What is the proud man doing, while the days go by? Does he ever think of
his daughter, or wonder where she is gone? Does he suppose she has come
home, and is leading her old life in the weary house? No one can answer
for him. He has never uttered her name, since. His household dread him
too much to approach a subject on which he is resolutely dumb; and the
only person who dares question him, he silences immediately.

'My dear Paul!' murmurs his sister, sidling into the room, on the day
of Florence's departure, 'your wife! that upstart woman! Is it possible
that what I hear confusedly, is true, and that this is her return for
your unparalleled devotion to her; extending, I am sure, even to the
sacrifice of your own relations, to her caprices and haughtiness? My
poor brother!'

With this speech feelingly reminiscent of her not having been asked to
dinner on the day of the first party, Mrs Chick makes great use of
her pocket-handkerchief, and falls on Mr Dombey's neck. But Mr Dombey
frigidly lifts her off, and hands her to a chair.

'I thank you, Louisa,' he says, 'for this mark of your affection; but
desire that our conversation may refer to any other subject. When
I bewail my fate, Louisa, or express myself as being in want of
consolation, you can offer it, if you will have the goodness.'

'My dear Paul,' rejoins his sister, with her handkerchief to her face,
and shaking her head, 'I know your great spirit, and will say no more
upon a theme so painful and revolting;' on the heads of which two
adjectives, Mrs Chick visits scathing indignation; 'but pray let me
ask you--though I dread to hear something that will shock and distress
me--that unfortunate child Florence--'

'Louisa!' says her brother, sternly, 'silence! Not another word of
this!'

Mrs Chick can only shake her head, and use her handkerchief, and moan
over degenerate Dombeys, who are no Dombeys. But whether Florence has
been inculpated in the flight of Edith, or has followed her, or has done
too much, or too little, or anything, or nothing, she has not the least
idea.

He goes on, without deviation, keeping his thoughts and feelings close
within his own breast, and imparting them to no one. He makes no search
for his daughter. He may think that she is with his sister, or that she
is under his own roof. He may think of her constantly, or he may never
think about her. It is all one for any sign he makes.

But this is sure; he does not think that he has lost her. He has no
suspicion of the truth. He has lived too long shut up in his towering
supremacy, seeing her, a patient gentle creature, in the path below it,
to have any fear of that. Shaken as he is by his disgrace, he is not
yet humbled to the level earth. The root is broad and deep, and in the
course of years its fibres have spread out and gathered nourishment from
everything around it. The tree is struck, but not down.

Though he hide the world within him from the world without--which
he believes has but one purpose for the time, and that, to watch him
eagerly wherever he goes--he cannot hide those rebel traces of it,
which escape in hollow eyes and cheeks, a haggard forehead, and a moody,
brooding air. Impenetrable as before, he is still an altered man; and,
proud as ever, he is humbled, or those marks would not be there.

The world. What the world thinks of him, how it looks at him, what it
sees in him, and what it says--this is the haunting demon of his mind.
It is everywhere where he is; and, worse than that, it is everywhere
where he is not. It comes out with him among his servants, and yet
he leaves it whispering behind; he sees it pointing after him in the
street; it is waiting for him in his counting-house; it leers over
the shoulders of rich men among the merchants; it goes beckoning and
babbling among the crowd; it always anticipates him, in every place; and
is always busiest, he knows, when he has gone away. When he is shut
up in his room at night, it is in his house, outside it, audible in
footsteps on the pavement, visible in print upon the table, steaming to
and fro on railroads and in ships; restless and busy everywhere, with
nothing else but him.

It is not a phantom of his imagination. It is as active in other
people's minds as in his. Witness Cousin Feenix, who comes from
Baden-Baden, purposely to talk to him. Witness Major Bagstock, who
accompanies Cousin Feenix on that friendly mission.

Mr Dombey receives them with his usual dignity, and stands erect, in his
old attitude, before the fire. He feels that the world is looking at
him out of their eyes. That it is in the stare of the pictures. That Mr
Pitt, upon the bookcase, represents it. That there are eyes in its own
map, hanging on the wall.

'An unusually cold spring,' says Mr Dombey--to deceive the world.

'Damme, Sir,' says the Major, in the warmth of friendship, 'Joseph
Bagstock is a bad hand at a counterfeit. If you want to hold your
friends off, Dombey, and to give them the cold shoulder, J. B. is not
the man for your purpose. Joe is rough and tough, Sir; blunt, Sir,
blunt, is Joe. His Royal Highness the late Duke of York did me the
honour to say, deservedly or undeservedly--never mind that--"If there is
a man in the service on whom I can depend for coming to the point, that
man is Joe--Joe Bagstock."'

Mr Dombey intimates his acquiescence.

'Now, Dombey,' says the Major, 'I am a man of the world. Our friend
Feenix--if I may presume to--'

'Honoured, I am sure,' says Cousin Feenix.

'--is,' proceeds the Major, with a wag of his head, 'also a man of the
world. Dombey, you are a man of the world. Now, when three men of the
world meet together, and are friends--as I believe--' again appealing to
Cousin Feenix.

'I am sure,' says Cousin Feenix, 'most friendly.'

'--and are friends,' resumes the Major, 'Old Joe's opinion is (I may be
wrong), that the opinion of the world on any particular subject, is very
easily got at.'

'Undoubtedly,' says Cousin Feenix. 'In point of fact, it's quite a
self-evident sort of thing. I am extremely anxious, Major, that my
friend Dombey should hear me express my very great astonishment and
regret, that my lovely and accomplished relative, who was possessed of
every qualification to make a man happy, should have so far forgotten
what was due to--in point of fact, to the world--as to commit herself
in such a very extraordinary manner. I have been in a devilish state of
depression ever since; and said indeed to Long Saxby last night--man of
six foot ten, with whom my friend Dombey is probably acquainted--that it
had upset me in a confounded way, and made me bilious. It induces a man
to reflect, this kind of fatal catastrophe,' says Cousin Feenix, 'that
events do occur in quite a providential manner; for if my Aunt had been
living at the time, I think the effect upon a devilish lively woman like
herself, would have been prostration, and that she would have fallen, in
point of fact, a victim.'

'Now, Dombey!--' says the Major, resuming his discourse with great
energy.

'I beg your pardon,' interposes Cousin Feenix. 'Allow me another word.
My friend Dombey will permit me to say, that if any circumstance could
have added to the most infernal state of pain in which I find myself
on this occasion, it would be the natural amazement of the world at my
lovely and accomplished relative (as I must still beg leave to call
her) being supposed to have so committed herself with a person--man with
white teeth, in point of fact--of very inferior station to her husband.
But while I must, rather peremptorily, request my friend Dombey not to
criminate my lovely and accomplished relative until her criminality is
perfectly established, I beg to assure my friend Dombey that the family
I represent, and which is now almost extinct (devilish sad reflection
for a man), will interpose no obstacle in his way, and will be happy
to assent to any honourable course of proceeding, with a view to the
future, that he may point out. I trust my friend Dombey will give me
credit for the intentions by which I am animated in this very melancholy
affair, and--a--in point of fact, I am not aware that I need trouble my
friend Dombey with any further observations.'

Mr Dombey bows, without raising his eyes, and is silent.

'Now, Dombey,' says the Major, 'our friend Feenix having, with an amount
of eloquence that Old Joe B. has never heard surpassed--no, by the Lord,
Sir! never!'--says the Major, very blue, indeed, and grasping his cane
in the middle--'stated the case as regards the lady, I shall presume
upon our friendship, Dombey, to offer a word on another aspect of it.
Sir,' says the Major, with the horse's cough, 'the world in these things
has opinions, which must be satisfied.'

'I know it,' rejoins Mr Dombey.

'Of course you know it, Dombey,' says the Major, 'Damme, Sir, I know you
know it. A man of your calibre is not likely to be ignorant of it.'

'I hope not,' replies Mr Dombey.

'Dombey!' says the Major, 'you will guess the rest. I speak
out--prematurely, perhaps--because the Bagstock breed have always
spoke out. Little, Sir, have they ever got by doing it; but it's in the
Bagstock blood. A shot is to be taken at this man. You have J. B. at
your elbow. He claims the name of friend. God bless you!'

'Major,' returns Mr Dombey, 'I am obliged. I shall put myself in your
hands when the time comes. The time not being come, I have forborne to
speak to you.'

'Where is the fellow, Dombey?' inquires the Major, after gasping and
looking at him, for a minute.

'I don't know.'

'Any intelligence of him?' asks the Major.

'Yes.'

'Dombey, I am rejoiced to hear it,' says the Major. 'I congratulate
you.'

'You will excuse--even you, Major,' replies Mr Dombey, 'my entering into
any further detail at present. The intelligence is of a singular kind,
and singularly obtained. It may turn out to be valueless; it may turn
out to be true; I cannot say at present. My explanation must stop here.'

Although this is but a dry reply to the Major's purple enthusiasm, the
Major receives it graciously, and is delighted to think that the world
has such a fair prospect of soon receiving its due. Cousin Feenix is
then presented with his meed of acknowledgment by the husband of his
lovely and accomplished relative, and Cousin Feenix and Major Bagstock
retire, leaving that husband to the world again, and to ponder at
leisure on their representation of its state of mind concerning his
affairs, and on its just and reasonable expectations.

But who sits in the housekeeper's room, shedding tears, and talking to
Mrs Pipchin in a low tone, with uplifted hands? It is a lady with her
face concealed in a very close black bonnet, which appears not to belong
to her. It is Miss Tox, who has borrowed this disguise from her servant,
and comes from Princess's Place, thus secretly, to revive her old
acquaintance with Mrs Pipchin, in order to get certain information of
the state of Mr Dombey.

'How does he bear it, my dear creature?' asks Miss Tox.

'Well,' says Mrs Pipchin, in her snappish way, 'he's pretty much as
usual.'

'Externally,' suggests Miss Tox 'But what he feels within!'

Mrs Pipchin's hard grey eye looks doubtful as she answers, in three
distinct jerks, 'Ah! Perhaps. I suppose so.'

'To tell you my mind, Lucretia,' says Mrs Pipchin; she still calls Miss
Tox Lucretia, on account of having made her first experiments in the
child-quelling line of business on that lady, when an unfortunate and
weazen little girl of tender years; 'to tell you my mind, Lucretia, I
think it's a good riddance. I don't want any of your brazen faces here,
myself!'

'Brazen indeed! Well may you say brazen, Mrs Pipchin!' returned Miss
Tox. 'To leave him! Such a noble figure of a man!' And here Miss Tox is
overcome.

