Dombey and Son
which effort of restraint, coupled with the intensity of his feelings,
made him red to the tips of his ears, and caused him to present such an
affecting spectacle of disinterested love to the eyes of Captain
Cuttle, that the good Captain patted him consolingly on the back, and
bade him cheer up.
“Thankee, Captain Gills,” said Mr Toots, “it’s kind of you, in the
midst of your own troubles, to say so. I’m very much obliged to you. As
I said before, I really want a friend, and should be glad to have your
acquaintance. Although I am very well off,” said Mr Toots, with energy,
“you can’t think what a miserable Beast I am. The hollow crowd, you
know, when they see me with the Chicken, and characters of distinction
like that, suppose me to be happy; but I’m wretched. I suffer for Miss
Dombey, Captain Gills. I can’t get through my meals; I have no pleasure
in my tailor; I often cry when I’m alone. I assure you it’ll be a
satisfaction to me to come back to-morrow, or to come back fifty
times.”
Mr Toots, with these words, shook the Captain’s hand; and disguising
such traces of his agitation as could be disguised on so short a
notice, before the Chicken’s penetrating glance, rejoined that eminent
gentleman in the shop. The Chicken, who was apt to be jealous of his
ascendancy, eyed Captain Cuttle with anything but favour as he took
leave of Mr Toots, but followed his patron without being otherwise
demonstrative of his ill-will: leaving the Captain oppressed with
sorrow; and Rob the Grinder elevated with joy, on account of having had
the honour of staring for nearly half an hour at the conqueror of the
Nobby Shropshire One.
Long after Rob was fast asleep in his bed under the counter, the
Captain sat looking at the fire; and long after there was no fire to
look at, the Captain sat gazing on the rusty bars, with unavailing
thoughts of Walter and old Sol crowding through his mind. Retirement to
the stormy chamber at the top of the house brought no rest with it; and
the Captain rose up in the morning, sorrowful and unrefreshed.
As soon as the City offices were opened, the Captain issued forth to
the counting-house of Dombey and Son. But there was no opening of the
Midshipman’s windows that morning. Rob the Grinder, by the Captain’s
orders, left the shutters closed, and the house was as a house of
death.
It chanced that Mr Carker was entering the office, as Captain Cuttle
arrived at the door. Receiving the Manager’s benison gravely and
silently, Captain Cuttle made bold to accompany him into his own room.
“Well, Captain Cuttle,” said Mr Carker, taking up his usual position
before the fireplace, and keeping on his hat, “this is a bad business.”
“You have received the news as was in print yesterday, Sir?” said the
Captain.
“Yes,” said Mr Carker, “we have received it! It was accurately stated.
The underwriters suffer a considerable loss. We are very sorry. No
help! Such is life!”
Mr Carker pared his nails delicately with a penknife, and smiled at the
Captain, who was standing by the door looking at him.
“I excessively regret poor Gay,” said Carker, “and the crew. I
understand there were some of our very best men among ’em. It always
happens so. Many men with families too. A comfort to reflect that poor
Gay had no family, Captain Cuttle!”
The Captain stood rubbing his chin, and looking at the Manager. The
Manager glanced at the unopened letters lying on his desk, and took up
the newspaper.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Captain Cuttle?” he asked looking
off it, with a smiling and expressive glance at the door.
“I wish you could set my mind at rest, Sir, on something it’s uneasy
about,” returned the Captain.
“Ay!” exclaimed the Manager, “what’s that? Come, Captain Cuttle, I must
trouble you to be quick, if you please. I am much engaged.”
“Lookee here, Sir,” said the Captain, advancing a step. “Afore my
friend Wal”r went on this here disastrous voyage—”
“Come, come, Captain Cuttle,” interposed the smiling Manager, “don’t
talk about disastrous voyages in that way. We have nothing to do with
disastrous voyages here, my good fellow. You must have begun very early
on your day’s allowance, Captain, if you don’t remember that there are
hazards in all voyages, whether by sea or land. You are not made uneasy
by the supposition that young what’s-his-name was lost in bad weather
that was got up against him in these offices—are you? Fie, Captain!
Sleep, and soda-water, are the best cures for such uneasiness as that.”
“My lad,” returned the Captain, slowly—“you are a’most a lad to me, and
so I don’t ask your pardon for that slip of a word,—if you find any
pleasure in this here sport, you ain’t the gentleman I took you for.
And if you ain’t the gentleman I took you for, may be my mind has call
to be uneasy. Now this is what it is, Mr Carker.—Afore that poor lad
went away, according to orders, he told me that he warn’t a going away
for his own good, or for promotion, he know’d. It was my belief that he
was wrong, and I told him so, and I come here, your head governor being
absent, to ask a question or two of you in a civil way, for my own
satisfaction. Them questions you answered—free. Now it’ll ease my mind
to know, when all is over, as it is, and when what can’t be cured must
be endoored—for which, as a scholar, you’ll overhaul the book it’s in,
and thereof make a note—to know once more, in a word, that I warn’t
mistaken; that I warn’t back’ard in my duty when I didn’t tell the old
man what Wal”r told me; and that the wind was truly in his sail, when
he highsted of it for Barbados Harbour. Mr Carker,” said the Captain,
in the goodness of his nature, “when I was here last, we was very
pleasant together. If I ain’t been altogether so pleasant myself this
morning, on account of this poor lad, and if I have chafed again any
observation of yours that I might have fended off, my name is Ed’ard
Cuttle, and I ask your pardon.”
