Dombey and Son
reproaches herself bitterly. Intent on making one last effort to redeem
her character, she breaks from Mr Toots and runs away to find the
coach, and show a parting smile. The Captain, divining her object, sets
off after her; for he feels it his duty also to dismiss them with a
cheer, if possible. Uncle Sol and Mr Toots are left behind together,
outside the church, to wait for them.
The coach is gone, but the street is steep, and narrow, and blocked up,
and Susan can see it at a stand-still in the distance, she is sure.
Captain Cuttle follows her as she flies down the hill, and waves his
glazed hat as a general signal, which may attract the right coach and
which may not.
Susan outstrips the Captain, and comes up with it. She looks in at the
window, sees Walter, with the gentle face beside him, and claps her
hands and screams:
“Miss Floy, my darling! look at me! We are all so happy now, dear! One
more good-bye, my precious, one more!”
How Susan does it, she don’t know, but she reaches to the window,
kisses her, and has her arms about her neck, in a moment.
“We are all so—so happy now, my dear Miss Floy!” says Susan, with a
suspicious catching in her breath. “You, you won’t be angry with me
now. Now will you?”
“Angry, Susan!”
“No, no; I am sure you won’t. I say you won’t, my pet, my dearest!”
exclaims Susan; “and here’s the Captain too—your friend the Captain,
you know—to say good-bye once more!”
“Hooroar, my Heart’s Delight!” vociferates the Captain, with a
countenance of strong emotion. “Hooroar, Wal”r my lad. Hooroar!
Hooroar!”
What with the young husband at one window, and the young wife at the
other; the Captain hanging on at this door, and Susan Nipper holding
fast by that; the coach obliged to go on whether it will or no, and all
the other carts and coaches turbulent because it hesitates; there never
was so much confusion on four wheels. But Susan Nipper gallantly
maintains her point. She keeps a smiling face upon her mistress,
smiling through her tears, until the last. Even when she is left
behind, the Captain continues to appear and disappear at the door,
crying “Hooroar, my lad! Hooroar, my Heart’s Delight!” with his
shirt-collar in a violent state of agitation, until it is hopeless to
attempt to keep up with the coach any longer. Finally, when the coach
is gone, Susan Nipper, being rejoined by the Captain, falls into a
state of insensibility, and is taken into a baker’s shop to recover.
Uncle Sol and Mr Toots wait patiently in the churchyard, sitting on the
coping-stone of the railings, until Captain Cuttle and Susan come back.
Neither being at all desirous to speak, or to be spoken to, they are
excellent company, and quite satisfied. When they all arrive again at
the little Midshipman, and sit down to breakfast, nobody can touch a
morsel. Captain Cuttle makes a feint of being voracious about toast,
but gives it up as a swindle. Mr Toots says, after breakfast, he will
come back in the evening; and goes wandering about the town all day,
with a vague sensation upon him as if he hadn’t been to bed for a
fortnight.
There is a strange charm in the house, and in the room, in which they
have been used to be together, and out of which so much is gone. It
aggravates, and yet it soothes, the sorrow of the separation. Mr Toots
tells Susan Nipper when he comes at night, that he hasn’t been so
wretched all day long, and yet he likes it. He confides in Susan
Nipper, being alone with her, and tells her what his feelings were when
she gave him that candid opinion as to the probability of Miss Dombey’s
ever loving him. In the vein of confidence engendered by these common
recollections, and their tears, Mr Toots proposes that they shall go
out together, and buy something for supper. Miss Nipper assenting, they
buy a good many little things; and, with the aid of Mrs Richards, set
the supper out quite showily before the Captain and old Sol came home.
The Captain and old Sol have been on board the ship, and have
established Di there, and have seen the chests put aboard. They have
much to tell about the popularity of Walter, and the comforts he will
have about him, and the quiet way in which it seems he has been working
early and late, to make his cabin what the Captain calls “a picter,” to
surprise his little wife. “A admiral’s cabin, mind you,” says the
Captain, “ain’t more trim.”
But one of the Captain’s chief delights is, that he knows the big
watch, and the sugar-tongs, and tea-spoons, are on board: and again and
again he murmurs to himself, “Ed’ard Cuttle, my lad, you never shaped a
better course in your life than when you made that there little
property over jintly. You see how the land bore, Ed’ard,” says the
Captain, “and it does you credit, my lad.”
The old Instrument-maker is more distraught and misty than he used to
be, and takes the marriage and the parting very much to heart. But he
is greatly comforted by having his old ally, Ned Cuttle, at his side;
and he sits down to supper with a grateful and contented face.
“My boy has been preserved and thrives,” says old Sol Gills, rubbing
his hands. “What right have I to be otherwise than thankful and happy!”
The Captain, who has not yet taken his seat at the table, but who has
been fidgeting about for some time, and now stands hesitating in his
place, looks doubtfully at Mr Gills, and says:
“Sol! There’s the last bottle of the old Madeira down below. Would you
wish to have it up tonight, my boy, and drink to Wal”r and his wife?”
The Instrument-maker, looking wistfully at the Captain, puts his hand
into the breast-pocket of his coffee-coloured coat, brings forth his
pocket-book, and takes a letter out.
“To Mr Dombey,” says the old man. “From Walter. To be sent in three
weeks’ time. I’ll read it.”
