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 l  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.

        CHAPTER 54.
     The Fugitives

     Tea-time,  an hour short of  midnight; the place,  a French  apartment,
comprising  some  half-dozen  rooms;  -  a  dull cold  hall  or corridor,  a
dining-room,  a  drawing-room,  a  bed-room, and an  inner  drawingroom,  or
boudoir,  smaller and more retired than the rest. All  these shut  in by one
large pair of  doors on the main  staircase, but each room provided with two
or  three  pairs  of  doors  of  its  own,  establishing  several  means  of
communication with the remaining portion of the apartment, or  with  certain
small passages within the  wall,  leading, as is not unusual in such houses,
to some back stairs with an  obscure outlet below. The whole situated on the
first  floor of so large an Hotel, that it did not absorb  one entire row of
windows upon one side of the square court-yard in the centre, upon which the
whole four sides of the mansion looked.
     An  air  of   splendour,  sufficiently  faded  to  be  melancholy,  and
sufficiently dazzling to clog and embarrass the details of life with a  show
of  state,  reigned in  these rooms The walls and  ceilings were gilded  and
painted;  the floors  were  waxed and  polished;  crimson  drapery  hung  in
festoons  from  window,  door,  and  mirror;  and  candelabra,  gnarled  and
intertwisted like the branches of trees, or horns of animals, stuck out from
the panels of  the wall. But in the day-time, when  the lattice-blinds  (now
closely  shut) were opened, and the  light let in, traces  were  discernible
among this finery, of wear and tear and dust, of sun and damp and smoke, and
lengthened intervals of want of use and habitation, when such shows and toys
of  life seem sensitive like life, and  waste as men shut up  in prison  do.
Even night, and clusters  of burning candles, could not  wholly efface them,
though the general glitter threw them in the shade.
     The glitter  of bright tapers, and their reflection in looking-glasses,
scraps of gilding and gay colours, were confined, on this night, to one room
- that smaller room within  the  rest, just now enumerated.  Seen  from  the
hall, where a lamp was feebly burning,  through the dark perspective of open
doors, it looked  as  shining and precious as a gem. In  the  heart  of  its
radiance sat a beautiful woman - Edith.
     She  was  alone. The  same  defiant, scornful woman still. The cheek  a
little worn, the eye a little larger  in appearance, and more  lustrous, but
the haughty  bearing just  the  same.  No  shame  upon  her  brow;  no  late
repentance bending her disdainful neck. Imperious and stately  yet, and  yet
regardless of herself and of all else, she sat wIth her dark eyes cast down,
waiting for someone.
     No  book,  no  work,  no occupation  of  any kind but her  own thought,
beguiled the tardy time. Some purpose, strong enough to fill  up any  pause,
possessed her. With her lips pressed together, and quivering if for a moment
she released  them from  her control; with  her  nostril inflated; her hands
clasped in one another; and her purpose swelling in her breast; she sat, and
waited.
     At  the  sound of a key in the outer door,  and a footstep in the hall,
she started up, and  cried  'Who's that?' The answer was in French, and  two
men came in with jingling trays, to make preparation for supper.
     'Who had bade them to do so?' she asked.
     'Monsieur  had  commanded  it, when it  was his  pleasure to  take  the
apartment.  Monsieur had said, when he stayed  there for  an hour, en route,
and left the letter for Madame - Madame had received it surely?'
     'Yes.'
     'A thousand pardons! The sudden apprehension  that it might  have  been
forgotten  had  struck  hIm;'  a  bald  man,  with  a  large  beard  from  a
neighbouring restaurant; 'with despair! Monsieur had said that supper was to
be ready at that hour: also that he had forewarned Madame of the commands he
had given, in  his letter.  Monsieur had done the Golden Head the  honour to
request  that the supper should be choice and  delicate. Monsieur would find
that his confidence in the Golden Head was not misplaced.'
     Edith  said no more, but looked on thoughtfully while they prepared the
table for two persons, and set the wine  upon it.  She arose before they had
finished,  and taking  a lamp,  passed  into  the  bed-chamber  and into the
drawing-room,  where  she  hurriedly but  narrowly  examined all  the doors;
particularly one in the former  room that opened on the passage in the wall.
From this  she took  the  key,  and put it on the outer side. She  then came
back.
     The men - the second of  whom was a dark, bilious subject, in a jacket,
close shaved, and  with a black head of hair close  cropped - had  completed
their preparation of the table, and were standing looking at  it. He who had
spoken before, inquired  whether  Madame  thought it  would  be long  before
Monsieur arrived?
     'She couldn't say. It was all one.'
     'Pardon!  There was  the supper! It  should  be eaten on  the  instant.
Monsieur (who  spoke French like an Angel - or a Frenchman -  it was all the
same) had spoken with  great emphasis of his  punctuality. But  the  English
nation had so grand a genius for punctuality.  Ah! what noise! Great Heaven,
here was Monsieur. Behold him!'
     In effect, Monsieur, admitted by the other of the two,  came,  with his
gleaming teeth, through the dark  rooms, like  a mouth; and arriving in that
sanctuary of light and colour, a figure at full length, embraced Madame, and
addressed her in the French tongue as his charming wife
     'My God! Madame is going to faint. Madame  is  overcome  with joy!' The
bald man with the beard observed it, and cried out.
     Madame had  only shrunk and shivered. Before the words were spoken, she
was standing with her hand upon the velvet back of a great chair; her figure
drawn up to its full height, and her face immoveable.
     'Francois  has flown over to  the  Golden Head for supper. He  flies on
these occasions like an angel or a bird. The baggage  of Monsieur is in  his
room. All is arranged. The supper will be here this moment.' These facts the
bald man notified with bows and smiles, and presently the supper came.
     The hot dishes were on a chafing-dish; the cold already set forth, with
the change  of service  on  a  sideboard. Monsieur was satisfied  with  this
arrangement.  The  supper table being  small, it pleased  him very well. Let
them set the chafing-dish upon the floor, and go. He would remove the dishes
with his own hands.
     'Pardon!' said the bald man, politely. 'It was impossible!'
     Monsieur was of another opinion. He required no further attendance that
night.
     'But Madame - ' the bald man hinted.
     'Madame,' replied Monsieur, 'had her own maid. It was enough.'
     'A million pardons! No! Madame had no maid!'
     'I came here alone,' said Edith 'It was  my choice  to do so. I am well
used to travelling; I want no attendance. They need send nobody to me.
     Monsieur  accordingly, persevering in his first proposed impossibility,
proceeded  to follow the two  attendants to the outer  door,  and secure  it
after them for the night. The bald man turning round to bow, as he went out,
observed that Madame still  stood with her hand upon the  velvet back of the
great chair,  and that  her face was quite regardless of him, though she was
looking straight before her.
     As the sound  of  Carker's  fastening the door  resounded  through  the
intermediate rooms, and seemed  to come  hushed  and stilled into that  last
distant one, the sound of  the Cathedral  clock striking twelve mingled with
it, in Edith's ears She heard him pause, as if he heard it too and listened;
and then came back towards her, laying a long train of footsteps through the
silence, and shutting all the doors  behind him as he  came along. Her hand,
for  a moment, left the velvet chair to  bring a knife within her reach upon
the table; then she stood as she had stood before.
     'How strange to come here by yourself, my love!' he said as he entered.
     'What?' she returned.
     Her  tone  was so  harsh; the quick  turn of her  head  so  fierce; her
attitude so repellent; and her  frown so black; that he stood, with the lamp
in his hand, looking at her, as if she had struck him motionless.
     'I say,' he at  length repeated, putting down the lamp, and smiling his
most  courtly  smile,  'how strange to come  here alone! It was unnecessarty
caution surely, and might have  defeated itself. You were to have engaged an
attendant at Havre or Rouen, and have had abundance of time for the purpose,
though  you had been the most capricious and difficult  (as you are the most
beautiful, my love) of women.'
     Her eyes gleamed strangely on him, but she stood with  her hand resting
on the chair, and said not a word.
     'I have  never,' resumed  Carker, 'seen you look so handsome, as you do
to-night.  Even  the  picture I have carried  in  my mind during this  cruel
probation,  and which I have contemplated night and day,  is exceeded by the
reality.'
