Dombey and Son
went to bed, and dreamed that old Sol Gills was married to Mrs
MacStinger, and kept prisoner by that lady in a secret chamber on a
short allowance of victuals.
CHAPTER L.
Mr Toots’s Complaint
There was an empty room above-stairs at the wooden Midshipman’s, which,
in days of yore, had been Walter’s bedroom. Walter, rousing up the
Captain betimes in the morning, proposed that they should carry thither
such furniture out of the little parlour as would grace it best, so
that Florence might take possession of it when she rose. As nothing
could be more agreeable to Captain Cuttle than making himself very red
and short of breath in such a cause, he turned to (as he himself said)
with a will; and, in a couple of hours, this garret was transformed
into a species of land-cabin, adorned with all the choicest moveables
out of the parlour, inclusive even of the Tartar frigate, which the
Captain hung up over the chimney-piece with such extreme delight, that
he could do nothing for half-an-hour afterwards but walk backward from
it, lost in admiration.
The Captain could be induced by no persuasion of Walter’s to wind up
the big watch, or to take back the canister, or to touch the
sugar-tongs and teaspoons. “No, no, my lad;” was the Captain’s
invariable reply to any solicitation of the kind, “I’ve made that there
little property over, jintly.” These words he repeated with great
unction and gravity, evidently believing that they had the virtue of an
Act of Parliament, and that unless he committed himself by some new
admission of ownership, no flaw could be found in such a form of
conveyance.
It was an advantage of the new arrangement, that besides the greater
seclusion it afforded Florence, it admitted of the Midshipman being
restored to his usual post of observation, and also of the shop
shutters being taken down. The latter ceremony, however little
importance the unconscious Captain attached to it, was not wholly
superfluous; for, on the previous day, so much excitement had been
occasioned in the neighbourhood, by the shutters remaining unopened,
that the Instrument-maker’s house had been honoured with an unusual
share of public observation, and had been intently stared at from the
opposite side of the way, by groups of hungry gazers, at any time
between sunrise and sunset. The idlers and vagabonds had been
particularly interested in the Captain’s fate; constantly grovelling in
the mud to apply their eyes to the cellar-grating, under the
shop-window, and delighting their imaginations with the fancy that they
could see a piece of his coat as he hung in a corner; though this
settlement of him was stoutly disputed by an opposite faction, who were
of opinion that he lay murdered with a hammer, on the stairs. It was
not without exciting some discontent, therefore, that the subject of
these rumours was seen early in the morning standing at his shop-door
as hale and hearty as if nothing had happened; and the beadle of that
quarter, a man of an ambitious character, who had expected to have the
distinction of being present at the breaking open of the door, and of
giving evidence in full uniform before the coroner, went so far as to
say to an opposite neighbour, that the chap in the glazed hat had
better not try it on there—without more particularly mentioning
what—and further, that he, the beadle, would keep his eye upon him.
“Captain Cuttle,” said Walter, musing, when they stood resting from
their labours at the shop-door, looking down the old familiar street;
it being still early in the morning; “nothing at all of Uncle Sol, in
all that time!”
“Nothing at all, my lad,” replied the Captain, shaking his head.
“Gone in search of me, dear, kind old man,” said Walter: “yet never
write to you! But why not? He says, in effect, in this packet that you
gave me,” taking the paper from his pocket, which had been opened in
the presence of the enlightened Bunsby, “that if you never hear from
him before opening it, you may believe him dead. Heaven forbid! But you
would have heard of him, even if he were dead! Someone would have
written, surely, by his desire, if he could not; and have said, ‘on
such a day, there died in my house,’ or ‘under my care,’ or so forth,
‘Mr Solomon Gills of London, who left this last remembrance and this
last request to you’.”
The Captain, who had never climbed to such a clear height of
probability before, was greatly impressed by the wide prospect it
opened, and answered, with a thoughtful shake of his head, “Well said,
my lad; wery well said.”
“I have been thinking of this, or, at least,” said Walter, colouring,
“I have been thinking of one thing and another, all through a sleepless
night, and I cannot believe, Captain Cuttle, but that my Uncle Sol
(Lord bless him!) is alive, and will return. I don’t so much wonder at
his going away, because, leaving out of consideration that spice of the
marvellous which was always in his character, and his great affection
for me, before which every other consideration of his life became
nothing, as no one ought to know so well as I who had the best of
fathers in him,”—Walter’s voice was indistinct and husky here, and he
looked away, along the street,—“leaving that out of consideration, I
say, I have often read and heard of people who, having some near and
dear relative, who was supposed to be shipwrecked at sea, have gone
down to live on that part of the sea-shore where any tidings of the
missing ship might be expected to arrive, though only an hour or two
sooner than elsewhere, or have even gone upon her track to the place
whither she was bound, as if their going would create intelligence. I
think I should do such a thing myself, as soon as another, or sooner
than many, perhaps. But why my Uncle shouldn’t write to you, when he so
clearly intended to do so, or how he should die abroad, and you not
know it through some other hand, I cannot make out.”
Captain Cuttle observed, with a shake of his head, that Jack Bunsby
himself hadn’t made it out, and that he was a man as could give a
pretty taut opinion too.
