, Sir!' cried Rob, with his legs
trembling under him. ' I'm sure, Sir, I only want to work for you,
Sir, and to wait upon you, Sir, and to do faithful whatever I'm bid,
Sir.'

'You had better do faithfully whatever you are bid,' returned
his patron, 'if you have anything to do with me.'

'Yes, I know that, Sir,' pleaded the submissive Rob; 'I'm sure
of that, Sir. If you'll only be so good as try me, Sir! And if ever
you find me out, Sir, doing anything against your wishes, I give you
leave to kill me.'

'You dog!' said Mr Carker, leaning back in his chair, and
smiling at him serenely. 'That's nothing to what I'd do to you, if
you tried to deceive me.'

'Yes, Sir,' replied the abject Grinder, 'I'm sure you would be
down upon me dreadful, Sir. I wouldn't attempt for to go and do it,
Sir, not if I was bribed with golden guineas.'

Thoroughly checked in his expectations of commendation, the
crestfallen Grinder stood looking at his patron, and vainly
endeavouring not to look at him, with the uneasiness which a cur will
often manifest in a similar situation.

'So you have left your old service, and come here to ask me to
take you into mine, eh?' said Mr Carker.

'Yes, if you please, Sir,' returned Rob, who, in doing so, had
acted on his patron's own instructions, but dared not justify himself
by the least insinuation to that effect.

'Well!' said Mr Carker. 'You know me, boy?'

'Please, Sir, yes, Sir,' returned Rob, tumbling with his hat,
and still fixed by Mr Carker's eye, and fruitlessly endeavouring to
unfix himself.

Mr Carker nodded. 'Take care, then!'

Rob expressed in a number of short bows his lively understanding
of this caution, and was bowing himself back to the door, greatly
relieved by the prospect of getting on the outside of it, when his
patron stopped him.

'Halloa!' he cried, calling him roughly back. 'You have been -
shut that door.'

Rob obeyed as if his life had depended on his alacrity.

'You have been used to eaves-dropping. Do you know what that
means?'

'Listening, Sir?' Rob hazarded, after some embarrassed
reflection.

His patron nodded. 'And watching, and so forth.'

'I wouldn't do such a thing here, Sir,' answered Rob; 'upon my
word and honour, I wouldn't, Sir, I wish I may die if I would, Sir,
for anything that could be promised to me. I should consider it is as
much as all the world was worth, to offer to do such a thing, unless
I was ordered, Sir.'

'You had better not' You have been used, too, to babbling and
tattling,' said his patron with perfect coolness. 'Beware of that
here, or you're a lost rascal,' and he smiled again, and again
cautioned him with his forefinger.

The Grinder's breath came short and thick with consternation. He
tried to protest the purity of his intentions, but could only stare
at the smiling gentleman in a stupor of submission, with which the
smiling gentleman seemed well enough satisfied, for he ordered him
downstairs, after observing him for some moments in silence, and gave
him to understand that he was retained in his employment. This was
the manner of Rob the Grinder's engagement by Mr Carker, and his
awe-stricken devotion to that gentleman had strengthened and
increased, if possible, with every minute of his service.

It was a service of some months' duration, when early one
morning, Rob opened the garden gate to Mr Dombey, who was come to
breakfast with his master, by appointment. At the same moment his
master himself came, hurrying forth to receive the distinguished
guest, and give him welcome with all his teeth.

'I never thought,' said Carker, when he had assisted him to
alight from his horse, 'to see you here, I'm sure. This is an
extraordinary day in my calendar. No occasion is very special to a
man like you, who may do anything; but to a man like me, the case is
widely different.

'You have a tasteful place here, Carker,' said Mr Dombey,
condescending to stop upon the lawn, to look about him.

'You can afford to say so,' returned Carker. 'Thank you.'

'Indeed,' said Mr Dombey, in his lofty patronage, 'anyone might
say so. As far as it goes, it is a very commodious and well-arranged
place - quite elegant.'

'As far as it goes, truly,' returned Carker, with an air of
disparagement' 'It wants that qualification. Well! we have said
enough about it; and though you can afford to praise it, I thank you
nonetheless. Will you walk in?'

Mr Dombey, entering the house, noticed, as he had reason to do,
the complete arrangement of the rooms, and the numerous contrivances
for comfort and effect that abounded there. Mr Carker, in his
ostentation of humility, received this notice with a deferential
smile, and said he understood its delicate meaning, and appreciated
it, but in truth the cottage was good enough for one in his position
- better, perhaps, than such a man should occupy, poor as it was.

'But perhaps to you, who are so far removed, it really does look
better than it is,' he said, with his false mouth distended to its
fullest stretch. 'Just as monarchs imagine attractions in the lives
of beggars.'

He directed a sharp glance and a sharp smile at Mr Dombey as he
spoke, and a sharper glance, and a sharper smile yet, when Mr Dombey,
drawing himself up before the fire, in the attitude so often copied
by his second in command, looked round at the pictures on the walls.
Cursorily as his cold eye wandered over them, Carker's keen glance
accompanied his, and kept pace with his, marking exactly where it
went, and what it saw. As it rested on one picture in particular,
Carker hardly seemed to breathe, his sidelong scrutiny was so
cat-like and vigilant, but the eye of his great chief passed from
that, as from the others, and appeared no more impressed by it than
by the rest.

Carker looked at it - it was the picture that resembled Edith -
as if it were a living thing; and with a wicked, silent laugh upon
his face, that seemed in part addressed to it, though it was all
derisive of the great man standing so unconscious beside him.
Breakfast was soon set upon the table; and, inviting Mr Dombey to a
chair which had its back towards this picture, he took his own seat
opposite to it as usual.

Mr Dombey was even graver than it was his custom to be, and
quite silent. The parrot, swinging in the gilded hoop within her
gaudy cage, attempted in vain to attract notice, for Carker was too
observant of his visitor to heed her; and the visitor, abstracted in
meditation, looked fixedly, not to say sullenly, over his stiff
neckcloth, without raising his eyes from the table-cloth. As to Rob,
who was in attendance, all his faculties and energies were so locked
up in observation of his master, that he scarcely ventured to give
shelter to the thought that the visitor was the great gentleman
before whom he had been carried as a certificate of the family
health, in his childhood, and to whom he had been indebted for his
leather smalls.

'Allow me,' said Carker suddenly, 'to ask how Mrs Dombey is?'

He leaned forward obsequiously, as he made the inquiry, with his
chin resting on his hand; and at the same time his eyes went up to
the picture, as if he said to it, 'Now, see, how I will lead him
on!'

Mr Dombey reddened as he answered:

'Mrs Dombey is quite well. You remind me, Carker, of some
conversation that I wish to have with you.'

'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.