Dombey and Son
demeanour; and in order that he might forget nothing of what had
transpired, made notes of it on various small scraps of paper, with a
vast expenditure of ink. There was no danger of these documents
betraying anything, if accidentally lost; for long before a word was
dry, it became as profound a mystery to Rob, as if he had had no part
whatever in its production.
While he was yet busy with these labours, the hackney-coach, after
encountering unheard-of difficulties from swivel-bridges, soft roads,
impassable canals, caravans of casks, settlements of scarlet-beans and
little wash-houses, and many such obstacles abounding in that country,
stopped at the corner of Brig Place. Alighting here, Florence and Susan
Nipper walked down the street, and sought out the abode of Captain
Cuttle.
It happened by evil chance to be one of Mrs MacStinger’s great cleaning
days. On these occasions, Mrs MacStinger was knocked up by the
policeman at a quarter before three in the morning, and rarely
succumbed before twelve o’clock next night. The chief object of this
institution appeared to be, that Mrs MacStinger should move all the
furniture into the back garden at early dawn, walk about the house in
pattens all day, and move the furniture back again after dark. These
ceremonies greatly fluttered those doves the young MacStingers, who
were not only unable at such times to find any resting-place for the
soles of their feet, but generally came in for a good deal of pecking
from the maternal bird during the progress of the solemnities.
At the moment when Florence and Susan Nipper presented themselves at
Mrs MacStinger’s door, that worthy but redoubtable female was in the
act of conveying Alexander MacStinger, aged two years and three months,
along the passage, for forcible deposition in a sitting posture on the
street pavement: Alexander being black in the face with holding his
breath after punishment, and a cool paving-stone being usually found to
act as a powerful restorative in such cases.
The feelings of Mrs MacStinger, as a woman and a mother, were outraged
by the look of pity for Alexander which she observed on Florence’s
face. Therefore, Mrs MacStinger asserting those finest emotions of our
nature, in preference to weakly gratifying her curiosity, shook and
buffeted Alexander both before and during the application of the
paving-stone, and took no further notice of the strangers.
“I beg your pardon, Ma’am,” said Florence, when the child had found his
breath again, and was using it. “Is this Captain Cuttle’s house?”
“No,” said Mrs MacStinger.
“Not Number Nine?” asked Florence, hesitating.
“Who said it wasn’t Number Nine?” said Mrs MacStinger.
Susan Nipper instantly struck in, and begged to inquire what Mrs
MacStinger meant by that, and if she knew whom she was talking to.
Mrs MacStinger in retort, looked at her all over. “What do you want
with Captain Cuttle, I should wish to know?” said Mrs MacStinger.
“Should you? Then I’m sorry that you won’t be satisfied,” returned Miss
Nipper.
“Hush, Susan! If you please!” said Florence. “Perhaps you can have the
goodness to tell us where Captain Cuttle lives, Ma’am as he don’t live
here.”
“Who says he don’t live here?” retorted the implacable MacStinger. “I
said it wasn’t Cap’en Cuttle’s house—and it ain’t his house—and forbid
it, that it ever should be his house—for Cap’en Cuttle don’t know how
to keep a house—and don’t deserve to have a house—it’s my house—and
when I let the upper floor to Cap’en Cuttle, oh I do a thankless thing,
and cast pearls before swine!”
Mrs MacStinger pitched her voice for the upper windows in offering
these remarks, and cracked off each clause sharply by itself as if from
a rifle possessing an infinity of barrels. After the last shot, the
Captain’s voice was heard to say, in feeble remonstrance from his own
room, “Steady below!”
“Since you want Cap’en Cuttle, there he is!” said Mrs MacStinger, with
an angry motion of her hand. On Florence making bold to enter, without
any more parley, and on Susan following, Mrs MacStinger recommenced her
pedestrian exercise in pattens, and Alexander MacStinger (still on the
paving-stone), who had stopped in his crying to attend to the
conversation, began to wail again, entertaining himself during that
dismal performance, which was quite mechanical, with a general survey
of the prospect, terminating in the hackney-coach.
The Captain in his own apartment was sitting with his hands in his
pockets and his legs drawn up under his chair, on a very small desolate
island, lying about midway in an ocean of soap and water. The Captain’s
windows had been cleaned, the walls had been cleaned, the stove had
been cleaned, and everything the stove excepted, was wet, and shining
with soft soap and sand: the smell of which dry-saltery impregnated the
air. In the midst of the dreary scene, the Captain, cast away upon his
island, looked round on the waste of waters with a rueful countenance,
and seemed waiting for some friendly bark to come that way, and take
him off.
But when the Captain, directing his forlorn visage towards the door,
saw Florence appear with her maid, no words can describe his
astonishment. Mrs MacStinger’s eloquence having rendered all other
sounds but imperfectly distinguishable, he had looked for no rarer
visitor than the potboy or the milkman; wherefore, when Florence
appeared, and coming to the confines of the island, put her hand in
his, the Captain stood up, aghast, as if he supposed her, for the
moment, to be some young member of the Flying Dutchman’s family.
Instantly recovering his self-possession, however, the Captain’s first
care was to place her on dry land, which he happily accomplished, with
one motion of his arm. Issuing forth, then, upon the main, Captain
Cuttle took Miss Nipper round the waist, and bore her to the island
also. Captain Cuttle, then, with great respect and admiration, raised
the hand of Florence to his lips, and standing off a little (for the
island was not large enough for three), beamed on her from the soap and
water like a new description of Triton.
