‘You respect nobody, Carker, I think,’ said Mr Dombey.
‘No?’ inquired Carker, with another wide and most feline show of his teeth. ‘Well! Not many people, I believe. I wouldn’t answer perhaps,’ he murmured, as if he were only thinking it, ‘for more than one.’
A dangerous quality, if real; and a not less dangerous one, if feigned. But Mr Dombey hardly seemed to think so, as he still stood with his back to the fire, drawn up to his full height, and looking at his head-clerk with a dignified composure, in which there seemed to lurk a stronger latent sense of power than usual.
‘Talking of Morfin,’ resumed Mr Carker, taking out one paper from the rest, ‘he reports a junior dead in the agency at Barbados, and proposes to reserve a passage in the Son and Heir – she’ll sail in a month or so – for the successor. You don’t care who goes, I suppose? We have nobody of that sort here.’
Mr Dombey shook his head with supreme indifference.
‘It’s no very precious appointment,’ observed Mr Carker, taking up a pen, with which to endorse a memorandum on the back of the paper. ‘I hope he may bestow it on some orphan nephew of a musical friend. It may perhaps stop his fiddle-playing, if he has a gift that way. Who’s that? Come in!’
‘I beg your pardon, Mr Carker. I didn’t know you were here, Sir,’ answered Walter; appearing with some letters in his hand, unopened, and newly arrived. ‘Mr Carker the junior, Sir – ’
At the mention of this name, Mr Carker the Manager was or affected to be, touched to the quick with shame and humiliation. He cast his eyes full on Mr Dombey with an altered and apologetic look, abased them on the ground, and remained for a moment without speaking.
‘I thought, Sir,’ he said suddenly and angrily, turning on Walter, ‘that you had been before requested not to drag Mr Carker the Junior into your conversation.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ returned Walter. ‘I was only going to say that Mr Carker the Junior had told me he believed you were gone out, or I should not have knocked at the door when you were engaged with Mr Dombey. These are letters for Mr Dombey, Sir.’
‘Very well, Sir,’ returned Mr Carker the Manager, plucking them sharply from his hand. ‘Go about your business.’
But in taking them with so little ceremony, Mr Carker dropped one on the floor, and did not see what he had done; neither did Mr Dombey observe the letter lying near his feet. Walter hesitated for a moment, thinking that one or other of them would notice it; but finding that neither did, he stopped, came back, picked it up, and laid it himself on Mr Dombey’s desk. The letters were post-letters; and it happened that the one in question was Mrs Pipchin’s regular report, directed as usual – for Mrs Pipchin was but an indifferent penwoman – by Florence. Mr Dombey, having his attention silently called to this letter by Walter, started, and looked fiercely at him, as if he believed that he had purposely selected it from all the rest.
‘You can leave the room, Sir!’ said Mr Dombey, haughtily.
He crushed the letter in his hand; and having watched Walter out at the door, put it in his pocket without breaking the seal.
‘These continual references to Mr Carker the Junior,’ Mr Carker the Manager began, as soon as they were alone, ‘are, to a man in my position, uttered before one in yours, so unspeakably distressing – ’
‘Nonsense, Carker,’ Mr Dombey interrupted. ‘You are too sensitive.’
‘I am sensitive,’ he returned. ‘If one in your position could by any possibility imagine yourself in my place: which you cannot: you would be so too.’
As Mr Dombey’s thoughts were evidently pursuing some other subject, his discreet ally broke off here, and stood with his teeth ready to present to him, when he should look up.
‘You want somebody to send to the West Indies, you were saying,’ observed Mr Dombey, hurriedly.
‘Yes,’ replied Carker.
‘Send young Gay.’
‘Good, very good indeed. Nothing easier,’ said Mr Carker, without any show of surprise, and taking up the pen to re-endorse the letter, as coolly as he had done before. ‘“Send young Gay.”’
‘Call him back,’ said Mr Dombey.
Mr Carker was quick to do so, and Walter was quick to return.
‘Gay,’ said Mr Dombey, turning a little to look at him over his shoulder. ‘Here is a – ’
‘An opening,’ said Mr Carker, with his mouth stretched to the utmost.
‘In the West Indies. At Barbados. I am going to send you,’ said Mr Dombey, scorning to embellish the bare truth, ‘to fill a junior situation in the counting-house at Barbados. Let your Uncle know from me, that I have chosen you to go to the West Indies.’
Walter’s breath was so completely taken away by his astonishment, that he could hardly find enough for the repetition of the words ‘West Indies.’
‘Somebody must go,’ said Mr Dombey, ‘and you are young and healthy, and your Uncle’s circumstances are not good. Tell your Uncle that you are appointed. You will not go yet. There will be an interval of a month – or two perhaps.’
‘Shall I remain there, Sir?’ inquired Walter.
‘Will you remain there, Sir!’ repeated Mr Dombey, turning a little more round towards him. ‘What do you mean? What does he mean, Carker?’
‘Live there, Sir,’ faltered Walter.
‘Certainly,’ returned Mr Dombey.
Walter bowed.
‘That’s all,’ said Mr Dombey, resuming his letters. ‘You will explain to him in good time about the usual outfit and so forth, Carker, of course. He needn’t wait, Carker.’
‘You needn’t wait, Gay,’ observed Mr Carker: bare to the gums.
‘Unless,’ said Mr Dombey, stopping in his reading without looking off the letter, and seeming to listen. ‘Unless he has anything to say.’
‘No, Sir,’ returned Walter, agitated and confused, and almost stunned, as an infinite variety of pictures presented themselves to his mind; among which Captain Cuttle, in his glazed hat, transfixed with astonishment at Mrs MacStinger’s, and his uncle bemoaning his loss in the little back parlour, held prominent places. ‘I hardly know – I – I am much obliged, Sir.’
‘He needn’t wait, Carker,’ said Mr Dombey.
And as Mr Carker again echoed the words, and also collected his papers as if he were going away too, Walter felt that his lingering any longer would be an unpardonable intrusion – especially as he had nothing to say – and therefore walked out quite confounded.
Going along the passage, with the mingled consciousness and helplessness of a dream, he heard Mr Dombey’s door shut again, as Mr Carker came out: and immediately afterwards that gentleman called to him.
‘Bring your friend Mr Carker the Junior to my room, Sir, if you please.’
Walter went to the outer office and apprised Mr Carker the Junior of his errand, who accordingly came out from behind a partition where he sat alone in one corner, and returned with him to the room of Mr Carker the Manager.
That gentleman was standing with his back to the fire, and his hands under his coat-tails, looking over his white cravat, as unpromisingly as Mr Dombey himself could have looked. He received them without any change in his attitude or softening of his harsh and black expression: merely signing to Walter to close the door.
‘John Carker,’ said the Manager, when this was done, turning suddenly upon his brother, with his two rows of teeth bristling as if he would have bitten him, ‘what is the league between you and this young man, in virtue of which I am haunted and hunted by the mention of your name? Is it not enough for you, John Carker, that I am your near relation, and can’t detach myself from that – ’
‘Say