Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens [top ten ebook reader .TXT] 📗

drawers, and making an endorsement on it, while Uncle Sol looked over him, ‘as one of your own chronometers. Quite right.’

‘The Son and Heir has not been spoken, I find by the list, Sir,’ said Uncle Sol, with a slight addition to the usual tremor in his voice.

‘The Son and Heir has not been spoken,’ returned Carker. ‘There seems to have been tempestuous weather, Mr Gills, and she has probably been driven out of her course.’

‘She is safe, I trust in Heaven!’ said old Sol.

‘She is safe, I trust in Heaven!’ assented Mr Carker in that voiceless manner of his: which made the observant young Toodle tremble again. ‘Mr Gills,’ he added aloud, throwing himself back in his chair, ‘you must miss your nephew very much?’

Uncle Sol, standing by him, shook his head and heaved a deep sigh.

‘Mr Gills,’ said Carker, with his soft hand playing round his mouth, and looking up into the Instrument-maker’s face, ‘it would be company to you to have a young fellow in your shop just now, and it would be obliging me if you would give one house-room for the present. No, to be sure,’ he added quickly, in anticipation of what the old man was going to say, ‘there’s not much business doing there, I know; but you can make him clean the place out, polish up the instruments; drudge, Mr Gills. That’s the lad!’

Sol Gills pulled down his spectacles from his forehead to his eyes, and looked at Toodle Junior standing upright in the corner: his head presenting the appearance (which it always did) of having been newly drawn out of a bucket of cold water; his small waistcoat rising and falling quickly in the play of his emotions; and his eyes intently fixed on Mr Carker, without the least reference to his proposed master.

‘Will you give him house-room, Mr Gills?’ said the Manager.

Old Sol, without being quite enthusiastic on the subject, replied that he was glad of any opportunity, however slight, to oblige Mr Carker, whose wish on such a point was a command: and that the wooden Midshipman would consider himself happy to receive in his berth any visitor of Mr Carker’s selecting.

Mr Carker bared himself to the tops and bottoms of his gums: making the watchful Toodle Junior tremble more and more: and acknowledged the Instrument-maker’s politeness in his most affable manner.

‘I’ll dispose of him so, then, Mr Gills,’ he answered, rising, and shaking the old man by the hand, ‘until I make up my mind what to do with him, and what he deserves. As I consider myself responsible for him, Mr Gills,’ here he smiled a wide smile at Rob, who shook before it: ‘I shall be glad if you’ll look sharply after him, and report his behaviour to me. I’ll ask a question or two of his parents as I ride home this afternoon—respectable people—to confirm some particulars in his own account of himself; and that done, Mr Gills, I’ll send him round to you to-morrow morning. Goodbye!’

His smile at parting was so full of teeth, that it confused old Sol, and made him vaguely uncomfortable. He went home, thinking of raging seas, foundering ships, drowning men, an ancient bottle of Madeira never brought to light, and other dismal matters.

‘Now, boy!’ said Mr Carker, putting his hand on young Toodle’s shoulder, and bringing him out into the middle of the room. ‘You have heard me?’

Rob said, ‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Perhaps you understand,’ pursued his patron, ‘that if you ever deceive or play tricks with me, you had better have drowned yourself, indeed, once for all, before you came here?’

There was nothing in any branch of mental acquisition that Rob seemed to understand better than that.

‘If you have lied to me,’ said Mr Carker, ‘in anything, never come in my way again. If not, you may let me find you waiting for me somewhere near your mother’s house this afternoon. I shall leave this at five o’clock, and ride there on horseback. Now, give me the address.’

Rob repeated it slowly, as Mr Carker wrote it down. Rob even spelt it over a second time, letter by letter, as if he thought that the omission of a dot or scratch would lead to his destruction. Mr Carker then handed him out of the room; and Rob, keeping his round eyes fixed upon his patron to the last, vanished for the time being.

Mr Carker the Manager did a great deal of business in the course of the day, and bestowed his teeth upon a great many people. In the office, in the court, in the street, and on ‘Change, they glistened and bristled to a terrible extent. Five o’clock arriving, and with it Mr Carker’s bay horse, they got on horseback, and went gleaming up Cheapside.

As no one can easily ride fast, even if inclined to do so, through the press and throng of the City at that hour, and as Mr Carker was not inclined, he went leisurely along, picking his way among the carts and carriages, avoiding whenever he could the wetter and more dirty places in the over-watered road, and taking infinite pains to keep himself and his steed clean. Glancing at the passersby while he was thus ambling on his way, he suddenly encountered the round eyes of the sleek-headed Rob intently fixed upon his face as if they had never been taken off, while the boy himself, with a pocket-handkerchief twisted up like a speckled eel and girded round his waist, made a very conspicuous demonstration of being prepared to attend upon him, at whatever pace he might think proper to go.

This attention, however flattering, being one of an unusual kind, and attracting some notice from the other passengers, Mr Carker took advantage of a clearer thoroughfare and a cleaner road, and broke into a trot. Rob immediately did the same. Mr Carker presently tried a canter; Rob was still in attendance. Then a short gallop; it was all one to the boy. Whenever Mr Carker turned his eyes to that side of the road, he still saw Toodle Junior holding his course, apparently without distress, and working himself along by the elbows after the most approved manner of professional gentlemen who get over the ground for wagers.