'I don't know about noble, I'm sure,' observes Mrs Pipchin; irascibly
rubbing her nose. 'But I know this--that when people meet with trials,
they must bear 'em. Hoity, toity! I have had enough to bear myself, in
my time! What a fuss there is! She's gone, and well got rid of. Nobody
wants her back, I should think!'

This hint of the Peruvian Mines, causes Miss Tox to rise to go away; when
Mrs Pipchin rings the bell for Towlinson to show her out, Mr Towlinson,
not having seen Miss Tox for ages, grins, and hopes she's well; observing
that he didn't know her at first, in that bonnet.

'Pretty well, Towlinson, I thank you,' says Miss Tox. 'I beg you'll
have the goodness, when you happen to see me here, not to mention it. My
visits are merely to Mrs Pipchin.'

'Very good, Miss,' says Towlinson.

'Shocking circumstances occur, Towlinson,' says Miss Tox.

'Very much so indeed, Miss,' rejoins Towlinson.

'I hope, Towlinson,' says Miss Tox, who, in her instruction of the
Toodle family, has acquired an admonitorial tone, and a habit of
improving passing occasions, 'that what has happened here, will be a
warning to you, Towlinson.'

'Thank you, Miss, I'm sure,' says Towlinson.

He appears to be falling into a consideration of the manner in which
this warning ought to operate in his particular case, when the vinegary
Mrs Pipchin, suddenly stirring him up with a 'What are you doing? Why
don't you show the lady to the door?' he ushers Miss Tox forth. As she
passes Mr Dombey's room, she shrinks into the inmost depths of the black
bonnet, and walks, on tip-toe; and there is not another atom in the
world which haunts him so, that feels such sorrow and solicitude about
him, as Miss Tox takes out under the black bonnet into the street, and
tries to carry home shadowed it from the newly-lighted lamps.

But Miss Tox is not a part of Mr Dombey's world. She comes back every
evening at dusk; adding clogs and an umbrella to the bonnet on wet
nights; and bears the grins of Towlinson, and the huffs and rebuffs
of Mrs Pipchin, and all to ask how he does, and how he bears his
misfortune: but she has nothing to do with Mr Dombey's world. Exacting
and harassing as ever, it goes on without her; and she, a by no means
bright or particular star, moves in her little orbit in the corner of
another system, and knows it quite well, and comes, and cries, and goes
away, and is satisfied. Verily Miss Tox is easier of satisfaction than
the world that troubles Mr Dombey so much!

At the Counting House, the clerks discuss the great disaster in all its
lights and shades, but chiefly wonder who will get Mr Carker's place.
They are generally of opinion that it will be shorn of some of
its emoluments, and made uncomfortable by newly-devised checks and
restrictions; and those who are beyond all hope of it are quite sure
they would rather not have it, and don't at all envy the person for whom
it may prove to be reserved. Nothing like the prevailing sensation has
existed in the Counting House since Mr Dombey's little son died; but all
such excitements there take a social, not to say a jovial turn, and lead
to the cultivation of good fellowship. A reconciliation is established
on this propitious occasion between the acknowledged wit of the Counting
House and an aspiring rival, with whom he has been at deadly feud for
months; and a little dinner being proposed, in commemoration of their
happily restored amity, takes place at a neighbouring tavern; the wit
in the chair; the rival acting as Vice-President. The orations following
the removal of the cloth are opened by the Chair, who says, Gentlemen,
he can't disguise from himself that this is not a time for private
dissensions. Recent occurrences to which he need not more particularly
allude, but which have not been altogether without notice in some Sunday
Papers, and in a daily paper which he need not name (here every other
member of the company names it in an audible murmur), have caused him
to reflect; and he feels that for him and Robinson to have any personal
differences at such a moment, would be for ever to deny that good
feeling in the general cause, for which he has reason to think and hope
that the gentlemen in Dombey's House have always been distinguished.
Robinson replies to this like a man and a brother; and one gentleman who
has been in the office three years, under continual notice to quit on
account of lapses in his arithmetic, appears in a perfectly new light,
suddenly bursting out with a thrilling speech, in which he says, May
their respected chief never again know the desolation which has fallen
on his hearth! and says a great variety of things, beginning with 'May
he never again,' which are received with thunders of applause. In short,
a most delightful evening is passed, only interrupted by a difference
between two juniors, who, quarrelling about the probable amount of Mr
Carker's late receipts per annum, defy each other with decanters, and
are taken out greatly excited. Soda water is in general request at the
office next day, and most of the party deem the bill an imposition.

As to Perch, the messenger, he is in a fair way of being ruined for
life. He finds himself again constantly in bars of public-houses, being
treated and lying dreadfully. It appears that he met everybody concerned
in the late transaction, everywhere, and said to them, 'Sir,' or
'Madam,' as the case was, 'why do you look so pale?' at which each
shuddered from head to foot, and said, 'Oh, Perch!' and ran away. Either
the consciousness of these enormities, or the reaction consequent on
liquor, reduces Mr Perch to an extreme state of low spirits at that hour
of the evening when he usually seeks consolation in the society of Mrs
Perch at Balls Pond; and Mrs Perch frets a good deal, for she fears his
confidence in woman is shaken now, and that he half expects on coming
home at night to find her gone off with some Viscount--'which,' as she
observes to an intimate female friend, 'is what these wretches in the
form of woman have to answer for, Mrs P. It ain't the harm they do
themselves so much as what they reflect upon us, Ma'am; and I see it in
Perch's eye.'

Mr Dombey's servants are becoming, at the same time, quite dissipated,
and unfit for other service. They have hot suppers every night, and
'talk it over' with smoking drinks upon the board. Mr Towlinson is
always maudlin after half-past ten, and frequently begs to know whether
he didn't say that no good would ever come of living in a corner house?
They whisper about Miss Florence, and wonder where she is; but agree
that if Mr Dombey don't know, Mrs Dombey does. This brings them to the
latter, of whom Cook says, She had a stately way though, hadn't she?
But she was too high! They all agree that she was too high, and Mr
Towlinson's old flame, the housemaid (who is very virtuous), entreats
that you will never talk to her any more about people who hold their
heads up, as if the ground wasn't good enough for 'em.

Everything that is said and done about it, except by Mr Dombey, is done
in chorus. Mr Dombey and the world are alone together.

Meanwhile, Dombey has not spoken of his daughter since her disappearance. He is not troubled by her whereabouts, and assumes that she will eventually return. Dombey tries to isolate himself, but Cousin Feenix and Bagstock come to visit him. They both offer to serve him in seeking revenge. Dombey says that he has some knowledge of where Carker might be, but that it is not certain yet, and he is not ready to take action. Meanwhile, Miss Tox has come to talk to Mrs. Pipchin to get news about the situation. Mrs. Pipchin says it is for the best that Edith is gone. While being escorted out of the house by Towlinson, Miss Tox requests that her visits be kept a secret, presumably from Mr. Dombey. Meanwhile, Dombey's employees speculate about who will fill Carker's place at the firm


Good Mrs Brown and her daughter Alice kept silent company together, in
their own dwelling. It was early in the evening, and late in the spring.
But a few days had elapsed since Mr Dombey had told Major Bagstock of
his singular intelligence, singularly obtained, which might turn out
to be valueless, and might turn out to be true; and the world was not
satisfied yet.

The mother and daughter sat for a long time without interchanging a
word: almost without motion. The old woman's face was shrewdly anxious
and expectant; that of her daughter was expectant too, but in a
less sharp degree, and sometimes it darkened, as if with gathering
disappointment and incredulity. The old woman, without heeding these
changes in its expression, though her eyes were often turned towards it,
sat mumbling and munching, and listening confidently.

Their abode, though poor and miserable, was not so utterly wretched as
in the days when only Good Mrs Brown inhabited it. Some few attempts at
cleanliness and order were manifest, though made in a reckless, gipsy
way, that might have connected them, at a glance, with the younger
woman. The shades of evening thickened and deepened as the two kept
silence, until the blackened walls were nearly lost in the prevailing
gloom.

Then Alice broke the silence which had lasted so long, and said:

'You may give him up, mother. He'll not come here.'

'Death give him up!' returned the old woman, impatiently. 'He will come
here.'

'We shall see,' said Alice.

'We shall see him,' returned her mother.

'And doomsday,' said the daughter.

'You think I'm in my second childhood, I know!' croaked the old woman.
'That's the respect and duty that I get from my own gal, but I'm wiser
than you take me for. He'll come. T'other day when I touched his coat
in the street, he looked round as if I was a toad. But Lord, to see him
when I said their names, and asked him if he'd like to find out where
they was!'

'Was it so angry?' asked her daughter, roused to interest in a moment.

'Angry? ask if it was bloody. That's more like the word. Angry? Ha, ha!
To call that only angry!' said the old woman, hobbling to the cupboard,
and lighting a candle, which displayed the workings of her mouth to ugly
advantage, as she brought it to the table. 'I might as well call your
face only angry, when you think or talk about 'em.'

It was something different from that, truly, as she sat as still as a
crouched tigress, with her kindling eyes.

'Hark!' said the old woman, triumphantly. 'I hear a step coming. It's
not the tread of anyone that lives about here, or comes this way often.
We don't walk like that. We should grow proud on such neighbours! Do you
hear him?'

'I believe you are right, mother,' replied Alice, in a low voice.
'Peace! open the door.'

As she drew herself within her shawl, and gathered it about her, the
old woman complied; and peering out, and beckoning, gave admission to Mr
Dombey, who stopped when he had set his foot within the door, and looked
distrustfully around.

'It's a poor place for a great gentleman like your worship,' said the
old woman, curtseying and chattering. 'I told you so, but there's no
harm in it.'

'Who is that?' asked Mr Dombey, looking at her companion.

'That's my handsome daughter,' said the old woman. 'Your worship won't
mind her. She knows all about it.'

A shadow fell upon his face not less expressive than if he had groaned
aloud, 'Who does not know all about it!' but he looked at her steadily,
and she, without any acknowledgment of his presence, looked at him. The
shadow on his face was darker when he turned his glance away from her;
and even then it wandered back again, furtively, as if he were haunted
by her bold eyes, and some remembrance they inspired.

'Woman,' said Mr Dombey to the old witch who was chuckling and leering
close at his elbow, and who, when he turned to address her, pointed
stealthily at her daughter, and rubbed her hands, and pointed again,
'Woman! I believe that I am weak and forgetful of my station in coming
here, but you know why I come, and what you offered when you stopped
me in the street the other day. What is it that you have to tell me
concerning what I want to know; and how does it happen that I can find
voluntary intelligence in a hovel like this,' with a disdainful glance
about him, 'when I have exerted my power and means to obtain it in vain?
I do not think,' he said, after a moment's pause, during which he had
observed her, sternly, 'that you are so audacious as to mean to trifle
with me, or endeavour to impose upon me. But if you have that purpose,
you had better stop on the threshold of your scheme. My humour is not a
trifling one, and my acknowledgment will be severe.'

