Dombey and Son
“Are there only you two, then?” inquired Florence.
“Only us two,” said the man. “Her mother has been dead these ten year.
Martha!” (he lifted up his head again, and whistled to her) “won’t you
say a word to the pretty young lady?”
The girl made an impatient gesture with her cowering shoulders, and
turned her head another way. Ugly, misshapen, peevish, ill-conditioned,
ragged, dirty—but beloved! Oh yes! Florence had seen her father’s look
towards her, and she knew whose look it had no likeness to.
“I’m afraid she’s worse this morning, my poor girl!” said the man,
suspending his work, and contemplating his ill-favoured child, with a
compassion that was the more tender for being rougher.
“She is ill, then!” said Florence.
The man drew a deep sigh. “I don’t believe my Martha’s had five short
days’ good health,” he answered, looking at her still, “in as many long
years.”
“Ay! and more than that, John,” said a neighbour, who had come down to
help him with the boat.
“More than that, you say, do you?” cried the other, pushing back his
battered hat, and drawing his hand across his forehead. “Very like. It
seems a long, long time.”
“And the more the time,” pursued the neighbour, “the more you’ve
favoured and humoured her, John, till she’s got to be a burden to
herself, and everybody else.”
“Not to me,” said her father, falling to his work. “Not to me.”
Florence could feel—who better?—how truly he spoke. She drew a little
closer to him, and would have been glad to touch his rugged hand, and
thank him for his goodness to the miserable object that he looked upon
with eyes so different from any other man’s.
“Who would favour my poor girl—to call it favouring—if I didn’t?” said
the father.
“Ay, ay,” cried the neighbour. “In reason, John. But you! You rob
yourself to give to her. You bind yourself hand and foot on her
account. You make your life miserable along of her. And what does she
care! You don’t believe she knows it?”
The father lifted up his head again, and whistled to her. Martha made
the same impatient gesture with her crouching shoulders, in reply; and
he was glad and happy.
“Only for that, Miss,” said the neighbour, with a smile, in which there
was more of secret sympathy than he expressed; “only to get that, he
never lets her out of his sight!”
“Because the day’ll come, and has been coming a long while,” observed
the other, bending low over his work, “when to get half as much from
that unfort’nate child of mine—to get the trembling of a finger, or the
waving of a hair—would be to raise the dead.”
Florence softly put some money near his hand on the old boat, and left
him.
And now Florence began to think, if she were to fall ill, if she were
to fade like her dear brother, would he then know that she had loved
him; would she then grow dear to him; would he come to her bedside,
when she was weak and dim of sight, and take her into his embrace, and
cancel all the past? Would he so forgive her, in that changed
condition, for not having been able to lay open her childish heart to
him, as to make it easy to relate with what emotions she had gone out
of his room that night; what she had meant to say if she had had the
courage; and how she had endeavoured, afterwards, to learn the way she
never knew in infancy?
Yes, she thought if she were dying, he would relent. She thought, that
if she lay, serene and not unwilling to depart, upon the bed that was
curtained round with recollections of their darling boy, he would be
touched home, and would say, “Dear Florence, live for me, and we will
love each other as we might have done, and be as happy as we might have
been these many years!” She thought that if she heard such words from
him, and had her arms clasped round him, she could answer with a smile,
“It is too late for anything but this; I never could be happier, dear
father!” and so leave him, with a blessing on her lips.
The golden water she remembered on the wall, appeared to Florence, in
the light of such reflections, only as a current flowing on to rest,
and to a region where the dear ones, gone before, were waiting, hand in
hand; and often when she looked upon the darker river rippling at her
feet, she thought with awful wonder, but not terror, of that river
which her brother had so often said was bearing him away.
The father and his sick daughter were yet fresh in Florence’s mind,
and, indeed, that incident was not a week old, when Sir Barnet and his
lady going out walking in the lanes one afternoon, proposed to her to
bear them company. Florence readily consenting, Lady Skettles ordered
out young Barnet as a matter of course. For nothing delighted Lady
Skettles so much, as beholding her eldest son with Florence on his arm.
Barnet, to say the truth, appeared to entertain an opposite sentiment
on the subject, and on such occasions frequently expressed himself
audibly, though indefinitely, in reference to “a parcel of girls.” As
it was not easy to ruffle her sweet temper, however, Florence generally
reconciled the young gentleman to his fate after a few minutes, and
they strolled on amicably: Lady Skettles and Sir Barnet following, in a
state of perfect complacency and high gratification.
This was the order of procedure on the afternoon in question; and
Florence had almost succeeded in overruling the present objections of
Skettles Junior to his destiny, when a gentleman on horseback came
riding by, looked at them earnestly as he passed, drew in his rein,
wheeled round, and came riding back again, hat in hand.
The gentleman had looked particularly at Florence; and when the little
party stopped, on his riding back, he bowed to her, before saluting Sir
Barnet and his lady. Florence had no remembrance of having ever seen
him, but she started involuntarily when he came near her, and drew
back.
“My horse is perfectly quiet, I assure you,” said the gentleman.
It was not that, but something in the gentleman himself—Florence could
not have said what—that made her recoil as if she had been stung.
