Dombey and Son
of the year, Walter pulled off his hat to Florence in the street, and
Florence would stop to shake hands. Mrs Wickam (who, with a
characteristic alteration of his name, invariably spoke of him as
“Young Graves”) was so well used to this, knowing the story of their
acquaintance, that she took no heed of it at all. Miss Nipper, on the
other hand, rather looked out for these occasions: her sensitive young
heart being secretly propitiated by Walter’s good looks, and inclining
to the belief that its sentiments were responded to.
In this way, Walter, so far from forgetting or losing sight of his
acquaintance with Florence, only remembered it better and better. As to
its adventurous beginning, and all those little circumstances which
gave it a distinctive character and relish, he took them into account,
more as a pleasant story very agreeable to his imagination, and not to
be dismissed from it, than as a part of any matter of fact with which
he was concerned. They set off Florence very much, to his fancy; but
not himself. Sometimes he thought (and then he walked very fast) what a
grand thing it would have been for him to have been going to sea on the
day after that first meeting, and to have gone, and to have done
wonders there, and to have stopped away a long time, and to have come
back an Admiral of all the colours of the dolphin, or at least a
Post-Captain with epaulettes of insupportable brightness, and have
married Florence (then a beautiful young woman) in spite of Mr Dombey’s
teeth, cravat, and watch-chain, and borne her away to the blue shores
of somewhere or other, triumphantly. But these flights of fancy seldom
burnished the brass plate of Dombey and Son’s Offices into a tablet of
golden hope, or shed a brilliant lustre on their dirty skylights; and
when the Captain and Uncle Sol talked about Richard Whittington and
masters’ daughters, Walter felt that he understood his true position at
Dombey and Son’s, much better than they did.
So it was that he went on doing what he had to do from day to day, in a
cheerful, pains-taking, merry spirit; and saw through the sanguine
complexion of Uncle Sol and Captain Cuttle; and yet entertained a
thousand indistinct and visionary fancies of his own, to which theirs
were work-a-day probabilities. Such was his condition at the Pipchin
period, when he looked a little older than of yore, but not much; and
was the same light-footed, light-hearted, light-headed lad, as when he
charged into the parlour at the head of Uncle Sol and the imaginary
boarders, and lighted him to bring up the Madeira.
“Uncle Sol,” said Walter, “I don’t think you’re well. You haven’t eaten
any breakfast. I shall bring a doctor to you, if you go on like this.”
“He can’t give me what I want, my boy,” said Uncle Sol. “At least he is
in good practice if he can—and then he wouldn’t.”
“What is it, Uncle? Customers?”
“Ay,” returned Solomon, with a sigh. “Customers would do.”
“Confound it, Uncle!” said Walter, putting down his breakfast cup with
a clatter, and striking his hand on the table: “when I see the people
going up and down the street in shoals all day, and passing and
re-passing the shop every minute, by scores, I feel half tempted to
rush out, collar somebody, bring him in, and make him buy fifty pounds’
worth of instruments for ready money. What are you looking in at the
door for?—” continued Walter, apostrophizing an old gentleman with a
powdered head (inaudibly to him of course), who was staring at a ship’s
telescope with all his might and main. “That’s no use. I could do that.
Come in and buy it!”
The old gentleman, however, having satiated his curiosity, walked
calmly away.
“There he goes!” said Walter. “That’s the way with ’em all. But,
Uncle—I say, Uncle Sol”—for the old man was meditating and had not
responded to his first appeal. “Don’t be cast down. Don’t be out of
spirits, Uncle. When orders do come, they’ll come in such a crowd, you
won’t be able to execute ’em.”
“I shall be past executing ’em, whenever they come, my boy,” returned
Solomon Gills. “They’ll never come to this shop again, till I am out of
t.”
“I say, Uncle! You musn’t really, you know!” urged Walter. “Don’t!”
Old Sol endeavoured to assume a cheery look, and smiled across the
little table at him as pleasantly as he could.
“There’s nothing more than usual the matter; is there, Uncle?” said
Walter, leaning his elbows on the tea tray, and bending over, to speak
the more confidentially and kindly. “Be open with me, Uncle, if there
is, and tell me all about it.”
“No, no, no,” returned Old Sol. “More than usual? No, no. What should
there be the matter more than usual?”
Walter answered with an incredulous shake of his head. “That’s what I
want to know,” he said, “and you ask me! I’ll tell you what, Uncle,
when I see you like this, I am quite sorry that I live with you.”
Old Sol opened his eyes involuntarily.
“Yes. Though nobody ever was happier than I am and always have been
with you, I am quite sorry that I live with you, when I see you with
anything in your mind.”
“I am a little dull at such times, I know,” observed Solomon, meekly
rubbing his hands.
“What I mean, Uncle Sol,” pursued Walter, bending over a little more to
pat him on the shoulder, “is, that then I feel you ought to have,
sitting here and pouring out the tea instead of me, a nice little
dumpling of a wife, you know,—a comfortable, capital, cosy old lady,
who was just a match for you, and knew how to manage you, and keep you
in good heart. Here am I, as loving a nephew as ever was (I am sure I
ought to be!) but I am only a nephew, and I can’t be such a companion
to you when you’re low and out of sorts as she would have made herself,
years ago, though I’m sure I’d give any money if I could cheer you up.