     Not a word. Not a  look  Her  eyes completely  hidden by their drooping
lashes, but her head held up.
     'Hard, unrelenting  terms they were!'  said Carker, with a  smile, 'but
they are all  fulfilled and passed, and  make the present more delicious and
more safe. Sicily shall be  the  Place  of  our retreat. In  the  idlest and
easiest part  of the  world, my soul, we'll both seek  compensation for  old
slavery.'
     He was  coming gaily towards her, when, in an instant,  she  caught the
knife up from the table, and started one pace back.
     'Stand still!' she said, 'or I shall murder you!'
     The sudden change  in her,  the towering fury  and  intense  abhorrence
sparkling in her eyes and lighting  up her brow, made him stop as  if a fire
had stopped him.
     'Stand still!' she said, 'come no nearer me, upon your life!'
     They both stood looking  at each  other. Rage and astonishment were  in
his face, but he controlled them, and said lightly,
     'Come,  come! Tush,  we  are  alone, and out  of everybody's  sight and
hearing. Do you think to frighten me with these tricks of virtue?'
     'Do you think to frighten me,' she answered fiercely, 'from any purpose
that I  have, and any course  I am resolved  upon,  by reminding  me of  the
solitude of this place, and there being no help near? Me, who am here alone,
designedly? If I feared you, should I not have avoided you? If I feared you,
should I be here, in the  dead of night, telling  you to your face what I am
going to tell?'
     'And what  is that,' he said, 'you handsome shrew?  Handsomer so,  than
any other woman in her best humour?'
     'I tell you nothing,' she returned, until you go back to  that  chair -
except this, once again - Don't come near me! Not a step nearer. I tell you,
if you do, as Heaven sees us, I shall murder you!'
     'Do you mistake me for your husband?' he retorted, with a grin.
     Disdaining to reply, she stretched her arm out, pointing to  the chair.
He bit his  lip, frowned,  laughed, and  sat  down in  it, with  a  baffled,
irresolute, impatient  air, he  was  unable to conceal; and biting his  nail
nervously, and looking at her sideways, with bitter discomfiture, even while
he feigned to be amused by her caprice.
     She put the knife down upon the table, and touching her bosom  wIth her
hand, said:
     'I have something lying here that is  no  love trinket, and sooner than
endure your touch once more, I would use it on you - and  you know it, while
I speak - with less reluctance than I would on any other creeping thing that
lives.'
     He affected to laugh  jestingly, and entreated her  to act her play out
quickly, for the supper was growing cold. But the secret look with which  he
regarded her, was more sullen and lowering, and he struck his foot once upon
the floor with a muttered oath.
     'How many times,' said Edith, bending her darkest glance upon him' 'has
your  bold knavery  assailed me with outrage and insult?  How  many times in
your smooth manner, and mocking words and looks, have I been twitted with my
courtship and my  marriage?  How many times have you  laid bare  my wound of
love for that  sweet,  injured  girl and  lacerated  it? How  often have you
fanned  the fire on which, for two years,  I have writhed; and tempted me to
take a desperate revenge, when it has most tortured me?'
     'I  have  no doubt, Ma'am,'  he replied,  'that  you have  kept a  good
account, and that  it's pretty accurate. Come, Edith. To your  husband, poor
wretch, this was well enough - '
     'Why, if,' she said, surveying him with a haughty contempt and disgust,
that he shrunk under, let him brave it as he would, 'if all my other reasons
for  despising him could have been blown away like feathers, his  having you
for his counsellor  and favourite,  would have almost been  enough  to  hold
their place.'
     'Is  that  a  reason  why you  have  run away  with me?'  he asked her,
tauntingly.
     'Yes, and why we are  face to face  for the last time. Wretch! We  meet
tonight, and part tonight. For not  one moment after I have ceased to speak,
will I stay here!'
     He  turned upon her with  his ugliest look, and gripped the  table with
his hand; but neither rose, nor otherwise answered or threatened her.
     'I am  a woman,' she said,  confronting him steadfastly,  'who from her
childhood has been shamed and steeled. I have been offered and rejected, put
up  and appraised,  until my  very soul  has  sickened. I  have  not had  an
accomplishment or grace that might have been a resource  to  me, but it  has
been  paraded and vended to enhance  my value,  as  if the common  crier had
called  it through the streets.  My poor, proud  friends, have looked on and
approved; and every tie between us has been  deadened in my breast. There is
not  one  of them for whom  I  care, as I could care for a  pet dog. I stand
alone in the world, remembering  well what a hollow world it has been to me,
and what a hollow part of it I have been myself. You know this, and you know
that my fame with it is worthless to me.'
     'Yes; I imagined that,' he said.
     'And  calculated  on it,'  she rejoined, 'and so pursued me. Grown  too
indifferent for any opposition but indifference, to the daily working of the
hands  that had moulded  me  to this; and knowing that my marriage would  at
least prevent their hawking of me up and down; I suffered myself to be sold,
as  infamously  as  any  woman  with a halter round  her neck is sold in any
market-place. You know that.'
     'Yes,' he said, showing all his teeth 'I know that.'
     'And  calculated on  it,' she  rejoined once  more, 'and so pursued me.
From my marriage day, I found  myself  exposed to  such new shame - to  such
solicitation and pursuit (expressed as clearly as if it  had been written in
the coarsest words, and thrust  into my hand  at every turn)  from  one mean
villain, that I  felt as if  I  had never known  humiliation till that time.
This shame my husband fixed upon me; hemmed  me round with, himself; steeped
me in, with his own hands, and of his own  act, repeated hundreds of  times.
And thus - forced by the two from every point  of rest I had - forced by the
two to yield up the last retreat of love and gentleness within me,  or to be
a  new misfortune  on  its innocent object - driven  from  each to each, and
beset by one when I escaped the other - my  anger rose almost to distraction
against both I do  not know against which it rose higher - the master or the
man!'
     He watched her closely, as she stood before him  in the very triumph of
her indignant  beauty. She was resolute,  he saw;  undauntable; with no more
fear of him than of a worm.
     'What should I say of honour or of chastity to you!' she went on. 'What
meaning would it  have to you; what  meaning would it have from me! But if I
tell you  that the  lightest  touch of your hand  makes my  blood  cold with
antipathy; that from the hour when I first saw and hated  you, to now,  when
my instinctive repugnance is enhanced by every minute's knowledge  of you  I
have  since had, you have been a loathsome  creature to me which has not its
like on earth; how then?'
     He answered with a faint laugh, 'Ay! How then, my queen?'
     'On that night, when, emboldened by the scene you had assisted at,  you
dared come to my room and speak to me,' she said, 'what passed?'
     He shrugged his shoulders, and laughed
     'What passed?' she said.
     'Your  memory  is so distinct,'  he said, 'that I have no doubt you can
recall it.'
     'I  can,' she said. 'Hear it! Proposing then,  this  flight -  not this
flight, but the flight you thought it - you told me that in the having given
you that meeting, and leaving you to be discovered  there, if you so thought
fit; and in the having suffered you to be alone with me many times before, -
and  having made  the  opportunities, you  said, -  and in the having openly
avowed to you that I had no feeling for my husband but aversion, and no care
for myself - I was lost; I had given you the power to traduce my name; and I
lived, in virtuous reputation, at the pleasure of your breath'
     'All stratagems in love - ' he interrupted, smiling. 'The old adage - '
     'On that night,' said Edith, 'and then,  the struggle  that I long  had
had  with something that was not respect for my good fame - that was  I know
not what - perhaps the  clinging  to that last retreat- was ended.  On  that
night, and then, I  turned  from everything  but  passion and resentment.  I
struck a blow  that laid your  lofty master in the dust, and set you  there,
before me, looking at me now, and knowing what I mean.'
     He  sprung up from his chair with a great oath. She put  her hand  into
her bosom, and not a finger trembled, not a hair  upon her head was stirred.