“I have the honour to address Miss Dombey, I believe?” said the
gentleman, with a most persuasive smile. On Florence inclining her
head, he added, “My name is Carker. I can hardly hope to be remembered
by Miss Dombey, except by name. Carker.”
Florence, sensible of a strange inclination to shiver, though the day
was hot, presented him to her host and hostess; by whom he was very
graciously received.
“I beg pardon,” said Mr Carker, “a thousand times! But I am going down
tomorrow morning to Mr Dombey, at Leamington, and if Miss Dombey can
entrust me with any commission, need I say how very happy I shall be?”
Sir Barnet immediately divining that Florence would desire to write a
letter to her father, proposed to return, and besought Mr Carker to
come home and dine in his riding gear. Mr Carker had the misfortune to
be engaged to dinner, but if Miss Dombey wished to write, nothing would
delight him more than to accompany them back, and to be her faithful
slave in waiting as long as she pleased. As he said this with his
widest smile, and bent down close to her to pat his horse’s neck,
Florence meeting his eyes, saw, rather than heard him say, “There is no
news of the ship!”
Confused, frightened, shrinking from him, and not even sure that he had
said those words, for he seemed to have shown them to her in some
extraordinary manner through his smile, instead of uttering them,
Florence faintly said that she was obliged to him, but she would not
write; she had nothing to say.
“Nothing to send, Miss Dombey?” said the man of teeth.
“Nothing,” said Florence, “but my—but my dear love—if you please.”
Disturbed as Florence was, she raised her eyes to his face with an
imploring and expressive look, that plainly besought him, if he
knew—which he as plainly did—that any message between her and her
father was an uncommon charge, but that one most of all, to spare her.
Mr Carker smiled and bowed low, and being charged by Sir Barnet with
the best compliments of himself and Lady Skettles, took his leave, and
rode away: leaving a favourable impression on that worthy couple.
Florence was seized with such a shudder as he went, that Sir Barnet,
adopting the popular superstition, supposed somebody was passing over
her grave. Mr Carker turning a corner, on the instant, looked back, and
bowed, and disappeared, as if he rode off to the churchyard straight,
to do it.
CHAPTER XXV.
Strange News of Uncle Sol
Captain Cuttle, though no sluggard, did not turn out so early on the
morning after he had seen Sol Gills, through the shop-window, writing
in the parlour, with the Midshipman upon the counter, and Rob the
Grinder making up his bed below it, but that the clocks struck six as
he raised himself on his elbow, and took a survey of his little
chamber. The Captain’s eyes must have done severe duty, if he usually
opened them as wide on awaking as he did that morning; and were but
roughly rewarded for their vigilance, if he generally rubbed them half
as hard. But the occasion was no common one, for Rob the Grinder had
certainly never stood in the doorway of Captain Cuttle’s room before,
and in it he stood then, panting at the Captain, with a flushed and
touzled air of Bed about him, that greatly heightened both his colour
and expression.
“Holloa!” roared the Captain. “What’s the matter?”
Before Rob could stammer a word in answer, Captain Cuttle turned out,
all in a heap, and covered the boy’s mouth with his hand.
“Steady, my lad,” said the Captain, “don’t ye speak a word to me as
yet!”
The Captain, looking at his visitor in great consternation, gently
shouldered him into the next room, after laying this injunction upon
him; and disappearing for a few moments, forthwith returned in the blue
suit. Holding up his hand in token of the injunction not yet being
taken off, Captain Cuttle walked up to the cupboard, and poured himself
out a dram; a counterpart of which he handed to the messenger. The
Captain then stood himself up in a corner, against the wall, as if to
forestall the possibility of being knocked backwards by the
communication that was to be made to him; and having swallowed his
liquor, with his eyes fixed on the messenger, and his face as pale as
his face could be, requested him to “heave ahead.”
“Do you mean, tell you, Captain?” asked Rob, who had been greatly
impressed by these precautions.
“Ay!” said the Captain.
“Well, Sir,” said Rob, “I ain’t got much to tell. But look here!”
Rob produced a bundle of keys. The Captain surveyed them, remained in
his corner, and surveyed the messenger.
“And look here!” pursued Rob.
The boy produced a sealed packet, which Captain Cuttle stared at as he
had stared at the keys.
“When I woke this morning, Captain,” said Rob, “which was about a
quarter after five, I found these on my pillow. The shop-door was
unbolted and unlocked, and Mr Gills gone.”
“Gone!” roared the Captain.
“Flowed, Sir,” returned Rob.
The Captain’s voice was so tremendous, and he came out of his corner
with such way on him, that Rob retreated before him into another
corner: holding out the keys and packet, to prevent himself from being
run down.
“‘For Captain Cuttle,’ Sir,” cried Rob, “is on the keys, and on the
packet too. Upon my word and honour, Captain Cuttle, I don’t know
anything more about it. I wish I may die if I do! Here’s a sitiwation
for a lad that’s just got a sitiwation,” cried the unfortunate Grinder,
screwing his cuff into his face: “his master bolted with his place, and
him blamed for it!”
These lamentations had reference to Captain Cuttle’s gaze, or rather
glare, which was full of vague suspicions, threatenings, and
denunciations. Taking the proffered packet from his hand, the Captain