Dombey and Son
“Well,” said the Captain, “it’s my belief as you’ll know more about it
pretty soon, if you don’t keep a bright look-out. I can read your
signals, my lad. You may go.”
“Oh! I may go at once, may I, Captain?” cried Rob, exulting in his
success. “But mind! I never asked to go at once, Captain. You are not
to take away my character again, because you send me off of your own
accord. And you’re not to stop any of my wages, Captain!”
His employer settled the last point by producing the tin canister and
telling the Grinder’s money out in full upon the table. Rob, snivelling
and sobbing, and grievously wounded in his feelings, took up the pieces
one by one, with a sob and a snivel for each, and tied them up
separately in knots in his pockethandkerchief; then he ascended to the
roof of the house and filled his hat and pockets with pigeons; then,
came down to his bed under the counter and made up his bundle,
snivelling and sobbing louder, as if he were cut to the heart by old
associations; then he whined, “Good-night, Captain. I leave you without
malice!” and then, going out upon the door-step, pulled the little
Midshipman’s nose as a parting indignity, and went away down the street
grinning triumphantly.
The Captain, left to himself, resumed his perusal of the news as if
nothing unusual or unexpected had taken place, and went reading on with
the greatest assiduity. But never a word did Captain Cuttle understand,
though he read a vast number, for Rob the Grinder was scampering up one
column and down another all through the newspaper.
It is doubtful whether the worthy Captain had ever felt himself quite
abandoned until now; but now, old Sol Gills, Walter, and Heart’s
Delight were lost to him indeed, and now Mr Carker deceived and jeered
him cruelly. They were all represented in the false Rob, to whom he had
held forth many a time on the recollections that were warm within him;
he had believed in the false Rob, and had been glad to believe in him;
he had made a companion of him as the last of the old ship’s company;
he had taken the command of the little Midshipman with him at his right
hand; he had meant to do his duty by him, and had felt almost as kindly
towards the boy as if they had been shipwrecked and cast upon a desert
place together. And now, that the false Rob had brought distrust,
treachery, and meanness into the very parlour, which was a kind of
sacred place, Captain Cuttle felt as if the parlour might have gone
down next, and not surprised him much by its sinking, or given him any
very great concern.
Therefore Captain Cuttle read the newspaper with profound attention and
no comprehension, and therefore Captain Cuttle said nothing whatever
about Rob to himself, or admitted to himself that he was thinking about
him, or would recognise in the most distant manner that Rob had
anything to do with his feeling as lonely as Robinson Crusoe.
In the same composed, business-like way, the Captain stepped over to
Leadenhall Market in the dusk, and effected an arrangement with a
private watchman on duty there, to come and put up and take down the
shutters of the wooden Midshipman every night and morning. He then
called in at the eating-house to diminish by one half the daily rations
theretofore supplied to the Midshipman, and at the public-house to stop
the traitor’s beer. “My young man,” said the Captain, in explanation to
the young lady at the bar, “my young man having bettered himself,
Miss.” Lastly, the Captain resolved to take possession of the bed under
the counter, and to turn in there o’ nights instead of upstairs, as
sole guardian of the property.
From this bed Captain Cuttle daily rose thenceforth, and clapped on his
glazed hat at six o’clock in the morning, with the solitary air of
Crusoe finishing his toilet with his goat-skin cap; and although his
fears of a visitation from the savage tribe, MacStinger, were somewhat
cooled, as similar apprehensions on the part of that lone mariner used
to be by the lapse of a long interval without any symptoms of the
cannibals, he still observed a regular routine of defensive operations,
and never encountered a bonnet without previous survey from his castle
of retreat. In the meantime (during which he received no call from Mr
Toots, who wrote to say he was out of town) his own voice began to have
a strange sound in his ears; and he acquired such habits of profound
meditation from much polishing and stowing away of the stock, and from
much sitting behind the counter reading, or looking out of window, that
the red rim made on his forehead by the hard glazed hat, sometimes
ached again with excess of reflection.
The year being now expired, Captain Cuttle deemed it expedient to open
the packet; but as he had always designed doing this in the presence of
Rob the Grinder, who had brought it to him, and as he had an idea that
it would be regular and ship-shape to open it in the presence of
somebody, he was sadly put to it for want of a witness. In this
difficulty, he hailed one day with unusual delight the announcement in
the Shipping Intelligence of the arrival of the Cautious Clara, Captain
John Bunsby, from a coasting voyage; and to that philosopher
immediately dispatched a letter by post, enjoining inviolable secrecy
as to his place of residence, and requesting to be favoured with an
early visit, in the evening season.
Bunsby, who was one of those sages who act upon conviction, took some
days to get the conviction thoroughly into his mind, that he had
received a letter to this effect. But when he had grappled with the
fact, and mastered it, he promptly sent his boy with the message, “He’s
a coming tonight.” Who being instructed to deliver those words and
disappear, fulfilled his mission like a tarry spirit, charged with a
mysterious warning.
The Captain, well pleased to receive it, made preparation of pipes and
rum and water, and awaited his visitor in the back parlour. At the hour
of eight, a deep lowing, as of a nautical Bull, outside the shop-door,
succeeded by the knocking of a stick on the panel, announced to the
listening ear of Captain Cuttle, that Bunsby was alongside; whom he
instantly admitted, shaggy and loose, and with his stolid mahogany
visage, as usual, appearing to have no consciousness of anything before
it, but to be attentively observing something that was taking place in
quite another part of the world.
