Dombey and Son
I know no more where he’s gone, or why he’s gone; if so be to seek his
nevy, or if so be along of being not quite settled in his mind; than
you do. One morning at daybreak, he went over the side,” said the
Captain, “without a splash, without a ripple I have looked for that man
high and low, and never set eyes, nor ears, nor nothing else, upon him
from that hour.”
“But, good Gracious, Miss Dombey don’t know—” Mr Toots began.
“Why, I ask you, as a feeling heart,” said the Captain, dropping his
voice, “why should she know? why should she be made to know, until such
time as there wam’t any help for it? She took to old Sol Gills, did
that sweet creetur, with a kindness, with a affability, with a—what’s
the good of saying so? you know her.”
“I should hope so,” chuckled Mr Toots, with a conscious blush that
suffused his whole countenance.
“And you come here from her?” said the Captain.
“I should think so,” chuckled Mr Toots.
“Then all I need observe, is,” said the Captain, “that you know a
angel, and are chartered a angel.”
Mr Toots instantly seized the Captain’s hand, and requested the favour
of his friendship.
“Upon my word and honour,” said Mr Toots, earnestly, “I should be very
much obliged to you if you’d improve my acquaintance. I should like to
know you, Captain, very much. I really am in want of a friend, I am.
Little Dombey was my friend at old Blimber’s, and would have been now,
if he’d have lived. The Chicken,” said Mr Toots, in a forlorn whisper,
“is very well—admirable in his way—the sharpest man perhaps in the
world; there’s not a move he isn’t up to, everybody says so—but I don’t
know—he’s not everything. So she is an angel, Captain. If there is an
angel anywhere, it’s Miss Dombey. That’s what I’ve always said. Really
though, you know,” said Mr Toots, “I should be very much obliged to you
if you’d cultivate my acquaintance.”
Captain Cuttle received this proposal in a polite manner, but still
without committing himself to its acceptance; merely observing, “Ay,
ay, my lad. We shall see, we shall see;” and reminding Mr Toots of his
immediate mission, by inquiring to what he was indebted for the honour
of that visit.
“Why the fact is,” replied Mr Toots, “that it’s the young woman I come
from. Not Miss Dombey—Susan, you know.
The Captain nodded his head once, with a grave expression of face
indicative of his regarding that young woman with serious respect.
“And I’ll tell you how it happens,” said Mr Toots. “You know, I go and
call sometimes, on Miss Dombey. I don’t go there on purpose, you know,
but I happen to be in the neighbourhood very often; and when I find
myself there, why—why I call.”
“Nat’rally,” observed the Captain.
“Yes,” said Mr Toots. “I called this afternoon. Upon my word and
honour, I don’t think it’s possible to form an idea of the angel Miss
Dombey was this afternoon.”
The Captain answered with a jerk of his head, implying that it might
not be easy to some people, but was quite so to him.
“As I was coming out,” said Mr Toots, “the young woman, in the most
unexpected manner, took me into the pantry.”
The Captain seemed, for the moment, to object to this proceeding; and
leaning back in his chair, looked at Mr Toots with a distrustful, if
not threatening visage.
“Where she brought out,” said Mr Toots, “this newspaper. She told me
that she had kept it from Miss Dombey all day, on account of something
that was in it, about somebody that she and Dombey used to know; and
then she read the passage to me. Very well. Then she said—wait a
minute; what was it she said, though!”
Mr Toots, endeavouring to concentrate his mental powers on this
question, unintentionally fixed the Captain’s eye, and was so much
discomposed by its stern expression, that his difficulty in resuming
the thread of his subject was enhanced to a painful extent.
“Oh!” said Mr Toots after long consideration. “Oh, ah! Yes! She said
that she hoped there was a bare possibility that it mightn’t be true;
and that as she couldn’t very well come out herself, without surprising
Miss Dombey, would I go down to Mr Solomon Gills the Instrument-maker’s
in this street, who was the party’s Uncle, and ask whether he believed
it was true, or had heard anything else in the City. She said, if he
couldn’t speak to me, no doubt Captain Cuttle could. By the bye!” said
Mr Toots, as the discovery flashed upon him, “you, you know!”
The Captain glanced at the newspaper in Mr Toots’s hand, and breathed
short and hurriedly.
“Well,” pursued Mr Toots, “the reason why I’m rather late is, because I
went up as far as Finchley first, to get some uncommonly fine chickweed
that grows there, for Miss Dombey’s bird. But I came on here, directly
afterwards. You’ve seen the paper, I suppose?”
The Captain, who had become cautious of reading the news, lest he
should find himself advertised at full length by Mrs MacStinger, shook
his head.
“Shall I read the passage to you?” inquired Mr Toots.
The Captain making a sign in the affirmative, Mr Toots read as follows,
from the Shipping Intelligence:
“‘Southampton. The barque Defiance, Henry James, Commander, arrived in
this port today, with a cargo of sugar, coffee, and rum, reports that
being becalmed on the sixth day of her passage home from Jamaica,
in’—in such and such a latitude, you know,” said Mr Toots, after making
a feeble dash at the figures, and tumbling over them.
“Ay!” cried the Captain, striking his clenched hand on the table.
“Heave ahead, my lad!”
