MR. DOMBEY'S OFFICIAL STATE. the young man that if he ever did it again, he should be obliged to part with him. The evenings being longer now, Paul stole up to his window every evening to look out for Florence. She always passed and repassed at a certain time, until she saw him; and their mutual recognition was a gleam of sunshine in Paul's daily life. Often after dark, one other figure walked alone before the Doctor's house. He rarely joined them on the SaturHe could not bear it. He would rather day now. come unrecognized, and look up at the windows where his son was qualifying for a man; and wait, and watch, and plan, and hope. Oh! could he but have seen, or seen as others did, the slight spare boy above, watching the waves and to the Stock Exchange, where a sporting taste (orig- the dealers in those wares fell off respectfully. The fruit at the corner; where perambulating merchants The pointer always came that way, with a view A solemn hush their demonstrations of respect. office. The wit of the Counting-house became in a prevailed as Mr. Dombey passed through the outer moment as mute as the row of leathern fire-buckets hanging up behind him. Such vapid and flat daylight as filtered through the ground-glass windows and sky-lights, leaving a black sediment upon the panes, showed the books and papers, and the figures bending over them, enveloped in a studious gloom, and as much abstracted in appearance, from the world without, as if they were assembled at the bottom of the sea; while a moldy little strong room in the obscure perspective, where a shady lamp was always burning, might have represented the cavern of some ocean-monster, looking on with a red eye at these mysteries of the deep. When Perch the messenger, whose place was on a evening by a private party. little bracket, like a time-piece, saw Mr. Dombey | excruciating nature were executed every Wednesday come in-or rather when he felt that he was coming, for he had usually an instinctive sense of his approach-he hurried into Mr. Dombey's room, stirred the fire, quarried fresh coals from the bowels of the coal-box, hung the newspaper to air upon the fender, put the chair ready, and the screen in its place, and was round upon his heel on the instant of Mr. Dombey's entrance, to take his great-coat and hat, and hang them up. Then Perch took the newspaper, and gave it a turn or two in his hands before the fire, and laid it, deferentially, at Mr. Dombey's elbow. And so little objection had Perch to doing deferential in the last degree, that if he might have laid himself at Mr. Dombey's feet, or might have called him by some such title as used to be bestowed upon the Caliph Haroun Alraschid, he would have been all the better pleased. As this honor would have been an innovation and an experiment, Perch was fain to content himself by expressing as well as he could, in his manner, You are the light of my Eyes. You are the Breath of my Soul. You are the commander of the Faithful Perch! With this imperfect happiness to cheer him, he would shut the door softly, walk away on tiptoe, and leave his great chief to be stared at, through a dome-shaped window in the leads, by ugly chimney-pots and backs of houses, and especially by the bold window of a hair-cutting saloon on a first floor, where a waxen effigy, bald as a Mussulman in the morning, and covered after eleven o'clock in the day with luxuriant hair and whiskers in the latest Christian fashion, showed him the wrong side of its head for ever. Between Mr. Dombey and the common world, as it was accessible through the medium of the outer office to which Mr. Dombey's presence in his own room may be said to have struck like damp, or cold air-there were two degrees of descent. Mr. Carker, in his own office, was the first step; Mr. Morfin, in his own office, was the second. Each of these gentlemen occupied a little chamber like a bath-room, opening from the passage outside Mr. Dombey's door. Mr. Carker, as Grand Vizier, inhabited the room that was nearest to the Sultan. Mr. Morfin, as an officer of inferior state, inhabited the room that was nearest to the clerks. The gentleman last mentioned was a cheerful-looking, hazel-eyed elderly bachelor: gravely attired, as to his upper man, in black; and as to his legs, in pepper-and-salt color. His dark hair was just touched here and there with specks of gray, as though the tread of Time had splashed it; and his whiskers were already white. He had a mighty respect for Mr. Dombey, and rendered him due homage; but as he was of a genial temper himself, and never wholly at his ease in that stately presence, he was disquieted by no jealousy of the many conferences enjoyed by Mr. Carker, and felt a secret satisfaction in having duties to discharge which rarely exposed him to be singled out for such distinction. He was a great musical amateur in his way-after business; and had a paternal affection for his violoncello, which was once in every week transported from Islington, his place of abode, to a certain club-room hard by the Bank, where quartettes of the most tormenting and Mr. Carker was a gentleman thirty-eight or forty years old, of a florid complexion, and with two unbroken rows of glistening teeth, whose regularity and whiteness were quite distressing. It was impossible to escape the observation of them, for he showed them whenever he spoke; and bore so wide a smile upon his countenance (a smile, however, very rarely indeed extending beyond his mouth), that there was something in it like the snarl of a cat. He affected a stiff white cravat, after