She had asked him why he did this. Had she not been blinded by her pride and wrath, and self-humiliation—which she was, fiercely as she bent her gaze upon him—she would have seen the answer in his face. To bring her to this declaration.
She saw it not, and cared not whether it was there or no. She saw only the indignities and struggles she had undergone and had to undergo, and was writhing under them. As she sat looking fixedly at them, rather than at him, she plucked the feathers from a pinion of some rare and beautiful bird, which hung from her wrist by a golden thread, to serve her as a fan, and rained them on the ground.
He did not shrink beneath her gaze, but stood, until such outward signs of her anger as had escaped her control subsided, with the air of a man who had his sufficient reply in reserve and would presently deliver it. And he then spoke, looking straight into her kindling eyes.
“Madam,” he said, “I know, and knew before today, that I have found no favour with you; and I knew why. Yes. I knew why. You have spoken so openly to me; I am so relieved by the possession of your confidence—”
“Confidence!” she repeated, with disdain.
He passed it over.
“—that I will make no pretence of concealment. I did see from the first, that there was no affection on your part for Mr. Dombey—how could it possibly exist between such different subjects? And I have seen, since, that stronger feelings than indifference have been engendered in your breast—how could that possibly be otherwise, either, circumstanced as you have been? But was it for me to presume to avow this knowledge to you in so many words?”
“Was it for you, Sir,” she replied, “to feign that other belief, and audaciously to thrust it on me day by day?”
“Madam, it was,” he eagerly retorted. “If I had done less, if I had done anything but that, I should not be speaking to you thus; and I foresaw—who could better foresee, for who has had greater experience of Mr. Dombey than myself?—that unless your character should prove to be as yielding and obedient as that of his first submissive lady, which I did not believe—”
A haughty smile gave him reason to observe that he might repeat this.
“I say, which I did not believe—the time was likely to come, when such an understanding as we have now arrived at, would be serviceable.”
“Serviceable to whom, Sir?” she demanded scornfully.
“To you. I will not add to myself, as warning me to refrain even from that limited commendation of Mr. Dombey, in which I can honestly indulge, in order that I may not have the misfortune of saying anything distasteful to one whose aversion and contempt,” with great expression, “are so keen.”
“Is it honest in you, Sir,” said Edith, “to confess to your ‘limited commendation,’ and to speak in that tone of disparagement, even of him: being his chief counsellor and flatterer!”
“Counsellor—yes,” said Carker. “Flatterer—no. A little reservation I fear I must confess to. But our interest and convenience commonly oblige many of us to make professions that we cannot feel. We have partnerships of interest and convenience, friendships of interest and convenience, dealings of interest and convenience, marriages of interest and convenience, every day.”
She bit her blood-red lip; but without wavering in the dark, stern watch she kept upon him.
“Madam,” said Mr. Carker, sitting down in a chair that was near her, with an air of the most profound and most considerate respect, “why should I hesitate now, being altogether devoted to your service, to speak plainly? It was natural that a lady, endowed as you are, should think it feasible to change her husband’s character in some respects, and mould him to a better form.”
“It was not natural to me, Sir,” she rejoined. “I had never any expectation or intention of that kind.”
The proud undaunted face showed him it was resolute to wear no mask he offered, but was set upon a reckless disclosure of itself, indifferent to any aspect in which it might present itself to such as he.
“At least it was natural,” he resumed, “that you should deem it quite possible to live with Mr. Dombey as his wife, at once without submitting to him, and without coming into such violent collision with him. But, Madam, you did not know Mr. Dombey (as you have since ascertained), when you thought that. You did not know how exacting and how proud he is, or how he is, if I may say so, the slave of his own greatness, and goes yoked to his own triumphal car like a beast of burden, with no idea on earth but that it is behind him and is to be drawn on, over everything and through everything.”
His teeth gleamed through his malicious relish of this conceit, as he went on talking:
“Mr. Dombey is really capable of no more true consideration for you, Madam, than for me. The comparison is an extreme one; I intend it to be so; but quite just. Mr. Dombey, in the plenitude of his power, asked me—I had it from his own lips yesterday morning—to be his go-between to you, because he knows I am not agreeable to you, and because he intends that I shall be a punishment for your contumacy; and besides that, because he really does
