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young mistress was well, and Mr Toots said it was ofno consequence. To her
amazement, Mr Toots, instead of going off, like a rocket, after that
observation, lingered and chuckled.
'Perhaps you'd like to walk upstairs, Sir!' said Susan.
'Well, I think I will come in!' said Mr Toots.
But instead of walking upstairs, the bold Toots made an awkward plunge
at Susan when the door was shut, and embracing that fair creature, kissed
her on the cheek
'Go along with you!~ cried Susan, 'or Ill tear your eyes out.'
'Just another!' said Mr Toots.
'Go along with you!' exclaimed Susan, giving him a push 'Innocents like
you, too! Who'll begin next? Go along, Sir!'
Susan was not in any serious strait, for she could hardly speak for
laughing; but Diogenes, on the staircase, hearing a rustling against the
wall, and a shuffling of feet, and seeing through the banisters that there
was some contention going on, and foreign invasion in the house, formed a
different opinion, dashed down to the rescue, and in the twinkling of an eye
had Mr Toots by the leg.
Susan screamed, laughed, opened the street-door, and ran downstairs;
the bold Toots tumbled staggering out into the street, with Diogenes holding
on to one leg of his pantaioons, as if Burgess and Co. were his cooks, and
had provided that dainty morsel for his holiday entertainment; Diogenes
shaken off, rolled over and over in the dust, got up' again, whirled round
the giddy Toots and snapped at him: and all this turmoil Mr Carker, reigning
up his horse and sitting a little at a distance, saw to his amazement, issue
from the stately house of Mr Dombey.
Mr Carker remained watching the discomfited Toots, when Diogenes was
called in, and the door shut: and while that gentleman, taking refuge in a
doorway near at hand, bound up the torn leg of his pantaloons with a costly
silk handkerchief that had formed part of his expensive outfit for the
advent
'I beg your pardon, Sir,' said Mr Carker, riding up, with his most
propitiatory smile. 'I hope you are not hurt?'
'Oh no, thank you,' replied Mr Toots, raising his flushed face, 'it's
of no consequence' Mr Toots would have signified, if he could, that he liked
it very much.
'If the dog's teeth have entered the leg, Sir - ' began Carker, with a
display of his own'
'No, thank you,' said Mr Toots, 'it's all quite right. It's very
comfortable, thank you.'
'I have the pleasure of knowing Mr Dombey,' observed Carker.
'Have you though?' rejoined the blushing Took
'And you will allow me, perhaps, to apologise, in his absence,' said Mr
Carker, taking off his hat, 'for such a misadventure, and to wonder how it
can possibly have happened.'
Mr Toots is so much gratified by this politeness, and the lucky chance
of making frends with a friend of Mr Dombey, that he pulls out his card-case
which he never loses an opportunity of using, and hands his name and address
to Mr Carker: who responds to that courtesy by giving him his own, and with
that they part.
As Mr Carker picks his way so softly past the house, looking up at the
windows, and trying to make out the pensive face behind the curtain looking
at the children opposite, the rough head of Diogenes came clambering up
close by it, and the dog, regardless of all soothing, barks and growls, and
makes at him from that height, as ifhe would spring down and tear him limb
from limb.
Well spoken, Di, so near your Mistress! Another, and another with your
head up, your eyes flashing, and your vexed mouth worrying itself, for want
of him! Another, as he picks his way along! You have a good scent, Di, -
cats, boy, cats!
Florence solitary, and the Midshipman mysterious
Florence lived alone in the great dreary house, and day succeeded day,
and still she lived alone; and the blank walls looked down upon her with a
vacant stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like mind to stare her youth and
beauty into stone.
No magic dwelling-place in magic story, shut up in the heart of a thick
wood, was ever more solitary and deserted to the fancy, than was her
father's mansion in its grim reality, as it stood lowering on the street:
always by night, when lights were shining from neighbouring windows, a blot
upon its scanty brightness; always by day, a frown upon its never-smiling
face.
There were not two dragon sentries keeping ward before the gate of this
above, as in magic legend are usually found on duty over the wronged
innocence imprisoned; but besides a glowering visage, with its thin lips
parted wickedly, that surveyed all comers from above the archway of the
door, there was a monstrous fantasy of rusty iron, curling and twisting like
a petrifaction of an arbour over threshold, budding in spikes and corkscrew
points, and bearing, one on either side, two ominous extinguishers, that
seemed to say, 'Who enter here, leave light behind!' There were no
talismanic characters engraven on the portal, but the house was now so
neglected in appearance, that boys chalked the railings and the pavement -
particularly round the corner where the side wall was - and drew ghosts on
the stable door; and being sometimes driven off by Mr Towlinson, made
portraits of him, in return, with his ears growing out horizontally from
under his hat. Noise ceased to be, within the shadow of the roof. The brass
band that came into the street once a week, in the morning, never brayed a
note in at those windows; but all such company, down to a poor little piping
organ of weak intellect, with an imbecile party of automaton dancers,
waltzing in and out at folding-doors, fell off from it with one accord, and
shunned it as a hopeless place.
The spell upon it was more wasting than the spell that used to set
enchanted houses sleeping once upon a time, but left their waking freshness
unimpaired. The passive desolation of disuse was everywhere silently
manifest about it. Within doors, curtains, drooping heavily, lost their old
folds and shapes, and hung like cumbrous palls. Hecatombs of furniture,
still piled and covered up, shrunk like imprisoned and forgotten men, and
changed insensibly. Mirrors were dim as with the breath of years. Patterns
of carpets faded and became perplexed and faint, like the memory of those
years' trifling incidents. Boards, starting at unwonted footsteps, creaked
and shook. Keys rusted in the locks of doors. Damp started on the walls, and
as the stains came out, the pictures seemed to go in and secrete themselves.
Mildew and mould began to lurk in closets. Fungus trees grew in corners of
the cellars. Dust accumulated, nobody knew whence nor how; spiders, moths,
and grubs were heard of every day. An exploratory blackbeetle now and then
was found immovable upon the stairs, or in an upper room, as wondering how
he got there. Rats began to squeak and scuffle in the night time, through
dark galleries they mined behind the panelling.
The dreary magnificence of the state rooms, seen imperfectly by the
doubtful light admitted through closed shutters, would have answered well
enough for an enchanted abode. Such as the tarnished paws of gilded lions,
stealthily put out from beneath their wrappers; the marble lineaments of
busts on pedestals, fearfully revealing themselves through veils; the clocks
that never told the time, or, if wound up by any chance, told it wrong, and
struck unearthly numbers, which are not upon the dial; the accidental
tinklings among the pendant lustres, more startling than alarm-bells; the
softened sounds and laggard air that made their way among these objects, and
a phantom crowd of others, shrouded and hooded, and made spectral of shape.
But, besides, there was the great staircase, where the lord of the place so
rarely set his foot, and by which his little child had gone up to Heaven.
There were other staircases and passages where no one went for weeks
together; there were two closed rooms associated with dead members of the
family, and with whispered recollections of them; and to all the house but
Florence, there was a gentle figure moving through the solitude and gloom,
that gave to every lifeless thing a touch of present human interest and
wonder,
For Florence lived alone in the deserted house, and day succeeded day,
and still she lived alone, and the cold walls looked down upon her with a
vacant stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like mind to stare her youth and
beauty into stone
The grass began to grow upon the roof, and in the crevices of the
basement paving. A scaly crumbling vegetation sprouted round the
window-sills. Fragments of mortar lost their hold upon the insides of the
unused chimneys, and came dropping down. The two trees with the smoky trunks
were blighted high up, and the withered branches domineered above the
leaves, Through the whole building white had turned yellow, yellow nearly
black; and since the time when the poor lady died, it had slowly become a
dark gap in the long monotonous street.
But Florence bloomed there, like the king's fair daughter in the story.
Her books, her music, and her daily teachers, were her only real companions,
Susan Nipper and Diogenes excepted: of whom the former, in her attendance on
the studies of her young mistress, began to grow quite learned herself,
while the latter, softened possibly by the same influences, would lay his
head upon the window-ledge, and placidly open and shut his eyes upon the
street, all through a summer morning; sometimes pricking up his head to look
with great significance after some noisy dog in a cart, who was barking his
way along, and sometimes, with an exasperated and unaccountable recollection
of his supposed enemy in the neighbourhood, rushing to the door, whence,
after a deafening disturbance, he would come jogging back with a ridiculous
complacency that belonged to him, and lay his jaw upon the window-ledge
again, with the air of a dog who had done a public service.
So Florence lived in her wilderness of a home, within the circle of her
innocent pursuits and thoughts, and nothing harmed her. She could go down to
her father's rooms now, and think of him, and suffer her loving heart humbly
to approach him, without fear of repulse. She could look upon the objects
that had surrounded him in his sorrow, and could nestle near his chair, and
not dread the glance that she so well remembered. She could render him such
little tokens of her duty and service' as putting everything in order for
him with her own hands, binding little nosegays for table, changing them as
one by one they withered and he did not come back, preparing something for
him every' day, and leaving some timid mark of her presence near his usual
seat. To-day, it was a little painted stand for his watch; tomorrow she
would be afraid to leave it, and would substitute some other trifle of her
making not so likely to attract his eye. Waking in the night, perhaps, she
would tremble at the thought of his coming home and angrily rejecting it,
and would hurry down with slippered feet and quickly beating heart, and
bring it away. At another time, she would only lay her face upon his desk,
and leave a kiss there, and a tear.
