Dombey and Son
shell. Every black spot in every mountain of water that rolled away was
a bit o’ the ship’s life or a living man, and so she went to pieces,
Beauty, and no grass will never grow upon the graves of them as manned
that ship.”
“They were not all lost!” cried Florence. “Some were saved!—Was one?”
“Aboard o’ that there unfort’nate wessel,” said the Captain, rising
from his chair, and clenching his hand with prodigious energy and
exultation, “was a lad, a gallant lad—as I’ve heerd tell—that had
loved, when he was a boy, to read and talk about brave actions in
shipwrecks—I’ve heerd him! I’ve heerd him!—and he remembered of ’em in
his hour of need; for when the stoutest and oldest hands was hove down,
he was firm and cheery. It warn’t the want of objects to like and love
ashore that gave him courage, it was his nat’ral mind. I’ve seen it in
his face, when he was no more than a child—ay, many a time!—and when I
thought it nothing but his good looks, bless him!”
“And was he saved!” cried Florence. “Was he saved!”
“That brave lad,” said the Captain,—“look at me, pretty! Don’t look
round—”
Florence had hardly power to repeat, “Why not?”
“Because there’s nothing there, my deary,” said the Captain. “Don’t be
took aback, pretty creetur! Don’t, for the sake of Wal”r, as was dear
to all on us! That there lad,” said the Captain, “arter working with
the best, and standing by the faint-hearted, and never making no
complaint nor sign of fear, and keeping up a spirit in all hands that
made ’em honour him as if he’d been a admiral—that lad, along with the
second-mate and one seaman, was left, of all the beatin’ hearts that
went aboard that ship, the only living creeturs—lashed to a fragment of
the wreck, and driftin’ on the stormy sea.”
“Were they saved?” cried Florence.
“Days and nights they drifted on them endless waters,” said the
Captain, “until at last—No! Don’t look that way, pretty!—a sail bore
down upon ’em, and they was, by the Lord’s mercy, took aboard: two
living and one dead.”
“Which of them was dead?” cried Florence.
“Not the lad I speak on,” said the Captain.
“Thank God! oh thank God!”
“Amen!” returned the Captain hurriedly. “Don’t be took aback! A minute
more, my lady lass! with a good heart!—aboard that ship, they went a
long voyage, right away across the chart (for there warn’t no touching
nowhere), and on that voyage the seaman as was picked up with him died.
But he was spared, and—”
The Captain, without knowing what he did, had cut a slice of bread from
the loaf, and put it on his hook (which was his usual toasting-fork),
on which he now held it to the fire; looking behind Florence with great
emotion in his face, and suffering the bread to blaze and burn like
fuel.
“Was spared,” repeated Florence, “and—?”
“And come home in that ship,” said the Captain, still looking in the
same direction, “and—don’t be frightened, pretty—and landed; and one
morning come cautiously to his own door to take a obserwation, knowing
that his friends would think him drownded, when he sheered off at the
unexpected—”
“At the unexpected barking of a dog?” cried Florence, quickly.
“Yes,” roared the Captain. “Steady, darling! courage! Don’t look round
yet. See there! upon the wall!”
There was the shadow of a man upon the wall close to her. She started
up, looked round, and with a piercing cry, saw Walter Gay behind her!
She had no thought of him but as a brother, a brother rescued from the
grave; a shipwrecked brother saved and at her side; and rushed into his
arms. In all the world, he seemed to be her hope, her comfort, refuge,
natural protector. “Take care of Walter, I was fond of Walter!” The
dear remembrance of the plaintive voice that said so, rushed upon her
soul, like music in the night. “Oh welcome home, dear Walter! Welcome
to this stricken breast!” She felt the words, although she could not
utter them, and held him in her pure embrace.
Captain Cuttle, in a fit of delirium, attempted to wipe his head with
the blackened toast upon his hook: and finding it an uncongenial
substance for the purpose, put it into the crown of his glazed hat, put
the glazed hat on with some difficulty, essayed to sing a verse of
Lovely Peg, broke down at the first word, and retired into the shop,
whence he presently came back express, with a face all flushed and
besmeared, and the starch completely taken out of his shirt-collar, to
say these words:
“Wal”r, my lad, here is a little bit of property as I should wish to
make over, jintly!”
The Captain hastily produced the big watch, the teaspoons, the
sugar-tongs, and the canister, and laying them on the table, swept them
with his great hand into Walter’s hat; but in handing that singular
strong box to Walter, he was so overcome again, that he was fain to
make another retreat into the shop, and absent himself for a longer
space of time than on his first retirement.
But Walter sought him out, and brought him back; and then the Captain’s
great apprehension was, that Florence would suffer from this new shock.
He felt it so earnestly, that he turned quite rational, and positively
interdicted any further allusion to Walter’s adventures for some days
to come. Captain Cuttle then became sufficiently composed to relieve
himself of the toast in his hat, and to take his place at the
tea-board; but finding Walter’s grasp upon his shoulder, on one side,
and Florence whispering her tearful congratulations on the other, the
Captain suddenly bolted again, and was missing for a good ten minutes.
