Blended with the look that Carker bent upon him, was a devilish look at the picture over his head, that struck upon it like a flash of lightning.
“Now, Carker,” said Mr. Dombey, “I do not hesitate to say to you that I will carry my point. I am not to be trifled with. Mrs. Dombey must understand that my will is law, and that I cannot allow of one exception to the whole rule of my life. You will have the goodness to undertake this charge, which, coming from me, is not unacceptable to you, I hope, whatever regret you may politely profess—for which I am obliged to you on behalf of Mrs. Dombey; and you will have the goodness, I am persuaded, to discharge it as exactly as any other commission.”
“You know,” said Mr. Carker, “that you have only to command me.”
“I know,” said Mr. Dombey, with a majestic indication of assent, “that I have only to command you. It is necessary that I should proceed in this. Mrs. Dombey is a lady undoubtedly highly qualified, in many respects, to—”
“To do credit even to your choice,” suggested Carker, with a yawning show of teeth.
“Yes; if you please to adopt that form of words,” said Mr. Dombey, in his tone of state; “and at present I do not conceive that Mrs. Dombey does that credit to it, to which it is entitled. There is a principle of opposition in Mrs. Dombey that must be eradicated; that must be overcome: Mrs. Dombey does not appear to understand,” said Mr. Dombey, forcibly, “that the idea of opposition to Me is monstrous and absurd.”
“We, in the City, know you better,” replied Carker, with a smile from ear to ear.
“You know me better,” said Mr. Dombey. “I hope so. Though, indeed, I am bound to do Mrs. Dombey the justice of saying, however inconsistent it 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 powerful 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.
“Carker,” said Mr. Dombey, looking here and there upon the table, and saying in a somewhat altered and more hurried voice, and with a paler lip, “there is no occasion for apology. You mistake. The association is with the matter in hand, and not with any recollection, as you suppose. I do not approve of Mrs. Dombey’s behaviour towards 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—matter 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 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!—Carker,” said Mr. Dombey, checking the unusual 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.”
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 waterspout. Mr. Dombey,