Still no one knew of this. Unless the household found it out when she
was not there - and they all held Mr Dombey's rooms in awe - it was as deep
a secret in her breast as what had gone before it. Florence stole into those
rooms at twilight, early in the morning, and at times when meals were served
downstairs. And although they were in every nook the better and the brighter
for her care, she entered and passed out as quietly as any sunbeam, opting
that she left her light behind.
Shadowy company attended Florence up and down the echoing house, and
sat with her in the dismantled rooms. As if her life were an enchanted
vision, there arose out of her solitude ministering thoughts, that made it
fanciful and unreal. She imagined so often what her life would have been if
her father could have loved her and she had been a favourite child, that
sometimes, for the moment, she almost believed it was so, and, borne on by
the current of that pensive fiction, seemed to remember how they had watched
her brother in his grave together; how they had freely shared his heart
between them; how they were united in the dear remembrance of him; how they
often spoke about him yet; and her kind father, looking at her gently, told
her of their common hope and trust in God. At other times she pictured to
herself her mother yet alive. And oh the happiness of falling on her neck,
and clinging to her with the love and confidence of all her soul! And oh the
desolation of the solitary house again, with evening coming on, and no one
there!
But there was one thought, scarcely shaped out to herself, yet fervent
and strong within her, that upheld Florence when she strove and filled her
true young heart, so sorely tried, with constancy of purpose. Into her mind,
as 'into all others contending with the great affliction of our mortal
nature, there had stolen solemn wonderings and hopes, arising in the dim
world beyond the present life, and murmuring, like faint music, of
recognition in the far-off land between her brother and her mother: of some
present consciousness in both of her: some love and commiseration for her:
and some knowledge of her as she went her way upon the earth. It was a
soothing consolation to Florence to give shelter to these thoughts, until
one day - it was soon after she had last seen her father in his own room,
late at night - the fancy came upon her, that, in weeping for his alienated
heart, she might stir the spirits of the dead against him' Wild, weak,
childish, as it may have been to think so, and to tremble at the half-formed
thought, it was the impulse of her loving nature; and from that hour
Florence strove against the cruel wound in her breast, and tried to think of
him whose hand had made it, only with hope.
Her father did not know - she held to it from that time - how much she
loved him. She was very young, and had no mother, and had never learned, by
some fault or misfortune, how to express to him that she loved him. She
would be patient, and would try to gain that art in time, and win him to a
better knowledge of his only child.
This became the purpose of her life. The morning sun shone down upon
the faded house, and found the resolution bright and fresh within the bosom
of its solitary mistress, Through all the duties of the day, it animated
her; for Florence hoped that the more she knew, and the more accomplished
she became, the more glad he would be when he came to know and like her.
Sometimes she wondered, with a swelling heart and rising tear, whether she
was proficient enough in anything to surprise him when they should become
companions. Sometimes she tried to think if there were any kind of knowledge
that would bespeak his interest more readily than another. Always: at her
books, her music, and her work: in her morning walks, and in her nightly
prayers: she had her engrossing aim in view. Strange study for a child, to
learn the road to a hard parent's heart!
There were many careless loungers through the street, as the summer
evening deepened into night, who glanced across the road at the sombre
house, and saw the youthful figure at the window, such a contrast to it,
looking upward at the stars as they began to shine, who would have slept the
worse if they had known on what design she mused so steady. The reputation
of the mansion as a haunted house, would not have been the gayer with some
humble dwellers elsewhere, who were struck by its external gloom in passing
and repassing on their daily avocations, and so named it, if they could have
read its story in the darkening face. But Florence held her sacred purpose,
unsuspected and unaided: and studied only how to bring her father to the
understanding that she loved him, and made no appeal against him in any
wandering thought.
Thus Florence lived alone in the deserted house, and day succeeded day,
and still she lived alone, and the monotonous walls looked down upon her
with a stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like intent to stare her youth and
beauty into stone.
Susan Nipper stood opposite to her young mistress one morning, as she
folded and sealed a note she had been writing: and showed in her looks an
approving knowledge of its contents.
'Better late than never, dear Miss Floy,' said Susan, 'and I do say,
that even a visit to them old Skettleses will be a Godsend.'
'It is very good of Sir Barnet and Lady Skettles, Susan,' returned
Florence, with a mild correction of that young lady's familiar mention of
the family in question, 'to repeat their invitation so kindly.'
Miss Nipper, who was perhaps the most thoroughgoing partisan on the
face of the earth, and who carried her partisanship into all matters great
or small, and perpetually waged war with it against society, screwed up her
lips and shook her head, as a protest against any recognition of
disinterestedness in the Skettleses, and a plea in bar that they would have
valuable consideration for their kindness, in the company of Florence.
'They know what they're about, if ever people did,' murmured Miss
Nipper, drawing in her breath 'oh! trust them Skettleses for that!'
'I am not very anxious to go to Fulham, Susan, I confess,' said
Florence thoughtfully: 'but it will be right to go. I think it will be
better.'
'Much better,' interposed Susan, with another emphatic shake of her
head.
'And so,' said Florence, 'though I would prefer to have gone when there
was no one there, instead of in this vacation time, when it seems there are
some young people staying in the house, I have thankfully said yes.'
'For which I say, Miss Floy, Oh be joyful!' returned Susan, 'Ah!
This last ejaculation, with which Miss Nipper frequently wound up a
sentence, at about that epoch of time, was supposed below the level of the
hall to have a general reference to Mr Dombey, and to be expressive of a
yearning in Miss Nipper to favour that gentleman with a piece of her mind.
But she never explained it; and it had, in consequence, the charm of
mystery, in addition to the advantage of the sharpest expression.
'How long it is before we have any news of Walter, Susan!' observed
Florence, after a moment's silence.
'Long indeed, Miss Floy!' replied her maid. 'And Perch said, when he
came just now to see for letters - but what signifies what he says!'
exclaimed Susan, reddening and breaking off. 'Much he knows about it!'
Florence raised her eyes quickly, and a flush overspread her face.
'If I hadn't,' said Susan Nipper, evidently struggling with some latent
anxiety and alarm, and looking full at her young mistress, while
endeavouring to work herself into a state of resentment with the unoffending
Mr Perch's image, 'if I hadn't more manliness than that insipidest of his
sex, I'd never take pride in my hair again, but turn it up behind my ears,
and wear coarse caps, without a bit of border, until death released me from
my insignificance. I may not be a Amazon, Miss Floy, and wouldn't so demean
myself by such disfigurement, but anyways I'm not a giver up, I hope'
'Give up! What?' cried Florence, with a face of terror.
'Why, nothing, Miss,' said Susan. 'Good gracious, nothing! It's only
that wet curl-paper of a man, Perch, that anyone might almost make away
with, with a touch, and really it would be a blessed event for all parties
if someone would take pity on him, and would have the goodness!'
'Does he give up the ship, Susan?' inquired Florence, very pale.
'No, Miss,' returned Susan, 'I should like to see' him make so bold as
do it to my face! No, Miss, but he goes 'on about some bothering ginger that
Mr Walter was to send to Mrs Perch, and shakes his dismal head, and says he
hopes it may be coming; anyhow, he says, it can't come now in time for the
intended occasion, but may do for next, which really,' said Miss Nipper,
with aggravated scorn, 'puts me out of patience with the man, for though I
can bear a great deal, I am not a camel, neither am I,' added Susan, after a
moment's consideration, 'if I know myself, a dromedary neither.'
'What else does he say, Susan?' inquired Florence, earnestly. 'Won't
you tell me?'
'As if I wouldn't tell you anything, Miss Floy, and everything!' said
Susan. 'Why, nothing Miss, he says that there begins to be a general talk
about the ship, and that they have never had a ship on that voyage half so
long unheard of, and that the Captain's wife was at the office yesterday,
and seemed a little put out about it, but anyone could say that, we knew
nearly that before.'
'I must visit Walter's uncle,' said Florence, hurriedly, 'before I
leave home. I will go and see him this morning. Let us walk there, directly,
Susan.
Miss Nipper having nothing to urge against the proposal, but being
perfectly acquiescent, they were soon equipped, and in the streets, and on
their way towards the little Midshipman.
The state of mind in which poor Walter had gone to Captain Cuttle's, on
the day when Brogley the broker came into possession, and when there seemed
to him to be an execution in the very steeples, was pretty much the same as
that in which Florence now took her way to Uncle Sol's; with this
difference, that Florence suffered the added pain of thinking that she had
been, perhaps, the innocent occasion of involving Walter in peril, and all
to whom he was dear, herself included, in an agony of suspense. For the
rest, uncertainty and danger seemed written upon everything. The
weathercocks on spires and housetops were mysterious with hints of stormy
wind, and pointed, like so many ghostly fingers, out to dangerous seas,
where fragments of great wrecks were drifting, perhaps, and helpless men
were rocked upon them into a sleep as deep as the unfathomable waters. When
Florence came into the City, and passed gentlemen who were talking together,
she dreaded to hear them speaking of the ship, an'd saying it was lost.
Pictures and prints of vessels fighting with the rolling waves filled her
with alarm. The smoke and clouds, though moving gently, moved too fast for
her apprehensions, and made her fear there was a tempest blowing at that
moment on the ocean.
