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 eavesdropping. 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 awestricken 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 catlike 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 tablecloth. 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,