'Oh a proud, hard gentleman!' chuckled the old woman, shaking her head,
and rubbing her shrivelled hands, 'oh hard, hard, hard! But your worship
shall see with your own eyes and hear with your own ears; not with
ours--and if your worship's put upon their track, you won't mind paying
something for it, will you, honourable deary?'

'Money,' returned Mr Dombey, apparently relieved, and assured by this
inquiry, 'will bring about unlikely things, I know. It may turn even
means as unexpected and unpromising as these, to account. Yes. For
any reliable information I receive, I will pay. But I must have the
information first, and judge for myself of its value.'

'Do you know nothing more powerful than money?' asked the younger woman,
without rising, or altering her attitude.

'Not here, I should imagine,' said Mr Dombey.

'You should know of something that is more powerful elsewhere, as I
judge,' she returned. 'Do you know nothing of a woman's anger?'

'You have a saucy tongue, Jade,' said Mr Dombey.

'Not usually,' she answered, without any show of emotion: 'I speak
to you now, that you may understand us better, and rely more on us. A
woman's anger is pretty much the same here, as in your fine house. I am
angry. I have been so, many years. I have as good cause for my anger as
you have for yours, and its object is the same man.'

He started, in spite of himself, and looked at her with astonishment.

'Yes,' she said, with a kind of laugh. 'Wide as the distance may seem
between us, it is so. How it is so, is no matter; that is my story, and
I keep my story to myself. I would bring you and him together, because
I have a rage against him. My mother there, is avaricious and poor; and
she would sell any tidings she could glean, or anything, or anybody, for
money. It is fair enough, perhaps, that you should pay her some, if she
can help you to what you want to know. But that is not my motive. I have
told you what mine is, and it would be as strong and all-sufficient with
me if you haggled and bargained with her for a sixpence. I have done. My
saucy tongue says no more, if you wait here till sunrise tomorrow.'

The old woman, who had shown great uneasiness during this speech, which
had a tendency to depreciate her expected gains, pulled Mr Dombey softly
by the sleeve, and whispered to him not to mind her. He glared at them
both, by turns, with a haggard look, and said, in a deeper voice than
was usual with him:

'Go on--what do you know?'

'Oh, not so fast, your worship! we must wait for someone,' answered the
old woman. 'It's to be got from someone else--wormed out--screwed and
twisted from him.'

'What do you mean?' said Mr Dombey.

'Patience,' she croaked, laying her hand, like a claw, upon his arm.
'Patience. I'll get at it. I know I can! If he was to hold it back from
me,' said Good Mrs Brown, crooking her ten fingers, 'I'd tear it out of
him!'

Mr Dombey followed her with his eyes as she hobbled to the door, and
looked out again: and then his glance sought her daughter; but she
remained impassive, silent, and regardless of him.

'Do you tell me, woman,' he said, when the bent figure of Mrs Brown came
back, shaking its head and chattering to itself, 'that there is another
person expected here?'

'Yes!' said the old woman, looking up into his face, and nodding.

'From whom you are to exact the intelligence that is to be useful to
me?'

'Yes,' said the old woman, nodding again.

'A stranger?'

'Chut!' said the old woman, with a shrill laugh. 'What signifies! Well,
well; no. No stranger to your worship. But he won't see you. He'd be
afraid of you, and wouldn't talk. You'll stand behind that door, and
judge him for yourself. We don't ask to be believed on trust What! Your
worship doubts the room behind the door? Oh the suspicion of you rich
gentlefolks! Look at it, then.'

Her sharp eye had detected an involuntary expression of this feeling
on his part, which was not unreasonable under the circumstances. In
satisfaction of it she now took the candle to the door she spoke of. Mr
Dombey looked in; assured himself that it was an empty, crazy room; and
signed to her to put the light back in its place.

'How long,' he asked, 'before this person comes?'

'Not long,' she answered. 'Would your worship sit down for a few odd
minutes?'

He made no answer; but began pacing the room with an irresolute air, as
if he were undecided whether to remain or depart, and as if he had some
quarrel with himself for being there at all. But soon his tread grew
slower and heavier, and his face more sternly thoughtful; as the object
with which he had come, fixed itself in his mind, and dilated there
again.

While he thus walked up and down with his eyes on the ground, Mrs Brown,
in the chair from which she had risen to receive him, sat listening
anew. The monotony of his step, or the uncertainty of age, made her so
slow of hearing, that a footfall without had sounded in her daughter's
ears for some moments, and she had looked up hastily to warn her mother
of its approach, before the old woman was roused by it. But then she
started from her seat, and whispering 'Here he is!' hurried her visitor
to his place of observation, and put a bottle and glass upon the table,
with such alacrity, as to be ready to fling her arms round the neck of
Rob the Grinder on his appearance at the door.

'And here's my bonny boy,' cried Mrs Brown, 'at last!--oho, oho! You're
like my own son, Robby!'

'Oh! Misses Brown!' remonstrated the Grinder. 'Don't! Can't you be fond
of a cove without squeedging and throttling of him? Take care of the
birdcage in my hand, will you?'

'Thinks of a birdcage, afore me!' cried the old woman, apostrophizing
the ceiling. 'Me that feels more than a mother for him!'

'Well, I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you, Misses Brown,' said the
unfortunate youth, greatly aggravated; 'but you're so jealous of a
cove. I'm very fond of you myself, and all that, of course; but I don't
smother you, do I, Misses Brown?'

He looked and spoke as if he would have been far from objecting to do
so, however, on a favourable occasion.

'And to talk about birdcages, too!' whimpered the Grinder. 'As If that
was a crime! Why, look'ee here! Do you know who this belongs to?'

'To Master, dear?' said the old woman with a grin.

'Ah!' replied the Grinder, lifting a large cage tied up in a wrapper,
on the table, and untying it with his teeth and hands. 'It's our parrot,
this is.'

'Mr Carker's parrot, Rob?'

'Will you hold your tongue, Misses Brown?' returned the goaded Grinder.
'What do you go naming names for? I'm blest,' said Rob, pulling his
hair with both hands in the exasperation of his feelings, 'if she ain't
enough to make a cove run wild!'

'What! Do you snub me, thankless boy!' cried the old woman, with ready
vehemence.

'Good gracious, Misses Brown, no!' returned the Grinder, with tears
in his eyes. 'Was there ever such a--! Don't I dote upon you, Misses
Brown?'

'Do you, sweet Rob? Do you truly, chickabiddy?' With that, Mrs Brown
held him in her fond embrace once more; and did not release him until
he had made several violent and ineffectual struggles with his legs, and
his hair was standing on end all over his head.

'Oh!' returned the Grinder, 'what a thing it is to be perfectly pitched
into with affection like this here. I wish she was--How have you been,
Misses Brown?'

'Ah! Not here since this night week!' said the old woman, contemplating
him with a look of reproach.

'Good gracious, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder, 'I said tonight's a
week, that I'd come tonight, didn't I? And here I am. How you do go on!
I wish you'd be a little rational, Misses Brown. I'm hoarse with saying
things in my defence, and my very face is shiny with being hugged!' He
rubbed it hard with his sleeve, as if to remove the tender polish in
question.

'Drink a little drop to comfort you, my Robin,' said the old woman,
filling the glass from the bottle and giving it to him.

'Thank'ee, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder. 'Here's your health. And
long may you--et ceterer.' Which, to judge from the expression of
his face, did not include any very choice blessings. 'And here's her
health,' said the Grinder, glancing at Alice, who sat with her eyes
fixed, as it seemed to him, on the wall behind him, but in reality on Mr
Dombey's face at the door, 'and wishing her the same and many of 'em!'

He drained the glass to these two sentiments, and set it down.

'Well, I say, Misses Brown!' he proceeded. 'To go on a little rational
now. You're a judge of birds, and up to their ways, as I know to my
cost.'

'Cost!' repeated Mrs Brown.

'Satisfaction, I mean,' returned the Grinder. 'How you do take up a
cove, Misses Brown! You've put it all out of my head again.'

'Judge of birds, Robby,' suggested the old woman.

'Ah!' said the Grinder. 'Well, I've got to take care of this
parrot--certain things being sold, and a certain establishment broke
up--and as I don't want no notice took at present, I wish you'd attend
to her for a week or so, and give her board and lodging, will you? If
I must come backwards and forwards,' mused the Grinder with a dejected
face, 'I may as well have something to come for.'

'Something to come for?' screamed the old woman.

'Besides you, I mean, Misses Brown,' returned the craven Rob. 'Not that
I want any inducement but yourself, Misses Brown, I'm sure. Don't begin
again, for goodness' sake.'

'He don't care for me! He don't care for me, as I care for him!' cried
Mrs Brown, lifting up her skinny hands. 'But I'll take care of his
bird.'

'Take good care of it too, you know, Mrs Brown,' said Rob, shaking his
head. 'If you was so much as to stroke its feathers once the wrong way,
I believe it would be found out.'

'Ah, so sharp as that, Rob?' said Mrs Brown, quickly.

'Sharp, Misses Brown!' repeated Rob. 'But this is not to be talked
about.'

Checking himself abruptly, and not without a fearful glance across the
room, Rob filled the glass again, and having slowly emptied it, shook
his head, and began to draw his fingers across and across the wires of
the parrot's cage by way of a diversion from the dangerous theme that
had just been broached.

The old woman eyed him slily, and hitching her chair nearer his, and
looking in at the parrot, who came down from the gilded dome at her
call, said:

'Out of place now, Robby?'

'Never you mind, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder, shortly.

'Board wages, perhaps, Rob?' said Mrs Brown.

'Pretty Polly!' said the Grinder.

The old woman darted a glance at him that might have warned him to
consider his ears in danger, but it was his turn to look in at the
parrot now, and however expressive his imagination may have made her
angry scowl, it was unseen by his bodily eyes.

'I wonder Master didn't take you with him, Rob,' said the old woman, in
a wheedling voice, but with increased malignity of aspect.

Rob was so absorbed in contemplation of the parrot, and in trolling his
forefinger on the wires, that he made no answer.

The old woman had her clutch within a hair's breadth of his shock of
hair as it stooped over the table; but she restrained her fingers, and
said, in a voice that choked with its efforts to be coaxing:

'Robby, my child.'

'Well, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder.

'I say I wonder Master didn't take you with him, dear.'

'Never you mind, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder.

Mrs Brown instantly directed the clutch of her right hand at his hair,
and the clutch of her left hand at his throat, and held on to the object
of her fond affection with such extraordinary fury, that his face began
to blacken in a moment.