the example of his principal, and was always closely buttoned up and tightly dressed. His manner toward Mr. Dombey was deeply conceived and perfectly expressed. He was familiar with him, in the very extremity of his sense of the distance between them. "Mr. Dombey, to a man in your position from a man in mine, there is no show of subservience compatible with the transaction of business between us, that I should think sufficient. I frankly tell you, sir, I give it up altogether. I feel that I could not satisfy my own mind; and Heaven knows, Mr. Dombey, you can afford to dispense with the endeavor." If he had carried these words about with him, printed on a placard, and had constantly offered it to Mr. Dombey's perusal on the breast of his coat, he could not have been more explicit than he was. This was Carker the Manager. Mr. Carker the Junior, Walter's friend, was his brother; two or three years older than he, but widely removed in station. The younger brother's post was on the top of the official ladder; the elder brother's at the bottom. The elder brother never gained a stave, or raised his foot to mount one. Young men passed above his head, and rose and rose; but he was always at the bottom. He was quite resigned to occupy that low condition: never complained of it: and certainly never hoped to escape from it. "How do you do this morning?" said Mr. Carker the Manager, entering Mr. Dombey's room soon after his arrival one day, with a bundle of papers in his hand. "How do you do, Carker?" said Mr. Dombey, rising from his chair, and standing with his back to the fire. "Have you any thing there for me?" "I don't know that I need trouble you," returned Carker, turning over the papers in his hand. "You have a committee to-day at three, you know." "And one at three, three-quarters,” added Mr. Dombey. "Catch you forgetting any thing!" exclaimed Carker, still turning over his papers. "If Mr. Paul inherits your memory, he'll be a troublesome customer in the house, One of you is enough." "You have an accurate memory of your own," said Mr. Dombey. "Oh! I!" returned the manager. "It's the only capital of a man like me." Mr. Dombey did not look less pompous or at all displeased as he stood leaning against the chimneypiece surveying his (of course unconscious) clerk from head to foot. The stiffness and nicety of Mr. Carker's dress, and a certain arrogance of manner, either natural to him or imitated from a pattern not far off, gave great additional effect to his humility. AN OPENING (A LONG WAY OFF) FOR WALTER. He seemed a man who would contend against the power that vanquished him if he could, but who was utterly borne down by the greatness and superiority of Mr. Dombey. "Is Morfin here ?" asked Mr. Dombey, after a short pause, during which Mr. Carker had been fluttering his papers, and muttering little abstracts of their contents to himself. "Morfin's here," he answered, looking up with his widest and most sudden smile; "humming musical recollections of his last night's quartette party, I suppose through the walls between us, and driving me half mad. I wish he'd make a bonfire of his violoncello, and burn his music-books in it." "You respect nobody, Carker, I think," said Mr. Dombey. "No?" inquired Carker, with another wide and most feline show of his teeth. "Well! Not many people, I believe. I wouldn't answer, perhaps," he murmured, as if he were only thinking it, "for more than one." A dangerous quality, if real; and a not less dangerous one, if feigned. But Mr. Dombey hardly seemed to think so, as he still stood with his back to the fire, drawn up to his full height, and looking at his head - clerk with a dignified composure, in which there seemed to lurk a stronger latent sense of power than usual. "Talking of Morfin," resumed Mr. Carker, taking out one paper from the rest, "he reports a junior dead in the agency at Barbados, and proposes to reserve a passage in the Son and Heir--she'll sail in a month or so-for the successor. You don't care who goes, I suppose? We have nobody of that sort here." Mr. Dombey shook his head with supreme indifference. "It's no very precious appointment," observed Mr. Carker, taking up a pen, with which to indorse a memorandum on the back of the paper. "I hope he may bestow it on some orphan nephew of a musical friend. It may perhaps stop his fiddle-playing, if he has a gift that way. Who's that? Come in!" "I beg your pardon, Mr. Carker. I didn't know ] you were here, sir," answered Walter, appearing with some letters in his hand, unopened, and newly arrived. "Mr. Carker the Junior, sir-" At the mention of this name, Mr. Carker the Manager was, or affected to be, touched to the quick with shame and humiliation. He cast his eyes full on Mr. Dombey with an altered and apologetic look, abased them on the ground, and remained for a moment without speaking. "I thought, sir," he said, suddenly and angrily, turning on Walter, "that you had been before requested not to drag Mr. Carker the Junior into your conversation." "I beg your pardon," returned Walter. "I was only going to say that Mr. Carker the Junior had told me he believed you were gone out, or I should not have knocked at the door when you were engaged with Mr. Dombey. These are letters for Mr. Dombey, sir." "Go "Very well, sir," returned Mr. Carker the Manager, plucking them sharply from his hand. about your business." But in taking them with so little 77 Carker dropped one on the floor, and did not see what he had done; neither did Mr. Dombey observe the letter lying near his feet. Walter hesitated