Dombey and Son
“To be sure!” cried Walter, catching at anything. “Certainly! Thankee.
Captain Cuttle’s the man, Uncle. Wait till I run to Captain Cuttle.
Keep your eye upon my Uncle, will you, Mr Brogley, and make him as
comfortable as you can while I am gone? Don’t despair, Uncle Sol. Try
and keep a good heart, there’s a dear fellow!”
Saying this with great fervour, and disregarding the old man’s broken
remonstrances, Walter dashed out of the shop again as hard as he could
go; and, having hurried round to the office to excuse himself on the
plea of his Uncle’s sudden illness, set off, full speed, for Captain
Cuttle’s residence.
Everything seemed altered as he ran along the streets. There were the
usual entanglement and noise of carts, drays, omnibuses, waggons, and
foot passengers, but the misfortune that had fallen on the wooden
Midshipman made it strange and new. Houses and shops were different
from what they used to be, and bore Mr Brogley’s warrant on their
fronts in large characters. The broker seemed to have got hold of the
very churches; for their spires rose into the sky with an unwonted air.
Even the sky itself was changed, and had an execution in it plainly.
Captain Cuttle lived on the brink of a little canal near the India
Docks, where there was a swivel bridge which opened now and then to let
some wandering monster of a ship come roaming up the street like a
stranded leviathan. The gradual change from land to water, on the
approach to Captain Cuttle’s lodgings, was curious. It began with the
erection of flagstaffs, as appurtenances to public-houses; then came
slop-sellers’ shops, with Guernsey shirts, sou’wester hats, and canvas
pantaloons, at once the tightest and the loosest of their order,
hanging up outside. These were succeeded by anchor and chain-cable
forges, where sledgehammers were dinging upon iron all day long. Then
came rows of houses, with little vane-surmounted masts uprearing
themselves from among the scarlet beans. Then, ditches. Then, pollard
willows. Then, more ditches. Then, unaccountable patches of dirty
water, hardly to be descried, for the ships that covered them. Then,
the air was perfumed with chips; and all other trades were swallowed up
in mast, oar, and block-making, and boatbuilding. Then, the ground grew
marshy and unsettled. Then, there was nothing to be smelt but rum and
sugar. Then, Captain Cuttle’s lodgings—at once a first floor and a top
storey, in Brig Place—were close before you.
The Captain was one of those timber-looking men, suits of oak as well
as hearts, whom it is almost impossible for the liveliest imagination
to separate from any part of their dress, however insignificant.
Accordingly, when Walter knocked at the door, and the Captain instantly
poked his head out of one of his little front windows, and hailed him,
with the hard glared hat already on it, and the shirt-collar like a
sail, and the wide suit of blue, all standing as usual, Walter was as
fully persuaded that he was always in that state, as if the Captain had
been a bird and those had been his feathers.
“Wal”r, my lad!” said Captain Cuttle. “Stand by and knock again. Hard!
It’s washing day.”
Walter, in his impatience, gave a prodigious thump with the knocker.
“Hard it is!” said Captain Cuttle, and immediately drew in his head, as
if he expected a squall.
Nor was he mistaken: for a widow lady, with her sleeves rolled up to
her shoulders, and her arms frothy with soap-suds and smoking with hot
water, replied to the summons with startling rapidity. Before she
looked at Walter she looked at the knocker, and then, measuring him
with her eyes from head to foot, said she wondered he had left any of
it.
“Captain Cuttle’s at home, I know,” said Walter with a conciliatory
smile.
“Is he?” replied the widow lady. “In-deed!”
“He has just been speaking to me,” said Walter, in breathless
explanation.
“Has he?” replied the widow lady. “Then p’raps you’ll give him Mrs
MacStinger’s respects, and say that the next time he lowers himself and
his lodgings by talking out of the winder she’ll thank him to come down
and open the door too.” Mrs MacStinger spoke loud, and listened for any
observations that might be offered from the first floor.
“I’ll mention it,” said Walter, “if you’ll have the goodness to let me
in, Ma’am.”
For he was repelled by a wooden fortification extending across the
doorway, and put there to prevent the little MacStingers in their
moments of recreation from tumbling down the steps.
“A boy that can knock my door down,” said Mrs MacStinger,
contemptuously, “can get over that, I should hope!” But Walter, taking
this as a permission to enter, and getting over it, Mrs MacStinger
immediately demanded whether an Englishwoman’s house was her castle or
not; and whether she was to be broke in upon by “raff.” On these
subjects her thirst for information was still very importunate, when
Walter, having made his way up the little staircase through an
artificial fog occasioned by the washing, which covered the banisters
with a clammy perspiration, entered Captain Cuttle’s room, and found
that gentleman in ambush behind the door.
“Never owed her a penny, Wal”r,” said Captain Cuttle, in a low voice,
and with visible marks of trepidation on his countenance. “Done her a
world of good turns, and the children too. Vixen at times, though.
Whew!”
“I should go away, Captain Cuttle,” said Walter.
“Dursn’t do it, Wal”r,” returned the Captain. “She’d find me out,
wherever I went. Sit down. How’s Gills?”
The Captain was dining (in his hat) off cold loin of mutton, porter,
and some smoking hot potatoes, which he had cooked himself, and took
out of a little saucepan before the fire as he wanted them. He
unscrewed his hook at dinner-time, and screwed a knife into its wooden
socket instead, with which he had already begun to peel one of these
potatoes for Walter. His rooms were very small, and strongly
impregnated with tobacco-smoke, but snug enough: everything being
stowed away, as if there were an earthquake regularly every half-hour.