'Misses Brown!' exclaimed the Grinder, 'let go, will you? What are you
doing of? Help, young woman! Misses Brow--Brow--!'

The young woman, however, equally unmoved by his direct appeal to her,
and by his inarticulate utterance, remained quite neutral, until, after
struggling with his assailant into a corner, Rob disengaged himself,
and stood there panting and fenced in by his own elbows, while the old
woman, panting too, and stamping with rage and eagerness, appeared to be
collecting her energies for another swoop upon him. At this crisis Alice
interposed her voice, but not in the Grinder's favour, by saying,

'Well done, mother. Tear him to pieces!'

'What, young woman!' blubbered Rob; 'are you against me too? What have
I been and done? What am I to be tore to pieces for, I should like to
know? Why do you take and choke a cove who has never done you any harm,
neither of you? Call yourselves females, too!' said the frightened and
afflicted Grinder, with his coat-cuff at his eye. 'I'm surprised at you!
Where's your feminine tenderness?'

'You thankless dog!' gasped Mrs Brown. 'You impudent insulting dog!'

'What have I been and done to go and give you offence, Misses Brown?'
retorted the fearful Rob. 'You was very much attached to me a minute
ago.'

'To cut me off with his short answers and his sulky words,' said the
old woman. 'Me! Because I happen to be curious to have a little bit of
gossip about Master and the lady, to dare to play at fast and loose with
me! But I'll talk to you no more, my lad. Now go!'

'I'm sure, Misses Brown,' returned the abject Grinder, 'I never
insiniwated that I wished to go. Don't talk like that, Misses Brown, if
you please.'

'I won't talk at all,' said Mrs Brown, with an action of her crooked
fingers that made him shrink into half his natural compass in the
corner. 'Not another word with him shall pass my lips. He's an
ungrateful hound. I cast him off. Now let him go! And I'll slip those
after him that shall talk too much; that won't be shook away; that'll
hang to him like leeches, and slink arter him like foxes. What! He knows
'em. He knows his old games and his old ways. If he's forgotten 'em,
they'll soon remind him. Now let him go, and see how he'll do Master's
business, and keep Master's secrets, with such company always following
him up and down. Ha, ha, ha! He'll find 'em a different sort from you
and me, Ally; Close as he is with you and me. Now let him go, now let
him go!'

The old woman, to the unspeakable dismay of the Grinder, walked her
twisted figure round and round, in a ring of some four feet in diameter,
constantly repeating these words, and shaking her fist above her head,
and working her mouth about.

'Misses Brown,' pleaded Rob, coming a little out of his corner, 'I'm
sure you wouldn't injure a cove, on second thoughts, and in cold blood,
would you?'

'Don't talk to me,' said Mrs Brown, still wrathfully pursuing her
circle. 'Now let him go, now let him go!'

'Misses Brown,' urged the tormented Grinder, 'I didn't mean to--Oh, what
a thing it is for a cove to get into such a line as this!--I was only
careful of talking, Misses Brown, because I always am, on account of his
being up to everything; but I might have known it wouldn't have gone any
further. I'm sure I'm quite agreeable,' with a wretched face, 'for
any little bit of gossip, Misses Brown. Don't go on like this, if
you please. Oh, couldn't you have the goodness to put in a word for a
miserable cove, here?' said the Grinder, appealing in desperation to the
daughter.

'Come, mother, you hear what he says,' she interposed, in her stern
voice, and with an impatient action of her head; 'try him once more,
and if you fall out with him again, ruin him, if you like, and have done
with him.'

Mrs Brown, moved as it seemed by this very tender exhortation, presently
began to howl; and softening by degrees, took the apologetic Grinder to
her arms, who embraced her with a face of unutterable woe, and like
a victim as he was, resumed his former seat, close by the side of
his venerable friend, whom he suffered, not without much constrained
sweetness of countenance, combating very expressive physiognomical
revelations of an opposite character to draw his arm through hers, and
keep it there.

'And how's Master, deary dear?' said Mrs Brown, when, sitting in this
amicable posture, they had pledged each other.

'Hush! If you'd be so good, Misses Brown, as to speak a little lower,'
Rob implored. 'Why, he's pretty well, thank'ee, I suppose.'

'You're not out of place, Robby?' said Mrs Brown, in a wheedling tone.

'Why, I'm not exactly out of place, nor in,' faltered Rob. 'I--I'm still
in pay, Misses Brown.'

'And nothing to do, Rob?'

'Nothing particular to do just now, Misses Brown, but to--keep my eyes
open,' said the Grinder, rolling them in a forlorn way.

'Master abroad, Rob?'

'Oh, for goodness' sake, Misses Brown, couldn't you gossip with a cove
about anything else?' cried the Grinder, in a burst of despair.

The impetuous Mrs Brown rising directly, the tortured Grinder detained
her, stammering 'Ye-es, Misses Brown, I believe he's abroad. What's
she staring at?' he added, in allusion to the daughter, whose eyes were
fixed upon the face that now again looked out behind.

'Don't mind her, lad,' said the old woman, holding him closer to prevent
his turning round. 'It's her way--her way. Tell me, Rob. Did you ever
see the lady, deary?'

'Oh, Misses Brown, what lady?' cried the Grinder in a tone of piteous
supplication.

'What lady?' she retorted. 'The lady; Mrs Dombey.'

'Yes, I believe I see her once,' replied Rob.

'The night she went away, Robby, eh?' said the old woman in his ear,
and taking note of every change in his face. 'Aha! I know it was that
night.'

'Well, if you know it was that night, you know, Misses Brown,' replied
Rob, 'it's no use putting pinchers into a cove to make him say so.

'Where did they go that night, Rob? Straight away? How did they go?
Where did you see her? Did she laugh? Did she cry? Tell me all about
it,' cried the old hag, holding him closer yet, patting the hand that
was drawn through his arm against her other hand, and searching every
line in his face with her bleared eyes. 'Come! Begin! I want to be told
all about it. What, Rob, boy! You and me can keep a secret together, eh?
We've done so before now. Where did they go first, Rob?'

The wretched Grinder made a gasp, and a pause.

'Are you dumb?' said the old woman, angrily.

'Lord, Misses Brown, no! You expect a cove to be a flash of lightning. I
wish I was the electric fluency,' muttered the bewildered Grinder. 'I'd
have a shock at somebody, that would settle their business.'

'What do you say?' asked the old woman, with a grin.

'I'm wishing my love to you, Misses Brown,' returned the false Rob,
seeking consolation in the glass. 'Where did they go to first was it?
Him and her, do you mean?'

'Ah!' said the old woman, eagerly. 'Them two.'

'Why, they didn't go nowhere--not together, I mean,' answered Rob.

The old woman looked at him, as though she had a strong impulse upon her
to make another clutch at his head and throat, but was restrained by a
certain dogged mystery in his face.

'That was the art of it,' said the reluctant Grinder; 'that's the way
nobody saw 'em go, or has been able to say how they did go. They went
different ways, I tell you Misses Brown.'

'Ay, ay, ay! To meet at an appointed place,' chuckled the old woman,
after a moment's silent and keen scrutiny of his face.

'Why, if they weren't a going to meet somewhere, I suppose they might as
well have stayed at home, mightn't they, Brown?' returned the unwilling
Grinder.

'Well, Rob? Well?' said the old woman, drawing his arm yet tighter
through her own, as if, in her eagerness, she were afraid of his
slipping away.

'What, haven't we talked enough yet, Misses Brown?' returned the
Grinder, who, between his sense of injury, his sense of liquor, and his
sense of being on the rack, had become so lachrymose, that at almost
every answer he scooped his coats into one or other of his eyes, and
uttered an unavailing whine of remonstrance. 'Did she laugh that night,
was it? Didn't you ask if she laughed, Misses Brown?'

'Or cried?' added the old woman, nodding assent.

'Neither,' said the Grinder. 'She kept as steady when she and me--oh, I
see you will have it out of me, Misses Brown! But take your solemn oath
now, that you'll never tell anybody.'

This Mrs Brown very readily did: being naturally Jesuitical; and having
no other intention in the matter than that her concealed visitor should
hear for himself.

'She kept as steady, then, when she and me went down to Southampton,'
said the Grinder, 'as a image. In the morning she was just the same,
Misses Brown. And when she went away in the packet before daylight,
by herself--me pretending to be her servant, and seeing her safe
aboard--she was just the same. Now, are you contented, Misses Brown?'

'No, Rob. Not yet,' answered Mrs Brown, decisively.

'Oh, here's a woman for you!' cried the unfortunate Rob, in an outburst
of feeble lamentation over his own helplessness. 'What did you wish to
know next, Misses Brown?'

'What became of Master? Where did he go?' she inquired, still holding
him tight, and looking close into his face, with her sharp eyes.

'Upon my soul, I don't know, Misses Brown,' answered Rob. 'Upon my soul
I don't know what he did, nor where he went, nor anything about him I
only know what he said to me as a caution to hold my tongue, when we
parted; and I tell you this, Misses Brown, as a friend, that sooner than
ever repeat a word of what we're saying now, you had better take and
shoot yourself, or shut yourself up in this house, and set it a-fire, for
there's nothing he wouldn't do, to be revenged upon you.  You don't know
him half as well as I do, Misses Brown. You're never safe from him, I
tell you.'

'Haven't I taken an oath,' retorted the old woman, 'and won't I keep
it?'

'Well, I'm sure I hope you will, Misses Brown,' returned Rob, somewhat
doubtfully, and not without a latent threatening in his manner. 'For
your own sake, quite as much as mine.'

He looked at her as he gave her this friendly caution, and emphasized
it with a nodding of his head; but finding it uncomfortable to encounter
the yellow face with its grotesque action, and the ferret eyes with
their keen old wintry gaze, so close to his own, he looked down uneasily
and sat skulking in his chair, as if he were trying to bring himself
to a sullen declaration that he would answer no more questions. The old
woman, still holding him as before, took this opportunity of raising the
forefinger of her right hand, in the air, as a stealthy signal to the
concealed observer to give particular attention to what was about to
follow.

'Rob,' she said, in her most coaxing tone.

'Good gracious, Misses Brown, what's the matter now?' returned the
exasperated Grinder.

'Rob! where did the lady and Master appoint to meet?'

Rob shuffled more and more, and looked up and looked down, and bit
his thumb, and dried it on his waistcoat, and finally said, eyeing his
tormentor askance, 'How should I know, Misses Brown?'

The old woman held up her finger again, as before, and replying, 'Come,
lad! It's no use leading me to that, and there leaving me. I want to
know' waited for his answer. Rob, after a discomfited pause, suddenly
broke out with, 'How can I pronounce the names of foreign places, Mrs
Brown? What an unreasonable woman you are!'

'But you have heard it said, Robby,' she retorted firmly, 'and you know
what it sounded like. Come!'