“If my Uncle had been a heedless young man, likely to be entrapped by
jovial company to some drinking-place, where he was to be got rid of
for the sake of what money he might have about him,” said Walter; “or
if he had been a reckless sailor, going ashore with two or three
months’ pay in his pocket, I could understand his disappearing, and
leaving no trace behind. But, being what he was—and is, I hope—I can’t
believe it.”
“Wal”r, my lad,” inquired the Captain, wistfully eyeing him as he
pondered and pondered, “what do you make of it, then?”
“Captain Cuttle,” returned Walter, “I don’t know what to make of it. I
suppose he never has written! There is no doubt about that?”
“If so be as Sol Gills wrote, my lad,” replied the Captain,
argumentatively, “where’s his dispatch?”
“Say that he entrusted it to some private hand,” suggested Walter, “and
that it has been forgotten, or carelessly thrown aside, or lost. Even
that is more probable to me, than the other event. In short, I not only
cannot bear to contemplate that other event, Captain Cuttle, but I
can’t, and won’t.”
“Hope, you see, Wal”r,” said the Captain, sagely, “Hope. It’s that as
animates you. Hope is a buoy, for which you overhaul your Little
Warbler, sentimental diwision, but Lord, my lad, like any other buoy,
it only floats; it can’t be steered nowhere. Along with the figure-head
of Hope,” said the Captain, “there’s a anchor; but what’s the good of
my having a anchor, if I can’t find no bottom to let it go in?”
Captain Cuttle said this rather in his character of a sagacious citizen
and householder, bound to impart a morsel from his stores of wisdom to
an inexperienced youth, than in his own proper person. Indeed, his face
was quite luminous as he spoke, with new hope, caught from Walter; and
he appropriately concluded by slapping him on the back; and saying,
with enthusiasm, “Hooroar, my lad! Indiwidually, I’m o’ your opinion.”
Walter, with his cheerful laugh, returned the salutation, and said:
“Only one word more about my Uncle at present, Captain Cuttle. I
suppose it is impossible that he can have written in the ordinary
course—by mail packet, or ship letter, you understand—”
“Ay, ay, my lad,” said the Captain approvingly.
“—And that you have missed the letter, anyhow?”
“Why, Wal”r,” said the Captain, turning his eyes upon him with a faint
approach to a severe expression, “ain’t I been on the look-out for any
tidings of that man o’ science, old Sol Gills, your Uncle, day and
night, ever since I lost him? Ain’t my heart been heavy and watchful
always, along of him and you? Sleeping and waking, ain’t I been upon my
post, and wouldn’t I scorn to quit it while this here Midshipman held
together!”
“Yes, Captain Cuttle,” replied Walter, grasping his hand, “I know you
would, and I know how faithful and earnest all you say and feel is. I
am sure of it. You don’t doubt that I am as sure of it as I am that my
foot is again upon this door-step, or that I again have hold of this
true hand. Do you?”
“No, no, Wal”r,” returned the Captain, with his beaming
“I’ll hazard no more conjectures,” said Walter, fervently shaking the
hard hand of the Captain, who shook his with no less goodwill. “All I
will add is, Heaven forbid that I should touch my Uncle’s possessions,
Captain Cuttle! Everything that he left here, shall remain in the care
of the truest of stewards and kindest of men—and if his name is not
Cuttle, he has no name! Now, best of friends, about—Miss Dombey.”
There was a change in Walter’s manner, as he came to these two words;
and when he uttered them, all his confidence and cheerfulness appeared
to have deserted him.
“I thought, before Miss Dombey stopped me when I spoke of her father
last night,” said Walter, “—you remember how?”
The Captain well remembered, and shook his head.
“I thought,” said Walter, “before that, that we had but one hard duty
to perform, and that it was, to prevail upon her to communicate with
her friends, and to return home.”
The Captain muttered a feeble “Awast!” or a “Stand by!” or something or
other, equally pertinent to the occasion; but it was rendered so
extremely feeble by the total discomfiture with which he received this
announcement, that what it was, is mere matter of conjecture.
“But,” said Walter, “that is over. I think so, no longer. I would
sooner be put back again upon that piece of wreck, on which I have so
often floated, since my preservation, in my dreams, and there left to
drift, and drive, and die!”
“Hooroar, my lad!” exclaimed the Captain, in a burst of uncontrollable
satisfaction. “Hooroar! hooroar! hooroar!”
“To think that she, so young, so good, and beautiful,” said Walter, “so
delicately brought up, and born to such a different fortune, should
strive with the rough world! But we have seen the gulf that cuts off
all behind her, though no one but herself can know how deep it is; and
there is no return.”
Captain Cuttle, without quite understanding this, greatly approved of
it, and observed in a tone of strong corroboration, that the wind was
quite abaft.
“She ought not to be alone here; ought she, Captain Cuttle?” said
Walter, anxiously.
“Well, my lad,” replied the Captain, after a little sagacious
consideration. “I don’t know. You being here to keep her company, you
see, and you two being jintly—”
“Dear Captain Cuttle!” remonstrated Walter. “I being here! Miss Dombey,
in her guileless innocent heart, regards me as her adopted brother; but
what would the guile and guilt of my heart be, if I pretended to
believe that I had any right to approach her, familiarly, in that
character—if I pretended to forget that I am bound, in honour, not to
do it?”