He stood still: she too: the table and chair between them.~
     'When I forget that this  man put his lips to mine that night, and held
me in his arms as  he has done again to-night,' said Edith, pointing at him;
'when I forget the taint of his kiss upon my cheek - the cheek that Florence
would  have laid her guiltless  face against - when I forget my meeting with
her, while that taint  was hot upon me, and in  what a  flood the  knowledge
rushed upon me when I saw her, that in releasing her from the persecution  I
had caused by my love, I brought a shame and degradation on her name through
mine, and in all time to come should be the solitary figure  representing in
her mind her first avoidance of a guilty creature - then, Husband, from whom
I  stand divorced  henceforth, I will forget these last two years,  and undo
what I have done, and undeceive you!'
     Her flashing eyes, uplifted for  a moment, lighted again on Carker, and
she held some letters out in her left hand.
     'See these!' she said, contemptuously. 'You  have addressed these to me
in the false name you  go by; one here, some elsewhere on my road. The seals
are unbroken. Take them back!'
     She crunched them in  her hand, and tossed them to his feet. And as she
looked upon him now, a smile was on her face.
     'We  meet and part to-night,' she  said. 'You  have fallen  on Sicilian
days and sensual  rest,  too soon. You might  have  cajoled, and fawned, and
played your traitor's part, a little longer, and grown  richer. You purchase
your voluptuous retirement dear!'
     'Edith!' he retorted,  menacing her with his hand. 'Sit down! Have done
with this! What devil possesses you?'
     'Their name is Legion,' she replied, uprearing her proud form as if she
would have crushed him; 'you  and your master have raised them in a fruitful
house, and they shall tear you both. False to  him, false  to  his  innocent
child, false every way and everywhere,  go  forth and boast of me, and gnash
your teeth, for once, to know that you are lying!'
     He stood before her, muttering and menacing, and  scowling  round as if
for  something  that  would  help  him  to  conquer her; but with  the  same
indomitable spirit she opposed him, without faltering.
     'In every vaunt you make,' she said, 'I have my triumph I single out in
you the meanest man I know, the parasite and tool of the  proud tyrant, that
his  wound may go the  deeper, and may rankle more. Boast, and revenge me on
him! You know how  you  came here to-night; you  know how you stand cowering
there; you see yourself in colours quite as despicable, if not as odious, as
those in which I see you. Boast then, and revenge me on yourself.'
     The foam was  on his lips;  the wet stood on his forehead. If she would
have faltered once for only one half-moment, he would have pinioned her; but
she was as firm as rock, and her searching eyes never left him.
     'We don't part so,' he said.  'Do you think I am drivelling, to let you
go in your mad temper?'
     'Do you think,' she answered, 'that I am to be stayed?'
     'I'll try, my dear,' he said with a ferocious gesture of his head.
     'God's mercy on you, if you try by coming near me!' she replied.
     'And what,' he said, 'if there are none of these same boasts and vaunts
on my part?  What if I were to turn too? Come!' and his  teeth fairly  shone
again. 'We must make a treaty of this, or I may take some unexpected course.
Sit down, sit down!'
     'Too late!' she cried, with eyes that seemed to sparkle fire.  'I  have
thrown my fame and good name to the winds! I have resolved to bear the shame
that  will  attach to me - resolved to know that it attaches falsely  - that
you know it  too - and that  he does not, never  can, and never  shall. I'll
die, and  make no sign. For  this, I am here alone  with you, at the dead of
night. For  this, I have met  you here, in  a false  name, as your wife. For
this, I have been seen  here by those men, and left here. Nothing  can  save
you now.
     He would  have sold his soul to root her, in her beauty, to the  floor,
and make her arms drop at her sides, and have her at his mercy. But he could
not look at her, and not be afraid of her. He saw a strength within her that
was  resistless.  He  saw that she  was desperate, and that her unquenchable
hatred of him would stop at nothing. His eyes followed the hand that was put
with  such rugged  uncongenial purpose into  her white bosom, and he thought
that if it struck at hIm, and failed, it would strike there, just as soon.
     He did  not venture, therefore, to advance towards her; but the door by
which he had entered was behind him, and he stepped back to lock it.
     'Lastly, take  my  warning!  Look to yourself!'  she  said, and  smiled
again. 'You have been betrayed, as all betrayers are. It has been made known
that you are in this place, or were to be, or have been. If I live, I saw my
husband in a carriage in the street to-night!'
     'Strumpet, it's false!' cried Carker.
     At the moment, the bell rang  loudly in the hall. He turned  white,  as
she held her hand up like an enchantress,  at whose invocation the sound had
come.
     'Hark! do you hear it?'
     He  set his  back against  the  door; for  he  saw a change in her, and
fancied  she was  coming  on  to  pass him. But, in a moment,  she was  gone
through the opposite doors communicating with the bed-chamber, and they shut
upon her.
     Once turned, once changed in her  inflexible  unyielding look,  he felt
that he could cope with her. He thought  a sudden terror, occasioned by this
night-alarm, had  subdued her; not  the  less  readily,  for her overwrought
condition. Throwing open the doors, he followed, almost instantly.
     But  the  room was dark; and  as she made no answer to his call, he was
fain to  go back for the lamp. He held it  up, and looked round, everywhere,
expecting  to see her crouching in  some corner; but the room was empty. So,
into  the drawing-room  and  dining-room  he  went, in succession,  with the
uncertain steps  of a man in a strange  place; looking fearfully  about, and
prying behind  screens and couches; but she  was not there.  No,  nor in the
hall, which was so bare that he could see that, at a glance.
     All this time, the  ringing  at  the bell was  constantly  renewed, and
those without were beating at  the door. He put his lamp down at a distance,
and going near it, listened.  There were several voices talking together: at
least two of  them  in English; and though the door was thick, and there was
great confusion, he knew one of these too well to doubt whose voice it was.
     He took up his lamp again, and came back quickly through all the rooms,
stopping as  he quitted each,  and  looking round for her,  with  the  light
raised above  his  head. He was standing  thus in  the bed-chamber, when the
door, leading to  the little passage in the wall, caught his eye. He went to
it, and found it fastened on the other  side;  but she had dropped a veil in
going through, and shut it in the door.
     All this  time the people  on the stairs were ringing at the  bell, and
knocking with their hands and feet.
     He  was  not  a coward: but  these  sounds; what had gone  before;  the
strangeness of the place, which  had confused  him, even  in his return from
the hall; the frustration of his schemes (for, strange to say, he would have
been  much  bolder,  if they  had  succeeded);  the  unseasonable time;  the
recollection of having no  one near to whom he could appeal for any friendly
office; above all, the  sudden  sense, which made  even his heart beat  like
lead, that  the man  whose confidence he  had outraged,  and whom he  had so
treacherously deceived, was there  to recognise  and  challenge him with his
mask  plucked off his face; struck a panic through him. He tried the door in
which the  veil was  shut,  but  couldn't force it.  He  opened  one  of the
windows,  and  looked down  through  the  lattice  of  the  blind,  into the
court-yard; but it was a high leap, and the stones were pitiless.
     The ringing and knocking  still continuing -  his panic  too  - he went
back  to  the door  in the bed-chamber, and with some new efforts, each more
stubborn  than the last, wrenched it  open. Seeing  the little staircase not
far off,  and feeling the night-air coming up, he stole back for his hat and
coat, made the door as secure after  hIm as  he  could,  crept down  lamp in
hand, extinguished it on seeing the street,  and  having put it in a corner,
went out where the stars were shining.

        CHAPTER 55.
     Rob the Grinder loses his Place

     The Porter at the iron gate which shut the court-yard from the  street,
had left the little wicket of his house open, and was gone away; no doubt to
mingle in the distant noise  at the door of the great staircase. Lifting the
latch  softly, Carker  crept  out, and shutting the jangling gate after  him
with as little noise as possible, hurried off.
     In the fever of  his mortification and  unavailing rage, the panic that
had seized upon him mastered him completely. It rose to  such  a height that
he would have blindly encountered almost any risk, rather than  meet the man
of whom, two hours ago, he  had been utterly regardless. His fierce arrival,
which he  had never expected; the sound  of  his voice; their having been so
near a meeting, face to face; he would have braved out this, after the first
momentary shock of alarm, and would have put as bold a front  upon his guilt
as any villain. But the springing of  his mine upon  himself, seemed to have
rent  and  shivered all his hardihood  and self-reliance.  Spurned  like any
reptile; entrapped and  mocked;  turned upon, and trodden  down by the proud
woman whose mind he had slowly poisoned, as  he thought, until  she had sunk
into the mere creature of his pleasure; undeceived in his  deceit,  and with
his fox's hide stripped off, he sneaked away, abashed, degraded, and afraid.