And so I say, when I see you with anything on your mind, that I feel
quite sorry you haven’t got somebody better about you than a blundering
young rough-and-tough boy like me, who has got the will to console you,
Uncle, but hasn’t got the way—hasn’t got the way,” repeated Walter,
reaching over further yet, to shake his Uncle by the hand.
“Wally, my dear boy,” said Solomon, “if the cosy little old lady had
taken her place in this parlour five and forty years ago, I never could
have been fonder of her than I am of you.”
“I know that, Uncle Sol,” returned Walter. “Lord bless you, I know
that. But you wouldn’t have had the whole weight of any uncomfortable
secrets if she had been with you, because she would have known how to
relieve you of ’em, and I don’t.”
“Yes, yes, you do,” returned the Instrument-maker.
“Well then, what’s the matter, Uncle Sol?” said Walter, coaxingly.
“Come! What’s the matter?”
Solomon Gills persisted that there was nothing the matter; and
maintained it so resolutely, that his nephew had no resource but to
make a very indifferent imitation of believing him.
“All I can say is, Uncle Sol, that if there is—”
“But there isn’t,” said Solomon.
“Very well,” said Walter. “Then I’ve no more to say; and that’s lucky,
for my time’s up for going to business. I shall look in by-and-by when
I’m out, to see how you get on, Uncle. And mind, Uncle! I’ll never
believe you again, and never tell you anything more about Mr Carker the
Junior, if I find out that you have been deceiving me!”
Solomon Gills laughingly defied him to find out anything of the kind;
and Walter, revolving in his thoughts all sorts of impracticable ways
of making fortunes and placing the wooden Midshipman in a position of
independence, betook himself to the offices of Dombey and Son with a
heavier countenance than he usually carried there.
There lived in those days, round the corner—in Bishopsgate Street
Without—one Brogley, sworn broker and appraiser, who kept a shop where
every description of second-hand furniture was exhibited in the most
uncomfortable aspect, and under circumstances and in combinations the
most completely foreign to its purpose. Dozens of chairs hooked on to
washing-stands, which with difficulty poised themselves on the
shoulders of sideboards, which in their turn stood upon the wrong side
of dining-tables, gymnastic with their legs upward on the tops of other
dining-tables, were among its most reasonable arrangements. A banquet
array of dish-covers, wine-glasses, and decanters was generally to be
seen, spread forth upon the bosom of a four-post bedstead, for the
entertainment of such genial company as half-a-dozen pokers, and a hall
lamp. A set of window curtains with no windows belonging to them, would
be seen gracefully draping a barricade of chests of drawers, loaded
with little jars from chemists’ shops; while a homeless hearthrug
severed from its natural companion the fireside, braved the shrewd east
wind in its adversity, and trembled in melancholy accord with the
shrill complainings of a cabinet piano, wasting away, a string a day,
and faintly resounding to the noises of the street in its jangling and
distracted brain. Of motionless clocks that never stirred a finger, and
seemed as incapable of being successfully wound up, as the pecuniary
affairs of their former owners, there was always great choice in Mr
Brogley’s shop; and various looking-glasses, accidentally placed at
compound interest of reflection and refraction, presented to the eye an
eternal perspective of bankruptcy and ruin.
Mr Brogley himself was a moist-eyed, pink-complexioned, crisp-haired
man, of a bulky figure and an easy temper—for that class of Caius
Marius who sits upon the ruins of other people’s Carthages, can keep up
his spirits well enough. He had looked in at Solomon’s shop sometimes,
to ask a question about articles in Solomon’s way of business; and
Walter knew him sufficiently to give him good day when they met in the
street. But as that was the extent of the broker’s acquaintance with
Solomon Gills also, Walter was not a little surprised when he came back
in the course of the forenoon, agreeably to his promise, to find Mr
Brogley sitting in the back parlour with his hands in his pockets, and
his hat hanging up behind the door.
“Well, Uncle Sol!” said Walter. The old man was sitting ruefully on the
opposite side of the table, with his spectacles over his eyes, for a
wonder, instead of on his forehead. “How are you now?”
Solomon shook his head, and waved one hand towards the broker, as
introducing him.
“Is there anything the matter?” asked Walter, with a catching in his
breath.
“No, no. There’s nothing the matter, said Mr Brogley. “Don’t let it put
you out of the way.”
Walter looked from the broker to his Uncle in mute amazement.
“The fact is,” said Mr Brogley, “there’s a little payment on a bond
debt —three hundred and seventy odd, overdue: and I’m in possession.”
“In possession!” cried Walter, looking round at the shop.
“Ah!” said Mr Brogley, in confidential assent, and nodding his head as
if he would urge the advisability of their all being comfortable
together. “It’s an execution. That’s what it is. Don’t let it put you
out of the way. I come myself, because of keeping it quiet and
sociable. You know me. It’s quite private.”
“Uncle Sol!” faltered Walter.
“Wally, my boy,” returned his uncle. “It’s the first time. Such a
calamity never happened to me before. I’m an old man to begin.” Pushing
up his spectacles again (for they were useless any longer to conceal
his emotion), he covered his face with his hand, and sobbed aloud, and
his tears fell down upon his coffee-coloured waistcoat.
“Uncle Sol! Pray! oh don’t!” exclaimed Walter, who really felt a thrill
of terror in seeing the old man weep. “For God’s sake don’t do that. Mr
Brogley, what shall I do?”
“I should recommend you looking up a friend or so,” said Mr Brogley,
“and talking it over.”