Dombey and Son
That he might do it the better, Captain Cuttle sometimes condescended,
of an evening after the shop was shut, to rehearse this scene: retiring
into the parlour for the purpose, as into the lodgings of a
supposititious MacStinger, and carefully observing the behaviour of his
ally, from the hole of espial he had cut in the wall. Rob the Grinder
discharged himself of his duty with so much exactness and judgment,
when thus put to the proof, that the Captain presented him, at divers
times, with seven sixpences, in token of satisfaction; and gradually
felt stealing over his spirit the resignation of a man who had made
provision for the worst, and taken every reasonable precaution against
an unrelenting fate.
Nevertheless, the Captain did not tempt ill-fortune, by being a whit
more venturesome than before. Though he considered it a point of good
breeding in himself, as a general friend of the family, to attend Mr
Dombey’s wedding (of which he had heard from Mr Perch), and to show
that gentleman a pleasant and approving countenance from the gallery,
he had repaired to the church in a hackney cabriolet with both windows
up; and might have scrupled even to make that venture, in his dread of
Mrs MacStinger, but that the lady’s attendance on the ministry of the
Reverend Melchisedech rendered it peculiarly unlikely that she would be
found in communion with the Establishment.
The Captain got safe home again, and fell into the ordinary routine of
his new life, without encountering any more direct alarm from the
enemy, than was suggested to him by the daily bonnets in the street.
But other subjects began to lay heavy on the Captain’s mind. Walter’s
ship was still unheard of. No news came of old Sol Gills. Florence did
not even know of the old man’s disappearance, and Captain Cuttle had
not the heart to tell her. Indeed the Captain, as his own hopes of the
generous, handsome, gallant-hearted youth, whom he had loved, according
to his rough manner, from a child, began to fade, and faded more and
more from day to day, shrunk with instinctive pain from the thought of
exchanging a word with Florence. If he had had good news to carry to
her, the honest Captain would have braved the newly decorated house and
splendid furniture—though these, connected with the lady he had seen at
church, were awful to him—and made his way into her presence. With a
dark horizon gathering around their common hopes, however, that
darkened every hour, the Captain almost felt as if he were a new
misfortune and affliction to her; and was scarcely less afraid of a
visit from Florence, than from Mrs MacStinger herself.
It was a chill dark autumn evening, and Captain Cuttle had ordered a
fire to be kindled in the little back parlour, now more than ever like
the cabin of a ship. The rain fell fast, and the wind blew hard; and
straying out on the house-top by that stormy bedroom of his old friend,
to take an observation of the weather, the Captain’s heart died within
him, when he saw how wild and desolate it was. Not that he associated
the weather of that time with poor Walter’s destiny, or doubted that if
Providence had doomed him to be lost and shipwrecked, it was over, long
ago; but that beneath an outward influence, quite distinct from the
subject-matter of his thoughts, the Captain’s spirits sank, and his
hopes turned pale, as those of wiser men had often done before him, and
will often do again.
Captain Cuttle, addressing his face to the sharp wind and slanting
rain, looked up at the heavy scud that was flying fast over the
wilderness of house-tops, and looked for something cheery there in
vain. The prospect near at hand was no better. In sundry tea-chests and
other rough boxes at his feet, the pigeons of Rob the Grinder were
cooing like so many dismal breezes getting up. A crazy weathercock of a
midshipman, with a telescope at his eye, once visible from the street,
but long bricked out, creaked and complained upon his rusty pivot as
the shrill blast spun him round and round, and sported with him
cruelly. Upon the Captain’s coarse blue vest the cold raindrops started
like steel beads; and he could hardly maintain himself aslant against
the stiff Nor’-Wester that came pressing against him, importunate to
topple him over the parapet, and throw him on the pavement below. If
there were any Hope alive that evening, the Captain thought, as he held
his hat on, it certainly kept house, and wasn’t out of doors; so the
Captain, shaking his head in a despondent manner, went in to look for
it.
Captain Cuttle descended slowly to the little back parlour, and, seated
in his accustomed chair, looked for it in the fire; but it was not
there, though the fire was bright. He took out his tobacco-box and
pipe, and composing himself to smoke, looked for it in the red glow
from the bowl, and in the wreaths of vapour that curled upward from his
lips; but there was not so much as an atom of the rust of Hope’s anchor
in either. He tried a glass of grog; but melancholy truth was at the
bottom of that well, and he couldn’t finish it. He made a turn or two
in the shop, and looked for Hope among the instruments; but they
obstinately worked out reckonings for the missing ship, in spite of any
opposition he could offer, that ended at the bottom of the lone sea.
The wind still rushing, and the rain still pattering, against the
closed shutters, the Captain brought to before the wooden Midshipman
upon the counter, and thought, as he dried the little officer’s uniform
with his sleeve, how many years the Midshipman had seen, during which
few changes—hardly any—had transpired among his ship’s company; how the
changes had come all together, one day, as it might be; and of what a
sweeping kind they were. Here was the little society of the back
parlour broken up, and scattered far and wide. Here was no audience for
Lovely Peg, even if there had been anybody to sing it, which there was
not; for the Captain was as morally certain that nobody but he could
execute that ballad, as he was that he had not the spirit, under
existing circumstances, to attempt it. There was no bright face of
“Wal”r” in the house;—here the Captain transferred his sleeve for a
moment from the Midshipman’s uniform to his own cheek;—the familiar wig
and buttons of Sol Gills were a vision of the past; Richard Whittington
was knocked on the head; and every plan and project in connexion with
the Midshipman, lay drifting, without mast or rudder, on the waste of
waters.
