Dombey and Son
hung up, on a particular peg behind the door, such a hard glazed hat as
a sympathetic person’s head might ache at the sight of, and which left
a red rim round his own forehead as if he had been wearing a tight
basin, he brought a chair to where the clean glass was, and sat himself
down behind it. He was usually addressed as Captain, this visitor; and
had been a pilot, or a skipper, or a privateersman, or all three
perhaps; and was a very salt-looking man indeed.
His face, remarkable for a brown solidity, brightened as he shook hands
with Uncle and nephew; but he seemed to be of a laconic disposition,
and merely said:
“How goes it?”
“All well,” said Mr Gills, pushing the bottle towards him.
He took it up, and having surveyed and smelt it, said with
extraordinary expression:
“The?”
“The,” returned the Instrument-maker.
Upon that he whistled as he filled his glass, and seemed to think they
were making holiday indeed.
“Wal”r!” he said, arranging his hair (which was thin) with his hook,
and then pointing it at the Instrument-maker, “Look at him! Love!
Honour! And Obey! Overhaul your catechism till you find that passage,
and when found turn the leaf down. Success, my boy!”
He was so perfectly satisfied both with his quotation and his reference
to it, that he could not help repeating the words again in a low voice,
and saying he had forgotten ’em these forty year.
“But I never wanted two or three words in my life that I didn’t know
where to lay my hand upon ’em, Gills,” he observed. “It comes of not
wasting language as some do.”
The reflection perhaps reminded him that he had better, like young
Norval’s father, ‘increase his store.’ At any rate he became silent,
and remained so, until old Sol went out into the shop to light it up,
when he turned to Walter, and said, without any introductory remark:—
“I suppose he could make a clock if he tried?”
“I shouldn’t wonder, Captain Cuttle,” returned the boy.
“And it would go!” said Captain Cuttle, making a species of serpent in
the air with his hook. “Lord, how that clock would go!”
For a moment or two he seemed quite lost in contemplating the pace of
this ideal timepiece, and sat looking at the boy as if his face were
the dial.
“But he’s chock-full of science,” he observed, waving his hook towards
the stock-in-trade. “Look’ye here! Here’s a collection of ’em. Earth,
air, or water. It’s all one. Only say where you’ll have it. Up in a
balloon? There you are. Down in a bell? There you are. D’ye want to put
the North Star in a pair of scales and weigh it? He’ll do it for you.”
It may be gathered from these remarks that Captain Cuttle’s reverence
for the stock of instruments was profound, and that his philosophy knew
little or no distinction between trading in it and inventing it.
“Ah!” he said, with a sigh, “it’s a fine thing to understand ’em. And
yet it’s a fine thing not to understand ’em. I hardly know which is
best. It’s so comfortable to sit here and feel that you might be
weighed, measured, magnified, electrified, polarized, played the very
devil with: and never know how.”
Nothing short of the wonderful Madeira, combined with the occasion
(which rendered it desirable to improve and expand Walter’s mind),
could have ever loosened his tongue to the extent of giving utterance
to this prodigious oration. He seemed quite amazed himself at the
manner in which it opened up to view the sources of the taciturn
delight he had had in eating Sunday dinners in that parlour for ten
years. Becoming a sadder and a wiser man, he mused and held his peace.
“Come!” cried the subject of this admiration, returning. “Before you
have your glass of grog, Ned, we must finish the bottle.”
“Stand by!” said Ned, filling his glass. “Give the boy some more.”
“No more, thank’e, Uncle!”
“Yes, yes,” said Sol, “a little more. We’ll finish the bottle, to the
House, Ned—Walter’s House. Why it may be his House one of these days,
in part. Who knows? Sir Richard Whittington married his master’s
daughter.”
“‘Turn again Whittington, Lord Mayor of London, and when you are old
you will never depart from it,’” interposed the Captain. “Wal”r!
Overhaul the book, my lad.”
“And although Mr Dombey hasn’t a daughter,” Sol began.
“Yes, yes, he has, Uncle,” said the boy, reddening and laughing.
“Has he?” cried the old man. “Indeed I think he has too.”
“Oh! I know he has,” said the boy. “Some of ’em were talking about it
in the office today. And they do say, Uncle and Captain Cuttle,”
lowering his voice, “that he’s taken a dislike to her, and that she’s
left, unnoticed, among the servants, and that his mind’s so set all the
while upon having his son in the House, that although he’s only a baby
now, he is going to have balances struck oftener than formerly, and the
books kept closer than they used to be, and has even been seen (when he
thought he wasn’t) walking in the Docks, looking at his ships and
property and all that, as if he was exulting like, over what he and his
son will possess together. That’s what they say. Of course, I don’t
know.”
“He knows all about her already, you see,” said the instrument-maker.
“Nonsense, Uncle,” cried the boy, still reddening and laughing,
boy-like. “How can I help hearing what they tell me?”
“The son’s a little in our way at present, I’m afraid, Ned,” said the
old man, humouring the joke.
“Very much,” said the Captain.
“Nevertheless, we’ll drink him,” pursued Sol. “So, here’s to Dombey and
Son.”
“Oh, very well, Uncle,” said the boy, merrily. “Since you have
introduced the mention of her, and have connected me with her and have
said that I know all about her, I shall make bold to amend the toast.
So here’s to Dombey—and Son—and Daughter!”
CHAPTER V.