Susan Nipper may or may not have been affected similarly, but having
her attention much engaged in struggles with boys, whenever there was any
press of people - for, between that grade of human kind and herself, there
was some natural animosity that invariably broke out, whenever they came
together - it would seem that she had not much leisure on the road for
intellectual operations,
Arriving in good time abreast of the wooden Midshipman on the opposite
side of the way, and waiting for an opportunity to cross the street, they
were a little surprised at first to see, at the Instrument-maker's door, a
round-headed lad, with his chubby face addressed towards the sky, who, as
they looked at him, suddenly thrust into his capacious mouth two fingers of
each hand, and with the assistance of that machinery whistled, with
astonishing shrillness, to some pigeons at a considerable elevation in the
air.
'Mrs Richards's eldest, Miss!' said Susan, 'and the worrit of Mrs
Richards's life!'
As Polly had been to tell Florence of the resuscitated prospects of her
son and heir, Florence was prepared for the meeting: so, a favourable moment
presenting itself, they both hastened across, without any further
contemplation of Mrs Richards's bane' That sporting character, unconscious
of their approach, again whistled with his utmost might, and then yelled in
a rapture of excitement, 'Strays! Whip! Strays!' which identification had
such an effect upon the conscience-stricken pigeons, that instead of going
direct to some town in the North of England, as appeared to have been their
original intention, they began to wheel and falter; whereupon Mrs Richards's
first born pierced them with another whistle, and again yelled, in a voice
that rose above the turmoil of the street, 'Strays! Who~oop! Strays!'
From this transport, he was abruptly recalled to terrestrial objects,
by a poke from Miss Nipper, which sent him into the shop,
'Is this the way you show your penitence, when Mrs Richards has been
fretting for you months and months?' said Susan, following the poke.
'Where's Mr Gills?'
Rob, who smoothed his first rebellious glance at Miss Nipper when he
saw Florence following, put his knuckles to his hair, in honour of the
latter, and said to the former, that Mr Gills was out'
Fetch him home,' said Miss Nipper, with authority, 'and say that my
young lady's here.'
'I don't know where he's gone,' said Rob.
'Is that your penitence?' cried Susan, with stinging sharpness.
'Why how can I go and fetch him when I don't know where to go?'
whimpered the baited Rob. 'How can you be so unreasonable?'
'Did Mr Gills say when he should be home?' asked Florence.
'Yes, Miss,' replied Rob, with another application of his knuckles to
his hair. 'He said he should be home early in the afternoon; in about a
couple of hours from now, Miss.'
'Is he very anxious about his nephew?' inquired Susan.
'Yes, Miss,' returned Rob, preferring to address himself to Florence
and slighting Nipper; 'I should say he was, very much so. He ain't indoors,
Miss, not a quarter of an hour together. He can't settle in one place five
minutes. He goes about, like a - just like a stray,' said Rob, stooping to
get a glimpse of the pigeons through the window, and checking himself, with
his fingers half-way to his mouth, on the verge of another whistle.
'Do you know a friend of Mr Gills, called Captain Cuttle?' inquired
Florence, after a moment's reflection.
'Him with a hook, Miss?' rejoined Rob, with an illustrative twist of
his left hand. Yes, Miss. He was here the day before yesterday.'
'Has he not been here since?' asked Susan.
'No, Miss,' returned Rob, still addressing his reply to Florence.
'Perhaps Walter's Uncle has gone there, Susan,' observed Florence,
turning to her.
'To Captain Cuttle's, Miss?' interposed Rob; 'no, he's not gone there,
Miss. Because he left particular word that if Captain Cuttle called, I
should tell him how surprised he was, not to have seen him yesterday, and
should make him stop till he came back'
'Do you know where Captain Cuttle lives?' asked Florence.
Rob replied in the affirmative, and turning to a greasy parchment book
on the shop desk, read the address aloud.
Florence again turned to her maid and took counsel with her in a low
voice, while Rob the round-eyed, mindful of his patron's secret charge,
looked on and listened. Florence proposed that they kould go to Captain
Cuttle's house; hear from his own lips, what he thought of the absence of
any tidings ofthe Son and Heir; and bring him, if they could, to comfort
Uncle Sol. Susan at first objected slightly, on the score of distance; but a
hackney-coach being mentioned by her mistress, withdrew that opposition, and
gave in her assent. There were some minutes of discussion between them
before they came to this conclusion, during which the staring Rob paid close
attention to both speakers, and inclined his ear to each by turns, as if he
were appointed arbitrator of the argument.
In time, Rob was despatched for a coach, the visitors keeping shop
meanwhile; and when he brought it, they got into it, leaving word for Uncle
Sol that they would be sure to call again, on their way back. Rob having
stared after the coach until it was as invisible as the pigeons had now
become, sat down behind the desk with a most assiduous demeanour; and in
order that he might forget nothing of what had transpired, made notes of it
on various small scraps of paper, with a vast expenditure of ink. There was
no danger of these documents betraying anything, if accidentally lost; for
long before a word was dry, it became as profound a mystery to Rob, as if he
had had no part whatever in its production.
While he was yet busy with these labours, the hackney-coach, after
encountering unheard-of difficulties from swivel-bridges, soft roads,
impassable canals, caravans of casks, settlements of scarlet-beans and
little wash-houses, and many such obstacles abounding in that country,
stopped at the corner of Brig Place. Alighting here, Florence and Susan
Nipper walked down the street, and sought out the abode of Captain Cuttle.
It happened by evil chance to be one of Mrs MacStinger's great cleaning
days. On these occasions, Mrs MacStinger was knocked up by the policeman at
a quarter before three in the morning, and rarely such before twelve o'clock
next night. The chief object of this institution appeared to be, that Mrs
MacStinger should move all the furniture into the back garden at early dawn,
walk about the house in pattens all day, and move the furniture back again
after dark. These ceremonies greatly fluttered those doves the young
MacStingers, who were not only unable at such times to find any
resting-place for the soles of their feet, but generally came in for a good
deal of pecking from the maternal bird during the progress of the
solemnities.
At the moment when Florence and Susan Nipper presented themselves at
Mrs MacStinger's door, that worthy but redoubtable female was in the act of
conveying Alexander MacStinger, aged two years and three months, along the
passage, for forcible deposition in a sitting posture on the street
pavement: Alexander being black in the face with holding his breath after
punishment, and a cool paving-stone being usually found to act as a powerful
restorative in such cases.
The feelings of Mrs MacStinger, as a woman and a mother, were outraged
by the look of pity for Alexander which she observed on Florence's face.
Therefore, Mrs MacStinger asserting those finest emotions of our nature, in
preference to weakly gratifying her curiosity, shook and buffeted Alexander
both before and during the application of the paving-stone, and took no
further notice of the strangers.
'I beg your pardon, Ma'am,' said Florence, when the child had found his
breath again, and was using it. 'Is this Captain Cuttle's house?'
'No,' said Mrs MacStinger.
'Not Number Nine?' asked Florence, hesitating.
'Who said it wasn't Number Nine?' said Mrs MacStinger.
Susan Nipper instantly struck in, and begged to inquire what Mrs
MacStinger meant by that, and if she knew whom she was talking to.
Mrs MacStinger in retort, looked at her all over. 'What do you want
with Captain Cuttle, I should wish to know?' said Mrs MacStinger.
'Should you? Then I'm sorry that you won't be satisfied,' returned Miss
Nipper.
'Hush, Susan! If you please!' said Florence. 'Perhaps you can have the
goodness to tell us where Captain Cutlle lives, Ma'am as he don't live
here.'
'Who says he don't live here?' retorted the implacable MacStinger. 'I
said it wasn't Cap'en Cuttle's house - and it ain't his house -and forbid
it, that it ever should be his house - for Cap'en Cuttle don't know how to
keep a house - and don't deserve to have a house - it's my house - and when
I let the upper floor to Cap'en Cuttle, oh I do a thankless thing, and cast
pearls before swine!'
Mrs MacStinger pitched her voice for the upper windows in offering
these remarks, and cracked off each clause sharply by itself as if from a
rifle possessing an infinity of barrels. After the last shot, the Captain's
voice was heard to say, in feeble remonstrance from his own room, 'Steady
below!'
'Since you want Cap'en Cuttle, there he is!' said Mrs MacStinger, with
an angry motion of her hand. On Florence making bold to enter, without any
more parley, and on Susan following, Mrs MacStinger recommenced her
pedestrian exercise in pattens, and Alexander MacStinger (still on the
paving-stone), who had stopped in his crying to attend to the conversation,
began to wail again, entertaining himself during that dismal performance,
which was quite mechanical, with a general survey of the prospect,
terminating in the hackney-coach.
The Captain in his own apartment was sitting with his hands in his
pockets and his legs drawn up under his chair, on a very small desolate
island, lying about midway in an ocean of soap and water. The Captain's
windows had been cleaned, the walls had been cleaned, the stove had been
cleaned, and everything the stove excepted, was wet, and shining with soft
soap and sand: the smell of which dry-saltery impregnated the air. In the
midst of the dreary scene, the Captain, cast away upon his island, looked
round on the waste of waters with a rueful countenance, and seemed waiting
for some friendly bark to come that way, and take him off.
But when the Captain, directing his forlorn visage towards the door,
saw Florence appear with her maid, no words can describe his astonishment.
Mrs MacStinger's eloquence having rendered all other sounds but imperfectly
distinguishable, he had looked for no rarer visitor than the potboy or the
milkman; wherefore, when Florence appeared, and coming to the confines of
the island, put her hand in his, the Captain stood up, aghast, as if he
supposed her, for the moment, to be some young member of the Flying
Dutchman's family.'