     Some  other  terror  came upon hIm  quite  removed from this  of  being
pursued, suddenly, like an  electric shock,  as he was creeping  through the
streets Some visionary terror, unintelligible and  inexplicable, asssociated
with a trembling of  the ground, - a rush and sweep of something through the
air, like Death upon the wing. He shrunk, as if  to let the thing  go by. It
was not gone, it never had  been there,  yet what a  startling horror it had
left behind.
     He raised  his wicked face so full of trouble, to  the night sky, where
the  stars, so full of peace, were shining on him as  they  had been when he
first stole out into the  air;  and stopped to  think what he should do. The
dread  of being hunted in  a strange remote place,  where the laws might not
protect  him  - the novelty  of  the feeling that it was strange and remote,
originating in  his being left alone so suddenly amid the ruins of his plans
- his greater dread of seeking refuge now, in  Italy or in Sicily, where men
might be hired to assissinate him, he thought, at any dark street corner-the
waywardness of guilt  and  fear - perhaps some sympathy  of  action with the
turning back of all his schemes - impelled  him to turn  back too, and go to
England.
     'I  am  safer there, in any case. If I  should not decide,' he thought,
'to give this  fool a meeting, I am  less likely to  be  traced there,  than
abroad here, now. And if I should (this cursed  fit being over), at  least I
shall not be alone, with out a soul to speak to, or advise with, or stand by
me. I shall not be run in upon and worried like a rat.'
     He muttered Edith's name,  and clenched his hand. As he crept along, in
the shadow of the massive buildings, he set his teeth, and muttered dreadful
imprecations on her head,  and looked from side  to side, as if in search of
her.  Thus, he stole on to the  gate of an inn-yard. The people were  a-bed;
but his  ringing at the bell  soon produced a man with a lantern, in company
with whom he was presently in a  dim coach-house, bargaining for the hire of
an old phaeton, to Paris.
     The bargain was a short one; and the horses were soon sent for. Leaving
word that  the  carriage was  to follow  him  when they  came, he stole away
again, beyond the town, past the old ramparts, out on  the open road,  which
seemed to glide away along the dark plain, like a stream.
     Whither did it  flow? What was the end of it? As  he paused, with  some
such suggestion within him, looking over the  gloomy flat where the  slender
trees marked out the way, again that flight of Death came rushing  up, again
went on, impetuous and  resistless, again  was nothing  but  a horror in his
mind, dark as the scene and undefined as its remotest verge.
     There was no wind; there was no passing shadow on the deep shade of the
night; there  was no noise. The city lay behind hIm, lighted here and there,
and starry  worlds were hidden by the masonry of  spire and roof that hardly
made out any shapes against the sky. Dark and lonely distance lay around him
everywhere, and the clocks were faintly striking two.
     He  went  forward for what appeared a long time, and a long  way; often
stopping to listen. At last the ringing of horses' bells greeted his anxious
ears. Now  softer, and now louder,  now inaudible,  now ringing very  slowly
over bad ground, now brisk and merry, it came on; until with a loud shouting
and  lashing,  a  shadowy postillion  muffled to the eyes, checked his  four
struggling horses at his side.
     'Who goes there! Monsieur?'
     'Yes.'
     'Monsieur has walked a long way in the dark midnight.'
     'No  matter. Everyone to his task. Were there any  other horses ordered
at the Post-house?'
     'A thousand devils! - and pardons! other horses? at this hour? No.'
     'Listen, my friend.  I  am much  hurried.  Let  us see  how fast we can
travel! The faster, the more money  there will be  to drink. Off we go then!
Quick!'
     'Halloa!  whoop!  Halloa!  Hi!'  Away,  at  a  gallop,  over the  black
landscape, scattering the dust and dirt like spray!
     The  clatter and commotion  echoed to the hurry  and discordance of the
fugitive's ideas.  Nothing clear  without, and nothing clear within. Objects
flitting  past, merging into  one another,  dimly descried,  confusedly lost
sight of, gone! Beyond the changing scraps of  fence and cottage immediately
upon the road, a lowering waste. Beyond the shifting  images that rose up in
his  mind and vanished as they  showed themselves, a black  expanse of dread
and rage  and baffled villainy. Occasionally,  a sigh of  mountain air  came
from the distant Jura, fading along the plain. Sometimes that rush which was
so furious and horrible, again came sweeping through his fancy, passed away,
and left a chill upon his blood.
     The  lamps,  gleaming  on the medley of horses' heads, jumbled with the
shadowy driver, and  the fluttering of his cloak, made a thousand indistinct
shapes, answering  to his thoughts.  Shadows of familiar people, stooping at
their desks and books, in their remembered attitudes; strange apparitions of
the man  whom  he was flying from, or  of  Edith; repetitions in the ringing
bells and rolling wheels, of words that  had been spoken; confusions of time
and place, making last night a month  ago, a month ago last night - home now
distant  beyond hope, now  instantly accessible;  commotion, discord, hurry,
darkness, and confusion in his  mind, and all around him. - Hallo! Hi!  away
at a  gallop over the black landscape; dust and dirt flying like  spray, the
smoking horses  snorting and  plunging  as if  each of them were ridden by a
demon, away in a frantic triumph on the dark road - whither?
     Again the nameless shock comes speeding up, and as it passes, the bells
ring in his ears 'whither?'  The wheels roar in his ears 'whither?' All  the
noise  and rattle shapes itself into that cry.  The lights and shadows dance
upon the horses'  heads like imps. No stopping now:  no slackening!  On,  on
Away with him upon the dark road wildly!
     He could not think to any purpose. He could not separate one subject of
reflection from  another, sufficiently to  dwell upon it, by  itself, for  a
minute  at a time. The crash of his project for  the gaining of a voluptuous
compensation for past restraint; the overthrow  of his treachery to one  who
had been true and  generous to him, but whose least proud word and  look  he
had  treasured up, at interest, for years -  for false and  subtle men  will
always  secretly  despise and dislike  the  object upon which  they fawn and
always  resent the  payment and  receipt  of  homage  that they know  to  be
worthless;  these  were  the  themes uppermost in  his  mind. A lurking rage
against the woman  who  had so  entrapped him and avenged herself was always
there; crude and misshapen schemes of retaliation  upon  her, floated in his
brain; but nothing was distinct. A hurry  and contradiction pervaded all his
thoughts. Even while he was so busy with this fevered, ineffectual thinking,
his one constant idea was,  that  he would  postpone reflection  until  some
indefinite time.
     Then,  the  old  days  before  the  second  marriage  rose  up  in  his
remembrance.  He thought how jealous he had been of the boy, how  jealous he
had been of the girl,  how artfully he had kept intruders at a distance, and
drawn a  circle round his dupe that none but himself  should cross; and then
he thought, had he done all this to be flying now, like a scared thief, from
only the poor dupe?
     He could have laid hands upon himself for his cowardice, but it was the
very shadow  of his defeat, and could not be separated from it. To  have his
confidence in his own knavery so shattered at a blow - to  be within his own
knowledge such a miserable tool - was like being paralysed. With an impotent
ferocity he raged at Edith, and hated Mr Dombey and hated himself, but still
he fled, and could do nothing else.
     Again and again he  listened for the  sound of wheels behind. Again and
again  his fancy heard it,  coming  on louder and louder. At last  he was so
persuaded  of this, that  he  cried out, 'Stop' preferring  even the loss of
ground to such uncertainty.
     The word soon brought carriage, horses, driver, all in a heap together,
across the road.
     'The  devil!' cried the  driver, looking over his shoulder, 'what's the
matter?'
     'Hark! What's that?'
     'What?'
     'That noise?'
     'Ah Heaven,  be quiet, cursed brigand!' to a  horse who shook his bells
'What noise?'
     'Behind. Is it not another  carriage  at a gallop? There! what's that?'
Miscreant  with  a  Pig's  head, stand  still!' to another  horse,  who  bit
another, who frightened  the other two, who plunged  and backed.  'There  is
nothing coming.'