Ridiculous as this attendance was, it was a sign of an influence established over the boy, and therefore Mr Carker, affecting not to notice it, rode away into the neighbourhood of Mr Toodle’s house. On his slackening his pace here, Rob appeared before him to point out the turnings; and when he called to a man at a neighbouring gateway to hold his horse, pending his visit to the buildings that had succeeded Staggs’s Gardens, Rob dutifully held the stirrup, while the Manager dismounted.

‘Now, Sir,’ said Mr Carker, taking him by the shoulder, ‘come along!’

The prodigal son was evidently nervous of visiting the parental abode; but Mr Carker pushing him on before, he had nothing for it but to open the right door, and suffer himself to be walked into the midst of his brothers and sisters, mustered in overwhelming force round the family tea-table. At sight of the prodigal in the grasp of a stranger, these tender relations united in a general howl, which smote upon the prodigal’s breast so sharply when he saw his mother stand up among them, pale and trembling, with the baby in her arms, that he lent his own voice to the chorus.

Nothing doubting now that the stranger, if not Mr Ketch in person, was one of that company, the whole of the young family wailed the louder, while its more infantine members, unable to control the transports of emotion appertaining to their time of life, threw themselves on their backs like young birds when terrified by a hawk, and kicked violently. At length, poor Polly making herself audible, said, with quivering lips, ‘Oh Rob, my poor boy, what have you done at last!’

‘Nothing, mother,’ cried Rob, in a piteous voice, ‘ask the gentleman!’

‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said Mr Carker, ‘I want to do him good.’

At this announcement, Polly, who had not cried yet, began to do so. The elder Toodles, who appeared to have been meditating a rescue, unclenched their fists. The younger Toodles clustered round their mother’s gown, and peeped from under their own chubby arms at their desperado brother and his unknown friend. Everybody blessed the gentleman with the beautiful teeth, who wanted to do good.

‘This fellow,’ said Mr Carker to Polly, giving him a gentle shake, ‘is your son, eh, Ma’am?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ sobbed Polly, with a curtsey; ‘yes, Sir.’

‘A bad son, I am afraid?’ said Mr Carker.

‘Never a bad son to me, Sir,’ returned Polly.

‘To whom then?’ demanded Mr Carker.

‘He has been a little wild, Sir,’ returned Polly, checking the baby, who was making convulsive efforts with his arms and legs to launch himself on Biler, through the ambient air, ‘and has gone with wrong companions: but I hope he has seen the misery of that, Sir, and will do well again.’

Mr Carker looked at Polly, and the clean room, and the clean children, and the simple Toodle face, combined of father and mother, that was reflected and repeated everywhere about him—and seemed to have achieved the real purpose of his visit.

‘Your husband, I take it, is not at home?’ he said.

‘No, Sir,’ replied Polly. ‘He’s down the line at present.’

The prodigal Rob seemed very much relieved to hear it: though still in the absorption of all his faculties in his patron, he hardly took his eyes from Mr Carker’s face, unless for a moment at a time to steal a sorrowful glance at his mother.

‘Then,’ said Mr Carker, ‘I’ll tell you how I have stumbled on this boy of yours, and who I am, and what I am going to do for him.’

This Mr Carker did, in his own way; saying that he at first intended to have accumulated nameless terrors on his presumptuous head, for coming to the whereabout of Dombey and Son. That he had relented, in consideration of his youth, his professed contrition, and his friends. That he was afraid he took a rash step in doing anything for the boy, and one that might expose him to the censure of the prudent; but that he did it of himself and for himself, and risked the consequences single-handed; and that his mother’s past connexion with Mr Dombey’s family had nothing to do with it, and that Mr Dombey had nothing to do with it, but that he, Mr Carker, was the be-all and the end-all of this business. Taking great credit to himself for his goodness, and receiving no less from all the family then present, Mr Carker signified, indirectly but still pretty plainly, that Rob’s implicit fidelity, attachment, and devotion, were for evermore his due, and the least homage he could receive. And with this great truth Rob himself was so impressed, that, standing gazing on his patron with tears rolling down his cheeks, he nodded his shiny head until it seemed almost as loose as it had done under the same patron’s hands that morning.

Polly, who had passed Heaven knows how many sleepless nights on account of this her dissipated firstborn, and had not seen him for weeks and weeks, could have almost kneeled to Mr Carker the Manager, as to a Good Spirit—in spite of his teeth. But Mr Carker rising to depart, she only thanked him with her mother’s prayers and blessings; thanks so rich when paid out of the Heart’s mint, especially for any service Mr Carker had rendered, that he might have given back a large amount of change, and yet been overpaid.

As that gentleman made his way among the crowding children to the door, Rob retreated on his mother, and took her and the baby in the same repentant hug.

‘I’ll try hard, dear mother, now. Upon my soul I will!’ said Rob.

‘Oh do, my dear boy! I am sure you will, for our sakes and your own!’ cried Polly,