“Captain Cuttle,” returned the Manager, with all possible politeness,
“I must ask you to do me a favour.”
“And what is it, Sir?” inquired the Captain.
“To have the goodness to walk off, if you please,” rejoined the
Manager, stretching forth his arm, “and to carry your jargon somewhere
else.”
Every knob in the Captain’s face turned white with astonishment and
indignation; even the red rim on his forehead faded, like a rainbow
among the gathering clouds.
“I tell you what, Captain Cuttle,” said the Manager, shaking his
forefinger at him, and showing him all his teeth, but still amiably
smiling, “I was much too lenient with you when you came here before.
You belong to an artful and audacious set of people. In my desire to
save young what’s-his-name from being kicked out of this place, neck
and crop, my good Captain, I tolerated you; but for once, and only
once. Now, go, my friend!”
The Captain was absolutely rooted to the ground, and speechless—
“Go,” said the good-humoured Manager, gathering up his skirts, and
standing astride upon the hearth-rug, “like a sensible fellow, and let
us have no turning out, or any such violent measures. If Mr Dombey were
here, Captain, you might be obliged to leave in a more ignominious
manner, possibly. I merely say, Go!”
The Captain, laying his ponderous hand upon his chest, to assist
himself in fetching a deep breath, looked at Mr Carker from head to
foot, and looked round the little room, as if he did not clearly
understand where he was, or in what company.
“You are deep, Captain Cuttle,” pursued Carker, with the easy and
vivacious frankness of a man of the world who knew the world too well
to be ruffled by any discovery of misdoing, when it did not immediately
concern himself, “but you are not quite out of soundings,
either—neither you nor your absent friend, Captain. What have you done
with your absent friend, hey?”
Again the Captain laid his hand upon his chest. After drawing another
deep breath, he conjured himself to “stand by!” But in a whisper.
“You hatch nice little plots, and hold nice little councils, and make
nice little appointments, and receive nice little visitors, too,
Captain, hey?” said Carker, bending his brows upon him, without showing
his teeth any the less: “but it’s a bold measure to come here
afterwards. Not like your discretion! You conspirators, and hiders, and
runners-away, should know better than that. Will you oblige me by
going?”
“My lad,” gasped the Captain, in a choked and trembling voice, and with
a curious action going on in the ponderous fist; “there’s a many words
I could wish to say to you, but I don’t rightly know where they’re
stowed just at present. My young friend, Wal”r, was drownded only last
night, according to my reckoning, and it puts me out, you see. But you
and me will come alongside o’one another again, my lad,” said the
Captain, holding up his hook, “if we live.”
“It will be anything but shrewd in you, my good fellow, if we do,”
returned the Manager, with the same frankness; “for you may rely, I
give you fair warning, upon my detecting and exposing you. I don’t
pretend to be a more moral man than my neighbours, my good Captain; but
the confidence of this House, or of any member of this House, is not to
be abused and undermined while I have eyes and ears. Good day!” said Mr
Carker, nodding his head.
Captain Cuttle, looking at him steadily (Mr Carker looked full as
steadily at the Captain), went out of the office and left him standing
astride before the fire, as calm and pleasant as if there were no more
spots upon his soul than on his pure white linen, and his smooth sleek
skin.
The Captain glanced, in passing through the outer counting-house, at
the desk where he knew poor Walter had been used to sit, now occupied
by another young boy, with a face almost as fresh and hopeful as his on
the day when they tapped the famous last bottle but one of the old
Madeira, in the little back parlour. The nation of ideas, thus
awakened, did the Captain a great deal of good; it softened him in the
very height of his anger, and brought the tears into his eyes.
Arrived at the wooden Midshipman’s again, and sitting down in a corner
of the dark shop, the Captain’s indignation, strong as it was, could
make no head against his grief. Passion seemed not only to do wrong and
violence to the memory of the dead, but to be infected by death, and to
droop and decline beside it. All the living knaves and liars in the
world, were nothing to the honesty and truth of one dead friend.
The only thing the honest Captain made out clearly, in this state of
mind, besides the loss of Walter, was, that with him almost the whole
world of Captain Cuttle had been drowned. If he reproached himself
sometimes, and keenly too, for having ever connived at Walter’s
innocent deceit, he thought at least as often of the Mr Carker whom no
sea could ever render up; and the Mr Dombey, whom he now began to
perceive was as far beyond human recall; and the “Heart’s Delight,”
with whom he must never foregather again; and the Lovely Peg, that
teak-built and trim ballad, that had gone ashore upon a rock, and split
into mere planks and beams of rhyme. The Captain sat in the dark shop,
thinking of these things, to the entire exclusion of his own injury;
and looking with as sad an eye upon the ground, as if in contemplation
of their actual fragments, as they floated past.
But the Captain was not unmindful, for all that, of such decent and
rest observances in memory of poor Walter, as he felt within his power.
Rousing himself, and rousing Rob the Grinder (who in the unnatural
twilight was fast asleep), the Captain sallied forth with his attendant
at his heels, and the door-key in his pocket, and repairing to one of
those convenient slop-selling establishments of which there is abundant