'I never heard it said, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder.

'Then,' retorted the old woman quickly, 'you have seen it written, and
you can spell it.'

Rob, with a petulant exclamation between laughing and crying--for he
was penetrated with some admiration of Mrs Brown's cunning, even through
this persecution--after some reluctant fumbling in his waistcoat pocket,
produced from it a little piece of chalk. The old woman's eyes sparkled
when she saw it between his thumb and finger, and hastily clearing a
space on the deal table, that he might write the word there, she once
more made her signal with a shaking hand.

'Now I tell you beforehand what it is, Misses Brown,' said Rob, 'it's no
use asking me anything else. I won't answer anything else; I can't. How
long it was to be before they met, or whose plan it was that they was to
go away alone, I don't know no more than you do. I don't know any more
about it. If I was to tell you how I found out this word, you'd believe
that. Shall I tell you, Misses Brown?'

'Yes, Rob.'

'Well then, Misses Brown. The way--now you won't ask any more, you
know?' said Rob, turning his eyes, which were now fast getting drowsy
and stupid, upon her.

'Not another word,' said Mrs Brown.

'Well then, the way was this. When a certain person left the lady with
me, he put a piece of paper with a direction written on it in the lady's
hand, saying it was in case she should forget. She wasn't afraid of
forgetting, for she tore it up as soon as his back was turned, and
when I put up the carriage steps, I shook out one of the pieces--she
sprinkled the rest out of the window, I suppose, for there was none
there afterwards, though I looked for 'em. There was only one word on
it, and that was this, if you must and will know. But remember! You're
upon your oath, Misses Brown!'

Mrs Brown knew that, she said. Rob, having nothing more to say, began to
chalk, slowly and laboriously, on the table.

'"D,"' the old woman read aloud, when he had formed the letter.

'Will you hold your tongue, Misses Brown?' he exclaimed, covering it
with his hand, and turning impatiently upon her. 'I won't have it read
out. Be quiet, will you!'

'Then write large, Rob,' she returned, repeating her secret signal; 'for
my eyes are not good, even at print.'

Muttering to himself, and returning to his work with an ill will, Rob
went on with the word. As he bent his head down, the person for whose
information he so unconsciously laboured, moved from the door behind him
to within a short stride of his shoulder, and looked eagerly towards the
creeping track of his hand upon the table. At the same time, Alice, from
her opposite chair, watched it narrowly as it shaped the letters, and
repeated each one on her lips as he made it, without articulating it
aloud. At the end of every letter her eyes and Mr Dombey's met, as if
each of them sought to be confirmed by the other; and thus they both
spelt D.I.J.O.N.

'There!' said the Grinder, moistening the palm of his hand hastily, to
obliterate the word; and not content with smearing it out, rubbing and
planing all trace of it away with his coat-sleeve, until the very colour
of the chalk was gone from the table. 'Now, I hope you're contented,
Misses Brown!'

The old woman, in token of her being so, released his arm and patted his
back; and the Grinder, overcome with mortification, cross-examination,
and liquor, folded his arms on the table, laid his head upon them, and
fell asleep.

Not until he had been heavily asleep some time, and was snoring roundly,
did the old woman turn towards the door where Mr Dombey stood concealed,
and beckon him to come through the room, and pass out. Even then, she
hovered over Rob, ready to blind him with her hands, or strike his head
down, if he should raise it while the secret step was crossing to the
door. But though her glance took sharp cognizance of the sleeper, it was
sharp too for the waking man; and when he touched her hand with his, and
in spite of all his caution, made a chinking, golden sound, it was as
bright and greedy as a raven's.

The daughter's dark gaze followed him to the door, and noted well how
pale he was, and how his hurried tread indicated that the least delay
was an insupportable restraint upon him, and how he was burning to be
active and away. As he closed the door behind him, she looked round at
her mother. The old woman trotted to her; opened her hand to show what
was within; and, tightly closing it again in her jealousy and avarice,
whispered:

'What will he do, Ally?'

'Mischief,' said the daughter.

'Murder?' asked the old woman.

'He's a madman, in his wounded pride, and may do that, for anything we
can say, or he either.'

Her glance was brighter than her mother's, and the fire that shone in it
was fiercer; but her face was colourless, even to her lips.

They said no more, but sat apart; the mother communing with her money;
the daughter with her thoughts; the glance of each, shining in the gloom
of the feebly lighted room. Rob slept and snored. The disregarded parrot
only was in action. It twisted and pulled at the wires of its cage, with
its crooked beak, and crawled up to the dome, and along its roof like
a fly, and down again head foremost, and shook, and bit, and rattled at
every slender bar, as if it knew its master's danger, and was wild to
force a passage out, and fly away to warn him of it.

Alice and Mrs. Brown argue about whether Dombey will come to see them. Mrs. Brown has stopped him in the street to hint that she knows the whereabouts of Edith and Carker. She is thus the source of Dombey's possible information, hinted at in the previous chapter. As they are having this conversation, Dombey does in fact arrive. He says that he will pay them for information leading to the location of Edith and Carker, if the information turns out to be accurate. Alice haughtily tells him that while her mother might sell this information for profit, her motive is making Carker suffer. Mrs. Brown then goes on to explain that she is in fact waiting for someone else to arrive, and this individual will be the one to provide information. She also explains that Dombey will have to hide and secretly listen to the conversation. He reluctantly agrees, and a short time later, Rob arrives. He has brought a parrot, abandoned by Carker after his disappearance, and wants Mrs. Brown to care for it. He is very cautious about responding to the hints she drops about his master; however, through manipulation and physical threats, the two women overwhelm him. Rob admits that he is still being paid, but has no specific tasks. He is coaxed to talk about the night Edith left, explaining that Carker and Edith left the city separately with plans to meet later at an appointed place. Rob eventually admits that Edith's coach was bound for Dijon, a city in France. He then falls asleep, and Dombey emerges from his hiding place, pays Mrs. Brown, and leaves the house in a hurry. Alice and Mrs. Brown are satisfied that he will find a way to exact revenge on Carker

This section reveals that the fallout of the collapse of the Dombey marriage and Florence's departure from her home has mixed results. For Florence, this seems to be a liberating transition. While she is clearly traumatized by feeling that she no longer has any family, the individuals who welcome her demonstrate that love and loyalty can be displayed without blood relations. Indeed, Cuttle, Toots, and Susan rally around her with the unconditional love more typically expected from family members. They love her for who she is, whether or not she has a prestigious social position and wealth. Toots, primarily a comic character, also shows genuine integrity in prioritizing Florence's happiness above his own, and respecting her choice to marry Walter without demonstrating any of the jealousy and bitterness that is so insidious in much of the novel. Moreover, now that Florence is no longer linked with her father, she can more freely choose the kind of family she wants to create for herself, which she does by agreeing to marry Walter. Walter is clear that he would not have approached her or considered himself worthy of her in her former social position, and certainly her father would never have agreed to the match. The pain of Florence's estrangement is offset by her new autonomy and freedom: she can choose to give herself to Walter without needing to seek anyone's approval. While Florence can sometimes seem to be unappealingly passive and dutiful, this section reveals her autonomy, and indeed, her power. As Hilary Schor explains, "in weaving the web of connection that will bring about the novel's happy ending  she moves from the highest realms of English society to the casual working class poverty of the Toodles and the decaying gentility of the Toxes and the Gills" . While Florence's future prospects seem to blossom once she leaves her father's house, Dombey has not learned from the experience and is fixated on preserving his public image and getting revenge on Carker. Some of this desire is shaped by social expectation that he should not tolerate a grave insult, especially from someone who is his social inferior. Dombey's desire for revenge plays into the schemes of Alice and Mrs. Brown; in a sense, others are still manipulating him. He is also fixated on the past, rather than attempting to move forward now that his marriage has ended.


There were two of the traitor's own blood--his renounced brother and
sister--on whom the weight of his guilt rested almost more heavily, at
this time, than on the man whom he had so deeply injured. Prying and
tormenting as the world was, it did Mr Dombey the service of nerving him
to pursuit and revenge. It roused his passion, stung his pride, twisted
the one idea of his life into a new shape, and made some gratification
of his wrath, the object into which his whole intellectual existence
resolved itself. All the stubbornness and implacability of his nature,
all its hard impenetrable quality, all its gloom and moroseness, all its
exaggerated sense of personal importance, all its jealous disposition
to resent the least flaw in the ample recognition of his importance by
others, set this way like many streams united into one, and bore him on
upon their tide. The most impetuously passionate and violently impulsive
of mankind would have been a milder enemy to encounter than the sullen
Mr Dombey wrought to this. A wild beast would have been easier turned
or soothed than the grave gentleman without a wrinkle in his starched
cravat.

But the very intensity of his purpose became almost a substitute for
action in it. While he was yet uninformed of the traitor's retreat, it
served to divert his mind from his own calamity, and to entertain it
with another prospect. The brother and sister of his false favourite had
no such relief; everything in their history, past and present, gave his
delinquency a more afflicting meaning to them.

The sister may have sometimes sadly thought that if she had remained
with him, the companion and friend she had been once, he might have
escaped the crime into which he had fallen. If she ever thought so, it
was still without regret for what she had done, without the least doubt
of her duty, without any pricing or enhancing of her self-devotion.
But when this possibility presented itself to the erring and repentant
brother, as it sometimes did, it smote upon his heart with such a keen,
reproachful touch as he could hardly bear. No idea of retort upon his
cruel brother came into his mind. New accusation of himself, fresh
inward lamentings over his own unworthiness, and the ruin in which it
was at once his consolation and his self-reproach that he did not stand
alone, were the sole kind of reflections to which the discovery gave
rise in him.

It was on the very same day whose evening set upon the last chapter, and
when Mr Dombey's world was busiest with the elopement of his wife, that
the window of the room in which the brother and sister sat at their
early breakfast, was darkened by the unexpected shadow of a man coming
to the little porch: which man was Perch the Messenger.

'I've stepped over from Balls Pond at a early hour,' said Mr Perch,
confidentially looking in at the room door, and stopping on the mat to
wipe his shoes all round, which had no mud upon them, 'agreeable to my
instructions last night. They was, to be sure and bring a note to you,
Mr Carker, before you went out in the morning. I should have been here a
good hour and a half ago,' said Mr Perch, meekly, 'but for the state of
health of Mrs P., who I thought I should have lost in the night, I do
assure you, five distinct times.'

'Is your wife so ill?' asked Harriet.

'Why, you see,' said Mr Perch, first turning round to shut the door
carefully, 'she takes what has happened in our House so much to heart,
Miss. Her nerves is so very delicate, you see, and soon unstrung. Not
but what the strongest nerves had good need to be shook, I'm sure. You
feel it very much yourself, no doubts.'