Instantly recovering his self-possession, however, the Captain's first
care was to place her on dry land, which he happily accomplished, with one
motion of his arm. Issuing forth, then, upon the main, Captain Cuttle took
Miss Nipper round the waist, and bore her to the island also. Captain
Cuttle, then, with great respect and admiration, raised the hand of Florence
to his lips, and standing off a little(for the island was not large enough
for three), beamed on her from the soap and water like a new description of
Triton.
'You are amazed to see us, I am sure,'said Florence, with a smile.
The inexpressibly gratified Captain kissed his hook in reply, and
growled, as if a choice and delicate compliment were included in the words,
'Stand by! Stand by!'
'But I couldn't rest,' said Florence, 'without coming to ask you what
you think about dear Walter - who is my brother now- and whether there is
anything to fear, and whether you will not go and console his poor Uncle
every day, until we have some intelligence of him?'
At these words Captain Cuttle, as by an involuntary gesture, clapped
his hand to his head, on which the hard glazed hat was not, and looked
discomfited.
'Have you any fears for Walter's safety?' inquired Florence, from whose
face the Captain (so enraptured he was with it) could not take his eyes:
while she, in her turn, looked earnestly at him, to be assured of the
sincerity of his reply.
'No, Heart's-delight,' said Captain Cuttle, 'I am not afeard. Wal'r is
a lad as'll go through a deal o' hard weather. Wal'r is a lad as'll bring as
much success to that 'ere brig as a lad is capable on. Wal'r,' said the
Captain, his eyes glistening with the praise of his young friend, and his
hook raised to announce a beautiful quotation, 'is what you may call a
out'ard and visible sign of an in'ard and spirited grasp, and when found
make a note of.'
Florence, who did not quite understand this, though the Captain
evidentllty thought it full of meaning, and highly satisfactory, mildly
looked to him for something more.
'I am not afeard, my Heart's-delight,' resumed the Captain, 'There's
been most uncommon bad weather in them latitudes, there's no denyin', and
they have drove and drove and been beat off, may be t'other side the world.
But the ship's a good ship, and the lad's a good lad; and it ain't easy,
thank the Lord,' the Captain made a little bow, 'to break up hearts of oak,
whether they're in brigs or buzzums. Here we have 'em both ways, which is
bringing it up with a round turn, and so I ain't a bit afeard as yet.'
'As yet?' repeated Florence.
'Not a bit,' returned the Captain, kissing his iron hand; 'and afore I
begin to be, my Hearts-delight, Wal'r will have wrote home from the island,
or from some port or another, and made all taut and shipsahape'And with
regard to old Sol Gills, here the Captain became solemn, 'who I'll stand by,
and not desert until death do us part, and when the stormy winds do blow, do
blow, do blow - overhaul the Catechism,' said the Captain parenthetically,
'and there you'll find them expressions - if it would console Sol Gills to
have the opinion of a seafaring man as has got a mind equal to any
undertaking that he puts it alongside of, and as was all but smashed in
his'prenticeship, and of which the name is Bunsby, that 'ere man shall give
him such an opinion in his own parlour as'll stun him. Ah!' said Captain
Cuttle, vauntingly, 'as much as if he'd gone and knocked his head again a
door!'
'Let us take this ~gentleman to see him, and let us hear what he says,'
cried Florence. 'Will you go with us now? We have a coach here.'
Again the Captain clapped his hand to his head, on which the hard
glazed hat was not, and looked discomfited. But at this instant a most
remarkable phenomenon occurred. The door opening, without any note of
preparation, and apparently of itself, the hard glazed hat in question
skimmed into the room like a bird, and alighted heavily at the Captain's
feet. The door then shut as violently as it had opened, and nothIng ensued
in explanation of the prodigy.
Captain Cuttle picked up his hat, and having turned it over with a look
of interest and welcome, began to polish it on his sleeve' While doing so,
the Captain eyed his visitors intently, and said in a low voice
'You see I should have bore down on Sol Gills yesterday, and this
morning, but she - she took it away and kep it. That's the long and short
ofthe subject.'
'Who did, for goodness sake?' asked Susan Nipper.
'The lady of the house, my dear,'returned the Captain, in a gruff
whisper, and making signals of secrecy.'We had some words about the swabbing
of these here planks, and she - In short,' said the Captain, eyeing the
door, and relieving himself with a long breath, 'she stopped my liberty.'
'Oh! I wish she had me to deal with!' said Susan, reddening with the
energy of the wish. 'I'd stop her!'
'Would you, do you, my dear?' rejoined the Captain, shaking his head
doubtfully, but regarding the desperate courage of the fair aspirant with
obvious admiration. 'I don't know. It's difficult navigation. She's very
hard to carry on with, my dear. You never can tell how she'll head, you see.
She's full one minute, and round upon you next. And when she in a tartar,'
said the Captain, with the perspiration breaking out upon his forehead.
There was nothing but a whistle emphatic enough for the conclusion of the
sentence, so the Captain whistled tremulously. After which he again shook
his head, and recurring to his admiration of Miss Nipper's devoted bravery,
timidly repeated, 'Would you, do you think, my dear?'
Susan only replied with a bridling smile, but that was so very full of
defiance, that there is no knowing how long Captain Cuttle might have stood
entranced in its contemplation, if Florence in her anxiety had not again
proposed their immediately resorting to the oracular Bunsby. Thus reminded
of his duty, Captain Cuttle Put on the glazed hat firmly, took up another
knobby stick, with which he had supplied the place of that one given to
Walter, and offering his arm to Florence, prepared to cut his way through
the enemy.
It turned out, however, that Mrs MacStinger had already changed her
course, and that she headed, as the Captain had remarked she often did, in
quite a new direction. For when they got downstairs, they found that
exemplary woman beating the mats on the doorsteps, with Alexander, still
upon the paving-stone, dimly looming through a fog of dust; and so absorbed
was Mrs MacStinger in her household occupation, that when Captain Cuttle and
his visitors passed, she beat the harder, and neither by word nor gesture
showed any consciousness of their vicinity. The Captain was so well pleased
with this easy escape - although the effect of the door-mats on him was like
a copious administration of snuff, and made him sneeze until the tears ran
down his face - that he could hardly believe his good fortune; but more than
once, between the door and the hackney-coach, looked over his shoulder, with
an obvious apprehension of Mrs MacStinger's giving chase yet.
However, they got to the corner of Brig Place without any molestation
from that terrible fire-ship; and the Captain mounting the coach-box - for
his gallantry would not allow him to ride inside with the ladies, though
besought to do so - piloted the driver on his course for Captain Bunsby's
vessel, which was called the Cautious Clara, and was lying hard by
Ratcliffe.
Arrived at the wharf off which this great commander's ship was jammed
in among some five hundred companions, whose tangled rigging looked like
monstrous cobwebs half swept down, Captain Cuttle appeared at the
coach-window, and invited Florence and Miss Nipper to accompany him on
board; observing that Bunsby was to the last degree soft-hearted in respect
of ladies, and that nothing would so much tend to bring his expansive
intellect into a state of harmony as their presentation to the Cautious
Clara.
Florence readily consented; and the Captain, taking her little hand in
his prodigious palm, led her, with a mixed expression of patronage,
paternity, pride, and ceremony, that was pleasant to see, over several very
dirty decks, until, coming to the Clara, they found that cautious craft
(which lay outside the tier) with her gangway removed, and half-a-dozen feet
of river interposed between herself and her nearest neighbour. It appeared,
from Captain Cuttle's explanation, that the great Bunsby, like himself, was
cruelly treated by his landlady, and that when her usage of him for the time
being was so hard that he could bear it no longer, he set this gulf between
them as a last resource.
'Clara a-hoy!' cried the Captain, putting a hand to each side of his
mouth.
'A-hoy!' cried a boy, like the Captain's echo, tumbling up from below.
'Bunsby aboard?' cried the Captain, hailing the boy in a stentorian
voice, as if he were half-a-mile off instead of two yards.
'Ay, ay!' cried the boy, in the same tone.
The boy then shoved out a plank to Captain Cuttle, who adjusted it
carefully, and led Florence across: returning presently for Miss Nipper. So
they stood upon the deck of the Cautious Clara, in whose standing rigging,
divers fluttering articles of dress were curing, in company with a few
tongues and some mackerel.
Immediately there appeared, coming slowly up above the bulk-head of the
cabin, another bulk-head 'human, and very large - with one stationary eye in
the mahogany face, and one revolving one, on the principle of some
lighthouses. This head was decorated with shaggy hair, like oakum,' which
had no governing inclination towards the north, east, west, or south, but
inclined to all four quarters of the compass, and to every point upon it.
The head was followed by a perfect desert of chin, and by a shirt-collar and
neckerchief, and by a dreadnought pilot-coat, and by a pair of dreadnought
pilot-trousers, whereof the waistband was so very broad and high, that it
became a succedaneum for a waistcoat: being ornamented near the wearer's
breastbone with some massive wooden buttons, like backgammon men. As the
lower portions of these pantaloons became revealed, Bunsby stood confessed;
his hands in their pockets, which were of vast size; and his gaze directed,
not to Captain Cuttle or the ladies, but the mast-head.
The profound appearance of this philosopher, who was bulky and strong,
and on whose extremely red face an expression of taciturnity sat enthroned,
not inconsistent with his character, in which that quality was proudly
conspicuous, almost daunted Captain Cuttle, though on familiar terms with
him. Whispering to Florence that Bunsby had never in his life expressed
surprise, and was considered not to know what it meant, the Captain watched
him as he eyed his mast-head, and afterwards swept the horizon; and when the
revolving eye seemed to be coming round in his direction, said:
amazement, Mr Toots, instead of going off, like a rocket, after that
observation, lingered and chuckled.