“You are amazed to see us, I am sure,” said Florence, with a smile.
The inexpressibly gratified Captain kissed his hook in reply, and
growled, as if a choice and delicate compliment were included in the
words, “Stand by! Stand by!”
“But I couldn’t rest,” said Florence, “without coming to ask you what
you think about dear Walter—who is my brother now—and whether there is
anything to fear, and whether you will not go and console his poor
Uncle every day, until we have some intelligence of him?”
At these words Captain Cuttle, as by an involuntary gesture, clapped
his hand to his head, on which the hard glazed hat was not, and looked
discomfited.
“Have you any fears for Walter’s safety?” inquired Florence, from whose
face the Captain (so enraptured he was with it) could not take his
eyes: while she, in her turn, looked earnestly at him, to be assured of
the sincerity of his reply.
“No, Heart’s-delight,” said Captain Cuttle, “I am not afeard. Wal”r is
a lad as’ll go through a deal o’ hard weather. Wal”r is a lad as’ll
bring as much success to that “ere brig as a lad is capable on. Wal”r,”
said the Captain, his eyes glistening with the praise of his young
friend, and his hook raised to announce a beautiful quotation, “is what
you may call a out’ard and visible sign of an in’ard and spirited
grasp, and when found make a note of.”
Florence, who did not quite understand this, though the Captain
evidently thought it full of meaning, and highly satisfactory, mildly
looked to him for something more.
“I am not afeard, my Heart’s-delight,” resumed the Captain, “There’s
been most uncommon bad weather in them latitudes, there’s no denyin’,
and they have drove and drove and been beat off, may be t’other side
the world. But the ship’s a good ship, and the lad’s a good lad; and it
ain’t easy, thank the Lord,” the Captain made a little bow, “to break
up hearts of oak, whether they’re in brigs or buzzums. Here we have ’em
both ways, which is bringing it up with a round turn, and so I ain’t a
bit afeard as yet.”
“As yet?” repeated Florence.
“Not a bit,” returned the Captain, kissing his iron hand; “and afore I
begin to be, my Hearts-delight, Wal”r will have wrote home from the
island, or from some port or another, and made all taut and
ship-shape.” And with regard to old Sol Gills, here the Captain became
solemn, “who I’ll stand by, and not desert until death do us part, and
when the stormy winds do blow, do blow, do blow—overhaul the
Catechism,” said the Captain parenthetically, “and there you’ll find
them expressions—if it would console Sol Gills to have the opinion of a
seafaring man as has got a mind equal to any undertaking that he puts
it alongside of, and as was all but smashed in his “prenticeship, and
of which the name is Bunsby, that “ere man shall give him such an
opinion in his own parlour as’ll stun him. Ah!” said Captain Cuttle,
vauntingly, “as much as if he’d gone and knocked his head again a
door!”
“Let us take this gentleman to see him, and let us hear what he says,”
cried Florence. “Will you go with us now? We have a coach here.”
Again the Captain clapped his hand to his head, on which the hard
glazed hat was not, and looked discomfited. But at this instant a most
remarkable phenomenon occurred. The door opening, without any note of
preparation, and apparently of itself, the hard glazed hat in question
skimmed into the room like a bird, and alighted heavily at the
Captain’s feet. The door then shut as violently as it had opened, and
nothing ensued in explanation of the prodigy.
Captain Cuttle picked up his hat, and having turned it over with a look
of interest and welcome, began to polish it on his sleeve. While doing
so, the Captain eyed his visitors intently, and said in a low voice,
“You see I should have bore down on Sol Gills yesterday, and this
morning, but she—she took it away and kept it. That’s the long and
short of the subject.”
“Who did, for goodness sake?” asked Susan Nipper.
“The lady of the house, my dear,” returned the Captain, in a gruff
whisper, and making signals of secrecy. “We had some words about the
swabbing of these here planks, and she—In short,” said the Captain,
eyeing the door, and relieving himself with a long breath, “she stopped
my liberty.”
“Oh! I wish she had me to deal with!” said Susan, reddening with the
energy of the wish. “I’d stop her!”
“Would you, do you, my dear?” rejoined the Captain, shaking his head
doubtfully, but regarding the desperate courage of the fair aspirant
with obvious admiration. “I don’t know. It’s difficult navigation.
She’s very hard to carry on with, my dear. You never can tell how
she’ll head, you see. She’s full one minute, and round upon you next.
And when she in a tartar,” said the Captain, with the perspiration
breaking out upon his forehead. There was nothing but a whistle
emphatic enough for the conclusion of the sentence, so the Captain
whistled tremulously. After which he again shook his head, and
recurring to his admiration of Miss Nipper’s devoted bravery, timidly
repeated, “Would you, do you think, my dear?”
Susan only replied with a bridling smile, but that was so very full of
defiance, that there is no knowing how long Captain Cuttle might have
stood entranced in its contemplation, if Florence in her anxiety had
not again proposed their immediately resorting to the oracular Bunsby.
Thus reminded of his duty, Captain Cuttle put on the glazed hat firmly,
took up another knobby stick, with which he had supplied the place of
that one given to Walter, and offering his arm to Florence, prepared to
cut his way through the enemy.