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at her, and warming his hands, and looking at her, until he sometimes quite
confounded Mrs Pipchin, Ogress as she was. Once she asked him, when they
were alone, what he was thinking about.
'You,' said Paul, without the least reserve.
'And what are you thinking about me?' asked Mrs Pipchin.
'I'm thinking how old you must be,' said Paul.
'You mustn't say such things as that, young gentleman,' returned the
dame. 'That'll never do.'
'Why not?' asked Paul.
'Because it's not polite,' said Mrs Pipchin, snappishly.
'Not polite?' said Paul.
'No.'
'It's not polite,' said Paul, innocently, 'to eat all the mutton chops
and toast, Wickam says.
'Wickam,' retorted Mrs Pipchin, colouring, 'is a wicked, impudent,
bold-faced hussy.'
'What's that?' inquired Paul.
'Never you mind, Sir,' retorted Mrs Pipchin. 'Remember the story of the
little boy that was gored to death by a mad bull for asking questions.'
'If the bull was mad,' said Paul, 'how did he know that the boy had
asked questions? Nobody can go and whisper secrets to a mad bull. I don't
believe that story.
'You don't believe it, Sir?' repeated Mrs Pipchin, amazed.
'No,' said Paul.
'Not if it should happen to have been a tame bull, you little Infidel?'
said Mrs Pipchin.
As Paul had not considered the subject in that light, and had founded
his conclusions on the alleged lunacy of the bull, he allowed himself to be
put down for the present. But he sat turning it over in his mind, with such
an obvious intention of fixing Mrs Pipchin presently, that even that hardy
old lady deemed it prudent to retreat until he should have forgotten the
subject.
From that time, Mrs Pipchin appeared to have something of the same odd
kind of attraction towards Paul, as Paul had towards her. She would make him
move his chair to her side of the fire, instead of sitting opposite; and
there he would remain in a nook between Mrs Pipchin and the fender, with all
the light of his little face absorbed into the black bombazeen drapery,
studying every line and wrinkle of her countenance, and peering at the hard
grey eye, until Mrs Pipchin was sometimes fain to shut it, on pretence of
dozing. Mrs Pipchin had an old black cat, who generally lay coiled upon the
centre foot of the fender, purring egotistically, and winking at the fire
until the contracted pupils of his eyes were like two notes of admiration.
The good old lady might have been - not to record it disrespectfully - a
witch, and Paul and the cat her two familiars, as they all sat by the fire
together. It would have been quite in keeping with the appearance of the
party if they had all sprung up the chimney in a high wind one night, and
never been heard of any more.
This, however, never came to pass. The cat, and Paul, and Mrs Pipchin,
were constantly to be found in their usual places after dark; and Paul,
eschewing the companionship of Master Bitherstone, went on studying Mrs
Pipchin, and the cat, and the fire, night after night, as if they were a
book of necromancy, in three volumes.
Mrs Wickam put her own construction on Paul's eccentricities; and being
confirmed in her low spirits by a perplexed view of chimneys from the room
where she was accustomed to sit, and by the noise of the wind, and by the
general dulness (gashliness was Mrs Wickam's strong expression) of her
present life, deduced the most dismal reflections from the foregoing
premises. It was a part of Mrs Pipchin's policy to prevent her own 'young
hussy' - that was Mrs Pipchin's generic name for female servant - from
communicating with Mrs Wickam: to which end she devoted much of her time to
concealing herself behind doors, and springing out on that devoted maiden,
whenever she made an approach towards Mrs Wickam's apartment. But Berry was
free to hold what converse she could in that quarter, consistently with the
discharge of the multifarious duties at which she toiled incessantly from
morning to night; and to Berry Mrs Wickam unburdened her mind.
'What a pretty fellow he is when he's asleep!' said Berry, stopping to
look at Paul in bed, one night when she took up Mrs Wickam's supper.
'Ah!' sighed Mrs Wickam. 'He need be.'
'Why, he's not ugly when he's awake,' observed Berry.
'No, Ma'am. Oh, no. No more was my Uncle's Betsey Jane,' said Mrs
Wickam.
Berry looked as if she would like to trace the connexion of ideas
between Paul Dombey and Mrs Wickam's Uncle's Betsey Jane
'My Uncle's wife,' Mrs Wickam went on to say, 'died just like his Mama.
My Uncle's child took on just as Master Paul do.'
'Took on! You don't think he grieves for his Mama, sure?' argued Berry,
sitting down on the side of the bed. 'He can't remember anything about her,
you know, Mrs Wickam. It's not possible.'
'No, Ma'am,' said Mrs Wickam 'No more did my Uncle's child. But my
Uncle's child said very strange things sometimes, and looked very strange,
and went on very strange, and was very strange altogether. My Uncle's child
made people's blood run cold, some times, she did!'
'How?' asked Berry.
'I wouldn't have sat up all night alone with Betsey Jane!' said Mrs
Wickam, 'not if you'd have put Wickam into business next morning for
himself. I couldn't have done it, Miss Berry.
Miss Berry naturally asked why not? But Mrs Wickam, agreeably to the
usage of some ladies in her condition, pursued her own branch of the
subject, without any compunction.
'Betsey Jane,' said Mrs Wickam, 'was as sweet a child as I could wish
to see. I couldn't wish to see a sweeter. Everything that a child could have
in the way of illnesses, Betsey Jane had come through. The cramps was as
common to her,' said Mrs Wickam, 'as biles is to yourself, Miss Berry.' Miss
Berry involuntarily wrinkled her nose.