'Perhaps you'd like to walk upstairs, Sir!' said Susan.
'Well, I think I will come in!' said Mr Toots.
But instead of walking upstairs, the bold Toots made an awkward plunge
at Susan when the door was shut, and embracing that fair creature, kissed
her on the cheek
'Go along with you!~ cried Susan, 'or Ill tear your eyes out.'
'Just another!' said Mr Toots.
'Go along with you!' exclaimed Susan, giving him a push 'Innocents like
you, too! Who'll begin next? Go along, Sir!'
Susan was not in any serious strait, for she could hardly speak for
laughing; but Diogenes, on the staircase, hearing a rustling against the
wall, and a shuffling of feet, and seeing through the banisters that there
was some contention going on, and foreign invasion in the house, formed a
different opinion, dashed down to the rescue, and in the twinkling of an eye
had Mr Toots by the leg.
Susan screamed, laughed, opened the street-door, and ran downstairs;
the bold Toots tumbled staggering out into the street, with Diogenes holding
on to one leg of his pantaioons, as if Burgess and Co. were his cooks, and
had provided that dainty morsel for his holiday entertainment; Diogenes
shaken off, rolled over and over in the dust, got up' again, whirled round
the giddy Toots and snapped at him: and all this turmoil Mr Carker, reigning
up his horse and sitting a little at a distance, saw to his amazement, issue
from the stately house of Mr Dombey.
Mr Carker remained watching the discomfited Toots, when Diogenes was
called in, and the door shut: and while that gentleman, taking refuge in a
doorway near at hand, bound up the torn leg of his pantaloons with a costly
silk handkerchief that had formed part of his expensive outfit for the
advent
'I beg your pardon, Sir,' said Mr Carker, riding up, with his most
propitiatory smile. 'I hope you are not hurt?'
'Oh no, thank you,' replied Mr Toots, raising his flushed face, 'it's
of no consequence' Mr Toots would have signified, if he could, that he liked
it very much.
'If the dog's teeth have entered the leg, Sir - ' began Carker, with a
display of his own'
'No, thank you,' said Mr Toots, 'it's all quite right. It's very
comfortable, thank you.'
'I have the pleasure of knowing Mr Dombey,' observed Carker.
'Have you though?' rejoined the blushing Took
'And you will allow me, perhaps, to apologise, in his absence,' said Mr
Carker, taking off his hat, 'for such a misadventure, and to wonder how it
can possibly have happened.'
Mr Toots is so much gratified by this politeness, and the lucky chance
of making frends with a friend of Mr Dombey, that he pulls out his card-case
which he never loses an opportunity of using, and hands his name and address
to Mr Carker: who responds to that courtesy by giving him his own, and with
that they part.
As Mr Carker picks his way so softly past the house, looking up at the
windows, and trying to make out the pensive face behind the curtain looking
at the children opposite, the rough head of Diogenes came clambering up
close by it, and the dog, regardless of all soothing, barks and growls, and
makes at him from that height, as ifhe would spring down and tear him limb
from limb.
Well spoken, Di, so near your Mistress! Another, and another with your
head up, your eyes flashing, and your vexed mouth worrying itself, for want
of him! Another, as he picks his way along! You have a good scent, Di, -
cats, boy, cats!
Florence solitary, and the Midshipman mysterious
Florence lived alone in the great dreary house, and day succeeded day,
and still she lived alone; and the blank walls looked down upon her with a
vacant stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like mind to stare her youth and
beauty into stone.
No magic dwelling-place in magic story, shut up in the heart of a thick
wood, was ever more solitary and deserted to the fancy, than was her
father's mansion in its grim reality, as it stood lowering on the street:
always by night, when lights were shining from neighbouring windows, a blot
upon its scanty brightness; always by day, a frown upon its never-smiling
face.
There were not two dragon sentries keeping ward before the gate of this
above, as in magic legend are usually found on duty over the wronged
innocence imprisoned; but besides a glowering visage, with its thin lips
parted wickedly, that surveyed all comers from above the archway of the
door, there was a monstrous fantasy of rusty iron, curling and twisting like
a petrifaction of an arbour over threshold, budding in spikes and corkscrew
points, and bearing, one on either side, two ominous extinguishers, that
seemed to say, 'Who enter here, leave light behind!' There were no
talismanic characters engraven on the portal, but the house was now so
neglected in appearance, that boys chalked the railings and the pavement -
particularly round the corner where the side wall was - and drew ghosts on
the stable door; and being sometimes driven off by Mr Towlinson, made
portraits of him, in return, with his ears growing out horizontally from
under his hat. Noise ceased to be, within the shadow of the roof. The brass
band that came into the street once a week, in the morning, never brayed a
note in at those windows; but all such company, down to a poor little piping
organ of weak intellect, with an imbecile party of automaton dancers,
waltzing in and out at folding-doors, fell off from it with one accord, and
shunned it as a hopeless place.
The spell upon it was more wasting than the spell that used to set
enchanted houses sleeping once upon a time, but left their waking freshness
unimpaired. The passive desolation of disuse was everywhere silently
manifest about it. Within doors, curtains, drooping heavily, lost their old
folds and shapes, and hung like cumbrous palls. Hecatombs of furniture,
still piled and covered up, shrunk like imprisoned and forgotten men, and
changed insensibly. Mirrors were dim as with the breath of years. Patterns
of carpets faded and became perplexed and faint, like the memory of those
years' trifling incidents. Boards, starting at unwonted footsteps, creaked
and shook. Keys rusted in the locks of doors. Damp started on the walls, and
as the stains came out, the pictures seemed to go in and secrete themselves.
Mildew and mould began to lurk in closets. Fungus trees grew in corners of
the cellars. Dust accumulated, nobody knew whence nor how; spiders, moths,
and grubs were heard of every day. An exploratory blackbeetle now and then
was found immovable upon the stairs, or in an upper room, as wondering how
he got there. Rats began to squeak and scuffle in the night time, through
dark galleries they mined behind the panelling.
The dreary magnificence of the state rooms, seen imperfectly by the
doubtful light admitted through closed shutters, would have answered well
enough for an enchanted abode. Such as the tarnished paws of gilded lions,
stealthily put out from beneath their wrappers; the marble lineaments of
busts on pedestals, fearfully revealing themselves through veils; the clocks
that never told the time, or, if wound up by any chance, told it wrong, and
struck unearthly numbers, which are not upon the dial; the accidental
tinklings among the pendant lustres, more startling than alarm-bells; the
softened sounds and laggard air that made their way among these objects, and
a phantom crowd of others, shrouded and hooded, and made spectral of shape.
But, besides, there was the great staircase, where the lord of the place so
rarely set his foot, and by which his little child had gone up to Heaven.
There were other staircases and passages where no one went for weeks
together; there were two closed rooms associated with dead members of the
family, and with whispered recollections of them; and to all the house but
Florence, there was a gentle figure moving through the solitude and gloom,
that gave to every lifeless thing a touch of present human interest and
wonder,
For Florence lived alone in the deserted house, and day succeeded day,
and still she lived alone, and the cold walls looked down upon her with a
vacant stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like mind to stare her youth and
beauty into stone
The grass began to grow upon the roof, and in the crevices of the
basement paving. A scaly crumbling vegetation sprouted round the
window-sills. Fragments of mortar lost their hold upon the insides of the
unused chimneys, and came dropping down. The two trees with the smoky trunks
were blighted high up, and the withered branches domineered above the
leaves, Through the whole building white had turned yellow, yellow nearly
black; and since the time when the poor lady died, it had slowly become a
dark gap in the long monotonous street.
But Florence bloomed there, like the king's fair daughter in the story.
Her books, her music, and her daily teachers, were her only real companions,
Susan Nipper and Diogenes excepted: of whom the former, in her attendance on
the studies of her young mistress, began to grow quite learned herself,
while the latter, softened possibly by the same influences, would lay his
head upon the window-ledge, and placidly open and shut his eyes upon the
street, all through a summer morning; sometimes pricking up his head to look
with great significance after some noisy dog in a cart, who was barking his
way along, and sometimes, with an exasperated and unaccountable recollection
of his supposed enemy in the neighbourhood, rushing to the door, whence,
after a deafening disturbance, he would come jogging back with a ridiculous
complacency that belonged to him, and lay his jaw upon the window-ledge
again, with the air of a dog who had done a public service.
So Florence lived in her wilderness of a home, within the circle of her
innocent pursuits and thoughts, and nothing harmed her. She could go down to
her father's rooms now, and think of him, and suffer her loving heart humbly
to approach him, without fear of repulse. She could look upon the objects
that had surrounded him in his sorrow, and could nestle near his chair, and
not dread the glance that she so well remembered. She could render him such
little tokens of her duty and service' as putting everything in order for
him with her own hands, binding little nosegays for table, changing them as
one by one they withered and he did not come back, preparing something for
him every' day, and leaving some timid mark of her presence near his usual
seat. To-day, it was a little painted stand for his watch; tomorrow she
would be afraid to leave it, and would substitute some other trifle of her
making not so likely to attract his eye. Waking in the night, perhaps, she
would tremble at the thought of his coming home and angrily rejecting it,
and would hurry down with slippered feet and quickly beating heart, and
bring it away. At another time, she would only lay her face upon his desk,
and leave a kiss there, and a tear.