Harriet repressed a sigh, and glanced at her brother.

'I'm sure I feel it myself, in my humble way,' Mr Perch went on to say,
with a shake of his head, 'in a manner I couldn't have believed if I
hadn't been called upon to undergo. It has almost the effect of drink
upon me. I literally feels every morning as if I had been taking more
than was good for me over-night.'

Mr Perch's appearance corroborated this recital of his symptoms. There
was an air of feverish lassitude about it, that seemed referable to
drams; and, which, in fact, might no doubt have been traced to those
numerous discoveries of himself in the bars of public-houses, being
treated and questioned, which he was in the daily habit of making.

'Therefore I can judge,' said Mr Perch, shaking his head and speaking
in a silvery murmur, 'of the feelings of such as is at all peculiarly
sitiwated in this most painful rewelation.'

Here Mr Perch waited to be confided in; and receiving no confidence,
coughed behind his hand. This leading to nothing, he coughed behind
his hat; and that leading to nothing, he put his hat on the ground and
sought in his breast pocket for the letter.

'If I rightly recollect, there was no answer,' said Mr Perch, with an
affable smile; 'but perhaps you'll be so good as cast your eye over it,
Sir.'

John Carker broke the seal, which was Mr Dombey's, and possessing
himself of the contents, which were very brief, replied, 'No. No answer
is expected.'

'Then I shall wish you good morning, Miss,' said Perch, taking a step
toward the door, and hoping, I'm sure, that you'll not permit yourself
to be more reduced in mind than you can help, by the late painful
rewelation. The Papers,' said Mr Perch, taking two steps back again, and
comprehensively addressing both the brother and sister in a whisper
of increased mystery, 'is more eager for news of it than you'd suppose
possible. One of the Sunday ones, in a blue cloak and a white hat,
that had previously offered for to bribe me--need I say with what
success?--was dodging about our court last night as late as twenty
minutes after eight o'clock. I see him myself, with his eye at the
counting-house keyhole, which being patent is impervious. Another one,'
said Mr Perch, 'with military frogs, is in the parlour of the King's
Arms all the blessed day. I happened, last week, to let a little
obserwation fall there, and next morning, which was Sunday, I see it
worked up in print, in a most surprising manner.'

Mr Perch resorted to his breast pocket, as if to produce the paragraph
but receiving no encouragement, pulled out his beaver gloves, picked up
his hat, and took his leave; and before it was high noon, Mr Perch had
related to several select audiences at the King's Arms and elsewhere,
how Miss Carker, bursting into tears, had caught him by both hands, and
said, 'Oh! dear dear Perch, the sight of you is all the comfort I have
left!' and how Mr John Carker had said, in an awful voice, 'Perch, I
disown him. Never let me hear him mentioned as a brother more!'

'Dear John,' said Harriet, when they were left alone, and had remained
silent for some few moments. 'There are bad tidings in that letter.'

'Yes. But nothing unexpected,' he replied. 'I saw the writer yesterday.'

'The writer?'

'Mr Dombey. He passed twice through the Counting House while I was
there. I had been able to avoid him before, but of course could not
hope to do that long. I know how natural it was that he should regard my
presence as something offensive; I felt it must be so, myself.'

'He did not say so?'

'No; he said nothing: but I saw that his glance rested on me for a
moment, and I was prepared for what would happen--for what has happened.
I am dismissed!'

She looked as little shocked and as hopeful as she could, but it was
distressing news, for many reasons.

'"I need not tell you,"' said John Carker, reading the letter, '"why
your name would henceforth have an unnatural sound, in however remote
a connexion with mine, or why the daily sight of anyone who bears
it, would be unendurable to me. I have to notify the cessation of all
engagements between us, from this date, and to request that no renewal
of any communication with me, or my establishment, be ever attempted by
you."--Enclosed is an equivalent in money to a generously long notice,
and this is my discharge. Heaven knows, Harriet, it is a lenient and
considerate one, when we remember all!'

'If it be lenient and considerate to punish you at all, John, for the
misdeed of another,' she replied gently, 'yes.'

'We have been an ill-omened race to him,' said John Carker. 'He has
reason to shrink from the sound of our name, and to think that there is
something cursed and wicked in our blood. I should almost think it too,
Harriet, but for you.'

'Brother, don't speak like this. If you have any special reason, as you
say you have, and think you have--though I say, No!--to love me, spare
me the hearing of such wild mad words!'

He covered his face with both his hands; but soon permitted her, coming
near him, to take one in her own.

'After so many years, this parting is a melancholy thing, I know,' said
his sister, 'and the cause of it is dreadful to us both. We have to
live, too, and must look about us for the means. Well, well! We can do
so, undismayed. It is our pride, not our trouble, to strive, John, and
to strive together!'

A smile played on her lips, as she kissed his cheek, and entreated him
to be of of good cheer.

'Oh, dearest sister! Tied, of your own noble will, to a ruined man!
whose reputation is blighted; who has no friend himself, and has driven
every friend of yours away!'

'John!' she laid her hand hastily upon his lips, 'for my sake! In
remembrance of our long companionship!' He was silent 'Now, let me tell
you, dear,' quietly sitting by his side, 'I have, as you have, expected
this; and when I have been thinking of it, and fearing that it would
happen, and preparing myself for it, as well as I could, I have resolved
to tell you, if it should be so, that I have kept a secret from you, and
that we have a friend.'

'What's our friend's name, Harriet?' he answered with a sorrowful smile.

'Indeed, I don't know, but he once made a very earnest protestation to
me of his friendship and his wish to serve us: and to this day I believe
him.'

'Harriet!' exclaimed her wondering brother, 'where does this friend
live?'

'Neither do I know that,' she returned. 'But he knows us both, and our
history--all our little history, John. That is the reason why, at his
own suggestion, I have kept the secret of his coming, here, from you,
lest his acquaintance with it should distress you.'

'Here! Has he been here, Harriet?'

'Here, in this room. Once.'

'What kind of man?'

'Not young. "Grey-headed," as he said, "and fast growing greyer." But
generous, and frank, and good, I am sure.'

'And only seen once, Harriet?'

'In this room only once,' said his sister, with the slightest and most
transient glow upon her cheek; 'but when here, he entreated me to suffer
him to see me once a week as he passed by, in token of our being well,
and continuing to need nothing at his hands. For I told him, when he
proffered us any service he could render--which was the object of his
visit--that we needed nothing.'

'And once a week--'

'Once every week since then, and always on the same day, and at the
same hour, he his gone past; always on foot; always going in the same
direction--towards London; and never pausing longer than to bow to me,
and wave his hand cheerfully, as a kind guardian might. He made that
promise when he proposed these curious interviews, and has kept it so
faithfully and pleasantly, that if I ever felt any trifling uneasiness
about them in the beginning (which I don't think I did, John; his manner
was so plain and true) It very soon vanished, and left me quite glad
when the day was coming. Last Monday--the first since this terrible
event--he did not go by; and I have wondered whether his absence can
have been in any way connected with what has happened.'

'How?' inquired her brother.

'I don't know how. I have only speculated on the coincidence; I have not
tried to account for it. I feel sure he will return. When he does, dear
John, let me tell him that I have at last spoken to you, and let me
bring you together. He will certainly help us to a new livelihood. His
entreaty was that he might do something to smooth my life and yours; and
I gave him my promise that if we ever wanted a friend, I would remember
him. Then his name was to be no secret.'

'Harriet,' said her brother, who had listened with close attention,
'describe this gentleman to me. I surely ought to know one who knows me
so well.'

His sister painted, as vividly as she could, the features, stature, and
dress of her visitor; but John Carker, either from having no knowledge
of the original, or from some fault in her description, or from some
abstraction of his thoughts as he walked to and fro, pondering, could
not recognise the portrait she presented to him.

However, it was agreed between them that he should see the original when
he next appeared. This concluded, the sister applied herself, with a
less anxious breast, to her domestic occupations; and the grey-haired
man, late Junior of Dombey's, devoted the first day of his unwonted
liberty to working in the garden.

It was quite late at night, and the brother was reading aloud while the
sister plied her needle, when they were interrupted by a knocking at the
door. In the atmosphere of vague anxiety and dread that lowered about
them in connexion with their fugitive brother, this sound, unusual
there, became almost alarming. The brother going to the door, the sister
sat and listened timidly. Someone spoke to him, and he replied and
seemed surprised; and after a few words, the two approached together.

'Harriet,' said her brother, lighting in their late visitor, and
speaking in a low voice, 'Mr Morfin--the gentleman so long in Dombey's
House with James.'

His sister started back, as if a ghost had entered. In the doorway stood
the unknown friend, with the dark hair sprinkled with grey, the ruddy
face, the broad clear brow, and hazel eyes, whose secret she had kept so
long!

'John!' she said, half-breathless. 'It is the gentleman I told you of,
today!'

'The gentleman, Miss Harriet,' said the visitor, coming in--for he had
stopped a moment in the doorway--'is greatly relieved to hear you
say that: he has been devising ways and means, all the way here, of
explaining himself, and has been satisfied with none. Mr John, I am not
quite a stranger here. You were stricken with astonishment when you saw
me at your door just now. I observe you are more astonished at present.
Well! That's reasonable enough under existing circumstances. If we were
not such creatures of habit as we are, we shouldn't have reason to be
astonished half so often.'

By this time, he had greeted Harriet with that able mingling of
cordiality and respect which she recollected so well, and had sat down
near her, pulled off his gloves, and thrown them into his hat upon the
table.

'There's nothing astonishing,' he said, 'in my having conceived a desire
to see your sister, Mr John, or in my having gratified it in my own way.
As to the regularity of my visits since (which she may have mentioned
to you), there is nothing extraordinary in that. They soon grew into a
habit; and we are creatures of habit--creatures of habit!'

Putting his hands into his pockets, and leaning back in his chair, he
looked at the brother and sister as if it were interesting to him to
see them together; and went on to say, with a kind of irritable
thoughtfulness: 'It's this same habit that confirms some of us, who are
capable of better things, in Lucifer's own pride and stubbornness--that
confirms and deepens others of us in villainy--more of us in indifference
--that hardens us from day to day, according to the temper of our clay,
like images, and leaves us as susceptible as images to new impressions
and convictions. You shall judge of its influence on me, John. For more
years than I need name, I had my small, and exactly defined share, in the
management of Dombey's House, and saw your brother (who has proved
himself a scoundrel! Your sister will forgive my being obliged to mention
it) extending and extending his influence, until the business and its
owner were his football; and saw you toiling at your obscure desk every
day; and was quite content to be as little troubled as I might be, out of
my own strip of duty, and to let everything about me go on, day by day,
unquestioned, like a great machine--that was its habit and mine--and to
take it all for granted, and consider it all right.  My Wednesday nights
came regularly round, our quartette parties came regularly off, my
violoncello was in good tune, and there was nothing wrong in my world--or
if anything not much--or little or much, it was no affair of mine.'