“—latitude,” repeated Mr Toots, with a startled glance at the Captain,
“and longitude so-and-so,—‘the look-out observed, half an hour before
sunset, some fragments of a wreck, drifting at about the distance of a
mile. The weather being clear, and the barque making no way, a boat was
hoisted out, with orders to inspect the same, when they were found to
consist of sundry large spars, and a part of the main rigging of an
English brig, of about five hundred tons burden, together with a
portion of the stem on which the words and letters “Son and H-” were
yet plainly legible. No vestige of any dead body was to be seen upon
the floating fragments. Log of the Defiance states, that a breeze
springing up in the night, the wreck was seen no more. There can be no
doubt that all surmises as to the fate of the missing vessel, the Son
and Heir, port of London, bound for Barbados, are now set at rest for
ever; that she broke up in the last hurricane; and that every soul on
board perished.’”
Captain Cuttle, like all mankind, little knew how much hope had
survived within him under discouragement, until he felt its
death-shock. During the reading of the paragraph, and for a minute or
two afterwards, he sat with his gaze fixed on the modest Mr Toots, like
a man entranced; then, suddenly rising, and putting on his glazed hat,
which, in his visitor’s honour, he had laid upon the table, the Captain
turned his back, and bent his head down on the little chimneypiece.
“Oh” upon my word and honour,” cried Mr Toots, whose tender heart was
moved by the Captain’s unexpected distress, “this is a most wretched
sort of affair this world is! Somebody’s always dying, or going and
doing something uncomfortable in it. I’m sure I never should have
looked forward so much, to coming into my property, if I had known
this. I never saw such a world. It’s a great deal worse than
Blimber’s.”
Captain Cuttle, without altering his position, signed to Mr Toots not
to mind him; and presently turned round, with his glazed hat thrust
back upon his ears, and his hand composing and smoothing his brown
face.
“Wal”r, my dear lad,” said the Captain, “farewell! Wal”r my child, my
boy, and man, I loved you! He warn’t my flesh and blood,” said the
Captain, looking at the fire—“I ain’t got none—but something of what a
father feels when he loses a son, I feel in losing Wal”r. For why?”
said the Captain. “Because it ain’t one loss, but a round dozen.
Where’s that there young school-boy with the rosy face and curly hair,
that used to be as merry in this here parlour, come round every week,
as a piece of music? Gone down with Wal”r. Where’s that there fresh
lad, that nothing couldn’t tire nor put out, and that sparkled up and
blushed so, when we joked him about Heart’s Delight, that he was
beautiful to look at? Gone down with Wal”r. Where’s that there man’s
spirit, all afire, that wouldn’t see the old man hove down for a
minute, and cared nothing for itself? Gone down with Wal”r. It ain’t
one Wal”r. There was a dozen Wal”rs that I know’d and loved, all
holding round his neck when he went down, and they’re a-holding round
mine now!”
Mr Toots sat silent: folding and refolding the newspaper as small as
possible upon his knee.
“And Sol Gills,” said the Captain, gazing at the fire, “poor nevyless
old Sol, where are you got to! you was left in charge of me; his last
words was, ‘Take care of my Uncle!’ What came over you, Sol, when you
went and gave the go-bye to Ned Cuttle; and what am I to put in my
accounts that he’s a looking down upon, respecting you! Sol Gills, Sol
Gills!” said the Captain, shaking his head slowly, “catch sight of that
there newspaper, away from home, with no one as know’d Wal”r by, to say
a word; and broadside to you broach, and down you pitch, head
foremost!”
Drawing a heavy sigh, the Captain turned to Mr Toots, and roused
himself to a sustained consciousness of that gentleman’s presence.
“My lad,” said the Captain, “you must tell the young woman honestly
that this here fatal news is too correct. They don’t romance, you see,
on such pints. It’s entered on the ship’s log, and that’s the truest
book as a man can write. To-morrow morning,” said the Captain, “I’ll
step out and make inquiries; but they’ll lead to no good. They can’t do
it. If you’ll give me a look-in in the forenoon, you shall know what I
have heerd; but tell the young woman from Cap’en Cuttle, that it’s
over. Over!” And the Captain, hooking off his glazed hat, pulled his
handkerchief out of the crown, wiped his grizzled head despairingly,
and tossed the handkerchief in again, with the indifference of deep
dejection.
“Oh! I assure you,” said Mr Toots, “really I am dreadfully sorry. Upon
my word I am, though I wasn’t acquainted with the party. Do you think
Miss Dombey will be very much affected, Captain Gills—I mean Mr
Cuttle?”
“Why, Lord love you,” returned the Captain, with something of
compassion for Mr Toots’s innocence. “When she warn’t no higher than
that, they were as fond of one another as two young doves.”
“Were they though!” said Mr Toots, with a considerably lengthened face.
“They were made for one another,” said the Captain, mournfully; “but
what signifies that now!”
“Upon my word and honour,” cried Mr Toots, blurting out his words
through a singular combination of awkward chuckles and emotion, “I’m
even more sorry than I was before. You know, Captain Gills, I—I
positively adore Miss Dombey;—I—I am perfectly sore with loving her;”
the burst with which this confession forced itself out of the unhappy
Mr Toots, bespoke the vehemence of his feelings; “but what would be the
good of my regarding her in this manner, if I wasn’t truly sorry for
her feeling pain, whatever was the cause of it. Mine ain’t a selfish
affection, you know,” said Mr Toots, in the confidence engendered by
his having been a witness of the Captain’s tenderness. “It’s the sort
of thing with me, Captain Gills, that if I could be run over—or—or
trampled upon—or—or thrown off a very high place-or anything of that
sort—for Miss Dombey’s sake, it would be the most delightful thing that
could happen to me.”
All this, Mr Toots said in a suppressed voice, to prevent its reaching
the jealous ears of the Chicken, who objected to the softer emotions;