'But Betsey Jane,' said Mrs Wickam, lowering her voice, and looking
round the room, and towards Paul in bed, 'had been minded, in her cradle, by
her departed mother. I couldn't say how, nor I couldn't say when, nor I
couldn't say whether the dear child knew it or not, but Betsey Jane had been
watched by her mother, Miss Berry!' and Mrs Wickam, with a very white face,
and with watery eyes, and with a tremulous voice, again looked fearfully
round the room, and towards Paul in bed.
'Nonsense!' cried Miss Berry - somewhat resentful of the idea.
'You may say nonsense! I ain't offended, Miss. I hope you may be able
to think in your own conscience that it is nonsense; you'll find your
spirits all the better for it in this - you'll excuse my being so free - in
this burying-ground of a place; which is wearing of me down. Master Paul's a
little restless in his sleep. Pat his back, if you please.'
'Of course you think,' said Berry, gently doing what she was asked,
'that he has been nursed by his mother, too?'
'Betsey Jane,' returned Mrs Wickam in her most solemn tones, 'was put
upon as that child has been put upon, and changed as that child has changed.
I have seen her sit, often and often, think, think, thinking, like him. I
have seen her look, often and often, old, old, old, like him. I have heard
her, many a time, talk just like him. I consider that child and Betsey Jane
on the same footing entirely, Miss Berry.'
'Is your Uncle's child alive?' asked Berry.
'Yes, Miss, she is alive,' returned Mrs Wickam with an air of triumph,
for it was evident. Miss Berry expected the reverse; 'and is married to a
silver-chaser. Oh yes, Miss, SHE is alive,' said Mrs Wickam, laying strong
stress on her nominative case.
It being clear that somebody was dead, Mrs Pipchin's niece inquired who
it was.
'I wouldn't wish to make you uneasy,' returned Mrs Wickam, pursuing her
supper. Don't ask me.'
This was the surest way of being asked again. Miss Berry repeated her
question, therefore; and after some resistance, and reluctance, Mrs Wickam
laid down her knife, and again glancing round the room and at Paul in bed,
replied:
'She took fancies to people; whimsical fancies, some of them; others,
affections that one might expect to see - only stronger than common. They
all died.'
This was so very unexpected and awful to Mrs Pipchin's niece, that she
sat upright on the hard edge of the bedstead, breathing short, and surveying
her informant with looks of undisguised alarm.
Mrs Wickam shook her left fore-finger stealthily towards the bed where
Florence lay; then turned it upside down, and made several emphatic points
at the floor; immediately below which was the parlour in which Mrs Pipchin
habitually consumed the toast.
'Remember my words, Miss Berry,' said Mrs Wickam, 'and be thankful that
Master Paul is not too fond of you. I am, that he's not too fond of me, I
assure you; though there isn't much to live for - you'll excuse my being so
free - in this jail of a house!'
Miss Berry's emotion might have led to her patting Paul too hard on the
back, or might have produced a cessation of that soothing monotony, but he
turned in his bed just now, and, presently awaking, sat up in it with his
hair hot and wet from the effects of some childish dream, and asked for
Florence.
She was out of her own bed at the first sound of his voice; and bending
over his pillow immediately, sang him to sleep again. Mrs Wickam shaking her
head, and letting fall several tears, pointed out the little group to Berry,
and turned her eyes up to the ceiling.
'He's asleep now, my dear,' said Mrs Wickam after a pause, 'you'd
better go to bed again. Don't you feel cold?'
'No, nurse,' said Florence, laughing. 'Not at all.'
'Ah!' sighed Mrs Wickam, and she shook her head again, expressing to
the watchful Berry, 'we shall be cold enough, some of us, by and by!'
Berry took the frugal supper-tray, with which Mrs Wickam had by this
time done, and bade her good-night.
'Good-night, Miss!' returned Wickam softly. 'Good-night! Your aunt is
an old lady, Miss Berry, and it's what you must have looked for, often.'
This consolatory farewell, Mrs Wickam accompanied with a look of
heartfelt anguish; and being left alone with the two children again, and
becoming conscious that the wind was blowing mournfully, she indulged in
melancholy - that cheapest and most accessible of luxuries - until she was
overpowered by slumber.
Although the niece of Mrs Pipchin did not expect to find that exemplary
dragon prostrate on the hearth-rug when she went downstairs, she was
relieved to find her unusually fractious and severe, and with every present
appearance of intending to live a long time to be a comfort to all who knew
her. Nor had she any symptoms of declining, in the course of the ensuing
week, when the constitutional viands still continued to disappear in regular
succession, notwithstanding that Paul studied her as attentively as ever,
and occupied his usual seat between the black skirts and the fender, with
unwavering constancy.
But as Paul himself was no stronger at the expiration of that time than
he had been on his first arrival, though he looked much healthier in the
face, a little carriage was got for him, in which he could lie at his ease,
with an alphabet and other elementary works of reference, and be wheeled
down to the sea-side. Consistent in his odd tastes, the child set aside a
ruddy-faced lad who was proposed as the drawer of this carriage, and
selected, instead, his grandfather - a weazen, old, crab-faced man, in a
suit of battered oilskin, who had got tough and stringy from long pickling
in salt water, and who smelt like a weedy sea-beach when the tide is out.
With this notable attendant to pull him along, and Florence always
walking by his side, and the despondent Wickam bringing up the rear, he went
down to the margin of the ocean every day; and there he would sit or lie in
his carriage for hours together: never so distressed as by the company of
children - Florence alone excepted, always.
'Go away, if you please,' he would say to any child who came to bear
him company. Thank you, but I don't want you.'
Some small voice, near his ear, would ask him how he was, perhaps.
'I am very well, I thank you,' he would answer. 'But you had better go
and play, if you please.'
Then he would turn his head, and watch the child away, and say to
Florence, 'We don't want any others, do we? Kiss me, Floy.'