     'Nothing.'
     'No, nothing but the day yonder.'
     'You are right, I think. I hear nothing now, indeed. Go on!'
     The  entangled  equipage, half  hidden in the  reeking cloud  from  the
horses, goes on  slowly at  first, for the  driver, checked unnecessarily in
his progress,  sulkily takes out a pocket-knife, and puts a new lash  to his
whip. Then 'Hallo, whoop! Hallo, hi!' Away once more, savagely.
     And now  the  stars faded, and  the day glimmered, and  standing in the
carriage, looking back, he could discern the track by which he had come, and
see  that there was no traveller within view,  on all the heavy expanse. And
soon it  was  broad  day, and  the  sun began to  shine  on  cornfields  and
vineyards; and solitary labourers, risen from little temporary huts by heaps
of  stones upon  the  road, were,  here  and  there,  at work repairing  the
highway, or  eating bread.  By and by, there were  peasants  going to  their
daily  labour,  or to  market, or  lounging  at the  doors of poor cottages,
gazing idly at  him as he  passed. And then there was a postyard, ankle-deep
in mud, with steaming dunghills and vast outhouses half ruined; and  looking
on this dainty prospect, an immense, old, shadeless, glaring, stone chateau,
with half its windows blinded, and  green damp crawling lazily over it, from
the  balustraded  terrace to  the  taper  tips of the extinguishers upon the
turrets.
     Gathered up  moodily in a  corner  of the  carriage, and only intent on
going fast - except  when he stood up, for a mile together, and looked back;
which he would do whenever there was a  piece of open country - he went  on,
still  postponing  thought  indefinitely, and still  always  tormented  with
thinking to no purpose.
     Shame, disappointment, and discomfiture gnawed at his heart; a constant
apprehension  of  being overtaken, or met  - for he was  groundlessly afraid
even of travellers, who came towards him by the way he was going - oppressed
him heavily. The same intolerable awe and dread  that  had come upon  him in
the  night, returned  unweakened in the  day. The monotonous ringing  of the
bells and tramping  of the horses; the  monotony of his anxiety, and useless
rage;  the monotonous  wheel of fear,  regret, and passion,  he kept turning
round and round; made the journey like a vision, in which  nothing was quite
real but his own torment.
     It  was  a vision of long roads,  that  stretched away  to an  horizon,
always  receding  and never gained; of  ill-paved  towns, up hill and  down,
where faces came to  dark doors and  ill-glazed windows, and  where rows  of
mudbespattered cows  and oxen  were tied  up  for sale  in the  long  narrow
streets, butting  and lowing, and receiving  blows on their blunt heads from
bludgeons that might  have beaten  them  in;  of bridges, crosses, churches,
postyards, new horses being  put in against their wills,  and  the horses of
the last  stage reeking, panting, and laying their  drooping heads  together
dolefully at  stable doors; of little cemeteries with black crosses  settled
sideways in the graves, and withered wreaths upon  them dropping away; again
of  long,  long roads, dragging  themselves  out, up hill and down,  to  the
treacherous horizon.
     Of morning,  noon, and sunset; night, and the rising  of an early moon.
Of long  roads temporarily left behind, and  a  rough pavement  reached;  of
battering and  clattering  over it,  and looking up, among house-roofs, at a
great church-tower; of getting out and eating hastily, and drinking draughts
of wine that  had no cheering influence; of coming forth afoot, among a host
of beggars - blind  men with quivering  eyelids,  led by  old  women holding
candles  to  their  faces; idiot  girls;  the lame,  the  epileptic, and the
palsied - of passing through the clamour, and  looking  from his seat at the
upturned  countenances  and  outstretched hands,  with a  hurried  dread  of
recognising  some pursuer pressing forward  - of galloping away again,  upon
the long, long road, gathered up, dull and stunned, in his corner, or rising
to see  where the moon  shone faintly on  a patch of  the same  endless road
miles away, or looking back to see who followed.
     Of never  sleeping,  but  sometimes  dozing  with  unclosed  eyes,  and
springing up with  a  start, and a reply  aloud  to an imaginary  voice.  Of
cursing himself for being there, for having fled, for having let her go, for
not  having confronted and defied him.  Of having a  deadly quarrel with the
whole world,  but chiefly  with himself. Of blighting  everything  with  his
black mood as he was carried on and away.
     It  was a  fevered  vision of things  past  and  present all confounded
together; of his life and journey blended  into one. Of  being madly hurried
somewhere, whither he must go. Of old scenes starting up among the novelties
through which  he  travelled. Of musing  and brooding over what was past and
distant, and seeming to take no notice of the actual objects he encountered,
but  with a wearisome exhausting consciousness  of being bewildered by them,
and having their images all crowded in his hot brain after they were gone.
     A vision  of change  upon change, and still  the same monotony of bells
and wheels, and  horses' feet, and no rest. Of  town and country, postyards,
horses, drivers,  hill and valley,  light and darkness, road  and  pavement,
height and hollow, wet weather and dry, and still the same monotony of bells
and wheels, and  horses' feet, and  no rest. A vision of tending on at last,
towards  the distant  capital, by busier roads, and sweeping  round,  by old
cathedrals,  and  dashing through  small towns  and  villages,  less  thinly
scattered on the  road  than  formerly,  and sitting shrouded in his corner,
with his cloak up to his face, as people passing by looked at him.
     Of rolling on and on, always postponing thought, and always racked with
thinking; of being unable to reckon up the  hours he had been upon the road,
or to  comprehend the  points of time and  place  in his journey.  Of  being
parched and giddy, and half mad. Of pressing on,  in spite of all, as  if he
could not stop, and coming into Paris, where the turbid river held its swift
course undisturbed, between two brawling streams of life and motion.
     A troubled vision, then, of bridges,  quays,  interminable  streets; of
wine-shops,  water-carriers,  great  crowds  of  people,  soldiers, coaches,
military  drums,  arcades. Of the  monotony  of bells and wheels and horses'
feet being at length lost in the universal din  and  uproar.  Of the gradual
subsidence of that noise as he passed out in another carriage by a different
barrier  from  that  by which  he  had entered. Of  the  restoration,  as he
travelled on towards the seacoast, of the monotony of bells and  wheels, and
horses' feet, and no rest.
     Of sunset once again,  and nightfall.  Of long roads again, and dead of
night, and  feeble  lights in  windows by the  roadside; and  still  the old
monotony of  bells and wheels, and horses' feet,  and  no rest. Of dawn, and
daybreak,  and  the rising of  the  sun.  Of  tolling slowly up  a hill, and
feeling on its top the fresh  sea-breeze; and  seeing the morning light upon
the edges of the distant waves. Of coming down into a harbour  when the tide
was at  its  full, and seeing  fishing-boats float on,  and  glad women  and
children  waiting  for them. Of nets and  seamen's clothes spread out to dry
upon the shore; of busy saIlors, and their voices  high among  ships'  masts
and  rigging; of the buoyancy and brightness of the water, and the universal
sparkling.
     Of receding from the coast, and looking back upon it from the deck when
it was a haze upon the water, with here and there a little opening of bright
land where the Sun struck.  Of the  swell, and flash, and murmur of the calm
sea. Of another  grey line on the ocean, on the vessel's track, fast growing
clearer and higher. Of cliffs and buildings, and a  windmill,  and a church,
becoming more and more  visible  upon it. Of steaming on at last into smooth
water, and mooring to a  pier whence groups of people  looked down, greeting
friends  on  board.  Of disembarking, passing among them  quickly,  shunning
every one; and of being at last again in England.
     He had thought, in his dream, of going down into a remote country-place
he knew, and lying  quiet there,  while he secretly informed himself of what
transpired,  and determined how to act, Still in the same stunned condition,
he  remembered  a  certain station  on the railway,  where he would  have to
branch off  to his place of destination, and where  there was a  quiet  Inn.
Here, he indistinctly resolved to tarry and rest.