Still no one knew of this. Unless the household found it out when she
was not there - and they all held Mr Dombey's rooms in awe - it was as deep
a secret in her breast as what had gone before it. Florence stole into those
rooms at twilight, early in the morning, and at times when meals were served
downstairs. And although they were in every nook the better and the brighter
for her care, she entered and passed out as quietly as any sunbeam, opting
that she left her light behind.
Shadowy company attended Florence up and down the echoing house, and
sat with her in the dismantled rooms. As if her life were an enchanted
vision, there arose out of her solitude ministering thoughts, that made it
fanciful and unreal. She imagined so often what her life would have been if
her father could have loved her and she had been a favourite child, that
sometimes, for the moment, she almost believed it was so, and, borne on by
the current of that pensive fiction, seemed to remember how they had watched
her brother in his grave together; how they had freely shared his heart
between them; how they were united in the dear remembrance of him; how they
often spoke about him yet; and her kind father, looking at her gently, told
her of their common hope and trust in God. At other times she pictured to
herself her mother yet alive. And oh the happiness of falling on her neck,
and clinging to her with the love and confidence of all her soul! And oh the
desolation of the solitary house again, with evening coming on, and no one
there!
But there was one thought, scarcely shaped out to herself, yet fervent
and strong within her, that upheld Florence when she strove and filled her
true young heart, so sorely tried, with constancy of purpose. Into her mind,
as 'into all others contending with the great affliction of our mortal
nature, there had stolen solemn wonderings and hopes, arising in the dim
world beyond the present life, and murmuring, like faint music, of
recognition in the far-off land between her brother and her mother: of some
present consciousness in both of her: some love and commiseration for her:
and some knowledge of her as she went her way upon the earth. It was a
soothing consolation to Florence to give shelter to these thoughts, until
one day - it was soon after she had last seen her father in his own room,
late at night - the fancy came upon her, that, in weeping for his alienated
heart, she might stir the spirits of the dead against him' Wild, weak,
childish, as it may have been to think so, and to tremble at the half-formed
thought, it was the impulse of her loving nature; and from that hour
Florence strove against the cruel wound in her breast, and tried to think of
him whose hand had made it, only with hope.
Her father did not know - she held to it from that time - how much she
loved him. She was very young, and had no mother, and had never learned, by
some fault or misfortune, how to express to him that she loved him. She
would be patient, and would try to gain that art in time, and win him to a
better knowledge of his only child.
This became the purpose of her life. The morning sun shone down upon
the faded house, and found the resolution bright and fresh within the bosom
of its solitary mistress, Through all the duties of the day, it animated
her; for Florence hoped that the more she knew, and the more accomplished
she became, the more glad he would be when he came to know and like her.
Sometimes she wondered, with a swelling heart and rising tear, whether she
was proficient enough in anything to surprise him when they should become
companions. Sometimes she tried to think if there were any kind of knowledge
that would bespeak his interest more readily than another. Always: at her
books, her music, and her work: in her morning walks, and in her nightly
prayers: she had her engrossing aim in view. Strange study for a child, to
learn the road to a hard parent's heart!
There were many careless loungers through the street, as the summer
evening deepened into night, who glanced across the road at the sombre
house, and saw the youthful figure at the window, such a contrast to it,
looking upward at the stars as they began to shine, who would have slept the
worse if they had known on what design she mused so steady. The reputation
of the mansion as a haunted house, would not have been the gayer with some
humble dwellers elsewhere, who were struck by its external gloom in passing
and repassing on their daily avocations, and so named it, if they could have
read its story in the darkening face. But Florence held her sacred purpose,
unsuspected and unaided: and studied only how to bring her father to the
understanding that she loved him, and made no appeal against him in any
wandering thought.
Thus Florence lived alone in the deserted house, and day succeeded day,
and still she lived alone, and the monotonous walls looked down upon her
with a stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like intent to stare her youth and
beauty into stone.
Susan Nipper stood opposite to her young mistress one morning, as she
folded and sealed a note she had been writing: and showed in her looks an
approving knowledge of its contents.
'Better late than never, dear Miss Floy,' said Susan, 'and I do say,
that even a visit to them old Skettleses will be a Godsend.'
'It is very good of Sir Barnet and Lady Skettles, Susan,' returned
Florence, with a mild correction of that young lady's familiar mention of
the family in question, 'to repeat their invitation so kindly.'
Miss Nipper, who was perhaps the most thoroughgoing partisan on the
face of the earth, and who carried her partisanship into all matters great
or small, and perpetually waged war with it against society, screwed up her
lips and shook her head, as a protest against any recognition of
disinterestedness in the Skettleses, and a plea in bar that they would have
valuable consideration for their kindness, in the company of Florence.
'They know what they're about, if ever people did,' murmured Miss
Nipper, drawing in her breath 'oh! trust them Skettleses for that!'
'I am not very anxious to go to Fulham, Susan, I confess,' said
Florence thoughtfully: 'but it will be right to go. I think it will be
better.'
'Much better,' interposed Susan, with another emphatic shake of her
head.
'And so,' said Florence, 'though I would prefer to have gone when there
was no one there, instead of in this vacation time, when it seems there are
some young people staying in the house, I have thankfully said yes.'
'For which I say, Miss Floy, Oh be joyful!' returned Susan, 'Ah!
This last ejaculation, with which Miss Nipper frequently wound up a
sentence, at about that epoch of time, was supposed below the level of the
hall to have a general reference to Mr Dombey, and to be expressive of a
yearning in Miss Nipper to favour that gentleman with a piece of her mind.
But she never explained it; and it had, in consequence, the charm of
mystery, in addition to the advantage of the sharpest expression.
'How long it is before we have any news of Walter, Susan!' observed
Florence, after a moment's silence.
'Long indeed, Miss Floy!' replied her maid. 'And Perch said, when he
came just now to see for letters - but what signifies what he says!'
exclaimed Susan, reddening and breaking off. 'Much he knows about it!'
Florence raised her eyes quickly, and a flush overspread her face.
'If I hadn't,' said Susan Nipper, evidently struggling with some latent
anxiety and alarm, and looking full at her young mistress, while
endeavouring to work herself into a state of resentment with the unoffending
Mr Perch's image, 'if I hadn't more manliness than that insipidest of his
sex, I'd never take pride in my hair again, but turn it up behind my ears,
and wear coarse caps, without a bit of border, until death released me from
my insignificance. I may not be a Amazon, Miss Floy, and wouldn't so demean
myself by such disfigurement, but anyways I'm not a giver up, I hope'
'Give up! What?' cried Florence, with a face of terror.
'Why, nothing, Miss,' said Susan. 'Good gracious, nothing! It's only
that wet curl-paper of a man, Perch, that anyone might almost make away
with, with a touch, and really it would be a blessed event for all parties
if someone would take pity on him, and would have the goodness!'
'Does he give up the ship, Susan?' inquired Florence, very pale.
'No, Miss,' returned Susan, 'I should like to see' him make so bold as
do it to my face! No, Miss, but he goes 'on about some bothering ginger that
Mr Walter was to send to Mrs Perch, and shakes his dismal head, and says he
hopes it may be coming; anyhow, he says, it can't come now in time for the
intended occasion, but may do for next, which really,' said Miss Nipper,
with aggravated scorn, 'puts me out of patience with the man, for though I
can bear a great deal, I am not a camel, neither am I,' added Susan, after a
moment's consideration, 'if I know myself, a dromedary neither.'
'What else does he say, Susan?' inquired Florence, earnestly. 'Won't
you tell me?'
'As if I wouldn't tell you anything, Miss Floy, and everything!' said
Susan. 'Why, nothing Miss, he says that there begins to be a general talk
about the ship, and that they have never had a ship on that voyage half so
long unheard of, and that the Captain's wife was at the office yesterday,
and seemed a little put out about it, but anyone could say that, we knew
nearly that before.'
'I must visit Walter's uncle,' said Florence, hurriedly, 'before I
leave home. I will go and see him this morning. Let us walk there, directly,
Susan.
Miss Nipper having nothing to urge against the proposal, but being
perfectly acquiescent, they were soon equipped, and in the streets, and on
their way towards the little Midshipman.
The state of mind in which poor Walter had gone to Captain Cuttle's, on
the day when Brogley the broker came into possession, and when there seemed
to him to be an execution in the very steeples, was pretty much the same as
that in which Florence now took her way to Uncle Sol's; with this
difference, that Florence suffered the added pain of thinking that she had
been, perhaps, the innocent occasion of involving Walter in peril, and all
to whom he was dear, herself included, in an agony of suspense. For the
rest, uncertainty and danger seemed written upon everything. The
weathercocks on spires and housetops were mysterious with hints of stormy
wind, and pointed, like so many ghostly fingers, out to dangerous seas,
where fragments of great wrecks were drifting, perhaps, and helpless men
were rocked upon them into a sleep as deep as the unfathomable waters. When
Florence came into the City, and passed gentlemen who were talking together,
she dreaded to hear them speaking of the ship, an'd saying it was lost.
Pictures and prints of vessels fighting with the rolling waves filled her
with alarm. The smoke and clouds, though moving gently, moved too fast for
her apprehensions, and made her fear there was a tempest blowing at that
moment on the ocean.
