“Perhaps you are charged by Mr. Dombey with some message of reproof,” said Edith. “You possess Mr. Dombey’s confidence in such an unusual degree, Sir, that you would scarcely surprise me if that were your business.”
“I have no message to the lady who sheds a lustre upon his name,” said Mr. Carker. “But I entreat that lady, on my own behalf, to be just to a very humble claimant for justice at her hands—a mere dependant of Mr. Dombey’s—which is a position of humility; and to reflect upon my perfect helplessness last night, and the impossibility of my avoiding the share that was forced upon me in a very painful occasion.”
“My dearest Edith,” hinted Cleopatra in a low voice, as she held her eyeglass aside, “really very charming of Mr. What’s-his-name. And full of heart!”
“For I do,” said Mr. Carker, appealing to Mrs. Skewton with a look of grateful deference—“I do venture to call it a painful occasion, though merely because it was so to me, who had the misfortune to be present. So slight a difference, as between the principals—between those who love each other with disinterested devotion, and would make any sacrifice of self in such a cause—is nothing. As Mrs. Skewton herself expressed, with so much truth and feeling last night, it is nothing.”
Edith could not look at him, but she said after a few moments.
“And your business, Sir—”
“Edith, my pet,” said Mrs. Skewton, “all this time Mr. Carker is standing! My dear Mr. Carker, take a seat, I beg.”
He offered no reply to the mother, but fixed his eyes on the proud daughter, as though he would only be bidden by her, and was resolved to be bidden by her. Edith, in spite of herself, sat down, and slightly motioned with her hand to him to be seated too. No action could be colder, haughtier, more insolent in its air of supremacy and disrespect, but she had struggled against even that concession ineffectually, and it was wrested from her. That was enough! Mr. Carker sat down.
“May I be allowed, Madam,” said Carker, turning his white teeth on Mrs. Skewton like a light—“a lady of your excellent sense and quick feeling will give me credit, for good reason, I am sure—to address what I have to say, to Mrs. Dombey, and to leave her to impart it to you who are her best and dearest friend—next to Mr. Dombey?”
Mrs. Skewton would have retired, but Edith stopped her. Edith would have stopped him too, and indignantly ordered him to speak openly or not at all, but that he said, in a low voice—“Miss Florence—the young lady who has just left the room—”
Edith suffered him to proceed. She looked at him now. As he bent forward, to be nearer, with the utmost show of delicacy and respect, and with his teeth persuasively arrayed, in a self-depreciating smile, she felt as if she could have struck him dead.
“Miss Florence’s position,” he began, “has been an unfortunate one. I have a difficulty in alluding to it to you, whose attachment to her father is naturally watchful and jealous of every word that applies to him.” Always distinct and soft in speech, no language could describe the extent of his distinctness and softness, when he said these words, or came to any others of a similar import. “But, as one who is devoted to Mr. Dombey in his different way, and whose life is passed in admiration of Mr. Dombey’s character, may I say, without offence to your tenderness as a wife, that Miss Florence has unhappily been neglected—by her father. May I say by her father?”
Edith replied, “I know it.”
“You know it!” said Mr. Carker, with a great appearance of relief. “It removes a mountain from my breast. May I hope you know how the neglect originated; in what an amiable phase of Mr. Dombey’s pride—character I mean?”
“You may pass that by, Sir,” she returned, “and come the sooner to the end of what you have to say.”
“Indeed, I am sensible, Madam,” replied Carker—“trust me, I am deeply sensible, that Mr. Dombey can require no justification in anything to you. But, kindly judge of my breast by your own, and you will forgive my interest in him, if in its excess, it goes at all astray.”
What a stab to her proud heart, to sit there, face to face with him, and have him tendering her false oath at the altar again and again for her acceptance, and pressing it upon her like the dregs of a sickening cup she could not own her loathing of, or turn away from! How shame, remorse, and passion raged within her, when, upright and majestic in her beauty before him, she knew that in her spirit she was down at his feet!
“Miss Florence,” said Carker, “left to the care—if one may call it care—of servants and mercenary people, in every way her inferiors, necessarily wanted some guide and compass in her younger days, and, naturally, for want of them, has been indiscreet, and has in some degree forgotten her station. There was some folly about one Walter, a common lad, who is fortunately dead now: and some very undesirable association, I regret to say, with certain coasting sailors, of anything but good repute, and a runaway old bankrupt.”
“I have heard the circumstances, Sir,” said Edith, flashing her disdainful glance upon him, “and I know that you pervert them. You may not know it. I hope so.”
“Pardon me,” said Mr. Carker, “I believe that nobody knows them so well as I. Your generous and ardent nature, Madam—the same nature which is so nobly imperative in vindication of your beloved and honoured husband, and which has blessed him as even his merits deserve—I must respect, defer to, bow before. But, as regards the circumstances, which is indeed the business I presumed to solicit your attention to, I can have no doubt, since, in the
