CHAPTER XLII. CONFIDENTIAL AND ACCIDENTAL. come to me?" "Oh if you please, Sir," faltered Rob," you said, you know, when I come here last-" ATTIRED no more in Captain Cuttle's sable slops | at his bundle. “Have you left your situation and 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 crow. ing 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. In mate 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. "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." 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 Thoroughly checked in his expectations of comby the least exertion of his will if he were so in-mendation, the crest-fallen Grinder stood looking at clined, than he had that Mr. Carker saw him when his patron, and vainly endeavouring not to look at be looked at him. The ascendancy was so com- him, with the uneasiness which a cur will often plete, and held him in such enthralment, that, manifest in a similar situation. 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 hirn. 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 "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?" 66 Please, Sir, yes, Sir," returned Rob, fumbling 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 em barrassed reflection. His patron nodded. forth." "And watching and so "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 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 down stairs, 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, "any one might say so. As far as it goes, it is a very commodious and well-arranged placequite 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 none the less. Will you walk in?" copied by his second in command, looked round at the pictures on the walls. Cursorily as his cold eye wondered over them, Carker's keen glance accom. panied 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 catlike and vigilant, but the eye of his great chief passed from that, as from the others, and appeared no more im. pressed 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, swing. ing 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 ener gies 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 ehildhood, 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 immeshed Grinder was gone. 66 No," said Mr. Dombey, with magnificent in. difference. "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?" 16 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 "Is it that boy?" said Mr. Dombey, with a frown. deferential smile, and said he understood its delicate "He does little credit to his education, I believe." meaning, and appreciated it, but in truth the cot- Why, he is a young rip, I am afraid," returned tage was good enough for one in his position-Carker, with a shrug. "He bears that character. better, perhaps, than such a man should occupy, But the truth is, I took him into my service be poor as it was. cause, being able to get no other employment, he conceived (had been taught at home, I dare say) that he had some sort of claim upon you, and was constantly trying to dog your heels with his peti tion. 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 "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 He stopped again, as if to discover whether he had led Mr. Dombey far enough yet. And again, CHAPTER XLII. CONFIDENTIAL AND ACCIDENTAL. 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. ATTIRED no more in Captain Cuttle's sable slops | at his bundle. "Have you left your situation and 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 crow. ing 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. In mate 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. 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." ceive 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." 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 "You dog!" said Mr. Carker, leaning back in considered himself safe in thinking about him when his chair, and smiling at him serenely. "That's he was absent, lest he should feel himself immedi-nothing to what I'd do to you, if you tried to deately 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. Thoroughly checked in his expectations of commendation, the crest-fallen 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, fumbling 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. 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 | barrassed reflection. "You have been used to eaves-dropping. Do you know what that means?" "Listening, Sir ?" Rob hazarded, after some em. Dombey, forcibly, "that the idea of opposition to "We, in the City, know you better," replied Carker, with a smile from ear to ear. 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! usual 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." "You know me better," said Mr. Dombey. "I hope so. Though, indeed, I am bound to do Mrs. Dombey the justice of saying, however inconsistentCarker," said Mr. Dombey, checking the unit 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 power ful 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. 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 sec," 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. 66 Consequently," pursued Carker, "your making these communications to Mrs. Dombey through me, is sure to be particularly unpalatable to that lady ?" "Carker," said Mr. Dombey, looking here and there upon the table, and speaking in a somewhat altered and more hurried voice, and with a paler "It appears to me," said Mr. Dombey, with lip, "there is no occasion for apology. You mis- haughty reserve, and yet with some embarrassment, take. The association is with the matter in hand," that Mrs. Dombey's views upon the subject form and not with any recollection, as you suppose. I no part of it as it presents itself to you and me, do not approve of Mrs. Dombey's behaviour towards Carker. But it may be so." 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-inatter 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 "And-pardon me-do I misconceive you," said Carker, "when I think you desery 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 intrust to you, would be likely to degrade you—” |