He had even a dislike, at such times, to the company of Wickam, and was
well pleased when she strolled away, as she generally did, to pick up shells
and acquaintances. His favourite spot was quite a lonely one, far away from
most loungers; and with Florence sitting by his side at work, or reading to
him, or talking to him, and the wind blowing on his face, and the water
coming up among the wheels of his bed, he wanted nothing more.
'Floy,' he said one day, 'where's India, where that boy's friends
live?'
'Oh, it's a long, long distance off,' said Florence, raising her eyes
from her work.
'Weeks off?' asked Paul.
'Yes dear. Many weeks' journey, night and day.'
'If you were in India, Floy,' said Paul, after being silent for a
minute, 'I should - what is it that Mama did? I forget.'
'Loved me!' answered Florence.
'No, no. Don't I love you now, Floy? What is it? - Died. in you were in
India, I should die, Floy.'
She hurriedly put her work aside, and laid her head down on his pillow,
caressing him. And so would she, she said, if he were there. He would be
better soon.
'Oh! I am a great deal better now!' he answered. 'I don't mean that. I
mean that I should die of being so sorry and so lonely, Floy!'
Another time, in the same place, he fell asleep, and slept quietly for
a long time. Awaking suddenly, he listened, started up, and sat listening.
Florence asked him what he thought he heard.
'I want to know what it says,' he answered, looking steadily in her
face. 'The sea' Floy, what is it that it keeps on saying?'
She told him that it was only the noise of the rolling waves.
'Yes, yes,' he said. 'But I know that they are always saying something.
Always the same thing. What place is over there?' He rose up, looking
eagerly at the horizon.
She told him that there was another country opposite, but he said he
didn't mean that: he meant further away - farther away!
Very often afterwards, in the midst of their talk, he would break off,
to try to understand what it was that the waves were always saying; and
would rise up in his couch to look towards that invisible region, far away.
In which the Wooden Midshipman gets into Trouble
That spice of romance and love of the marvellous, of which there was a
pretty strong infusion in the nature of young Walter Gay, and which the
guardianship of his Uncle, old Solomon Gills, had not very much weakened by
the waters of stern practical experience, was the occasion of his attaching
an uncommon and delightful interest to the adventure of Florence with Good
Mrs Brown. He pampered and cherished it in his memory, especially that part
of it with which he had been associated: until it became the spoiled child
of his fancy, and took its own way, and did what it liked with it.
The recollection of those incidents, and his own share in them, may
have been made the more captivating, perhaps, by the weekly dreamings of old
Sol and Captain Cuttle on Sundays. Hardly a Sunday passed, without
mysterious references being made by one or other of those worthy chums to
Richard Whittington; and the latter gentleman had even gone so far as to
purchase a ballad of considerable antiquity, that had long fluttered among
many others, chiefly expressive of maritime sentiments, on a dead wall in
the Commercial Road: which poetical performance set forth the courtship and
nuptials of a promising young coal-whipper with a certain 'lovely Peg,' the
accomplished daughter of the master and part-owner of a Newcastle collier.
In this stirring legend, Captain Cuttle descried a profound metaphysical
bearing on the case of Walter and Florence; and it excited him so much, that
on very festive occasions, as birthdays and a few other non-Dominical
holidays, he would roar through the whole song in the little back parlour;
making an amazing shake on the word Pe-e-eg, with which every verse
concluded, in compliment to the heroine of the piece.
But a frank, free-spirited, open-hearted boy, is not much given to
analysing the nature of his own feelings, however strong their hold upon
him: and Walter would have found it difficult to decide this point. He had a
great affection for the wharf where he had encountered Florence, and for the
streets (albeit not enchanting in themselves) by which they had come home.
The shoes that had so often tumbled off by the way, he preserved in his own
room; and, sitting in the little back parlour of an evening, he had drawn a
whole gallery of fancy portraits of Good Mrs Brown. It may be that he became
a little smarter in his dress after that memorable occasion; and he
certainly liked in his leisure time to walk towards that quarter of the town
where Mr Dombey's house was situated, on the vague chance of passing little
Florence in the street. But the sentiment of all this was as boyish and
innocent as could be. Florence was very pretty, and it is pleasant to admire
a pretty face. Florence was defenceless and weak, and it was a proud thought
that he had been able to render her any protection and assistance. Florence
was the most grateful little creature in the world, and it was delightful to
see her bright gratitude beaming in her face. Florence was neglected and
coldly looked upon, and his breast was full of youthful interest for the
slighted child in her dull, stately home.
Thus it came about that, perhaps some half-a-dozen times in the course
of the year, Walter pulled off his hat to Florence in the street, and
Florence would stop to shake hands. Mrs Wickam (who, with a characteristic
alteration of his name, invariably spoke of him as 'Young Graves') was so
well used to this, knowing the story of their acquaintance, that she took no
heed of it at all. Miss Nipper, on the other hand, rather looked out for
these occasions: her sensitive young heart being secretly propitiated by
Walter's good looks, and inclining to the belief that its sentiments were
responded to.
In this way, Walter, so far from forgetting or losing sight of his
acquaintance with Florence, only remembered it better and better. As to its
adventurous beginning, and all those little circumstances which gave it a
distinctive character and relish, he took them into account, more as a
pleasant story very agreeable to his imagination, and not to be dismissed
from it, than as a part of any matter of fact with which he was concerned.
They set off Florence very much, to his fancy; but not himself. Sometimes he
thought (and then he walked very fast) what a grand thing it would have been
for him to have been going to sea on the day after that first meeting, and
to have gone, and to have done wonders there, and to have stopped away a
long time, and to have come back an Admiral of all the colours of the
dolphin, or at least a Post-Captain with epaulettes of insupportable
brightness, and have married Florence (then a beautiful young woman) in
spite of Mr Dombey's teeth, cravat, and watch-chain, and borne her away to
the blue shores of somewhere or other, triumphantly. But these flights of
fancy seldom burnished the brass plate of Dombey and Son's Offices into a
tablet of golden hope, or shed a brilliant lustre on their dirty skylights;
and when the Captain and Uncle Sol talked about Richard Whittington and
masters' daughters, Walter felt that he understood his true position at
Dombey and Son's, much better than they did.
