Dombey and Son
upstairs again, she would have sent Florence into the inner room to say
good-night to her father, but the child was timid and drew back; and
when she urged her again, said, spreading her hands before her eyes, as
if to shut out her own unworthiness, “Oh no, no! He don’t want me. He
don’t want me!”
The little altercation between them had attracted the notice of Mr
Dombey, who inquired from the table where he was sitting at his wine,
what the matter was.
“Miss Florence was afraid of interrupting, Sir, if she came in to say
good-night,” said Richards.
“It doesn’t matter,” returned Mr Dombey. “You can let her come and go
without regarding me.”
The child shrunk as she listened—and was gone, before her humble friend
looked round again.
However, Polly triumphed not a little in the success of her
well-intentioned scheme, and in the address with which she had brought
it to bear: whereof she made a full disclosure to Spitfire when she was
once more safely entrenched upstairs. Miss Nipper received that proof
of her confidence, as well as the prospect of their free association
for the future, rather coldly, and was anything but enthusiastic in her
demonstrations of joy.
“I thought you would have been pleased,” said Polly.
“Oh yes, Mrs Richards, I’m very well pleased, thank you,” returned
Susan, who had suddenly become so very upright that she seemed to have
put an additional bone in her stays.
“You don’t show it,” said Polly.
“Oh! Being only a permanency I couldn’t be expected to show it like a
temporary,” said Susan Nipper. “Temporaries carries it all before ’em
here, I find, but though there’s a excellent party-wall between this
house and the next, I mayn’t exactly like to go to it, Mrs Richards,
notwithstanding!”
CHAPTER IV.
In which some more First Appearances are made on the Stage of these
Adventures
Though the offices of Dombey and Son were within the liberties of the
City of London, and within hearing of Bow Bells, when their clashing
voices were not drowned by the uproar in the streets, yet were there
hints of adventurous and romantic story to be observed in some of the
adjacent objects. Gog and Magog held their state within ten minutes’
walk; the Royal Exchange was close at hand; the Bank of England, with
its vaults of gold and silver “down among the dead men” underground,
was their magnificent neighbour. Just round the corner stood the rich
East India House, teeming with suggestions of precious stuffs and
stones, tigers, elephants, howdahs, hookahs, umbrellas, palm trees,
palanquins, and gorgeous princes of a brown complexion sitting on
carpets, with their slippers very much turned up at the toes. Anywhere
in the immediate vicinity there might be seen pictures of ships
speeding away full sail to all parts of the world; outfitting
warehouses ready to pack off anybody anywhere, fully equipped in half
an hour; and little timber midshipmen in obsolete naval uniforms,
eternally employed outside the shop doors of nautical Instrument-makers
in taking observations of the hackney carriages.
Sole master and proprietor of one of these effigies—of that which might
be called, familiarly, the woodenest—of that which thrust itself out
above the pavement, right leg foremost, with a suavity the least
endurable, and had the shoe buckles and flapped waistcoat the least
reconcileable to human reason, and bore at its right eye the most
offensively disproportionate piece of machinery—sole master and
proprietor of that Midshipman, and proud of him too, an elderly
gentleman in a Welsh wig had paid house-rent, taxes, rates, and dues,
for more years than many a full-grown midshipman of flesh and blood has
numbered in his life; and midshipmen who have attained a pretty green
old age, have not been wanting in the English Navy.
The stock-in-trade of this old gentleman comprised chronometers,
barometers, telescopes, compasses, charts, maps, sextants, quadrants,
and specimens of every kind of instrument used in the working of a
ship’s course, or the keeping of a ship’s reckoning, or the prosecuting
of a ship’s discoveries. Objects in brass and glass were in his drawers
and on his shelves, which none but the initiated could have found the
top of, or guessed the use of, or having once examined, could have ever
got back again into their mahogany nests without assistance. Everything
was jammed into the tightest cases, fitted into the narrowest corners,
fenced up behind the most impertinent cushions, and screwed into the
acutest angles, to prevent its philosophical composure from being
disturbed by the rolling of the sea. Such extraordinary precautions
were taken in every instance to save room, and keep the thing compact;
and so much practical navigation was fitted, and cushioned, and screwed
into every box (whether the box was a mere slab, as some were, or
something between a cocked hat and a star-fish, as others were, and
those quite mild and modest boxes as compared with others); that the
shop itself, partaking of the general infection, seemed almost to
become a snug, sea-going, ship-shape concern, wanting only good
sea-room, in the event of an unexpected launch, to work its way
securely to any desert island in the world.
Many minor incidents in the household life of the Ships’
Instrument-maker who was proud of his little Midshipman, assisted and
bore out this fancy. His acquaintance lying chiefly among
ship-chandlers and so forth, he had always plenty of the veritable
ships’ biscuit on his table. It was familiar with dried meats and
tongues, possessing an extraordinary flavour of rope yarn. Pickles were
produced upon it, in great wholesale jars, with “dealer in all kinds of
Ships’ Provisions” on the label; spirits were set forth in case bottles
with no throats. Old prints of ships with alphabetical references to
their various mysteries, hung in frames upon the walls; the Tartar
Frigate under weigh, was on the plates; outlandish shells, seaweeds,
and mosses, decorated the chimney-piece; the little wainscotted back
parlour was lighted by a sky-light, like a cabin.