'I can answer for your being more respected and beloved during all that
time than anybody in the House, Sir,' said John Carker.

'Pooh! Good-natured and easy enough, I daresay,' returned the other, 'a
habit I had. It suited the Manager; it suited the man he managed: it
suited me best of all. I did what was allotted to me to do, made no
court to either of them, and was glad to occupy a station in which none
was required. So I should have gone on till now, but that my room had
a thin wall. You can tell your sister that it was divided from the
Manager's room by a wainscot partition.'

'They were adjoining rooms; had been one, Perhaps, originally; and were
separated, as Mr Morfin says,' said her brother, looking back to him for
the resumption of his explanation.

'I have whistled, hummed tunes, gone accurately through the whole of
Beethoven's Sonata in B, to let him know that I was within hearing,'
said Mr Morfin; 'but he never heeded me. It happened seldom enough that
I was within hearing of anything of a private nature, certainly. But
when I was, and couldn't otherwise avoid knowing something of it, I
walked out. I walked out once, John, during a conversation between two
brothers, to which, in the beginning, young Walter Gay was a party.
But I overheard some of it before I left the room. You remember it
sufficiently, perhaps, to tell your sister what its nature was?'

'It referred, Harriet,' said her brother in a low voice, 'to the past,
and to our relative positions in the House.'

'Its matter was not new to me, but was presented in a new aspect.
It shook me in my habit--the habit of nine-tenths of the world--of
believing that all was right about me, because I was used to it,'
said their visitor; 'and induced me to recall the history of the two
brothers, and to ponder on it. I think it was almost the first time in
my life when I fell into this train of reflection--how will many things
that are familiar, and quite matters of course to us now, look, when we
come to see them from that new and distant point of view which we must
all take up, one day or other? I was something less good-natured, as the
phrase goes, after that morning, less easy and complacent altogether.'

He sat for a minute or so, drumming with one hand on the table; and
resumed in a hurry, as if he were anxious to get rid of his confession.

'Before I knew what to do, or whether I could do anything, there was a
second conversation between the same two brothers, in which their sister
was mentioned. I had no scruples of conscience in suffering all the
waifs and strays of that conversation to float to me as freely as they
would. I considered them mine by right. After that, I came here to see
the sister for myself. The first time I stopped at the garden gate, I
made a pretext of inquiring into the character of a poor neighbour; but
I wandered out of that tract, and I think Miss Harriet mistrusted me.
The second time I asked leave to come in; came in; and said what I
wished to say. Your sister showed me reasons which I dared not dispute,
for receiving no assistance from me then; but I established a means of
communication between us, which remained unbroken until within these
few days, when I was prevented, by important matters that have lately
devolved upon me, from maintaining them.'

'How little I have suspected this,' said John Carker, 'when I have seen
you every day, Sir! If Harriet could have guessed your name--'

'Why, to tell you the truth, John,' interposed the visitor, 'I kept it
to myself for two reasons. I don't know that the first might have
been binding alone; but one has no business to take credit for good
intentions, and I made up my mind, at all events, not to disclose myself
until I should be able to do you some real service or other. My
second reason was, that I always hoped there might be some lingering
possibility of your brother's relenting towards you both; and in that
case, I felt that where there was the chance of a man of his suspicious,
watchful character, discovering that you had been secretly befriended
by me, there was the chance of a new and fatal cause of division. I
resolved, to be sure, at the risk of turning his displeasure against
myself--which would have been no matter--to watch my opportunity of
serving you with the head of the House; but the distractions of death,
courtship, marriage, and domestic unhappiness, have left us no head but
your brother for this long, long time. And it would have been better
for us,' said the visitor, dropping his voice, 'to have been a lifeless
trunk.'

He seemed conscious that these latter words had escaped hIm against
his will, and stretching out a hand to the brother, and a hand to the
sister, continued:

'All I could desire to say, and more, I have now said. All I mean goes
beyond words, as I hope you understand and believe. The time has come,
John--though most unfortunately and unhappily come--when I may help you
without interfering with that redeeming struggle, which has lasted
through so many years; since you were discharged from it today by no act
of your own. It is late; I need say no more to-night. You will guard the
treasure you have here, without advice or reminder from me.'

With these words he rose to go.

'But go you first, John,' he said goodhumouredly, 'with a light, without
saying what you want to say, whatever that maybe;' John Carker's heart
was full, and he would have relieved it in speech, if he could; 'and
let me have a word with your sister. We have talked alone before, and in
this room too; though it looks more natural with you here.'

Following him out with his eyes, he turned kindly to Harriet, and said
in a lower voice, and with an altered and graver manner:

'You wish to ask me something of the man whose sister it is your
misfortune to be.'

'I dread to ask,' said Harriet.

'You have looked so earnestly at me more than once,' rejoined the
visitor, 'that I think I can divine your question. Has he taken money?
Is it that?'

'Yes.'

'He has not.'

'I thank Heaven!' said Harriet. 'For the sake of John.'

'That he has abused his trust in many ways,' said Mr Morfin; 'that he
has oftener dealt and speculated to advantage for himself, than for
the House he represented; that he has led the House on, to prodigious
ventures, often resulting in enormous losses; that he has always
pampered the vanity and ambition of his employer, when it was his duty
to have held them in check, and shown, as it was in his power to do,
to what they tended here or there; will not, perhaps, surprise you now.
Undertakings have been entered on, to swell the reputation of the House
for vast resources, and to exhibit it in magnificent contrast to other
merchants' Houses, of which it requires a steady head to contemplate
the possibly--a few disastrous changes of affairs might render them the
probably--ruinous consequences. In the midst of the many transactions of
the House, in most parts of the world: a great labyrinth of which only
he has held the clue: he has had the opportunity, and he seems to have
used it, of keeping the various results afloat, when ascertained, and
substituting estimates and generalities for facts. But latterly--you
follow me, Miss Harriet?'

'Perfectly, perfectly,' she answered, with her frightened face fixed on
his. 'Pray tell me all the worst at once.'

'Latterly, he appears to have devoted the greatest pains to making these
results so plain and clear, that reference to the private books enables
one to grasp them, numerous and varying as they are, with extraordinary
ease. As if he had resolved to show his employer at one broad view what
has been brought upon him by ministration to his ruling passion! That it
has been his constant practice to minister to that passion basely, and
to flatter it corruptly, is indubitable. In that, his criminality, as it
is connected with the affairs of the House, chiefly consists.'

'One other word before you leave me, dear Sir,' said Harriet. 'There is
no danger in all this?'

'How danger?' he returned, with a little hesitation.

'To the credit of the House?'

'I cannot help answering you plainly, and trusting you completely,' said
Mr Morfin, after a moment's survey of her face.

'You may. Indeed you may!'

'I am sure I may. Danger to the House's credit? No; none There may be
difficulty, greater or less difficulty, but no danger, unless--unless,
indeed--the head of the House, unable to bring his mind to the reduction
of its enterprises, and positively refusing to believe that it is,
or can be, in any position but the position in which he has always
represented it to himself, should urge it beyond its strength. Then it
would totter.'

'But there is no apprehension of that?' said Harriet.

'There shall be no half-confidence,' he replied, shaking her hand,
'between us. Mr Dombey is unapproachable by anyone, and his state of
mind is haughty, rash, unreasonable, and ungovernable, now. But he is
disturbed and agitated now beyond all common bounds, and it may
pass. You now know all, both worst and best. No more to-night, and
good-night!'

With that he kissed her hand, and, passing out to the door where her
brother stood awaiting his coming, put him cheerfully aside when he
essayed to speak; told him that, as they would see each other soon and
often, he might speak at another time, if he would, but there was no
leisure for it then; and went away at a round pace, in order that no
word of gratitude might follow him.

The brother and sister sat conversing by the fireside, until it was
almost day; made sleepless by this glimpse of the new world that opened
before them, and feeling like two people shipwrecked long ago, upon a
solitary coast, to whom a ship had come at last, when they were old in
resignation, and had lost all thought of any other home. But another and
different kind of disquietude kept them waking too. The darkness out of
which this light had broken on them gathered around; and the shadow of
their guilty brother was in the house where his foot had never trod.

Nor was it to be driven out, nor did it fade before the sun. Next
morning it was there; at noon; at night Darkest and most distinct at
night, as is now to be told.

John Carker had gone out, in pursuance of a letter of appointment from
their friend, and Harriet was left in the house alone. She had been
alone some hours. A dull, grave evening, and a deepening twilight, were
not favourable to the removal of the oppression on her spirits. The idea
of this brother, long unseen and unknown, flitted about her in frightful
shapes. He was dead, dying, calling to her, staring at her, frowning on
her. The pictures in her mind were so obtrusive and exact that, as the
twilight deepened, she dreaded to raise her head and look at the dark
corners of the room, lest his wraith, the offspring of her excited
imagination, should be waiting there, to startle her. Once she had such
a fancy of his being in the next room, hiding--though she knew quite
well what a distempered fancy it was, and had no belief in it--that she
forced herself to go there, for her own conviction. But in vain. The
room resumed its shadowy terrors, the moment she left it; and she had no
more power to divest herself of these vague impressions of dread, than
if they had been stone giants, rooted in the solid earth.

It was almost dark, and she was sitting near the window, with her head
upon her hand, looking down, when, sensible of a sudden increase in the
gloom of the apartment, she raised her eyes, and uttered an involuntary
cry. Close to the glass, a pale scared face gazed in; vacantly, for an
instant, as searching for an object; then the eyes rested on herself,
and lighted up.

'Let me in! Let me in! I want to speak to you!' and the hand rattled on
the glass.

She recognised immediately the woman with the long dark hair, to whom
she had given warmth, food, and shelter, one wet night. Naturally afraid
of her, remembering her violent behaviour, Harriet, retreating a little
from the window, stood undecided and alarmed.

'Let me in! Let me speak to you! I am thankful--quiet--humble--anything
you like. But let me speak to you.'

The vehement manner of the entreaty, the earnest expression of the face,
the trembling of the two hands that were raised imploringly, a certain
dread and terror in the voice akin to her own condition at the moment,
prevailed with Harriet. She hastened to the door and opened it.

'May I come in, or shall I speak here?' said the woman, catching at her
hand.

'What is it that you want? What is it that you have to say?'

'Not much, but let me say it out, or I shall never say it. I am tempted
now to go away. There seem to be hands dragging me from the door. Let me
come in, if you can trust me for this once!'