So it was that he went on doing what he had to do from day to day, in a
cheerful, pains-taking, merry spirit; and saw through the sanguine
complexion of Uncle Sol and Captain Cuttle; and yet entertained a thousand
indistinct and visionary fancies of his own, to which theirs were work-a-day
probabilities. Such was his condition at the Pipchin period, when he looked
a little older than of yore, but not much; and was the same light-footed,
light-hearted, light-headed lad, as when he charged into the parlour at the
head of Uncle Sol and the imaginary boarders, and lighted him to bring up
the Madeira.
'Uncle Sol,' said Walter, 'I don't think you're well. You haven't eaten
any breakfast. I shall bring a doctor to you, if you go on like this.'
'He can't give me what I want, my boy,' said Uncle Sol. 'At least he is
in good practice if he can - and then he wouldn't.'
'What is it, Uncle? Customers?'
'Ay,' returned Solomon, with a sigh. 'Customers would do.'
'Confound it, Uncle!' said Walter, putting down his breakfast cup with
a clatter, and striking his hand on the table: 'when I see the people going
up and down the street in shoals all day, and passing and re-passing the
shop every minute, by scores, I feel half tempted to rush out, collar
somebody, bring him in, and make him buy fifty pounds' worth of instruments
for ready money. What are you looking in at the door for? - ' continued
Walter, apostrophizing an old gentleman with a powdered head (inaudibly to
him of course), who was staring at a ship's telescope with all his might and
main. 'That's no use. I could do that. Come in and buy it!'
The old gentleman, however, having satiated his curiosity, walked
calmly away.
'There he goes!' said Walter. 'That's the way with 'em all. But, Uncle
- I say, Uncle Sol' - for the old man was meditating and had not responded
to his first appeal. 'Don't be cast down. Don't be out of spirits, Uncle.
When orders do come, they'll come in such a crowd, you won't be able to
execute 'em.'
'I shall be past executing 'em, whenever they come, my boy,' returned
Solomon Gills. 'They'll never come to this shop again, till I am out of t.'
'I say, Uncle! You musn't really, you know!' urged Walter. 'Don't!'
Old Sol endeavoured to assume a cheery look, and smiled across the
little table at him as pleasantly as he could.
'There's nothing more than usual the matter; is there, Uncle?' said
Walter, leaning his elbows on the tea tray, and bending over, to speak the
more confidentially and kindly. 'Be open with me, Uncle, if there is, and
tell me all about it.'
'No, no, no,' returned Old Sol. 'More than usual? No, no. What should
there be the matter more than usual?'
Walter answered with an incredulous shake of his head. 'That's what I
want to know,' he said, 'and you ask me! I'll tell you what, Uncle, when I
see you like this, I am quite sorry that I live with you.'
Old Sol opened his eyes involuntarily.
'Yes. Though nobody ever was happier than I am and always have been
with you, I am quite sorry that I live with you, when I see you with
anything in your mind.'
'I am a little dull at such times, I know,' observed Solomon, meekly
rubbing his hands.
'What I mean, Uncle Sol,' pursued Walter, bending over a little more to
pat him on the shoulder, 'is, that then I feel you ought to have, sitting
here and pouring out the tea instead of me, a nice little dumpling of a
wife, you know, - a comfortable, capital, cosy old lady, who was just a
match for you, and knew how to manage you, and keep you in good heart. Here
am I, as loving a nephew as ever was (I am sure I ought to be!) but I am
only a nephew, and I can't be such a companion to you when you're low and
out of sorts as she would have made herself, years ago, though I'm sure I'd
give any money if I could cheer you up. And so I say, when I see you with
anything on your mind, that I feel quite sorry you haven't got somebody
better about you than a blundering young rough-and-tough boy like me, who
has got the will to console you, Uncle, but hasn't got the way - hasn't got
the way,' repeated Walter, reaching over further yet, to shake his Uncle by
the hand.
'Wally, my dear boy,' said Solomon, 'if the cosy little old lady had
taken her place in this parlour five and forty years ago, I never could have
been fonder of her than I am of you.'
'I know that, Uncle Sol,' returned Walter. 'Lord bless you, I know
that. But you wouldn't have had the whole weight of any uncomfortable
secrets if she had been with you, because she would have known how to
relieve you of 'em, and I don't.'
'Yes, yes, you do,' returned the Instrument-maker.
'Well then, what's the matter, Uncle Sol?' said Walter, coaxingly.
'Come! What's the matter?'
Solomon Gills persisted that there was nothing the matter; and
maintained it so resolutely, that his nephew had no resource but to make a
very indifferent imitation of believing him.
'All I can say is, Uncle Sol, that if there is - '
'But there isn't,' said Solomon.
'Very well,, said Walter. 'Then I've no more to say; and that's lucky,
for my time's up for going to business. I shall look in by-and-by when I'm
out, to see how you get on, Uncle. And mind, Uncle! I'll never believe you
again, and never tell you anything more about Mr Carker the Junior, if I
find out that you have been deceiving me!'
Solomon Gills laughingly defied him to find out anything of the kind;
and Walter, revolving in his thoughts all sorts of impracticable ways of
making fortunes and placing the wooden Midshipman in a position of
independence, betook himself to the offices of Dombey and Son with a heavier
countenance than he usually carried there.
There lived in those days, round the corner - in Bishopsgate Street
Without - one Brogley, sworn broker and appraiser, who kept a shop where
every description of second-hand furniture was exhibited in the most
uncomfortable aspect, and under circumstances and in combinations the most
completely foreign to its purpose. Dozens of chairs hooked on to
washing-stands, which with difficulty poised themselves on the shoulders of
sideboards, which in their turn stood upon the wrong side of dining-tables,
gymnastic with their legs upward on the tops of other dining-tables, were
among its most reasonable arrangements. A banquet array of dish-covers,
wine-glasses, and decanters was generally to be seen, spread forth upon the
bosom of a four-post bedstead, for the entertainment of such genial company
as half-a-dozen pokers, and a hall lamp. A set of window curtains with no
windows belonging to them, would be seen gracefully draping a barricade of
chests of drawers, loaded with little jars from chemists' shops; while a
homeless hearthrug severed from its natural companion the fireside, braved
the shrewd east wind in its adversity, and trembled in melancholy accord
with the shrill complainings of a cabinet piano, wasting away, a string a
day, and faintly resounding to the noises of the street in its jangling and
distracted brain. Of motionless clocks that never stirred a finger, and
seemed as incapable of being successfully wound up, as the pecuniary affairs
of their former owners, there was always great choice in Mr Brogley's shop;
and various looking-glasses, accidentally placed at compound interest of
reflection and refraction, presented to the eye an eternal perspective of
bankruptcy and ruin.
Mr Brogley himself was a moist-eyed, pink-complexioned, crisp-haired
man, of a bulky figure and an easy temper - for that class of Caius Marius
who sits upon the ruins of other people's Carthages, can keep up his spirits
well enough. He had looked in at Solomon's shop sometimes, to ask a question
about articles in Solomon's way of business; and Walter knew him
sufficiently to give him good day when they met in the street. But as that
was the extent of the broker's acquaintance with Solomon Gills also, Walter
was not a little surprised when he came back in the course of the forenoon,
agreeably to his promise, to find Mr Brogley sitting in the back parlour
with his hands in his pockets, and his hat hanging up behind the door.
'Well, Uncle Sol!' said Walter. The old man was sitting ruefully on the
opposite side of the table, with his spectacles over his eyes, for a wonder,
instead of on his forehead. 'How are you now?'
Solomon shook his head, and waved one hand towards the broker, as
introducing him.
'Is there anything the matter?' asked Walter, with a catching in his
breath.
'No, no. There's nothing the matter, said Mr Brogley. 'Don't let it put
you out of the way.' Walter looked from the broker to his Uncle in mute
amazement. 'The fact is,' said Mr Brogley, 'there's a little payment on a
bond debt - three hundred and seventy odd, overdue: and I'm in possession.'
'In possession!' cried Walter, looking round at the shop.
'Ah!' said Mr Brogley, in confidential assent, and nodding his head as
if he would urge the advisability of their all being comfortable together.
'It's an execution. That's what it is. Don't let it put you out of the way.
I come myself, because of keeping it quiet and sociable. You know me. It's
quite private.'
'Uncle Sol!' faltered Walter.
'Wally, my boy,' returned his uncle. 'It's the first time. Such a
calamity never happened to me before. I'm an old man to begin.' Pushing up
his spectacles again (for they were useless any longer to conceal his
emotion), he covered his face with his hand, and sobbed aloud, and his tears
fell down upon his coffee-coloured waistcoat.
'Uncle Sol! Pray! oh don't!' exclaimed Walter, who really felt a thrill
of terror in seeing the old man weep. 'For God's sake don't do that. Mr
Brogley, what shall I do?'
'I should recommend you looking up a friend or so,' said Mr Brogley,
'and talking it over.'
'To be sure!' cried Walter, catching at anything. 'Certainly! Thankee.
Captain Cuttle's the man, Uncle. Wait till I run to Captain Cuttle. Keep
your eye upon my Uncle, will you, Mr Brogley, and make him as comfortable as
you can while I am gone? Don't despair, Uncle Sol. Try and keep a good
heart, there's a dear fellow!'
Saying this with great fervour, and disregarding the old man's broken
remonstrances, Walter dashed out of the shop again as hard as he could go;
and, having hurried round to the office to excuse himself on the plea of his
Uncle's sudden illness, set off, full speed, for Captain Cuttle's residence.
Everything seemed altered as he ran along the streets. There were the
usual entanglement and noise of carts, drays, omnibuses, waggons, and foot
passengers, but the misfortune that had fallen on the wooden Midshipman made
it strange and new. Houses and shops were different from what they used to
be, and bore Mr Brogley's warrant on their fronts in large characters. The
broker seemed to have got hold of the very churches; for their spires rose
into the sky with an unwonted air. Even the sky itself was changed, and had
an execution in it plainly.
Captain Cuttle lived on the brink of a little canal near the India
Docks, where there was a swivel bridge which opened now and then to let some
wandering monster of a ship come roamIng up the street like a stranded
leviathan. The gradual change from land to water, on the approach to Captain
Cuttle's lodgings, was curious. It began with the erection of flagstaffs, as
appurtenances to public-houses; then came slop-sellers' shops, with Guernsey
shirts, sou'wester hats, and canvas pantaloons, at once the tightest and the
loosest of their order, hanging up outside. These were succeeded by anchor
and chain-cable forges, where sledgehammers were dinging upon iron all day
long. Then came rows of houses, with little vane-surmounted masts uprearing
themselves from among the scarlet beans. Then, ditches. Then, pollard
willows. Then, more ditches. Then, unaccountable patches of dirty water,
hardly to be descried, for the ships that covered them. Then, the air was
perfumed with chips; and all other trades were swallowed up in mast, oar,
and block-making, and boatbuilding. Then, the ground grew marshy and
unsettled. Then, there was nothing to be smelt but rum and sugar. Then,
Captain Cuttle's lodgings - at once a first floor and a top storey, in Brig
Place - were close before you.