“Bunsby,” said the Captain, grasping him by the hand, “what cheer, my
lad, what cheer?”
“Shipmet,” replied the voice within Bunsby, unaccompanied by any sign
on the part of the Commander himself, “hearty, hearty.”
“Bunsby!” said the Captain, rendering irrepressible homage to his
genius, “here you are! a man as can give an opinion as is brighter than
di’monds—and give me the lad with the tarry trousers as shines to me
like di’monds bright, for which you’ll overhaul the Stanfell’s Budget,
and when found make a note. Here you are, a man as gave an opinion in
this here very place, that has come true, every letter on it,” which
the Captain sincerely believed.
“Ay, ay?” growled Bunsby.
“Every letter,” said the Captain.
“For why?” growled Bunsby, looking at his friend for the first time.
“Which way? If so, why not? Therefore.” With these oracular words—they
seemed almost to make the Captain giddy; they launched him upon such a
sea of speculation and conjecture—the sage submitted to be helped off
with his pilot-coat, and accompanied his friend into the back parlour,
where his hand presently alighted on the rum-bottle, from which he
brewed a stiff glass of grog; and presently afterwards on a pipe, which
he filled, lighted, and began to smoke.
Captain Cuttle, imitating his visitor in the matter of these
particulars, though the rapt and imperturbable manner of the great
Commander was far above his powers, sat in the opposite corner of the
fireside, observing him respectfully, and as if he waited for some
encouragement or expression of curiosity on Bunsby’s part which should
lead him to his own affairs. But as the mahogany philosopher gave no
evidence of being sentient of anything but warmth and tobacco, except
once, when taking his pipe from his lips to make room for his glass, he
incidentally remarked with exceeding gruffness, that his name was Jack
Bunsby—a declaration that presented but small opening for
conversation—the Captain bespeaking his attention in a short
complimentary exordium, narrated the whole history of Uncle Sol’s
departure, with the change it had produced in his own life and
fortunes; and concluded by placing the packet on the table.
After a long pause, Mr Bunsby nodded his head.
“Open?” said the Captain.
Bunsby nodded again.
The Captain accordingly broke the seal, and disclosed to view two
folded papers, of which he severally read the endorsements, thus: “Last
Will and Testament of Solomon Gills.” “Letter for Ned Cuttle.”
Bunsby, with his eye on the coast of Greenland, seemed to listen for
the contents. The Captain therefore hemmed to clear his throat, and
read the letter aloud.
“‘My dear Ned Cuttle. When I left home for the West Indies’—”
Here the Captain stopped, and looked hard at Bunsby, who looked fixedly
at the coast of Greenland.
“—‘in forlorn search of intelligence of my dear boy, I knew that if you
were acquainted with my design, you would thwart it, or accompany me;
and therefore I kept it secret. If you ever read this letter, Ned, I am
likely to be dead. You will easily forgive an old friend’s folly then,
and will feel for the restlessness and uncertainty in which he wandered
away on such a wild voyage. So no more of that. I have little hope that
my poor boy will ever read these words, or gladden your eyes with the
sight of his frank face any more.’ No, no; no more,” said Captain
Cuttle, sorrowfully meditating; “no more. There he lays, all his days—”
Mr Bunsby, who had a musical ear, suddenly bellowed, “In the Bays of
Biscay, O!” which so affected the good Captain, as an appropriate
tribute to departed worth, that he shook him by the hand in
acknowledgment, and was fain to wipe his eyes.
“Well, well!” said the Captain with a sigh, as the Lament of Bunsby
ceased to ring and vibrate in the skylight. “Affliction sore, long time
he bore, and let us overhaul the wollume, and there find it.”
“Physicians,” observed Bunsby, “was in vain.”
“Ay, ay, to be sure,” said the Captain, “what’s the good o’ them in two
or three hundred fathoms o’ water!” Then, returning to the letter, he
read on:—“"But if he should be by, when it is opened;’” the Captain
involuntarily looked round, and shook his head; “‘or should know of it
at any other time;’” the Captain shook his head again; “‘my blessing on
him! In case the accompanying paper is not legally written, it matters
very little, for there is no one interested but you and he, and my
plain wish is, that if he is living he should have what little there
may be, and if (as I fear) otherwise, that you should have it, Ned. You
will respect my wish, I know. God bless you for it, and for all your
friendliness besides, to Solomon Gills.’ Bunsby!” said the Captain,
appealing to him solemnly, “what do you make of this? There you sit, a
man as has had his head broke from infancy up’ards, and has got a new
opinion into it at every seam as has been opened. Now, what do you make
o’ this?”
“If so be,” returned Bunsby, with unusual promptitude, “as he’s dead,
my opinion is he won’t come back no more. If so be as he’s alive, my
opinion is he will. Do I say he will? No. Why not? Because the bearings
of this obserwation lays in the application on it.”
“Bunsby!” said Captain Cuttle, who would seem to have estimated the
value of his distinguished friend’s opinions in proportion to the
immensity of the difficulty he experienced in making anything out of