Susan Nipper may or may not have been affected similarly, but having
her attention much engaged in struggles with boys, whenever there was any
press of people - for, between that grade of human kind and herself, there
was some natural animosity that invariably broke out, whenever they came
together - it would seem that she had not much leisure on the road for
intellectual operations,
Arriving in good time abreast of the wooden Midshipman on the opposite
side of the way, and waiting for an opportunity to cross the street, they
were a little surprised at first to see, at the Instrument-maker's door, a
round-headed lad, with his chubby face addressed towards the sky, who, as
they looked at him, suddenly thrust into his capacious mouth two fingers of
each hand, and with the assistance of that machinery whistled, with
astonishing shrillness, to some pigeons at a considerable elevation in the
air.
'Mrs Richards's eldest, Miss!' said Susan, 'and the worrit of Mrs
Richards's life!'
As Polly had been to tell Florence of the resuscitated prospects of her
son and heir, Florence was prepared for the meeting: so, a favourable moment
presenting itself, they both hastened across, without any further
contemplation of Mrs Richards's bane' That sporting character, unconscious
of their approach, again whistled with his utmost might, and then yelled in
a rapture of excitement, 'Strays! Whip! Strays!' which identification had
such an effect upon the conscience-stricken pigeons, that instead of going
direct to some town in the North of England, as appeared to have been their
original intention, they began to wheel and falter; whereupon Mrs Richards's
first born pierced them with another whistle, and again yelled, in a voice
that rose above the turmoil of the street, 'Strays! Who~oop! Strays!'
From this transport, he was abruptly recalled to terrestrial objects,
by a poke from Miss Nipper, which sent him into the shop,
'Is this the way you show your penitence, when Mrs Richards has been
fretting for you months and months?' said Susan, following the poke.
'Where's Mr Gills?'
Rob, who smoothed his first rebellious glance at Miss Nipper when he
saw Florence following, put his knuckles to his hair, in honour of the
latter, and said to the former, that Mr Gills was out'
Fetch him home,' said Miss Nipper, with authority, 'and say that my
young lady's here.'
'I don't know where he's gone,' said Rob.
'Is that your penitence?' cried Susan, with stinging sharpness.
'Why how can I go and fetch him when I don't know where to go?'
whimpered the baited Rob. 'How can you be so unreasonable?'
'Did Mr Gills say when he should be home?' asked Florence.
'Yes, Miss,' replied Rob, with another application of his knuckles to
his hair. 'He said he should be home early in the afternoon; in about a
couple of hours from now, Miss.'
'Is he very anxious about his nephew?' inquired Susan.
'Yes, Miss,' returned Rob, preferring to address himself to Florence
and slighting Nipper; 'I should say he was, very much so. He ain't indoors,
Miss, not a quarter of an hour together. He can't settle in one place five
minutes. He goes about, like a - just like a stray,' said Rob, stooping to
get a glimpse of the pigeons through the window, and checking himself, with
his fingers half-way to his mouth, on the verge of another whistle.
'Do you know a friend of Mr Gills, called Captain Cuttle?' inquired
Florence, after a moment's reflection.
'Him with a hook, Miss?' rejoined Rob, with an illustrative twist of
his left hand. Yes, Miss. He was here the day before yesterday.'
'Has he not been here since?' asked Susan.
'No, Miss,' returned Rob, still addressing his reply to Florence.
'Perhaps Walter's Uncle has gone there, Susan,' observed Florence,
turning to her.
'To Captain Cuttle's, Miss?' interposed Rob; 'no, he's not gone there,
Miss. Because he left particular word that if Captain Cuttle called, I
should tell him how surprised he was, not to have seen him yesterday, and
should make him stop till he came back'
'Do you know where Captain Cuttle lives?' asked Florence.
Rob replied in the affirmative, and turning to a greasy parchment book
on the shop desk, read the address aloud.
Florence again turned to her maid and took counsel with her in a low
voice, while Rob the round-eyed, mindful of his patron's secret charge,
looked on and listened. Florence proposed that they kould go to Captain
Cuttle's house; hear from his own lips, what he thought of the absence of
any tidings ofthe Son and Heir; and bring him, if they could, to comfort
Uncle Sol. Susan at first objected slightly, on the score of distance; but a
hackney-coach being mentioned by her mistress, withdrew that opposition, and
gave in her assent. There were some minutes of discussion between them
before they came to this conclusion, during which the staring Rob paid close
attention to both speakers, and inclined his ear to each by turns, as if he
were appointed arbitrator of the argument.
In time, Rob was despatched for a coach, the visitors keeping shop
meanwhile; and when he brought it, they got into it, leaving word for Uncle
Sol that they would be sure to call again, on their way back. Rob having
stared after the coach until it was as invisible as the pigeons had now
become, sat down behind the desk with a most assiduous demeanour; and in
order that he might forget nothing of what had transpired, made notes of it
on various small scraps of paper, with a vast expenditure of ink. There was
no danger of these documents betraying anything, if accidentally lost; for
long before a word was dry, it became as profound a mystery to Rob, as if he
had had no part whatever in its production.
While he was yet busy with these labours, the hackney-coach, after
encountering unheard-of difficulties from swivel-bridges, soft roads,
impassable canals, caravans of casks, settlements of scarlet-beans and
little wash-houses, and many such obstacles abounding in that country,
stopped at the corner of Brig Place. Alighting here, Florence and Susan
Nipper walked down the street, and sought out the abode of Captain Cuttle.
It happened by evil chance to be one of Mrs MacStinger's great cleaning
days. On these occasions, Mrs MacStinger was knocked up by the policeman at
a quarter before three in the morning, and rarely such before twelve o'clock
next night. The chief object of this institution appeared to be, that Mrs
MacStinger should move all the furniture into the back garden at early dawn,
walk about the house in pattens all day, and move the furniture back again
after dark. These ceremonies greatly fluttered those doves the young
MacStingers, who were not only unable at such times to find any
resting-place for the soles of their feet, but generally came in for a good
deal of pecking from the maternal bird during the progress of the
solemnities.
At the moment when Florence and Susan Nipper presented themselves at
Mrs MacStinger's door, that worthy but redoubtable female was in the act of
conveying Alexander MacStinger, aged two years and three months, along the
passage, for forcible deposition in a sitting posture on the street
pavement: Alexander being black in the face with holding his breath after
punishment, and a cool paving-stone being usually found to act as a powerful
restorative in such cases.
The feelings of Mrs MacStinger, as a woman and a mother, were outraged
by the look of pity for Alexander which she observed on Florence's face.
Therefore, Mrs MacStinger asserting those finest emotions of our nature, in
preference to weakly gratifying her curiosity, shook and buffeted Alexander
both before and during the application of the paving-stone, and took no
further notice of the strangers.
'I beg your pardon, Ma'am,' said Florence, when the child had found his
breath again, and was using it. 'Is this Captain Cuttle's house?'
'No,' said Mrs MacStinger.
'Not Number Nine?' asked Florence, hesitating.
'Who said it wasn't Number Nine?' said Mrs MacStinger.
Susan Nipper instantly struck in, and begged to inquire what Mrs
MacStinger meant by that, and if she knew whom she was talking to.
Mrs MacStinger in retort, looked at her all over. 'What do you want
with Captain Cuttle, I should wish to know?' said Mrs MacStinger.
'Should you? Then I'm sorry that you won't be satisfied,' returned Miss
Nipper.
'Hush, Susan! If you please!' said Florence. 'Perhaps you can have the
goodness to tell us where Captain Cutlle lives, Ma'am as he don't live
here.'
'Who says he don't live here?' retorted the implacable MacStinger. 'I
said it wasn't Cap'en Cuttle's house - and it ain't his house -and forbid
it, that it ever should be his house - for Cap'en Cuttle don't know how to
keep a house - and don't deserve to have a house - it's my house - and when
I let the upper floor to Cap'en Cuttle, oh I do a thankless thing, and cast
pearls before swine!'
Mrs MacStinger pitched her voice for the upper windows in offering
these remarks, and cracked off each clause sharply by itself as if from a
rifle possessing an infinity of barrels. After the last shot, the Captain's
voice was heard to say, in feeble remonstrance from his own room, 'Steady
below!'
'Since you want Cap'en Cuttle, there he is!' said Mrs MacStinger, with
an angry motion of her hand. On Florence making bold to enter, without any
more parley, and on Susan following, Mrs MacStinger recommenced her
pedestrian exercise in pattens, and Alexander MacStinger (still on the
paving-stone), who had stopped in his crying to attend to the conversation,
began to wail again, entertaining himself during that dismal performance,
which was quite mechanical, with a general survey of the prospect,
terminating in the hackney-coach.
The Captain in his own apartment was sitting with his hands in his
pockets and his legs drawn up under his chair, on a very small desolate
island, lying about midway in an ocean of soap and water. The Captain's
windows had been cleaned, the walls had been cleaned, the stove had been
cleaned, and everything the stove excepted, was wet, and shining with soft
soap and sand: the smell of which dry-saltery impregnated the air. In the
midst of the dreary scene, the Captain, cast away upon his island, looked
round on the waste of waters with a rueful countenance, and seemed waiting
for some friendly bark to come that way, and take him off.
But when the Captain, directing his forlorn visage towards the door,
saw Florence appear with her maid, no words can describe his astonishment.
Mrs MacStinger's eloquence having rendered all other sounds but imperfectly
distinguishable, he had looked for no rarer visitor than the potboy or the
milkman; wherefore, when Florence appeared, and coming to the confines of
the island, put her hand in his, the Captain stood up, aghast, as if he
supposed her, for the moment, to be some young member of the Flying
Dutchman's family.'