The Captain was one of those timber-looking men, suits of oak as well
as hearts, whom it is almost impossible for the liveliest imagination to
separate from any part of their dress, however insignificant. Accordingly,
when Walter knocked at the door, and the Captain instantly poked his head
out of one of his little front windows, and hailed him, with the hard glared
hat already on it, and the shirt-collar like a sail, and the wide suit of
blue, all standing as usual, Walter was as fully persuaded that he was
always in that state, as if the Captain had been a bird and those had been
his feathers.
'Wal'r, my lad!'said Captain Cuttle. 'Stand by and knock again. Hard!
It's washing day.'
Walter, in his impatience, gave a prodigious thump with the knocker.
'Hard it is!' said Captain Cuttle, and immediately drew in his head, as
if he expected a squall.
Nor was he mistaken: for a widow lady, with her sleeves rolled up to
her shoulders, and her arms frothy with soap-suds and smoking with hot
water, replied to the summons with startling rapidity. Before she looked at
Walter she looked at the knocker, and then, measuring him with her eyes from
head to foot, said she wondered he had left any of it.
'Captain Cuttle's at home, I know,' said Walter with a conciliatory
smile.
'Is he?' replied the widow lady. 'In-deed!'
'He has just been speaking to me,' said Walter, in breathless
explanation.
'Has he?' replied the widow lady. 'Then p'raps you'll give him Mrs
MacStinger's respects, and say that the next time he lowers himself and his
lodgings by talking out of the winder she'll thank him to come down and open
the door too.' Mrs MacStinger spoke loud, and listened for any observations
that might be offered from the first floor.
'I'll mention it,' said Walter, 'if you'll have the goodness to let me
in, Ma'am.'
For he was repelled by a wooden fortification extending across the
doorway, and put there to prevent the little MacStingers in their moments of
recreation from tumbling down the steps.
'A boy that can knock my door down,' said Mrs MacStinger,
contemptuously, 'can get over that, I should hope!' But Walter, taking this
as a permission to enter, and getting over it, Mrs MacStinger immediately
demanded whether an Englishwoman's house was her castle or not; and whether
she was to be broke in upon by 'raff.' On these subjects her thirst for
information was still very importunate, when Walter, having made his way up
the little staircase through an artificial fog occasioned by the washing,
which covered the banisters with a clammy perspiration, entered Captain
Cuttle's room, and found that gentleman in ambush behind the door.
'Never owed her a penny, Wal'r,' said Captain Cuttle, in a low voice,
and with visible marks of trepidation on his countenance. 'Done her a world
of good turns, and the children too. Vixen at times, though. Whew!'
'I should go away, Captain Cuttle,' said Walter.
'Dursn't do it, Wal'r,' returned the Captain. 'She'd find me out,
wherever I went. Sit down. How's Gills?'
The Captain was dining (in his hat) off cold loin of mutton, porter,
and some smoking hot potatoes, which he had cooked himself, and took out of
a little saucepan before the fire as he wanted them. He unscrewed his hook
at dinner-time, and screwed a knife into its wooden socket instead, with
which he had already begun to peel one of these potatoes for Walter. His
rooms were very small, and strongly impregnated with tobacco-smoke, but snug
enough: everything being stowed away, as if there were an earthquake
regularly every half-hour.
'How's Gills?' inquired the Captain.
Walter, who had by this time recovered his breath, and lost his spirits
- or such temporary spirits as his rapid journey had given him - looked at
his questioner for a moment, said 'Oh, Captain Cuttle!' and burst into
tears.
No words can describe the Captain's consternation at this sight Mrs
MacStinger faded into nothing before it. He dropped the potato and the fork
- and would have dropped the knife too if he could - and sat gazing at the
boy, as if he expected to hear next moment that a gulf had opened in the
City, which had swallowed up his old friend, coffee-coloured suit, buttons,
chronometer, spectacles, and all.
But when Walter told him what was really the matter, Captain Cuttle,
after a moment's reflection, started up into full activity. He emptied out
of a little tin canister on the top shelf of the cupboard, his whole stock
of ready money (amounting to thirteen pounds and half-a-crown), which he
transferred to one of the pockets of his square blue coat; further enriched
that repository with the contents of his plate chest, consisting of two
withered atomies of tea-spoons, and an obsolete pair of knock-knee'd
sugar-tongs; pulled up his immense double-cased silver watch from the depths
in which it reposed, to assure himself that that valuable was sound and
whole; re-attached the hook to his right wrist; and seizing the stick
covered over with knobs, bade Walter come along.
Remembering, however, in the midst of his virtuous excitement, that Mrs
MacStinger might be lying in wait below, Captain Cuttle hesitated at last,
not without glancing at the window, as if he had some thoughts of escaping
by that unusual means of egress, rather than encounter his terrible enemy.
He decided, however, in favour of stratagem.
'Wal'r,' said the Captain, with a timid wink, 'go afore, my lad. Sing
out, "good-bye, Captain Cuttle," when you're in the passage, and shut the
door. Then wait at the corner of the street 'till you see me.
These directions were not issued without a previous knowledge of the
enemy's tactics, for when Walter got downstairs, Mrs MacStinger glided out
of the little back kitchen, like an avenging spirit. But not gliding out
upon the Captain, as she had expected, she merely made a further allusion to
the knocker, and glided in again.
Some five minutes elapsed before Captain Cuttle could summon courage to
attempt his escape; for Walter waited so long at the street corner, looking
back at the house, before there were any symptoms of the hard glazed hat. At
length the Captain burst out of the door with the suddenness of an
explosion, and coming towards him at a great pace, and never once looking
over his shoulder, pretended, as soon as they were well out of the street,
to whistle a tune.
