But not as she did. She had better have been dead than laugh as she did, in reply, with her intent look fixed upon him. He had better have been dead, than sitting there, in his magnificence, to hear her.
`No, Mrs. Dombey,' he resumed. `No, Madam. There is no possibility of separation between you and me, and therefore I the more advise you to be awakened to a sense of duty. And, Carker, as I was about to say to you--'
Mr. Carker, who had sat and listened all this time, now raised his eyes, in which there was a bright unusual light.
`--As I was about to say to you,'resumed Mr. Dombey, `I must beg you, now that matters have come to this, to inform Mrs. Dombey, that it is not the rule of my life to allow myself to be thwarted by anybody-- anybody, Carker--or to suffer anybody to be paraded as a stronger motive for obedience in those who owe obedience to me than I am myself. The mention that has been made of my daughter, and the use that is made of my daughter, in opposition to me, are unnatural. Whether my daughter is in actual concert with Mrs. Dombey, I do not know, and do not care; but after what Mrs. Dombey has said to-day, and my daughter has heard to-day, I beg you to make known to Mrs. Dombey, that if she continues to make this house the scene of contention it has become, I shall consider my daughter responsible in some degree, on that lady's own avowal, and shall visit her with my severe displeasure. Mrs. Dombey has asked "whether it is not enough," that she had done this and that. You will please to answer no, it is not enough.'
`A moment!' cried Carker, interposing, `permit me! painful as my position is, at the best, and unusually painful in seeming to entertain a different opinion from you,' addressing Mr. Dombey, `I must ask, had you not better reconsider the question of a separation? I know how incompatible it appears with your high public position, and I know how determined you are when you give Mrs. Dombey to understand'-- the light in his eyes fell upon her as he separated his words each from each, with the distinctness of so many bells--`that nothing but death can ever part you. Nothing else. But when you consider that Mrs. Dombey, by living in this house, and making it as you have said, a scene of contention, not only has her part in that contention, but compromises Miss Dombey every day (for I know how determined you are), will you not relieve her from a continual irritation of spirit, and a continual sense of being unjust to another, almost intolerable? Does this not seem like--I do not say it is--sacrificing Mrs. Dombey to the preservation of your pre-eminent and unassailable position?'
Again the light in his eyes fell upon her, as she stood looking at her husband: now with an extraordinary and awful smile upon her face.
`Carker,' returned Mr. Dombey, with a supercilious frown, and in a tone that was intended to be final, `you mistake your position in offering advice to me on such a point, and you mistake me (I am surprised to find) in the character of your advice. I have no more to say.'
`Perhaps,' said Carker, with an unusual and indefinable taunt in his air, `you mistook my position, when you honoured me with the negotiations in which I have been engaged here'--with a motion of his hand towards Mrs. Dombey.
`Not at all, Sir, not at all,' returned the other haughtily. `You were employed--'
`Being an inferior person, for the humiliation of Mrs. Dombey. I forgot. Oh, yes, it was expressly understood!' said Carker. `I beg your pardon!'
As he bent his head to Mr. Dombey, with an air of deference that accorded ill with his words, though they were humbly spoken, he moved it round towards her, and kept his watching eyes that way.
She had better have turned hideous and dropped dead, than have stood up with such a smile upon her face, in such a fallen spirit's majesty of scorn and beauty. She lifted her hand to the tiara of bright