But never in all his life had the Captain’s face so shone and
glistened, as when, at last, he sat stationary at the tea-board,
looking from Florence to Walter, and from Walter to Florence. Nor was
this effect produced or at all heightened by the immense quantity of
polishing he had administered to his face with his coat-sleeve during
the last half-hour. It was solely the effect of his internal emotions.
There was a glory and delight within the Captain that spread itself
over his whole visage, and made a perfect illumination there.
The pride with which the Captain looked upon the bronzed cheek and the
courageous eyes of his recovered boy; with which he saw the generous
fervour of his youth, and all its frank and hopeful qualities, shining
once more, in the fresh, wholesome manner, and the ardent face, would
have kindled something of this light in his countenance. The admiration
and sympathy with which he turned his eyes on Florence, whose beauty,
grace, and innocence could have won no truer or more zealous champion
than himself, would have had an equal influence upon him. But the
fulness of the glow he shed around him could only have been engendered
in his contemplation of the two together, and in all the fancies
springing out of that association, that came sparkling and beaming into
his head, and danced about it.
How they talked of poor old Uncle Sol, and dwelt on every little
circumstance relating to his disappearance; how their joy was moderated
by the old man’s absence and by the misfortunes of Florence; how they
released Diogenes, whom the Captain had decoyed upstairs some time
before, lest he should bark again; the Captain, though he was in one
continual flutter, and made many more short plunges into the shop,
fully comprehended. But he no more dreamed that Walter looked on
Florence, as it were, from a new and far-off place; that while his eyes
often sought the lovely face, they seldom met its open glance of
sisterly affection, but withdrew themselves when hers were raised
towards him; than he believed that it was Walter’s ghost who sat beside
him. He saw them together in their youth and beauty, and he knew the
story of their younger days, and he had no inch of room beneath his
great blue waistcoat for anything save admiration of such a pair, and
gratitude for their being reunited.
They sat thus, until it grew late. The Captain would have been content
to sit so for a week. But Walter rose, to take leave for the night.
“Going, Walter!” said Florence. “Where?”
“He slings his hammock for the present, lady lass,” said Captain
Cuttle, “round at Brogley’s. Within hail, Heart’s Delight.”
“I am the cause of your going away, Walter,” said Florence. “There is a
houseless sister in your place.”
“Dear Miss Dombey,” replied Walter, hesitating—“if it is not too bold
to call you so!—”
“Walter!” she exclaimed, surprised.
“—If anything could make me happier in being allowed to see and speak
to you, would it not be the discovery that I had any means on earth of
doing you a moment’s service! Where would I not go, what would I not
do, for your sake?”
She smiled, and called him brother.
“You are so changed,” said Walter—
“I changed!” she interrupted.
“—To me,” said Walter, softly, as if he were thinking aloud, “changed
to me. I left you such a child, and find you—oh! something so
different—”
“But your sister, Walter. You have not forgotten what we promised to
each other, when we parted?”
“Forgotten!” But he said no more.
“And if you had—if suffering and danger had driven it from your
thoughts—which it has not—you would remember it now, Walter, when you
find me poor and abandoned, with no home but this, and no friends but
the two who hear me speak!”
“I would! Heaven knows I would!” said Walter.
“Oh, Walter,” exclaimed Florence, through her sobs and tears. “Dear
brother! Show me some way through the world—some humble path that I may
take alone, and labour in, and sometimes think of you as one who will
protect and care for me as for a sister! Oh, help me, Walter, for I
need help so much!”
“Miss Dombey! Florence! I would die to help you. But your friends are
proud and rich. Your father—”
“No, no! Walter!” She shrieked, and put her hands up to her head, in an
attitude of terror that transfixed him where he stood. “Don’t say that
word!”
He never, from that hour, forgot the voice and look with which she
stopped him at the name. He felt that if he were to live a hundred
years, he never could forget it.
Somewhere—anywhere—but never home! All past, all gone, all lost, and
broken up! The whole history of her untold slight and suffering was in
the cry and look; and he felt he never could forget it, and he never
did.
She laid her gentle face upon the Captain’s shoulder, and related how
and why she had fled. If every sorrowing tear she shed in doing so, had
been a curse upon the head of him she never named or blamed, it would
have been better for him, Walter thought, with awe, than to be
renounced out of such a strength and might of love.
“There, precious!” said the Captain, when she ceased; and deep
attention the Captain had paid to her while she spoke; listening, with
his glazed hat all awry and his mouth wide open. “Awast, awast, my
eyes! Wal”r, dear lad, sheer off for tonight, and leave the pretty one
to me!”
Walter took her hand in both of his, and put it to his lips, and kissed
it. He knew now that she was, indeed, a homeless wandering fugitive;
but, richer to him so, than in all the wealth and pride of her right
station, she seemed farther off than even on the height that had made
him giddy in his boyish dreams.
Captain Cuttle, perplexed by no such meditations, guarded Florence to
her room, and watched at intervals upon the charmed ground outside her
door—for such it truly was to him—until he felt sufficiently easy in
his mind about her, to turn in under the counter. On abandoning his
watch for that purpose, he could not help calling once, rapturously,
through the keyhole, “Drownded. Ain’t he, pretty?”—or, when he got
downstairs, making another trial at that verse of Lovely Peg. But it
stuck in his throat somehow, and he could make nothing of it; so he