Paul’s Progress and Christening
Little Paul, suffering no contamination from the blood of the Toodles,
grew stouter and stronger every day. Every day, too, he was more and
more ardently cherished by Miss Tox, whose devotion was so far
appreciated by Mr Dombey that he began to regard her as a woman of
great natural good sense, whose feelings did her credit and deserved
encouragement. He was so lavish of this condescension, that he not only
bowed to her, in a particular manner, on several occasions, but even
entrusted such stately recognitions of her to his sister as “pray tell
your friend, Louisa, that she is very good,” or “mention to Miss Tox,
Louisa, that I am obliged to her;” specialities which made a deep
impression on the lady thus distinguished.
Whether Miss Tox conceived that having been selected by the Fates to
welcome the little Dombey before he was born, in Kirby, Beard and
Kirby’s Best Mixed Pins, it therefore naturally devolved upon her to
greet him with all other forms of welcome in all other early stages of
his existence—or whether her overflowing goodness induced her to
volunteer into the domestic militia as a substitute in some sort for
his deceased Mama—or whether she was conscious of any other motives—are
questions which in this stage of the Firm’s history herself only could
have solved. Nor have they much bearing on the fact (of which there is
no doubt), that Miss Tox’s constancy and zeal were a heavy
discouragement to Richards, who lost flesh hourly under her patronage,
and was in some danger of being superintended to death.
Miss Tox was often in the habit of assuring Mrs Chick, that nothing
could exceed her interest in all connected with the development of that
sweet child; and an observer of Miss Tox’s proceedings might have
inferred so much without declaratory confirmation. She would preside
over the innocent repasts of the young heir, with ineffable
satisfaction, almost with an air of joint proprietorship with Richards
in the entertainment. At the little ceremonies of the bath and
toilette, she assisted with enthusiasm. The administration of infantine
doses of physic awakened all the active sympathy of her character; and
being on one occasion secreted in a cupboard (whither she had fled in
modesty), when Mr Dombey was introduced into the nursery by his sister,
to behold his son, in the course of preparation for bed, taking a short
walk uphill over Richards’s gown, in a short and airy linen jacket,
Miss Tox was so transported beyond the ignorant present as to be unable
to refrain from crying out, “Is he not beautiful Mr Dombey! Is he not a
Cupid, Sir!” and then almost sinking behind the closet door with
confusion and blushes.
“Louisa,” said Mr Dombey, one day, to his sister, “I really think I
must present your friend with some little token, on the occasion of
Paul’s christening. She has exerted herself so warmly in the child’s
behalf from the first, and seems to understand her position so
thoroughly (a very rare merit in this world, I am sorry to say), that
it would really be agreeable to me to notice her.”
Let it be no detraction from the merits of Miss Tox, to hint that in Mr
Dombey’s eyes, as in some others that occasionally see the light, they
only achieved that mighty piece of knowledge, the understanding of
their own position, who showed a fitting reverence for his. It was not
so much their merit that they knew themselves, as that they knew him,
and bowed low before him.
“My dear Paul,” returned his sister, “you do Miss Tox but justice, as a
man of your penetration was sure, I knew, to do. I believe if there are
three words in the English language for which she has a respect
amounting almost to veneration, those words are, Dombey and Son.”
“Well,” said Mr Dombey, “I believe it. It does Miss Tox credit.”
“And as to anything in the shape of a token, my dear Paul,” pursued his
sister, “all I can say is that anything you give Miss Tox will be
hoarded and prized, I am sure, like a relic. But there is a way, my
dear Paul, of showing your sense of Miss Tox’s friendliness in a still
more flattering and acceptable manner, if you should be so inclined.”
“How is that?” asked Mr Dombey.
“Godfathers, of course,” continued Mrs Chick, “are important in point
of connexion and influence.”
“I don’t know why they should be, to my son,” said Mr Dombey, coldly.
“Very true, my dear Paul,” retorted Mrs Chick, with an extraordinary
show of animation, to cover the suddenness of her conversion; “and
spoken like yourself. I might have expected nothing else from you. I
might have known that such would have been your opinion. Perhaps;” here
Mrs Chick faltered again, as not quite comfortably feeling her way;
“perhaps that is a reason why you might have the less objection to
allowing Miss Tox to be godmother to the dear thing, if it were only as
deputy and proxy for someone else. That it would be received as a great
honour and distinction, Paul, I need not say.”
“Louisa,” said Mr Dombey, after a short pause, “it is not to be
supposed—”
“Certainly not,” cried Mrs Chick, hastening to anticipate a refusal, “I
never thought it was.”
Mr Dombey looked at her impatiently.
“Don’t flurry me, my dear Paul,” said his sister; “for that destroys
me. I am far from strong. I have not been quite myself, since poor dear
Fanny departed.”
Mr Dombey glanced at the pocket-handkerchief which his sister applied
to her eyes, and resumed:
“It is not be supposed, I say—”
“And I say,” murmured Mrs Chick, “that I never thought it was.”
“Good Heaven, Louisa!” said Mr Dombey.
“No, my dear Paul,” she remonstrated with tearful dignity, “I must
really be allowed to speak. I am not so clever, or so reasoning, or so
eloquent, or so anything, as you are. I know that very well. So much
the worse for me. But if they were the last words I had to utter—and
last words should be very solemn to you and me, Paul, after poor dear
Fanny—I would still say I never thought it was. And what is more,”