for a moment, thinking that one or other of them would notice it; but finding that neither did, he stopped, came back, picked it up, and laid it himself on Mr. Dombey's desk. The letters were post-letters; and it happened that the one in question was Mrs. Pipchin's regular report, directed as usual-for Mrs. Pipchin was but an indifferent pen-woman - by Florence. Mr. Dombey, having his attention silently called to this letter by Walter, started, and looked fiercely at him, as if he believed that he had purposely selected it from all the rest. "You can leave the room, sir," said Mr. Dombey, haughtily. He crushed the letter in his hand; and having watched Walter out at the door, put it in his pocket without breaking the seal. "You want somebody to send to the West Indies, you were saying," observed Mr. Dombey, hurriedly. "Yes," replied Carker. "Send young Gay." "Good, very good indeed. Nothing easier," said Mr. Carker, without any show of surprise, and taking up the pen to re-indorse the letter, as coolly as he had done before. "Send young Gay.'" "Call him back," said Mr. Dombey. Mr. Carker was quick to do so, and Walter was quick to return. "Gay," said Mr. Dombey, turning a little to look at him over his shoulder. "Here is a "" "An opening," said Mr. Carker, with his mouth stretched to the utmost. "In the West Indies. At Barbados. I am going to send you," said Mr. Dombey, scoruing to embellish the bare truth, "to fill a junior situation in the counting-house at Barbados. Let your uncle know from me that I have chosen you to go to the West Indies." Walter's breath was so completely taken away by his astonishment, that he could hardly find enough for the repetition of the words "West Indies." "Somebody must go," said Mr. Dombey, " and you are young and healthy, and your uncle's circumstances are not good. Tell your uncle that you are appointed. You will not go yet. There will be an interval of a month-or two, perhaps." "Shall I remain there, sir?" inquired Walter. "Will you remain there, sir!" repeated Mr. Dombey, turning a little more round toward him. "What do you mean? What does he mean, Carker?" "Live there, sir," faltered Walter. "Certainly," returned Mr. Dombey. Walter bowed. "That's all," said Mr. Dombey, resuming his let ters. "You will explain to him in good time about the usual outfit, and so forth, Carker, of course. He needn't wait, Carker." "You needn't wait, Gay," observed Mr. Carker, bare to the gums. "Unless," said Mr. Dombey, stopping in his reading without looking off the letter, and seeming to listen. "Unless he has any thing to say." "No, sir," returned Walter, agitated and confused, and almost stunned, as an infinite variety of pic tures presented themselves to his mind; among which Captain Cuttle, in his glazed hat, transfixed with astonishment at Mrs. MacStinger's, and his uncle bemoaning his loss in the little back parlor, held prominent places. "I hardly know-I-I am much obliged, sir." "He needn't wait, Carker," said Mr. Dombey. And as Mr. Carker again echoed the words, and also collected his papers as if he were going away too, Walter felt that his lingering any longer would be an unpardonable intrusion-especially as he had nothing to say- - and therefore walked out quite confounded. Going along the passage, with the mingled consciousness and helplessness of a dream, he heard Mr. Dombey's door shut again as Mr. Carker came out; and immediately afterward that gentleman called to him. Bring your friend Mr. Carker the Junior to my room, sir, if you please." Walter went to the outer office and apprised Mr. Carker the Junior of his errand, who accordingly came out from behind a partition where he sat alone in one corner, and returned with him to the room of Mr. Carker the Manager. That gentleman was standing with his back to the fire, and his hands under his coat-tails, looking over his white cravat as unpromisingly as Mr. Dombey himself could have looked. He received them without any change in his attitude or softening of his harsh and black expression: merely signing to Walter to close the door. "John Carker," said the Manager, when this was done, turning suddenly upon his brother, with his two rows of teeth bristling as if he would have bitten him, "what is the league between you and this young man, in virtue of which I am haunted and hunted by the mention of your name? Is it not enough for you, John Carker, that I am your near relation, and can't detach myself from that-” "Say disgrace, James," interposed the other in a low voice, finding that he stammered for a word. "You mean it, and have reason, say disgrace." "From that disgrace," assented his brother with keen emphasis; "but is the fact to be blurted out and trumpeted, and proclaimed continually in the presence of the very House! In moments of confidence too? Do you think your name is calculated to harmonize in this place with trust and confidence, John Carker?" "No," returned the other. "No, James. knows I have no such thought." God "What is your thought, then?" said his brother, and why do you thrust yourself in my way? Haven't you injured me enough already?" "I have never injured you, James, willfully." "You are my brother," said the Manager. "That's injury enough." "I wish I could undo it, James." "I wish you could and would." ter by the tone and look with which they were accompanied, and by the presence of Walter, whom they so much surprised and shocked, he entered no other protest against them than by slightly raising his right hand in a deprecatory manner, as if he would have said, "Spare me!" So, had