“I think if you would hear me—”
“Why should I hear you, Brother John?” returned the Manager, laying a sarcastic emphasis on those two words, and throwing up his head, but not lifting his eyes. “I tell you, Harriet Carker made her choice many years ago between her two brothers. She may repent it, but she must abide by it.”
“Don’t mistake me. I do not say she does repent it. It would be black ingratitude in me to hint at such a thing,” returned the other. “Though believe me, James, I am as sorry for her sacrifice as you.”
“As I?” exclaimed the Manager. “As I?”
“As sorry for her choice—for what you call her choice—as you are angry at it,” said the Junior.
“Angry?” repeated the other, with a wide show of his teeth.
“Displeased. Whatever word you like best. You know my meaning. There is no offence in my intention.”
“There is offence in everything you do,” replied his brother, glancing at him with a sudden scowl, which in a moment gave place to a wider smile than the last. “Carry those papers away, if you please. I am busy.”
His politeness was so much more cutting than his wrath, that the Junior went to the door. But stopping at it, and looking round, he said:
“When Harriet tried in vain to plead for me with you, on your first just indignation, and my first disgrace; and when she left you, James, to follow my broken fortunes, and devote herself, in her mistaken affection, to a ruined brother, because without her he had no one, and was lost; she was young and pretty. I think if you could see her now—if you would go and see her—she would move your admiration and compassion.”
The Manager inclined his head, and showed his teeth, as who should say, in answer to some careless small-talk, “Dear me! Is that the case?” but said never a word.
“We thought in those days: you and I both: that she would marry young, and lead a happy and lighthearted life,” pursued the other. “Oh if you knew how cheerfully she cast those hopes away; how cheerfully she has gone forward on the path she took, and never once looked back; you never could say again that her name was strange in your ears. Never!”
Again the Manager inclined his head and showed his teeth, and seemed to say, “Remarkable indeed! You quite surprise me!” And again he uttered never a word.
“May I go on?” said John Carker, mildly.
“On your way?” replied his smiling brother. “If you will have the goodness.”
John Carker, with a sigh, was passing slowly out at the door, when his brother’s voice detained him for a moment on the threshold.
“If she has gone, and goes, her own way cheerfully,” he said, throwing the still unfolded letter on his desk, and putting his hands firmly in his pockets, “you may tell her that I go as cheerfully on mine. If she has never once looked back, you may tell her that I have, sometimes, to recall her taking part with you, and that my resolution is no easier to wear away;” he smiled very sweetly here; “than marble.”
“I tell her nothing of you. We never speak about you. Once a year, on your birthday, Harriet says always, ‘Let us remember James by name, and wish him happy,’ but we say no more.”
“Tell it then, if you please,” returned the other, “to yourself. You can’t repeat it too often, as a lesson to you to avoid the subject in speaking to me. I know no Harriet Carker. There is no such person. You may have a sister; make much of her. I have none.”
Mr. Carker the Manager took up the letter again, and waved it with a smile of mock courtesy towards the door. Unfolding it as his brother withdrew, and looking darkly after him as he left the room, he once more turned round in his elbow-chair, and applied himself to a diligent perusal of its contents.
It was in the writing of his great chief, Mr. Dombey, and dated from Leamington. Though he was a quick reader of all other letters, Mr. Carker read this slowly; weighing the words as he went, and bringing every tooth in his head to bear upon them. When he had read it through once, he turned it over again, and picked out these passages. “I find myself benefited by the change, and am not yet inclined to name any time for my return.” “I wish, Carker, you would arrange to come down once and see me here, and let me know how things are going on, in person.” “I omitted to speak to you about young Gay. If not gone per Son and Heir, or if Son and Heir still lying in the Docks, appoint some other young man and keep him in the City for the present. I am not decided.” “Now that’s unfortunate!” said Mr. Carker the Manager, expanding his mouth, as if it were made of India-rubber: “for he’s far away.”
Still that passage, which was in a postscript, attracted his attention and his teeth, once more.
“I think,” he said, “my good friend Captain Cuttle mentioned something about being towed along in the wake of that day. What a pity he’s so far away!”
He refolded the letter, and was sitting trifling with it, standing it longwise and broad-wise on his table, and turning it over and over on all sides—doing pretty much the same thing, perhaps, by its contents—when Mr. Perch the messenger knocked softly at the door, and coming in on tiptoe, bending his body at every step as if it were the delight of his life to bow, laid some papers on the table.
“Would you please to be engaged, Sir?” asked Mr. Perch, rubbing his hands, and deferentially putting his head on one side, like a man who felt he had no business to hold it up in such a