     With this purpose  he  slunk into  a railway carriage as  quickly as he
could, and lying  there  wrapped in his cloak as if he were asleep, was soon
borne far away from the sea,  and deep into the inland green. Arrived at his
destination he looked out, and surveyed it carefully. He was not mistaken in
his  impression of the  place. It  was a  retired  spot, on the borders of a
little wood.  Only  one house, newly-built or altered for the purpose, stood
there,  surrounded by its neat garden; the small town that was nearest,  was
some miles away. Here he alighted  then; and going straight into the tavern,
unobserved  by anyone,  secured two  rooms upstairs  communicating with each
other, and sufficiently retired.
     His  object was  to rest, and recover the  command of himself, and  the
balance of his mind. Imbecile discomfiture and rage - so that, as  he walked
about his  room, he  ground his teeth - had complete possession  of him. His
thoughts, not  to be stopped or directed,  still wandered  where they would,
and dragged him after them. He was stupefied, and he was wearied to death.
     But, as if there were a curse upon him that he should never rest again,
his drowsy  senses  would  not  lose their  consciousness.  He had  no  more
influence with them, in this regard, than if they had been another man's. It
was not that they forced him to take note of present sounds and objects, but
that  they  would  not  be  diverted from  the  whole  hurried vision of his
journey. It was constantly before him all at once. She stood there, with her
dark disdainful eyes  again upon  him;  and he  was riding  on nevertheless,
through town and country, light and darkness, wet weather and dry, over road
and pavement,  hill  and valley, height and hollow, jaded and scared  by the
monotony of bells and wheels, and horses' feet, and no rest.
     'What day is this?' he asked of the waiter, who was making preparations
for his dinner.
     'Day, Sir?'
     'Is it Wednesday?'
     'Wednesday, Sir? No, Sir. Thursday, Sir.'
     'I forgot. How goes the time? My watch is unwound.'
     'Wants a few minutes of five o'clock, Sir. Been travelling a long time,
Sir, perhaps?'
     'Yes'
     'By rail, Sir?'
     'Yes'
     'Very  confusing, Sir.  Not  much in  the habit of  travelling  by rail
myself, Sir, but gentlemen frequently say so.'
     'Do many gentlemen come here?
     'Pretty well, Sir,  in general.  Nobody  here at present. Rather  slack
just now, Sir. Everything is slack, Sir.'
     He made no answer; but had risen  into a  sitting posture on  the  sofa
where  he  had  been  lying, and  leaned forward  with an arm on each  knee,
staring at the ground.  He could not  master his own attention  for a minute
together. It rushed away where it would, but it never, for an  instant, lost
itself in sleep.
     He drank  a quantity  of wine after dinner, in vain. No such artificial
means would bring sleep to his eyes.  His thoughts, more incoherent, dragged
him  more  unmercifully  after  them  -  as  if a wretch, condemned  to such
expiation, were drawn at the heels of wild horses. No oblivion, and no rest.
     How  long  he  sat,  drinking   and  brooding,  and  being  dragged  in
imagination hither and thither, no one could  have  told less correctly than
he.  But he knew that he had been sitting a long time by  candle-light, when
he started up and listened, in a sudden terror.
     For now, indeed, it was no fancy. The  ground shook, the house rattled,
the fierce impetuous rush was in the air! He felt it come up, and go darting
by; and  even when  he had hurried to the window, and saw what  it  was,  he
stood, shrinking from it, as if it were not safe to look.
     A  curse upon the fiery devil,  thundering  along so  smoothly, tracked
through the distant valley by a glare of light and lurid smoke, and gone! He
felt as if he had been plucked out  of its  path,  and saved from being torn
asunder. It  made him shrink and shudder even now, when its faintest hum was
hushed,  and  when  the lines of iron  road he could trace in the moonlight,
running to a point, were as empty and as silent as a desert.
     Unable to rest, and irresistibly attracted - or he thought so - to this
road, he went out, and lounged on the brink of it, marking the way the train
had gone, by the yet smoking cinders that  were  lying in its track. After a
lounge of some half  hour in  the  direction by which it had disappeared, he
turned  and walked the other way - still keeping  to the brink of the road -
past the inn garden, and a long way  down; looking curiously at the bridges,
signals, lamps, and wondering when another Devil would come by.
     A  trembling of the ground, and quick  vibration in his ears; a distant
shriek; a  dull  light  advancing, quickly changed to  two  red eyes, and  a
fierce fire, dropping glowing coals; an irresistible bearing on of  a  great
roaring and dilating mass; a  high  wind, and a rattle  - another  come  and
gone, and he holding to a gate, as if to save himself!
     He waited for  another, and for  another. He walked back to  his former
point,  and  back again to that,  and still, through the wearisome vision of
his journey,  looked for these approaching monsters. He  loitered  about the
station, waiting until one should stay to call there; and  when one did, and
was detached for water, he stood parallel with it, watching its heavy wheels
and brazen front, and thinking what  a cruel power and might it had. Ugh! To
see the great  wheels slowly turning,  and  to think of  being run  down and
crushed!
     Disordered  with wine and  want  of rest -  that  want  which  nothing,
although he was so weary, would appease - these ideas and  objects assumed a
diseased importance in his thoughts. When  he  went back  to his room, which
was not until  near  midnight, they still haunted him,  and he sat listening
for the coming of another.
     So in his bed, whither he repaired with no hope of  sleep. He still lay
listening; and when he felt the  trembling and vibration, got up and went to
the window, to watch (as he could from its position) the dull light changing
to  the two  red eyes, and the  fierce fire  dropping glowing coals, and the
rush of the giant  as it fled past, and the  track of glare  and smoke along
the valley.  Then he would  glance in the direction by which he intended  to
depart at sunrise,  as there was no  rest for him there; and would  lie down
again, to be troubled by the  vision of his journey, and the old monotony of
bells and  wheels  and  horses' feet,  until  another came. This lasted  all
night. So far from resuming the  mastery of himself, he seemed, if possible,
to lose it more and more, as the night crept on. When  the dawn appeared, he
was still tormented with thinking,  still postponing thought until he should
be in  a  better state; the past, present, and future all floated confusedly
before him, and he had  lost  all power of looking steadily  at  any one  of
them.
     'At what time,' he asked the man who had waited  on hIm over-night, now
entering with a candle, 'do I leave here, did you say?'
     'About a quarter after four, Sir. Express comes through at four, Sir. -
It don't stop.
     He passed his  hand across his throbbing head, and looked at his watch.
Nearly half-past three.
     'Nobody  going  with  you,  Sir,  probably,'  observed  the  man.  'Two
gentlemen here, Sir, but they're waiting for the train to London.'
     'I thought  you said there was nobody here,' said Carker, turning  upon
him with the ghost of his old smile, when he was angry or suspicious.
     'Not then, sir. Two gentlemen came in the night by the short train that
stops here, Sir. Warm water, Sir?'
     'No; and take away the candle. There's day enough for me.'
     Having thrown himself upon the bed, half-dressed he  was  at the window
as the man left  the room. The cold light of morning  had succeeded to night
and there was already, in the sky, the  red suffusion  of the coming sun. He
bathed  his head and face with  water - there was no cooling influence in it
for him - hurriedly put on his clothes, paid what he owed, and went out.
     The air struck chill and comfortless as it breathed upon him. There was
a heavy  dew; and, hot  as he was, it made him shiver. After a glance at the
place  where he had walked last night, and at the  signal-lights burning  in
the morning, and  bereft of their significance, he turned to  where the  sun
was rising, and beheld it, in its glory, as it broke upon the scene.
     So awful, so transcendent in its beauty, so divinely solemn. As he cast
his  faded eyes upon it, where it rose, tranquil and serene, unmoved by  all
the wrong and wickedness on which its beams had shone since the beginning of
the world, who shall say  that some weak sense of virtue upon Earth, and its
in Heaven,  did  not manifest  itself, even  to him? If  ever he  remembered
sister or  brother with a touch of  tenderness and remorse, who shall say it
was not then?
     He needed some such touch then. Death was  on  him. He was marked off -
the living world, and going down into his grave.
     He paid the  money for his journey to the country-place he  had thought
of;  and was  walking to and  fro, alone,  looking along the lines  of iron,
across the  valley in one direction, and towards  a dark bridge near at hand
in the other;  when, turning in his walk, where it was bounded by one end of
the wooden stage on which he paced up and down, he  saw the man from whom he
had fled, emerging from the door by which he himself had entered
     And their eyes met.
     In the quick unsteadiness of the surprise, he staggered, and slipped on
to the road below him. But recovering his feet  immediately, he stepped back
a pace or two  upon  that  road, to interpose some wider space between them,
and looked at his pursuer, breathing short and quick.
     He heard  a  shout - another - saw the  face change from its vindictive
passion to a faint sickness  and terror - felt the earth tremble - knew in a
moment that the rush was  come - uttered  a shriek - looked  round - saw the
red  eyes, bleared and  dim,  in the  daylight, close upon him  - was beaten
down, caught  up, and whirled away  upon a jagged mill, that spun  him round
and  round, and  struck him limb from limb, and licked his stream of life up
with its fiery heat, and cast his mutilated fragments in the air.
     When the traveller, who had been recognised, recovered from a swoon, he
saw  them  bringing  from  a  distance something covered, that lay heavy and
still,  upon a board, between four men,  and saw that others drove some dogs
away that sniffed  upon the road, and  soaked his blood up, with  a train of
ashes.

        CHAPTER 56.
     Several People delighted, and the Game Chicken disgusted

     The Midshipman  was all alive. Mr Toots  and Susan had arrived at last.
Susan had run upstairs like a young woman bereft of her senses, and Mr Toots
and the Chicken had gone into the Parlour.
     'Oh my  own pretty darling sweet Miss Floy!'  cried the Nipper, running
into  Florence's room, 'to  think that it  should  come to this and I should
find you here  my own dear dove  with nobody to wait upon you and no home to
call your own but  never never will I go away  again Miss Floy for though  I
may not gather moss I'm not a rolling  stone nor is my heart a stone or else
it wouldn't bust as it is busting now oh dear oh dear!'
     Pouring out these words,  without the faintest indication of a stop, of
any sort, Miss Nipper, on her knees beside her mistress, hugged her close.
     'Oh love!' cried Susan, 'I know all that's past I know it all my tender
pet and I'm a choking give me air!'
     'Susan,  dear good Susan!' said Florence. 'Oh bless her! I that was her
little maid when  she  was  a little child! and is she  really, really truly
going to be married?'exclaimed Susan, in a burst of pain and pleasure, pride
and grief, and Heaven knows how many other conflicting feelings.
     'Who told you so?' said Florence.
     'Oh  gracious  me!  that innocentest  creetur  Toots,'  returned  Susan
hysterically. 'I knew he must be right my dear, because he took  on so. He's
the devotedest and innocentest infant!  And is my darling,'  pursued  Susan,
with another close embrace and burst  of  tears, 'really really going  to be
married!'
     The mixture of compassion, pleasure, tenderness, protection, and regret
with which the Nipper constantly recurred to this subject, and at every such
once,  raised her head to look in the young face and kiss it,  and then laid
her head again upon her mistress's shoulder, caressing  her and sobbing, was
as womanly and good a thing, in its way, as ever was seen in the world.
     'There,  there!' said  the soothing voice of  Florence  presently. 'Now
you're quite yourself, dear Susan!'
     Miss  Nipper,  sitting down  upon the floor, at  her  mistress's  feet,
laughing and sobbing, holding her pocket-handkerchief to  her  eyes with one
hand, and patting Diogenes  with the other as  he licked her face, confessed
to being more composed, and laughed and cried a little more in proof of it.
     'I-I-I never did see such a creetur as that Toots,' said Susan, 'in all
my born days never!'
     'So kind,' suggested Florence.
     'And so comic!' Susan sobbed. 'The way  he's been going  on inside with
me with that disrespectable Chicken on the box!'
     'About what, Susan?' inquired Florence, timidly.
     'Oh about Lieutenant Walters,  and Captain Gills, and you my dear  Miss
Floy, and the silent tomb,' said Susan.
     'The silent tomb!' repeated Florence.
     'He says,' here  Susan  burst  into a violent  hysterical laugh,  'that
he'll go down into it now immediately and quite comfortable, but bless  your
heart my  dear Miss Floy he  won't, he's a great  deal  too  happy in seeing
other people happy for that, he may not be a Solomon,' pursued  the  Nipper,
with her usual  volubility, 'nor do I say  he  is but this I do  say  a less
selfish human  creature human nature never  knew!' Miss  Nipper  being still
hysterical,  laughed immoderately after making this  energetic  declaration,
and then informed Florence that he was waiting below to see her; which would
be a rich repayment for the trouble he had had in his late expedition.
     Florence entreated Susan to beg of Mr Toots as a favour  that she might
have the pleasure  of thanking  him for  his kindness; and  Susan, in  a few
moments,  produced that young  gentleman, still  very  much  dishevelled  in
appearance, and stammering exceedingly.
     'Miss Dombey,' said Mr Toots. 'To be again permitted to  - to -  gaze -
at  least,  not to gaze, but - I don't exactly know what I was going to say,
but it's of no consequence.
     'I have to  thank you so often,' returned Florence, giving him both her
hands, with  all her innocent gratitude beaming in her face, 'that I have no
words left, and don't know how to do it.'
     'Miss Dombey,' said Mr  Toots, in  an awful voice, 'if  it was possible
that you could, consistently with your angelic nature, Curse me, you would -
if I may  be allowed  to say so  - floor me infinitely less, than  by  these
undeserved expressions of kindness Their effect upon me - is - but,' said Mr
Toots, abruptly, 'this is a digression, and of no consequence at all.'
     As there seemed to be no means of replying to this, but by thanking him
again, Florence thanked him again.
     'I could wish,'  said Mr Toots, 'to take this opportunity, Miss Dombey,
if I might, of entering into  a word of explanation. I  should  have had the
pleasure  of - of  returning with  Susan at an earlier period;  but, in  the
first place, we didn't know the name  of the relation to whose house she had
gone, and, in  the  second, as she had  left  that relation's  and  gone  to
another at a distance, I think that scarcely anything  short of the sagacity
of the Chicken, would have found her out in the time.'
     Florence was sure of it.
     'This, however,' said Mr Toots, 'is not the point. The company of Susan
has been,  I assure you, Miss Dombey,  a consolation and satisfaction to me,
in  my state of mind, more easily conceived than described. The  journey has
been its own reward. That, however,  still, is not the point. Miss Dombey, I
have before observed that I know I am not what is considered a quick person.
I  am  perfectly  aware of that.  I  don't  think  anybody  could  be better
acquainted with his own - if it  was not  too strong an expression, I should
say with the  thickness  of his own head - than  myself. But, Miss Dombey, I
do,  notwithstanding, perceive the state of -  of  things -  with Lieutenant
Walters. Whatever agony that state of things may have caused me (which is of
no  consequence at all), I  am bound  to say, that Lieutenant  Walters  is a
person who appears  to be worthy of the blessing that has fallen on his - on
his  brow. May he  wear it long, and appreciate it, as a very different, and
very  unworthy individual, that it is of no consequence to  name, would have
done! That, however, still, is not the point. Miss Dombey, Captain  Gills is
a friend of mine; and during the interval that is now elapsing, I believe it
would afford Captain Gills pleasure  to see me occasionally coming backwards
and  forwards here. It  would afford me  pleasure so to  come. But  I cannot
forget that I once committed myself, fatally, at the corner of the Square at
Brighton; and if my presence  will be, in  the  least  degree, unpleasant to
you, I only ask  you  to name it  to  me now,  and  assure you that I  shall
perfectly  understand you. I shall not consider it at all unkind,  and shall
only be too delighted and happy to be honoured with your confidence.'
     'Mr  Toots,' returned Florence, 'if you, who are  so  old  and  true  a
friend  of mine,  were to stay  away from this house now, you would make  me
very unhappy. It can  never, never, give me any feeling but  pleasure to see
you.
     'Miss Dombey,' said Mr Toots, taking out his pocket-handkerchief, 'if I
shed  a tear, it is  a tear of joy. It is of no  consequence, and I am  very
much obliged  to you.  I  may be  allowed to remark, after  what you have so
kindly said, that it is not my intention to neglect my person any longer.'
     Florence received this  intimation  with  the  prettiest expression  of
perplexity possible.