they been blows, and he a brave man, under strong constraint, and weakened by bodily suffering, he might have stood before the executioner. Generous and quick in all his emotions, and regarding himself as the innocent occasion of these taunts, Walter now struck in, with all the earnestness he felt. We “Mr. Carker,” he said, addressing himself to the Manager. "Indeed, indeed, this is my fault, solely. In a kind of heedlessness, for which I can not blame myself enough, I have, I have no doubt, mentioned Mr. Carker the Junior much oftener than was necessary; and have allowed his name sometimes to slip through my lips, when it was against your express wish. But it has been my own mistake, sir. have never exchanged one word upon the subject— very few, indeed, on any subject. And it has not been," added Walter, after a moment's pause, "all heedlessness on my part, sir; for I have felt an interest in Mr. Carker ever since I have been here, and have hardly been able to help speaking of him sometimes, when I have thought of him so much!" Walter said this from his soul, and with the very breath of honor. For he looked upon the bowed head, and the downcast eyes, and upraised hand, and thought, "I have felt it; and why should I not avow it in behalf of this unfriended, broken man!" "In truth, you have avoided me, Mr. Carker," said Walter, with the tears rising to his eyes; so true was his compassion. "I know it, to my disappointment and regret. When I first came here, and ever since, I am sure I have tried to be as much your friend as one of my age could presume to be; but it has been of no use." "And observe," said the Manager, taking him up quickly, "it will be of still less use, Gay, if you persist in forcing Mr. John Carker's name on people's attention. That is not the way to befriend Mr. John Carker. Ask him if he thinks it is." "It is no service to me," said the brother. "It only leads to such a conversation as the present, which I need not say I could have well spared. No one can be a better friend to me"-he spoke here very distinctly, as if he would impress it upon Walter-"than in forgetting me, and leaving me to go my way, unquestioned and unnoticed." "Your memory not being retentive, Gay, of what you are told by others," said Mr. Carker the Manager, warming himself with great and increased satisfaction, "I thought it well that you should be told this from the best authority," nodding toward his brother. "You are not likely to forget it now, I hope. That's all, Gay. You can go." Walter passed out at the door, and was about to close it after him, when, hearing the voice of the brothers again, and also the mention of his own name, he stood irresolutely, with his hand upon the lock, and the door ajar, uncertain whether to return or go away. In this position he could not help over During this conversation, Walter had looked from one brother to the other with pain and amazement. He who was the Senior in years, and Junior in the house, stood, with his eyes cast upon the ground, and | his head bowed, humbly listening to the reproaches of the other. Though these were rendered very bit- | hearing what followed. TWO BROTHERS. "Think of me more leniently, if you can, James," said John Carker, "when I tell you I have hadhow could I help having, with my history written here"-striking himself upon the breast-"my whole heart awakened by my observation of that boy, Walter Gay. I saw in him, when he first came here, almost my other self." "Your other self!" repeated the Manager, disdainfully. "Not as I am, but as I was when I first came here too; as sanguine, giddy, youthful, inexperienced; flushed with the same restless and adventurous fancies; and full of the same qualities, fraught with the same capacity of leading on to good or evil.” 79 "From which ONE traveler fell," returned the other, "who set forward on his way a boy like him, and missed his footing more and more, and slipped a little and a little lower, and went on stumbling still, until he fell headlong, and found himself below, a shattered man. Think what I suffered when I watched that boy." "You have only yourself to thank for it," returned the brother. "Only myself," he assented, with a sigh. "I don't seek to divide the blame or shame." "You have divided the shame," James Carker muttered through his teeth. And through so many and such close teeth he could mutter well. "I hope not," said his brother, with some hidden and sarcastic meaning in his tone. "You strike me sharply; and your hand is steady, and your thrust is very deep," returned the other, speaking (or so Walter thought) as if some cruel weapon actually stabbed him as he spoke. "I imagined all this when he was a boy. I believed it. It was a truth to me. I saw him lightly walking on the edge of an unseen gulf where so many others walk with equal gayety, and from which-" "The old excuse," interrupted his brother, as he stirred the fire. "So many. Go on. Say, so many fall." "Ah, James," returned his brother, speaking for the first time in an accent of reproach, and seeming, by the sound of his voice, to have covered his face with his hands, "I have been, since then, a useful foil to you. You have trodden on me freely in your climbing up. Don't spurn me with your heel!" A silence ensued. After a time, Mr. Carker the Manager was heard rustling among his papers, as if he had resolved to bring the interview to a conclusion. At the same time his brother withdrew nearer to the door. "That's all," he said. "I watched him with such trembling and such fear, as was some little punish |