Instantly recovering his self-possession, however, the Captain's first
care was to place her on dry land, which he happily accomplished, with one
motion of his arm. Issuing forth, then, upon the main, Captain Cuttle took
Miss Nipper round the waist, and bore her to the island also. Captain
Cuttle, then, with great respect and admiration, raised the hand of Florence
to his lips, and standing off a little(for the island was not large enough
for three), beamed on her from the soap and water like a new description of
Triton.
'You are amazed to see us, I am sure,'said Florence, with a smile.
The inexpressibly gratified Captain kissed his hook in reply, and
growled, as if a choice and delicate compliment were included in the words,
'Stand by! Stand by!'
'But I couldn't rest,' said Florence, 'without coming to ask you what
you think about dear Walter - who is my brother now- and whether there is
anything to fear, and whether you will not go and console his poor Uncle
every day, until we have some intelligence of him?'
At these words Captain Cuttle, as by an involuntary gesture, clapped
his hand to his head, on which the hard glazed hat was not, and looked
discomfited.
'Have you any fears for Walter's safety?' inquired Florence, from whose
face the Captain (so enraptured he was with it) could not take his eyes:
while she, in her turn, looked earnestly at him, to be assured of the
sincerity of his reply.
'No, Heart's-delight,' said Captain Cuttle, 'I am not afeard. Wal'r is
a lad as'll go through a deal o' hard weather. Wal'r is a lad as'll bring as
much success to that 'ere brig as a lad is capable on. Wal'r,' said the
Captain, his eyes glistening with the praise of his young friend, and his
hook raised to announce a beautiful quotation, 'is what you may call a
out'ard and visible sign of an in'ard and spirited grasp, and when found
make a note of.'
Florence, who did not quite understand this, though the Captain
evidentllty thought it full of meaning, and highly satisfactory, mildly
looked to him for something more.
'I am not afeard, my Heart's-delight,' resumed the Captain, 'There's
been most uncommon bad weather in them latitudes, there's no denyin', and
they have drove and drove and been beat off, may be t'other side the world.
But the ship's a good ship, and the lad's a good lad; and it ain't easy,
thank the Lord,' the Captain made a little bow, 'to break up hearts of oak,
whether they're in brigs or buzzums. Here we have 'em both ways, which is
bringing it up with a round turn, and so I ain't a bit afeard as yet.'
'As yet?' repeated Florence.
'Not a bit,' returned the Captain, kissing his iron hand; 'and afore I
begin to be, my Hearts-delight, Wal'r will have wrote home from the island,
or from some port or another, and made all taut and shipsahape'And with
regard to old Sol Gills, here the Captain became solemn, 'who I'll stand by,
and not desert until death do us part, and when the stormy winds do blow, do
blow, do blow - overhaul the Catechism,' said the Captain parenthetically,
'and there you'll find them expressions - if it would console Sol Gills to
have the opinion of a seafaring man as has got a mind equal to any
undertaking that he puts it alongside of, and as was all but smashed in
his'prenticeship, and of which the name is Bunsby, that 'ere man shall give
him such an opinion in his own parlour as'll stun him. Ah!' said Captain
Cuttle, vauntingly, 'as much as if he'd gone and knocked his head again a
door!'
'Let us take this ~gentleman to see him, and let us hear what he says,'
cried Florence. 'Will you go with us now? We have a coach here.'
Again the Captain clapped his hand to his head, on which the hard
glazed hat was not, and looked discomfited. But at this instant a most
remarkable phenomenon occurred. The door opening, without any note of
preparation, and apparently of itself, the hard glazed hat in question
skimmed into the room like a bird, and alighted heavily at the Captain's
feet. The door then shut as violently as it had opened, and nothIng ensued
in explanation of the prodigy.
Captain Cuttle picked up his hat, and having turned it over with a look
of interest and welcome, began to polish it on his sleeve' While doing so,
the Captain eyed his visitors intently, and said in a low voice
'You see I should have bore down on Sol Gills yesterday, and this
morning, but she - she took it away and kep it. That's the long and short
ofthe subject.'
'Who did, for goodness sake?' asked Susan Nipper.
'The lady of the house, my dear,'returned the Captain, in a gruff
whisper, and making signals of secrecy.'We had some words about the swabbing
of these here planks, and she - In short,' said the Captain, eyeing the
door, and relieving himself with a long breath, 'she stopped my liberty.'
'Oh! I wish she had me to deal with!' said Susan, reddening with the
energy of the wish. 'I'd stop her!'
'Would you, do you, my dear?' rejoined the Captain, shaking his head
doubtfully, but regarding the desperate courage of the fair aspirant with
obvious admiration. 'I don't know. It's difficult navigation. She's very
hard to carry on with, my dear. You never can tell how she'll head, you see.
She's full one minute, and round upon you next. And when she in a tartar,'
said the Captain, with the perspiration breaking out upon his forehead.
There was nothing but a whistle emphatic enough for the conclusion of the
sentence, so the Captain whistled tremulously. After which he again shook
his head, and recurring to his admiration of Miss Nipper's devoted bravery,
timidly repeated, 'Would you, do you think, my dear?'
Susan only replied with a bridling smile, but that was so very full of
defiance, that there is no knowing how long Captain Cuttle might have stood
entranced in its contemplation, if Florence in her anxiety had not again
proposed their immediately resorting to the oracular Bunsby. Thus reminded
of his duty, Captain Cuttle Put on the glazed hat firmly, took up another
knobby stick, with which he had supplied the place of that one given to
Walter, and offering his arm to Florence, prepared to cut his way through
the enemy.
It turned out, however, that Mrs MacStinger had already changed her
course, and that she headed, as the Captain had remarked she often did, in
quite a new direction. For when they got downstairs, they found that
exemplary woman beating the mats on the doorsteps, with Alexander, still
upon the paving-stone, dimly looming through a fog of dust; and so absorbed
was Mrs MacStinger in her household occupation, that when Captain Cuttle and
his visitors passed, she beat the harder, and neither by word nor gesture
showed any consciousness of their vicinity. The Captain was so well pleased
with this easy escape - although the effect of the door-mats on him was like
a copious administration of snuff, and made him sneeze until the tears ran
down his face - that he could hardly believe his good fortune; but more than
once, between the door and the hackney-coach, looked over his shoulder, with
an obvious apprehension of Mrs MacStinger's giving chase yet.
However, they got to the corner of Brig Place without any molestation
from that terrible fire-ship; and the Captain mounting the coach-box - for
his gallantry would not allow him to ride inside with the ladies, though
besought to do so - piloted the driver on his course for Captain Bunsby's
vessel, which was called the Cautious Clara, and was lying hard by
Ratcliffe.
Arrived at the wharf off which this great commander's ship was jammed
in among some five hundred companions, whose tangled rigging looked like
monstrous cobwebs half swept down, Captain Cuttle appeared at the
coach-window, and invited Florence and Miss Nipper to accompany him on
board; observing that Bunsby was to the last degree soft-hearted in respect
of ladies, and that nothing would so much tend to bring his expansive
intellect into a state of harmony as their presentation to the Cautious
Clara.
Florence readily consented; and the Captain, taking her little hand in
his prodigious palm, led her, with a mixed expression of patronage,
paternity, pride, and ceremony, that was pleasant to see, over several very
dirty decks, until, coming to the Clara, they found that cautious craft
(which lay outside the tier) with her gangway removed, and half-a-dozen feet
of river interposed between herself and her nearest neighbour. It appeared,
from Captain Cuttle's explanation, that the great Bunsby, like himself, was
cruelly treated by his landlady, and that when her usage of him for the time
being was so hard that he could bear it no longer, he set this gulf between
them as a last resource.
'Clara a-hoy!' cried the Captain, putting a hand to each side of his
mouth.
'A-hoy!' cried a boy, like the Captain's echo, tumbling up from below.
'Bunsby aboard?' cried the Captain, hailing the boy in a stentorian
voice, as if he were half-a-mile off instead of two yards.
'Ay, ay!' cried the boy, in the same tone.
The boy then shoved out a plank to Captain Cuttle, who adjusted it
carefully, and led Florence across: returning presently for Miss Nipper. So
they stood upon the deck of the Cautious Clara, in whose standing rigging,
divers fluttering articles of dress were curing, in company with a few
tongues and some mackerel.
Immediately there appeared, coming slowly up above the bulk-head of the
cabin, another bulk-head 'human, and very large - with one stationary eye in
the mahogany face, and one revolving one, on the principle of some
lighthouses. This head was decorated with shaggy hair, like oakum,' which
had no governing inclination towards the north, east, west, or south, but
inclined to all four quarters of the compass, and to every point upon it.
The head was followed by a perfect desert of chin, and by a shirt-collar and
neckerchief, and by a dreadnought pilot-coat, and by a pair of dreadnought
pilot-trousers, whereof the waistband was so very broad and high, that it
became a succedaneum for a waistcoat: being ornamented near the wearer's
breastbone with some massive wooden buttons, like backgammon men. As the
lower portions of these pantaloons became revealed, Bunsby stood confessed;
his hands in their pockets, which were of vast size; and his gaze directed,
not to Captain Cuttle or the ladies, but the mast-head.
The profound appearance of this philosopher, who was bulky and strong,
and on whose extremely red face an expression of taciturnity sat enthroned,
not inconsistent with his character, in which that quality was proudly
conspicuous, almost daunted Captain Cuttle, though on familiar terms with
him. Whispering to Florence that Bunsby had never in his life expressed
surprise, and was considered not to know what it meant, the Captain watched
him as he eyed his mast-head, and afterwards swept the horizon; and when the
revolving eye seemed to be coming round in his direction, said: