Dombey and Son
waistcoat, and bustling very much, “if you’ll come and break the news
to Uncle Sol (which he ought to have known, days upon days ago, by
rights), I’ll leave you at the door, you know, and walk about until the
afternoon.”
The Captain, however, scarcely appeared to relish the commission, or to
be by any means confident of his powers of executing it. He had
arranged the future life and adventures of Walter so very differently,
and so entirely to his own satisfaction; he had felicitated himself so
often on the sagacity and foresight displayed in that arrangement, and
had found it so complete and perfect in all its parts; that to suffer
it to go to pieces all at once, and even to assist in breaking it up,
required a great effort of his resolution. The Captain, too, found it
difficult to unload his old ideas upon the subject, and to take a
perfectly new cargo on board, with that rapidity which the
circumstances required, or without jumbling and confounding the two.
Consequently, instead of putting on his coat and waistcoat with
anything like the impetuosity that could alone have kept pace with
Walter’s mood, he declined to invest himself with those garments at all
at present; and informed Walter that on such a serious matter, he must
be allowed to “bite his nails a bit”.
“It’s an old habit of mine, Wal”r,” said the Captain, “any time these
fifty year. When you see Ned Cuttle bite his nails, Wal”r, then you may
know that Ned Cuttle’s aground.”
Thereupon the Captain put his iron hook between his teeth, as if it
were a hand; and with an air of wisdom and profundity that was the very
concentration and sublimation of all philosophical reflection and grave
inquiry, applied himself to the consideration of the subject in its
various branches.
“There’s a friend of mine,” murmured the Captain, in an absent manner,
“but he’s at present coasting round to Whitby, that would deliver such
an opinion on this subject, or any other that could be named, as would
give Parliament six and beat ’em. Been knocked overboard, that man,”
said the Captain, “twice, and none the worse for it. Was beat in his
apprenticeship, for three weeks (off and on), about the head with a
ring-bolt. And yet a clearer-minded man don’t walk.”
In spite of his respect for Captain Cuttle, Walter could not help
inwardly rejoicing at the absence of this sage, and devoutly hoping
that his limpid intellect might not be brought to bear on his
difficulties until they were quite settled.
“If you was to take and show that man the buoy at the Nore,” said
Captain Cuttle in the same tone, “and ask him his opinion of it, Wal”r,
he’d give you an opinion that was no more like that buoy than your
Uncle’s buttons are. There ain’t a man that walks—certainly not on two
legs—that can come near him. Not near him!”
“What’s his name, Captain Cuttle?” inquired Walter, determined to be
interested in the Captain’s friend.
“His name’s Bunsby,” said the Captain. “But Lord, it might be anything
for the matter of that, with such a mind as his!”
The exact idea which the Captain attached to this concluding piece of
praise, he did not further elucidate; neither did Walter seek to draw
it forth. For on his beginning to review, with the vivacity natural to
himself and to his situation, the leading points in his own affairs, he
soon discovered that the Captain had relapsed into his former profound
state of mind; and that while he eyed him steadfastly from beneath his
bushy eyebrows, he evidently neither saw nor heard him, but remained
immersed in cogitation.
In fact, Captain Cuttle was labouring with such great designs, that far
from being aground, he soon got off into the deepest of water, and
could find no bottom to his penetration. By degrees it became perfectly
plain to the Captain that there was some mistake here; that it was
undoubtedly much more likely to be Walter’s mistake than his; that if
there were really any West India scheme afoot, it was a very different
one from what Walter, who was young and rash, supposed; and could only
be some new device for making his fortune with unusual celerity. “Or if
there should be any little hitch between ’em,” thought the Captain,
meaning between Walter and Mr Dombey, “it only wants a word in season
from a friend of both parties, to set it right and smooth, and make all
taut again.” Captain Cuttle’s deduction from these considerations was,
that as he already enjoyed the pleasure of knowing Mr Dombey, from
having spent a very agreeable half-hour in his company at Brighton (on
the morning when they borrowed the money); and that, as a couple of men
of the world, who understood each other, and were mutually disposed to
make things comfortable, could easily arrange any little difficulty of
this sort, and come at the real facts; the friendly thing for him to do
would be, without saying anything about it to Walter at present, just
to step up to Mr Dombey’s house—say to the servant “Would ye be so
good, my lad, as report Cap’en Cuttle here?”—meet Mr Dombey in a
confidential spirit—hook him by the button-hole—talk it over—make it
all right—and come away triumphant!
As these reflections presented themselves to the Captain’s mind, and by
slow degrees assumed this shape and form, his visage cleared like a
doubtful morning when it gives place to a bright noon. His eyebrows,
which had been in the highest degree portentous, smoothed their rugged
bristling aspect, and became serene; his eyes, which had been nearly
closed in the severity of his mental exercise, opened freely; a smile
which had been at first but three specks—one at the right-hand corner
of his mouth, and one at the corner of each eye—gradually overspread
his whole face, and, rippling up into his forehead, lifted the glazed
hat: as if that too had been aground with Captain Cuttle, and were now,
like him, happily afloat again.
Finally, the Captain left off biting his nails, and said, “Now, Wal”r,
my boy, you may help me on with them slops.” By which the Captain meant
his coat and waistcoat.
Walter little imagined why the Captain was so particular in the
arrangement of his cravat, as to twist the pendent ends into a sort of
pigtail, and pass them through a massive gold ring with a picture of a
tomb upon it, and a neat iron railing, and a tree, in memory of some
deceased friend. Nor why the Captain pulled up his shirt-collar to the
utmost limits allowed by the Irish linen below, and by so doing
decorated himself with a complete pair of blinkers; nor why he changed
his shoes, and put on an unparalleled pair of ankle-jacks, which he
only wore on extraordinary occasions. The Captain being at length
attired to his own complete satisfaction, and having glanced at himself
from head to foot in a shaving-glass which he removed from a nail for
that purpose, took up his knotted stick, and said he was ready.
The Captain’s walk was more complacent than usual when they got out
into the street; but this Walter supposed to be the effect of the
ankle-jacks, and took little heed of. Before they had gone very far,
they encountered a woman selling flowers; when the Captain stopping
short, as if struck by a happy idea, made a purchase of the largest
bundle in her basket: a most glorious nosegay, fan-shaped, some two
feet and a half round, and composed of all the jolliest-looking flowers
that blow.
Armed with this little token which he designed for Mr Dombey, Captain
Cuttle walked on with Walter until they reached the Instrument-maker’s
door, before which they both paused.
“You’re going in?” said Walter.
“Yes,” returned the Captain, who felt that Walter must be got rid of
before he proceeded any further, and that he had better time his
projected visit somewhat later in the day.
“And you won’t forget anything?”
“No,” returned the Captain.
“I’ll go upon my walk at once,” said Walter, “and then I shall be out
of the way, Captain Cuttle.”
“Take a good long “un, my lad!” replied the Captain, calling after him.
Walter waved his hand in assent, and went his way.
His way was nowhere in particular; but he thought he would go out into
the fields, where he could reflect upon the unknown life before him,
and resting under some tree, ponder quietly. He knew no better fields
than those near Hampstead, and no better means of getting at them than
by passing Mr Dombey’s house.
It was as stately and as dark as ever, when he went by and glanced up
at its frowning front. The blinds were all pulled down, but the upper
windows stood wide open, and the pleasant air stirring those curtains
and waving them to and fro was the only sign of animation in the whole
exterior. Walter walked softly as he passed, and was glad when he had
left the house a door or two behind.
He looked back then; with the interest he had always felt for the place
since the adventure of the lost child, years ago; and looked especially
at those upper windows. While he was thus engaged, a chariot drove to
the door, and a portly gentleman in black, with a heavy watch-chain,
alighted, and went in. When he afterwards remembered this gentleman and
his equipage together, Walter had no doubt he was a physician; and then
he wondered who was ill; but the discovery did not occur to him until
he had walked some distance, thinking listlessly of other things.
Though still, of what the house had suggested to him; for Walter
pleased himself with thinking that perhaps the time might come, when
the beautiful child who was his old friend and had always been so
grateful to him and so glad to see him since, might interest her
brother in his behalf and influence his fortunes for the better. He
liked to imagine this—more, at that moment, for the pleasure of
imagining her continued remembrance of him, than for any worldly profit
he might gain: but another and more sober fancy whispered to him that
if he were alive then, he would be beyond the sea and forgotten; she
married, rich, proud, happy. There was no more reason why she should
remember him with any interest in such an altered state of things, than
any plaything she ever had. No, not so much.
Yet Walter so idealised the pretty child whom he had found wandering in
the rough streets, and so identified her with her innocent gratitude of
that night and the simplicity and truth of its expression, that he
blushed for himself as a libeller when he argued that she could ever
grow proud. On the other hand, his meditations were of that fantastic
order that it seemed hardly less libellous in him to imagine her grown
a woman: to think of her as anything but the same artless, gentle,
winning little creature, that she had been in the days of Good Mrs
Brown. In a word, Walter found out that to reason with himself about
Florence at all, was to become very unreasonable indeed; and that he
could do no better than preserve her image in his mind as something
precious, unattainable, unchangeable, and indefinite—indefinite in all
but its power of giving him pleasure, and restraining him like an
angel’s hand from anything unworthy.
It was a long stroll in the fields that Walter took that day, listening
to the birds, and the Sunday bells, and the softened murmur of the
town—breathing sweet scents; glancing sometimes at the dim horizon
beyond which his voyage and his place of destination lay; then looking
round on the green English grass and the home landscape. But he hardly
once thought, even of going away, distinctly; and seemed to put off
reflection idly, from hour to hour, and from minute to minute, while he
yet went on reflecting all the time.
Walter had left the fields behind him, and was plodding homeward in the
same abstracted mood, when he heard a shout from a man, and then a
woman’s voice calling to him loudly by name. Turning quickly in his