“How’s Gills?” inquired the Captain.
Walter, who had by this time recovered his breath, and lost his
spirits—or such temporary spirits as his rapid journey had given
him—looked at his questioner for a moment, said “Oh, Captain Cuttle!”
and burst into tears.
No words can describe the Captain’s consternation at this sight. Mrs
MacStinger faded into nothing before it. He dropped the potato and the
fork—and would have dropped the knife too if he could—and sat gazing at
the boy, as if he expected to hear next moment that a gulf had opened
in the City, which had swallowed up his old friend, coffee-coloured
suit, buttons, chronometer, spectacles, and all.
But when Walter told him what was really the matter, Captain Cuttle,
after a moment’s reflection, started up into full activity. He emptied
out of a little tin canister on the top shelf of the cupboard, his
whole stock of ready money (amounting to thirteen pounds and
half-a-crown), which he transferred to one of the pockets of his square
blue coat; further enriched that repository with the contents of his
plate chest, consisting of two withered atomies of tea-spoons, and an
obsolete pair of knock-knee’d sugar-tongs; pulled up his immense
double-cased silver watch from the depths in which it reposed, to
assure himself that that valuable was sound and whole; re-attached the
hook to his right wrist; and seizing the stick covered over with knobs,
bade Walter come along.
Remembering, however, in the midst of his virtuous excitement, that Mrs
MacStinger might be lying in wait below, Captain Cuttle hesitated at
last, not without glancing at the window, as if he had some thoughts of
escaping by that unusual means of egress, rather than encounter his
terrible enemy. He decided, however, in favour of stratagem.
“Wal”r,” said the Captain, with a timid wink, “go afore, my lad. Sing
out, ‘good-bye, Captain Cuttle,’ when you’re in the passage, and shut
the door. Then wait at the corner of the street “till you see me.
These directions were not issued without a previous knowledge of the
enemy’s tactics, for when Walter got downstairs, Mrs MacStinger glided
out of the little back kitchen, like an avenging spirit. But not
gliding out upon the Captain, as she had expected, she merely made a
further allusion to the knocker, and glided in again.
Some five minutes elapsed before Captain Cuttle could summon courage to
attempt his escape; for Walter waited so long at the street corner,
looking back at the house, before there were any symptoms of the hard
glazed hat. At length the Captain burst out of the door with the
suddenness of an explosion, and coming towards him at a great pace, and
never once looking over his shoulder, pretended, as soon as they were
well out of the street, to whistle a tune.
“Uncle much hove down, Wal”r?” inquired the Captain, as they were
walking along.
“I am afraid so. If you had seen him this morning, you would never have
forgotten it.”
“Walk fast, Wal”r, my lad,” returned the Captain, mending his pace;
“and walk the same all the days of your life. Overhaul the catechism
for that advice, and keep it!”
The Captain was too busy with his own thoughts of Solomon Gills,
mingled perhaps with some reflections on his late escape from Mrs
MacStinger, to offer any further quotations on the way for Walter’s
moral improvement They interchanged no other word until they arrived at
old Sol’s door, where the unfortunate wooden Midshipman, with his
instrument at his eye, seemed to be surveying the whole horizon in
search of some friend to help him out of his difficulty.
“Gills!” said the Captain, hurrying into the back parlour, and taking
him by the hand quite tenderly. “Lay your head well to the wind, and
we’ll fight through it. All you’ve got to do,” said the Captain, with
the solemnity of a man who was delivering himself of one of the most
precious practical tenets ever discovered by human wisdom, “is to lay
your head well to the wind, and we’ll fight through it!”
Old Sol returned the pressure of his hand, and thanked him.
Captain Cuttle, then, with a gravity suitable to the nature of the
occasion, put down upon the table the two tea-spoons and the
sugar-tongs, the silver watch, and the ready money; and asked Mr
Brogley, the broker, what the damage was.
“Come! What do you make of it?” said Captain Cuttle.
“Why, Lord help you!” returned the broker; “you don’t suppose that
property’s of any use, do you?”
“Why not?” inquired the Captain.
“Why? The amount’s three hundred and seventy, odd,” replied the broker.
“Never mind,” returned the Captain, though he was evidently dismayed by
the figures: “all’s fish that comes to your net, I suppose?”
“Certainly,” said Mr Brogley. “But sprats ain’t whales, you know.”
The philosophy of this observation seemed to strike the Captain. He
ruminated for a minute; eyeing the broker, meanwhile, as a deep genius;
and then called the Instrument-maker aside.
“Gills,” said Captain Cuttle, “what’s the bearings of this business?
Who’s the creditor?”
“Hush!” returned the old man. “Come away. Don’t speak before Wally.
It’s a matter of security for Wally’s father—an old bond. I’ve paid a
good deal of it, Ned, but the times are so bad with me that I can’t do
more just now. I’ve foreseen it, but I couldn’t help it. Not a word
before Wally, for all the world.”
“You’ve got some money, haven’t you?” whispered the Captain.
“Yes, yes—oh yes—I’ve got some,” returned old Sol, first putting his
hands into his empty pockets, and then squeezing his Welsh wig between
them, as if he thought he might wring some gold out of it; “but I—the
little I have got, isn’t convertible, Ned; it can’t be got at. I have