Her energy again prevailed, and they passed into the firelight of
the little kitchen, where she had before sat, and ate, and dried her
clothes.

'Sit there,' said Alice, kneeling down beside her, 'and look at me. You
remember me?'

'I do.'

'You remember what I told you I had been, and where I came from, ragged
and lame, with the fierce wind and weather beating on my head?'

'Yes.'

'You know how I came back that night, and threw your money in the
dirt, and you and your race. Now, see me here, upon my knees. Am I less
earnest now, than I was then?'

'If what you ask,' said Harriet, gently, 'is forgiveness--'

'But it's not!' returned the other, with a proud, fierce look 'What I
ask is to be believed. Now you shall judge if I am worthy of belief,
both as I was, and as I am.'

Still upon her knees, and with her eyes upon the fire, and the fire
shining on her ruined beauty and her wild black hair, one long tress
of which she pulled over her shoulder, and wound about her hand, and
thoughtfully bit and tore while speaking, she went on:

'When I was young and pretty, and this,' plucking contemptuously at
the hair she held, 'was only handled delicately, and couldn't be admired
enough, my mother, who had not been very mindful of me as a child, found
out my merits, and was fond of me, and proud of me. She was covetous and
poor, and thought to make a sort of property of me. No great lady ever
thought that of a daughter yet, I'm sure, or acted as if she did--it's
never done, we all know--and that shows that the only instances of
mothers bringing up their daughters wrong, and evil coming of it, are
among such miserable folks as us.'

Looking at the fire, as if she were forgetful, for the moment, of having
any auditor, she continued in a dreamy way, as she wound the long tress
of hair tight round and round her hand.

'What came of that, I needn't say. Wretched marriages don't come of such
things, in our degree; only wretchedness and ruin. Wretchedness and ruin
came on me--came on me.'

Raising her eyes swiftly from their moody gaze upon the fire, to
Harriet's face, she said:

'I am wasting time, and there is none to spare; yet if I hadn't thought
of all, I shouldn't be here now. Wretchedness and ruin came on me, I
say. I was made a short-lived toy, and flung aside more cruelly and
carelessly than even such things are. By whose hand do you think?'

'Why do you ask me?' said Harriet.

'Why do you tremble?' rejoined Alice, with an eager look. 'His usage
made a Devil of me. I sunk in wretchedness and ruin, lower and
lower yet. I was concerned in a robbery--in every part of it but the
gains--and was found out, and sent to be tried, without a friend,
without a penny. Though I was but a girl, I would have gone to Death,
sooner than ask him for a word, if a word of his could have saved me.
I would! To any death that could have been invented. But my mother,
covetous always, sent to him in my name, told the true story of my case,
and humbly prayed and petitioned for a small last gift--for not so many
pounds as I have fingers on this hand. Who was it, do you think, who
snapped his fingers at me in my misery, lying, as he believed, at his
feet, and left me without even this poor sign of remembrance; well
satisfied that I should be sent abroad, beyond the reach of farther
trouble to him, and should die, and rot there? Who was this, do you
think?'

'Why do you ask me?' repeated Harriet.

'Why do you tremble?' said Alice, laying her hand upon her arm, and
looking in her face, 'but that the answer is on your lips! It was your
brother James.'

Harriet trembled more and more, but did not avert her eyes from the
eager look that rested on them.

'When I knew you were his sister--which was on that night--I came back,
weary and lame, to spurn your gift. I felt that night as if I could have
travelled, weary and lame, over the whole world, to stab him, if I could
have found him in a lonely place with no one near. Do you believe that I
was earnest in all that?'

'I do! Good Heaven, why are you come again?'

'Since then,' said Alice, with the same grasp of her arm, and the same
look in her face, 'I have seen him! I have followed him with my eyes, In
the broad day. If any spark of my resentment slumbered in my bosom, it
sprung into a blaze when my eyes rested on him. You know he has
wronged a proud man, and made him his deadly enemy. What if I had given
information of him to that man?'

'Information!' repeated Harriet.

'What if I had found out one who knew your brother's secret; who knew
the manner of his flight, who knew where he and the companion of his
flight were gone? What if I had made him utter all his knowledge, word
by word, before his enemy, concealed to hear it? What if I had sat by at
the time, looking into this enemy's face, and seeing it change till it
was scarcely human? What if I had seen him rush away, mad, in pursuit?
What if I knew, now, that he was on his road, more fiend than man, and
must, in so many hours, come up with him?'

'Remove your hand!' said Harriet, recoiling. 'Go away! Your touch is
dreadful to me!'

'I have done this,' pursued the other, with her eager look, regardless
of the interruption. 'Do I speak and look as if I really had? Do you
believe what I am saying?'

'I fear I must. Let my arm go!'

'Not yet. A moment more. You can think what my revengeful purpose must
have been, to last so long, and urge me to do this?'

'Dreadful!' said Harriet.

'Then when you see me now,' said Alice hoarsely, 'here again, kneeling
quietly on the ground, with my touch upon your arm, with my eyes upon
your face, you may believe that there is no common earnestness in what
I say, and that no common struggle has been battling in my breast. I
am ashamed to speak the words, but I relent. I despise myself; I have
fought with myself all day, and all last night; but I relent towards him
without reason, and wish to repair what I have done, if it is possible.
I wouldn't have them come together while his pursuer is so blind and
headlong. If you had seen him as he went out last night, you would know
the danger better.'

'How can it be prevented? What can I do?' cried Harriet.

'All night long,' pursued the other, hurriedly, 'I had dreams of
him--and yet I didn't sleep--in his blood. All day, I have had him near
me.'

'What can I do?' cried Harriet, shuddering at these words.

'If there is anyone who'll write, or send, or go to him, let them lose
no time. He is at Dijon. Do you know the name, and where it is?'

'Yes.'

'Warn him that the man he has made his enemy is in a frenzy, and that he
doesn't know him if he makes light of his approach. Tell him that he is
on the road--I know he is!--and hurrying on. Urge him to get away while
there is time--if there is time--and not to meet him yet. A month or
so will make years of difference. Let them not encounter, through me.
Anywhere but there! Any time but now! Let his foe follow him, and
find him for himself, but not through me! There is enough upon my head
without.'

The fire ceased to be reflected in her jet black hair, uplifted face,
and eager eyes; her hand was gone from Harriet's arm; and the place
where she had been was empty.

Harriet and John Carker are deeply troubled and shamed by what their brother has done. One morning, Mr. Perch comes to see them, delivering a message from Mr. Dombey. After he leaves, they read the letter. As he expected, John Carker has been fired from his job. While he understands why Dombey would take this action, he is still distressed about what the future will hold. Harriet, to comfort him, reveals that they do have a friend: the mysterious stranger who visited, would not reveal his name, but promised to be of assistance should they need it. He has been passing by the house weekly since then, but since Carker's disappearance with Edith, the visits have stopped. Harriet is sure he will return, and suggests that, when he does, he and John can meet and discuss a plan for the future. Later that evening, someone comes to their door. John opens it and recognizes Mr. Morfin, whom Harriet identifies as the stranger who has visited her. Mr. Morfin has been working alongside Carker for years, quietly observing, but minding his own business. Because of the position of his office, separated from Carker's only by a thin wall, he has been able to overhear many of Carker's interactions, including the argument between John and James about the damage inflicted on the Carker reputation by John's past behavior. Intrigued by this conversation, as well as the mention of a sister, Morfin had come to see Harriet. Without revealing his identity, he had made his offer to be of assistance if necessary, and has been visiting regularly ever since. Morfin did not want to get involved in case there was any chance of the siblings reconciling, but now he will be able to help them. He rises to leave, but then asks John to leave him alone with Harriet. When they are alone, Morfin guesses that Harriet has been wondering if Carker stole money and she confirms that she is anxious about this. Morfin explains that Carker has not directly stolen from his employer; he has, however, mismanaged the firm, taking extravagant risks. Harriet asks whether the business is in danger as a result, and Morfin explains that it needn't be, if it is scaled back appropriately. If, however, Dombey refuses to recognize the altered circumstances, serious consequences could result. Morfin then leaves. The next night, Harriet is alone in the house when Alice abruptly appears. Alice wants to tell her story: she explains that when she was young, her mother realized how beautiful she was and desired to make a profit as a result. They were not of a social class where an advantageous marriage was a possibility; instead, Alice became the mistress of James Carker. When he discarded her, she was worse off than before and reduced to poverty, theft and prostitution. She was put on trial for theft and her mother went to Carker asking for financial help, which he refused. Her hatred for him was what led to her rejecting the money Harriet had first given her when she realized the connection between the two. Alice now confesses that she provided information about Carker's whereabouts to Dombey, as part of her revenge. Since then, she has been tormented, horrified by what will happen if Dombey catches up to Carker. She tells Harriet that Carker is in Dijon, and begs her to find a way to warn him that Dombey is coming for him. Then Alice flees the house

As the novel approaches its conclusion, closure starts to emerge in some of the plotlines. Florence and Walter are finally married, and the wedding, especially now that Sol how returned, signals that Florence has finally found the security and love she has always craved. The marriage, however, rather than providing a domestic retreat from the world as might be expected, will radically broaden her horizons in that she will sail with Walter to China. A wife accompanying her husband to sea was not typical at this time, and shows that Florence gives Walter the complete love and devotion she has always longed to offer to her father. It also reveals a new boldness to her: having taken the radical step of leaving her father's house, she can now survey her future fearlessly, and if she has love at long last, she does not have anything to be anxious about. Carker's plot is also resolved with a punishment for his many evil deeds: a train, which is personified as a kind of demon, kills him. While it is possible that Dombey might have been intending to kill him, as was Alice's fear, this accidental death prevents that fate. It evokes instead a kind of poetic justice where Carker's paranoia emerges because he has made it impossible for him to trust anyone. He becomes obsessed with the idea of being watched just as he himself has been ever watchful in his spying and plotting. In effect, he is his own downfall. There are also surprises that emerge even at this late juncture. Alice, despite her deep hatred of Carker, panics at the thought that she may have enabled his murder and attempts to save him. This shows that even her cynicism and bitterness have not completely hardened her, and that it is always possible for a character to have a change of heart and try to show forgiveness and compassion. Edith is also revealed as having different intentions than might be expected. She is not actually involved in an adulterous affair, and reveals that she has in fact outwitted Carker, playing him to her purposes. While clever, this scheme has deep consequences for Edith in that her reputation is ruined and she will never be socially accepted again. Her sense of shame and moral disgust has become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. And yet, Edith is willing to tolerate this because she is free and will no longer have to live a lie. The Dombey household dynamic was so poisonous for both Edith and Florence that even the drastic risks they take in liberating themselves are presented as worthwhile.