“‘Sir. I am married to your daughter. She is gone with me upon a
distant voyage. To be devoted to her is to have no claim on her or you,
but God knows that I am.
“‘Why, loving her beyond all earthly things, I have yet, without
remorse, united her to the uncertainties and dangers of my life, I will
not say to you. You know why, and you are her father.
“‘Do not reproach her. She has never reproached you.
“‘I do not think or hope that you will ever forgive me. There is
nothing I expect less. But if an hour should come when it will comfort
you to believe that Florence has someone ever near her, the great
charge of whose life is to cancel her remembrance of past sorrow, I
solemnly assure you, you may, in that hour, rest in that belief.’”
Solomon puts back the letter carefully in his pocket-book, and puts
back his pocket-book in his coat.
“We won’t drink the last bottle of the old Madeira yet, Ned,” says the
old man thoughtfully. “Not yet.
“Not yet,” assents the Captain. “No. Not yet.”
Susan and Mr Toots are of the same opinion. After a silence they all
sit down to supper, and drink to the young husband and wife in
something else; and the last bottle of the old Madeira still remains
among its dust and cobwebs, undisturbed.
A few days have elapsed, and a stately ship is out at sea, spreading
its white wings to the favouring wind.
Upon the deck, image to the roughest man on board of something that is
graceful, beautiful, and harmless—something that it is good and
pleasant to have there, and that should make the voyage prosperous—is
Florence. It is night, and she and Walter sit alone, watching the
solemn path of light upon the sea between them and the moon.
At length she cannot see it plainly, for the tears that fill her eyes;
and then she lays her head down on his breast, and puts her arms around
his neck, saying, “Oh Walter, dearest love, I am so happy!”
Her husband holds her to his heart, and they are very quiet, and the
stately ship goes on serenely.
“As I hear the sea,” says Florence, “and sit watching it, it brings so
many days into my mind. It makes me think so much—”
“Of Paul, my love. I know it does.”
Of Paul and Walter. And the voices in the waves are always whispering
to Florence, in their ceaseless murmuring, of love—of love, eternal and
illimitable, not bounded by the confines of this world, or by the end
of time, but ranging still, beyond the sea, beyond the sky, to the
invisible country far away!
CHAPTER LVIII.
After a Lapse
The sea had ebbed and flowed, through a whole year. Through a whole
year, the winds and clouds had come and gone; the ceaseless work of
Time had been performed, in storm and sunshine. Through a whole year,
the tides of human chance and change had set in their allotted courses.
Through a whole year, the famous House of Dombey and Son had fought a
fight for life, against cross accidents, doubtful rumours, unsuccessful
ventures, unpropitious times, and most of all, against the infatuation
of its head, who would not contract its enterprises by a hair’s
breadth, and would not listen to a word of warning that the ship he
strained so hard against the storm, was weak, and could not bear it.
The year was out, and the great House was down.
One summer afternoon; a year, wanting some odd days, after the marriage
in the City church; there was a buzz and whisper upon “Change of a
great failure. A certain cold proud man, well known there, was not
there, nor was he represented there. Next day it was noised abroad that
Dombey and Son had stopped, and next night there was a List of
Bankrupts published, headed by that name.
The world was very busy now, in sooth, and had a deal to say. It was an
innocently credulous and a much ill-used world. It was a world in which
there was no other sort of bankruptcy whatever. There were no
conspicuous people in it, trading far and wide on rotten banks of
religion, patriotism, virtue, honour. There was no amount worth
mentioning of mere paper in circulation, on which anybody lived pretty
handsomely, promising to pay great sums of goodness with no effects.
There were no shortcomings anywhere, in anything but money. The world
was very angry indeed; and the people especially, who, in a worse
world, might have been supposed to be apt traders themselves in shows
and pretences, were observed to be mightily indignant.
Here was a new inducement to dissipation, presented to that sport of
circumstances, Mr Perch the Messenger! It was apparently the fate of Mr
Perch to be always waking up, and finding himself famous. He had but
yesterday, as one might say, subsided into private life from the
celebrity of the elopement and the events that followed it; and now he
was made a more important man than ever, by the bankruptcy. Gliding
from his bracket in the outer office where he now sat, watching the
strange faces of accountants and others, who quickly superseded nearly
all the old clerks, Mr Perch had but to show himself in the court
outside, or, at farthest, in the bar of the King’s Arms, to be asked a
multitude of questions, almost certain to include that interesting
question, what would he take to drink? Then would Mr Perch descant upon
the hours of acute uneasiness he and Mrs Perch had suffered out at
Balls Pond, when they first suspected “things was going wrong.” Then
would Mr Perch relate to gaping listeners, in a low voice, as if the
corpse of the deceased House were lying unburied in the next room, how
Mrs Perch had first come to surmise that things was going wrong by
hearing him (Perch) moaning in his sleep, “twelve and ninepence in the
pound, twelve and ninepence in the pound!” Which act of somnambulism he
supposed to have originated in the impression made upon him by the
change in Mr Dombey’s face. Then would he inform them how he had once
said, “Might I make so bold as ask, Sir, are you unhappy in your mind?”
and how Mr Dombey had replied, “My faithful Perch—but no, it cannot