     'I  mean,'  said Mr Toots,  'that  I  shall consider it my  duty  as  a
fellow-creature generally, until I  am  claimed by the silent tomb,  to make
the best of myself, and to - to  have my boots as brightly polished, as - as
-circumstances  will  admit of. This is  the last  time, Miss  Dombey, of my
intruding any observation of a private and personal nature. I thank you very
much indeed.  if I am not, in a general way, as sensible as my friends could
wish  me  to be, or as I  could  wish myself,  I really am, upon my word and
honour, particularly sensible of what is considerate and kind. I feel,' said
Mr Toots, in an impassioned tone, 'as if I could express my feelings, at the
present moment, in a most  remarkable  manner,  if - if - I could only get a
start.'
     Appearing not to  get it, after waiting a minute  or  two  to see if it
would come, Mr Toots took a hasty leave, and went below to seek the Captain,
whom he found in the shop.
     'Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots,  'what is now to take place between us,
takes place under the sacred  seal of confidence.  It is the sequel, Captain
Gills, of what has taken place between myself and Miss Dombey, upstairs.'
     'Alow and aloft, eh, my lad?' murmured the Captain.
     'Exactly  so,  Captain  Gills,'  said  Mr  Toots,  whose   fervour   of
acquiescence was greatly heightened by his entire ignorance of the Captain's
meaning. 'Miss Dombey, I  believe, Captain Gills, is to be shortly united to
Lieutenant Walters?'
     'Why, ay, my lad.  We're  all shipmets  here, - Wal'r  and sweet- heart
will  be jined together in the house of bondage, as soon as  the askings  is
over,' whispered Captain Cuttle, in his ear.
     'The askings, Captain Gills!' repeated Mr Toots.
     'In the church, down yonder,' said the Captain, pointing his thumb over
his shoulder.
     'Oh! Yes!' returned Mr Toots.
     'And then,'  said the Captain, in his  hoarse whisper,  and  tapping Mr
Toots on  the chest with the back of his  hand,  and falling from him with a
look  of infinite admiration,  'what follers? That there pretty  creetur, as
delicately  brought up as a foreign  bird, goes away  upon the  roaring main
with Wal'r on a woyage to China!'
     'Lord, Captain Gills!' said Mr Toots.
     'Ay!' nodded the Captain. 'The ship as took him up, when he was wrecked
in the  hurricane  that had  drove  her clean out of her course, was a China
trader, and Wal'r made the woyage, and got into favour, aboard and  ashore -
being as smart and good a lad as ever stepped - and so, the supercargo dying
at  Canton,  he  got made  (having  acted  as clerk  afore),  and  now  he's
supercargo aboard another ship, same owners.  And so, you see,' repeated the
Captain,  thoughtfully, 'the pretty creetur goes away  upon the roaring main
with Wal'r, on a woyage to China.'
     Mr Toots and Captain Cuttle heaved a sigh in concert. 'What then?' said
the Captain.  'She loves  him true. He loves her  true.  Them as should have
loved and tended of her, treated of her like the beasts as perish. When she,
cast out of home, come here to me, and dropped upon them planks, her wownded
heart was broke. I know it. I, Ed'ard Cuttle, see it. There's nowt but true,
kind, steady love, as  can  ever piece it up again. If so  be I didn't  know
that, and  didn't know as Wal'r was her true love, brother, and she his, I'd
have these here blue arms and legs chopped off, afore  I'd let her go. But I
know it, and what then! Why, then, I say, Heaven go with 'em both, and so it
will! Amen!'
     'Captain Gills,' said  Mr Toots, 'let  me  have the pleasure of shaking
hands You've a way of saying  things, that gives me an agreeable warmth, all
up  my  back. I say Amen.  You  are aware, Captain  Gills, that I, too, have
adored Miss Dombey.'
     'Cheer up!' said the Captain,  laying  his hand on Mr Toots's shoulder.
'Stand by, boy!'
     'It is  my intention,  Captain Gills,' returned  the spirited Mr Toots,
'to  cheer up. Also to  standby,  as much as possible. When the  silent tomb
shall yawn, Captain Gills, I shall be ready for burial; not before.  But not
being certain, just at present, of my power over myself,  what I wish to say
to you, and  what I shall take it as a particular favour if you will mention
to Lieutenant Walters, is as follows.'
     'Is as follers,' echoed the Captain. 'Steady!'
     'Miss Dombey  being  so  inexpressably  kind,' continued Mr  Toots with
watery eyes, 'as to say that my  presence is  the reverse of disagreeable to
her,  and  you and  everybody  here  being no  less forbearing and  tolerant
towards one who  -  who certainly,' said Mr Toots, with momentary dejection,
'would  appear  to  have been born by mistake,  I shall  come  backwards and
forwards  of an evening, during the short time we can all  be  together. But
what  I  ask is this. If, at any moment, I  find  that  I cannot endure  the
contemplation  of Lieutenant Walters's bliss, and should  rush out, I  hope,
Captain Gills,  that you and he  will both consider it as  my misfortune and
not my  fault,  or the want of inward conflict. That you'll feel convinced I
bear no  malice  to any  living  creature-least of all to Lieutenant Walters
himself  - and that you'll casually remark  that I have gone out for a walk,
or probably to see what o'clock it is by the  Royal Exchange. Captain Gills,
if you  could enter into this arrangement,  and  could answer for Lieutenant
Walters, it would be a relief to my feelings  that I should  think cheap  at
the sacrifice of a considerable portion of my property.'
     'My lad,' returned the  Captain, 'say no more. There ain't a colour you
can run up, as won't be made out, and answered to, by Wal'r and self.'
     'Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots, 'my mind is greatly relieved. I wish to
preserve the good opinion of  all here. I  - I - mean well, upon  my honour,
however badly I  may show it. You know,' said Mr Toots, 'it's as exactly  as
Burgess and Co.  wished to oblige a customer  with a most extraordinary pair
of trousers, and could not cut out what they had in their minds.'
     With this apposite  illustration, of which he seemed a little Proud, Mr
Toots gave Captain Cuttle his blessing and departed.
     The honest Captain, with his  Heart's Delight in  the  house, and Susan
tending her, was a beaming  and a  happy  man. As  the days flew by, he grew
more beaming  and  more  happy, every day. After some conferences with Susan
(for  whose wisdom  the Captain  had  a profound respect, and whose  valiant
precipitation  of herself  on  Mrs  MacStinger he  could  never  forget), he
proposed to Florence that the daughter of  the elderly  lady who usually sat
under the blue umbrella in Leadenhall Market, should, for prudential reasons
and considerations of privacy, be superseded  in  the temporary discharge of
the household duties, by someone who was  not  unknown to them, and  in whom
they could safely confide. Susan, being present,  then named, in furtherance
of a suggestion she  had previously offered to  the Captain,  Mrs  Richards.
Florence brightened at the name. And Susan, setting off that very  afternoon
to the Toodle  domicile, to sound Mrs Richards, returned in triumph the same
evening, accompanied by the identical  rosy-cheeked apple-faced Polly, whose
demonstrations, when  brought  into  Florence's presence,  were  hardly less
affectionate than those of Susan Nipper herself.
     This  piece of generalship accomplished; from which the Captain derived
uncommon satisfaction, as  he did,  indeed, from everything  else  that  was
done,  whatever it happened to be;  Florence had next  to prepare  Susan for
their  approaching separation. This was  a much more difficult task, as Miss
Nipper was  of a resolute disposition, and  had fully made up her mind  that
she had come back never to be parted from her old mistress any more.
     'As to wages dear Miss Floy,' she said, 'you wouldn't hint and wrong me
so as think of naming them, for I've put money by and  wouldn't sell my love
and duty at a  time  like this even if the Savings' Banks and  me were total
strangers or  the Banks were broke to pieces, but you've never been  without
me darling  from the time your  poor dear Ma was  took away, and  though I'm
nothing to  be  boasted of you're  used to  me  and  oh my own dear mistress
through  so  many years  don't  think of  going anywhere without me,  for it
mustn't and can't be!'
     'Dear Susan, I am going on a long, long voyage.'
     'Well Miss Floy, and what of that?  the more you'll want me. Lengths of
voyages  ain't  an objec