'Uncle much hove down, Wal'r?' inquired the Captain, as they were
walking along.
'I am afraid so. If you had seen him this morning, you would never have
forgotten it.'
'Walk fast, Wal'r, my lad,' returned the Captain, mending his pace;
'and walk the same all the days of your life. Overhaul the catechism for
that advice, and keep it!'
The Captain was too busy with his own thoughts of Solomon Gills,
mingled perhaps with some reflections on his late escape from Mrs
MacStinger, to offer any further quotations on the way for Walter's moral
improvement They interchanged no other word until they arrived at old Sol's
door, where the unfortunate wooden Midshipman, with his instrument at his
eye, seemed to be surveying the whole horizon in search of some friend to
help him out of his difficulty.
'Gills!' said the Captain, hurrying into the back parlour, and taking
him by the hand quite tenderly. 'Lay your head well to the wind, and we'll
fight through it. All you've got to do,' said the Captain, with the
solemnity of a man who was delivering himself of one of the most precious
practical tenets ever discovered by human wisdom, 'is to lay your head well
to the wind, and we'll fight through it!'
Old Sol returned the pressure of his hand, and thanked him.
Captain Cuttle, then, with a gravity suitable to the nature of the
occasion, put down upon the table the two tea-spoons and the sugar-tongs,
the silver watch, and the ready money; and asked Mr Brogley, the broker,
what the damage was.
'Come! What do you make of it?' said Captain Cuttle.
'Why, Lord help you!' returned the broker; 'you don't suppose that
property's of any use, do you?'
'Why not?' inquired the Captain.
'Why? The amount's three hundred and seventy, odd,' replied the broker.
'Never mind,' returned the Captain, though he was evidently dismayed by
the figures: 'all's fish that comes to your net, I suppose?'
'Certainly,' said Mr Brogley. 'But sprats ain't whales, you know.'
The philosophy of this observation seemed to strike the Captain. He
ruminated for a minute; eyeing the broker, meanwhile, as a deep genius; and
then called the Instrument-maker aside.
'Gills,' said Captain Cuttle, 'what's the bearings of this business?
Who's the creditor?'
'Hush!' returned the old man. 'Come away. Don't speak before Wally.
It's a matter of security for Wally's father - an old bond. I've paid a good
deal of it, Ned, but the times are so bad with me that I can't do more just
now. I've foreseen it, but I couldn't help it. Not a word before Wally, for
all the world.'
'You've got some money, haven't you?' whispered the Captain.
'Yes, yes - oh yes- I've got some,' returned old Sol, first putting his
hands into his empty pockets, and then squeezing his Welsh wig between them,
as if he thought he might wring some gold out of it; 'but I - the little I
have got, isn't convertible, Ned; it can't be got at. I have been trying to
do something with it for Wally, and I'm old fashioned, and behind the time.
It's here and there, and - and, in short, it's as good as nowhere,' said the
old man, looking in bewilderment about him.
He had so much the air of a half-witted person who had been hiding his
money in a variety of places, and had forgotten where, that the Captain
followed his eyes, not without a faint hope that he might remember some few
hundred pounds concealed up the chimney, or down in the cellar. But Solomon
Gills knew better than that.
'I'm behind the time altogether, my dear Ned,' said Sol, in resigned
despair, 'a long way. It's no use my lagging on so far behind it. The stock
had better be sold - it's worth more than this debt - and I had better go
and die somewhere, on the balance. I haven't any energy left. I don't
understand things. This had better be the end of it. Let 'em sell the stock
and take him down,' said the old man, pointing feebly to the wooden
Midshipman, 'and let us both be broken up together.'
'And what d'ye mean to do with Wal'r?'said the Captain. 'There, there!
Sit ye down, Gills, sit ye down, and let me think o' this. If I warn't a man
on a small annuity, that was large enough till to-day, I hadn't need to
think of it. But you only lay your head well to the wind,' said the Captain,
again administering that unanswerable piece of consolation, 'and you're all
right!'
Old Sol thanked him from his heart, and went and laid it against the
back parlour fire-place instead.
Captain Cuttle walked up and down the shop for some time, cogitating
profoundly, and bringing his bushy black eyebrows to bear so heavily on his
nose, like clouds setting on a mountain, that Walter was afraid to offer any
interruption to the current of his reflections. Mr Brogley, who was averse
to being any constraint upon the party, and who had an ingenious cast of
mind, went, softly whistling, among the stock; rattling weather-glasses,
shaking compasses as if they were physic, catching up keys with loadstones,
looking through telescopes, endeavouring to make himself acquainted with the
use of the globes, setting parallel rulers astride on to his nose, and
amusing himself with other philosophical transactions.
'Wal'r!' said the Captain at last. 'I've got it.'
'Have you, Captain Cuttle?' cried Walter, with great animation.
'Come this way, my lad,' said the Captain. 'The stock's the security.
I'm another. Your governor's the man to advance money.'
'Mr Dombey!' faltered Walter.
The Captain nodded gravely. 'Look at him,' he said. 'Look at Gills. If
they was to sell off these things now, he'd die of it. You know he would. We
mustn't leave a stone unturned - and there's a stone for you.'
'A stone! - Mr Dombey!' faltered Walter.
'You run round to the office, first of all, and see if he's there,'
said Captain Cuttle, clapping him on the back. 'Quick!'
confounded Mrs Pipchin, Ogress as she was. Once she asked him, when they
were alone, what he was thinking about.
'You,' said Paul, without the least reserve.
'And what are you thinking about me?' asked Mrs Pipchin.
'I'm thinking how old you must be,' said Paul.