As the Captain, with a dejected face, stood revolving these thoughts,
and polishing the Midshipman, partly in the tenderness of old
acquaintance, and partly in the absence of his mind, a knocking at the
shop-door communicated a frightful start to the frame of Rob the
Grinder, seated on the counter, whose large eyes had been intently
fixed on the Captain’s face, and who had been debating within himself,
for the five hundredth time, whether the Captain could have done a
murder, that he had such an evil conscience, and was always running
away.
“What’s that?” said Captain Cuttle, softly.
“Somebody’s knuckles, Captain,” answered Rob the Grinder.
The Captain, with an abashed and guilty air, immediately walked on
tiptoe to the little parlour and locked himself in. Rob, opening the
door, would have parleyed with the visitor on the threshold if the
visitor had come in female guise; but the figure being of the male sex,
and Rob’s orders only applying to women, Rob held the door open and
allowed it to enter: which it did very quickly, glad to get out of the
driving rain.
“A job for Burgess and Co. at any rate,” said the visitor, looking over
his shoulder compassionately at his own legs, which were very wet and
covered with splashes. “Oh, how-de-do, Mr Gills?”
The salutation was addressed to the Captain, now emerging from the back
parlour with a most transparent and utterly futile affectation of
coming out by accidence.
“Thankee,” the gentleman went on to say in the same breath; “I’m very
well indeed, myself, I’m much obliged to you. My name is Toots,—Mister
Toots.”
The Captain remembered to have seen this young gentleman at the
wedding, and made him a bow. Mr Toots replied with a chuckle; and being
embarrassed, as he generally was, breathed hard, shook hands with the
Captain for a long time, and then falling on Rob the Grinder, in the
absence of any other resource, shook hands with him in a most
affectionate and cordial manner.
“I say! I should like to speak a word to you, Mr Gills, if you please,”
said Toots at length, with surprising presence of mind. “I say! Miss
D.O.M. you know!”
The Captain, with responsive gravity and mystery, immediately waved his
hook towards the little parlour, whither Mr Toots followed him.
“Oh! I beg your pardon though,” said Mr Toots, looking up in the
Captain’s face as he sat down in a chair by the fire, which the Captain
placed for him; “you don’t happen to know the Chicken at all; do you,
Mr Gills?”
“The Chicken?” said the Captain.
“The Game Chicken,” said Mr Toots.
The Captain shaking his head, Mr Toots explained that the man alluded
to was the celebrated public character who had covered himself and his
country with glory in his contest with the Nobby Shropshire One; but
this piece of information did not appear to enlighten the Captain very
much.
“Because he’s outside: that’s all,” said Mr Toots. “But it’s of no
consequence; he won’t get very wet, perhaps.”
“I can pass the word for him in a moment,” said the Captain.
“Well, if you would have the goodness to let him sit in the shop with
your young man,” chuckled Mr Toots, “I should be glad; because, you
know, he’s easily offended, and the damp’s rather bad for his stamina.
I’ll call him in, Mr Gills.”
With that, Mr Toots repairing to the shop-door, sent a peculiar whistle
into the night, which produced a stoical gentleman in a shaggy white
great-coat and a flat-brimmed hat, with very short hair, a broken nose,
and a considerable tract of bare and sterile country behind each ear.
“Sit down, Chicken,” said Mr Toots.
The compliant Chicken spat out some small pieces of straw on which he
was regaling himself, and took in a fresh supply from a reserve he
carried in his hand.
“There ain’t no drain of nothing short handy, is there?” said the
Chicken, generally. “This here sluicing night is hard lines to a man as
lives on his condition.”
Captain Cuttle proffered a glass of rum, which the Chicken, throwing
back his head, emptied into himself, as into a cask, after proposing
the brief sentiment, “Towards us!” Mr Toots and the Captain returning
then to the parlour, and taking their seats before the fire, Mr Toots
began:
“Mr Gills—”
“Awast!” said the Captain. “My name’s Cuttle.”
Mr Toots looked greatly disconcerted, while the Captain proceeded
gravely.
“Cap’en Cuttle is my name, and England is my nation, this here is my
dwelling-place, and blessed be creation—Job,” said the Captain, as an
index to his authority.
“Oh! I couldn’t see Mr Gills, could I?” said Mr Toots; “because—”
“If you could see Sol Gills, young gen’l’m’n,” said the Captain,
impressively, and laying his heavy hand on Mr Toots’s knee, “old Sol,
mind you—with your own eyes—as you sit there—you’d be welcomer to me,
than a wind astern, to a ship becalmed. But you can’t see Sol Gills.
And why can’t you see Sol Gills?” said the Captain, apprised by the
face of Mr Toots that he was making a profound impression on that
gentleman’s mind. “Because he’s inwisible.”
Mr Toots in his agitation was going to reply that it was of no
consequence at all. But he corrected himself, and said, “Lor bless me!”
“That there man,” said the Captain, “has left me in charge here by a
piece of writing, but though he was a’most as good as my sworn brother,