Here he lived too, in skipper-like state, all alone with his nephew
Walter: a boy of fourteen who looked quite enough like a midshipman, to
carry out the prevailing idea. But there it ended, for Solomon Gills
himself (more generally called old Sol) was far from having a maritime
appearance. To say nothing of his Welsh wig, which was as plain and
stubborn a Welsh wig as ever was worn, and in which he looked like
anything but a Rover, he was a slow, quiet-spoken, thoughtful old
fellow, with eyes as red as if they had been small suns looking at you
through a fog; and a newly-awakened manner, such as he might have
acquired by having stared for three or four days successively through
every optical instrument in his shop, and suddenly came back to the
world again, to find it green. The only change ever known in his
outward man, was from a complete suit of coffee-colour cut very square,
and ornamented with glaring buttons, to the same suit of coffee-colour
minus the inexpressibles, which were then of a pale nankeen. He wore a
very precise shirt-frill, and carried a pair of first-rate spectacles
on his forehead, and a tremendous chronometer in his fob, rather than
doubt which precious possession, he would have believed in a conspiracy
against it on part of all the clocks and watches in the City, and even
of the very Sun itself. Such as he was, such he had been in the shop
and parlour behind the little Midshipman, for years upon years; going
regularly aloft to bed every night in a howling garret remote from the
lodgers, where, when gentlemen of England who lived below at ease had
little or no idea of the state of the weather, it often blew great
guns.
It is half-past five o’clock, and an autumn afternoon, when the reader
and Solomon Gills become acquainted. Solomon Gills is in the act of
seeing what time it is by the unimpeachable chronometer. The usual
daily clearance has been making in the City for an hour or more; and
the human tide is still rolling westward. “The streets have thinned,”
as Mr Gills says, “very much.” It threatens to be wet tonight. All the
weatherglasses in the shop are in low spirits, and the rain already
shines upon the cocked hat of the wooden Midshipman.
“Where’s Walter, I wonder!” said Solomon Gills, after he had carefully
put up the chronometer again. “Here’s dinner been ready, half an hour,
and no Walter!”
Turning round upon his stool behind the counter, Mr Gills looked out
among the instruments in the window, to see if his nephew might be
crossing the road. No. He was not among the bobbing umbrellas, and he
certainly was not the newspaper boy in the oilskin cap who was slowly
working his way along the piece of brass outside, writing his name over
Mr Gills’s name with his forefinger.
“If I didn’t know he was too fond of me to make a run of it, and go and
enter himself aboard ship against my wishes, I should begin to be
fidgetty,” said Mr Gills, tapping two or three weather-glasses with his
knuckles. “I really should. All in the Downs, eh! Lots of moisture!
Well! it’s wanted.”
“I believe,” said Mr Gills, blowing the dust off the glass top of a
compass-case, “that you don’t point more direct and due to the back
parlour than the boy’s inclination does after all. And the parlour
couldn’t bear straighter either. Due north. Not the twentieth part of a
point either way.”
“Halloa, Uncle Sol!”
“Halloa, my boy!” cried the Instrument-maker, turning briskly round.
“What! you are here, are you?”
A cheerful looking, merry boy, fresh with running home in the rain;
fair-faced, bright-eyed, and curly-haired.
“Well, Uncle, how have you got on without me all day? Is dinner ready?
I’m so hungry.”
“As to getting on,” said Solomon good-naturedly, “it would be odd if I
couldn’t get on without a young dog like you a great deal better than
with you. As to dinner being ready, it’s been ready this half hour and
waiting for you. As to being hungry, I am!”
“Come along then, Uncle!” cried the boy. “Hurrah for the admiral!”
“Confound the admiral!” returned Solomon Gills. “You mean the Lord
Mayor.”
“No I don’t!” cried the boy. “Hurrah for the admiral! Hurrah for the
admiral! For-ward!”
At this word of command, the Welsh wig and its wearer were borne
without resistance into the back parlour, as at the head of a boarding
party of five hundred men; and Uncle Sol and his nephew were speedily
engaged on a fried sole with a prospect of steak to follow.
“The Lord Mayor, Wally,” said Solomon, “for ever! No more admirals. The
Lord Mayor’s your admiral.”
“Oh, is he though!” said the boy, shaking his head. “Why, the Sword
Bearer’s better than him. He draws his sword sometimes.”
“And a pretty figure he cuts with it for his pains,” returned the
Uncle. “Listen to me, Wally, listen to me. Look on the mantelshelf.”
“Why who has cocked my silver mug up there, on a nail?” exclaimed the
boy.
“I have,” said his Uncle. “No more mugs now. We must begin to drink out
of glasses today, Walter. We are men of business. We belong to the
City. We started in life this morning.”
“Well, Uncle,” said the boy, “I’ll drink out of anything you like, so
long as I can drink to you. Here’s to you, Uncle Sol, and Hurrah for
the—”
“Lord Mayor,” interrupted the old man.
“For the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, Common Council, and Livery,” said the
boy. “Long life to ’em!”
The uncle nodded his head with great satisfaction. “And now,” he said,
“let’s hear something about the Firm.”
“Oh! there’s not much to be told about the Firm, Uncle,” said the boy,
plying his knife and fork. “It’s a precious dark set of offices, and in
the room where I sit, there’s a high fender, and an iron safe, and some