'You mustn't say such things as that, young gentleman,' returned the
dame. 'That'll never do.'
'Why not?' asked Paul.
'Because it's not polite,' said Mrs Pipchin, snappishly.
'Not polite?' said Paul.
'No.'
'It's not polite,' said Paul, innocently, 'to eat all the mutton chops
and toast, Wickam says.
'Wickam,' retorted Mrs Pipchin, colouring, 'is a wicked, impudent,
bold-faced hussy.'
'What's that?' inquired Paul.
'Never you mind, Sir,' retorted Mrs Pipchin. 'Remember the story of the
little boy that was gored to death by a mad bull for asking questions.'
'If the bull was mad,' said Paul, 'how did he know that the boy had
asked questions? Nobody can go and whisper secrets to a mad bull. I don't
believe that story.
'You don't believe it, Sir?' repeated Mrs Pipchin, amazed.
'No,' said Paul.
'Not if it should happen to have been a tame bull, you little Infidel?'
said Mrs Pipchin.
As Paul had not considered the subject in that light, and had founded
his conclusions on the alleged lunacy of the bull, he allowed himself to be
put down for the present. But he sat turning it over in his mind, with such
an obvious intention of fixing Mrs Pipchin presently, that even that hardy
old lady deemed it prudent to retreat until he should have forgotten the
subject.
From that time, Mrs Pipchin appeared to have something of the same odd
kind of attraction towards Paul, as Paul had towards her. She would make him
move his chair to her side of the fire, instead of sitting opposite; and
there he would remain in a nook between Mrs Pipchin and the fender, with all
the light of his little face absorbed into the black bombazeen drapery,
studying every line and wrinkle of her countenance, and peering at the hard
grey eye, until Mrs Pipchin was sometimes fain to shut it, on pretence of
dozing. Mrs Pipchin had an old black cat, who generally lay coiled upon the
centre foot of the fender, purring egotistically, and winking at the fire
until the contracted pupils of his eyes were like two notes of admiration.
The good old lady might have been - not to record it disrespectfully - a
witch, and Paul and the cat her two familiars, as they all sat by the fire
together. It would have been quite in keeping with the appearance of the
party if they had all sprung up the chimney in a high wind one night, and
never been heard of any more.
This, however, never came to pass. The cat, and Paul, and Mrs Pipchin,
were constantly to be found in their usual places after dark; and Paul,
eschewing the companionship of Master Bitherstone, went on studying Mrs
Pipchin, and the cat, and the fire, night after night, as if they were a
book of necromancy, in three volumes.
Mrs Wickam put her own construction on Paul's eccentricities; and being
confirmed in her low spirits by a perplexed view of chimneys from the room
where she was accustomed to sit, and by the noise of the wind, and by the
general dulness (gashliness was Mrs Wickam's strong expression) of her
present life, deduced the most dismal reflections from the foregoing
premises. It was a part of Mrs Pipchin's policy to prevent her own 'young
hussy' - that was Mrs Pipchin's generic name for female servant - from
communicating with Mrs Wickam: to which end she devoted much of her time to
concealing herself behind doors, and springing out on that devoted maiden,
whenever she made an approach towards Mrs Wickam's apartment. But Berry was
free to hold what converse she could in that quarter, consistently with the
discharge of the multifarious duties at which she toiled incessantly from
morning to night; and to Berry Mrs Wickam unburdened her mind.
'What a pretty fellow he is when he's asleep!' said Berry, stopping to
look at Paul in bed, one night when she took up Mrs Wickam's supper.
'Ah!' sighed Mrs Wickam. 'He need be.'
'Why, he's not ugly when he's awake,' observed Berry.
'No, Ma'am. Oh, no. No more was my Uncle's Betsey Jane,' said Mrs
Wickam.
Berry looked as if she would like to trace the connexion of ideas
between Paul Dombey and Mrs Wickam's Uncle's Betsey Jane
'My Uncle's wife,' Mrs Wickam went on to say, 'died just like his Mama.
My Uncle's child took on just as Master Paul do.'
'Took on! You don't think he grieves for his Mama, sure?' argued Berry,
sitting down on the side of the bed. 'He can't remember anything about her,
you know, Mrs Wickam. It's not possible.'
'No, Ma'am,' said Mrs Wickam 'No more did my Uncle's child. But my
Uncle's child said very strange things sometimes, and looked very strange,
and went on very strange, and was very strange altogether. My Uncle's child
made people's blood run cold, some times, she did!'
'How?' asked Berry.
'I wouldn't have sat up all night alone with Betsey Jane!' said Mrs
Wickam, 'not if you'd have put Wickam into business next morning for
himself. I couldn't have done it, Miss Berry.
Miss Berry naturally asked why not? But Mrs Wickam, agreeably to the
usage of some ladies in her condition, pursued her own branch of the
subject, without any compunction.
'Betsey Jane,' said Mrs Wickam, 'was as sweet a child as I could wish
to see. I couldn't wish to see a sweeter. Everything that a child could have
in the way of illnesses, Betsey Jane had come through. The cramps was as
common to her,' said Mrs Wickam, 'as biles is to yourself, Miss Berry.' Miss
Berry involuntarily wrinkled her nose.
'But Betsey Jane,' said Mrs Wickam, lowering her voice, and looking
round the room, and towards Paul in bed, 'had been minded, in her cradle, by
her departed mother. I couldn't say how, nor I couldn't say when, nor I
couldn't say whether the dear child knew it or not, but Betsey Jane had been
watched by her mother, Miss Berry!' and Mrs Wickam, with a very white face,
and with watery eyes, and with a tremulous voice, again looked fearfully
round the room, and towards Paul in bed.
'Nonsense!' cried Miss Berry - somewhat resentful of the idea.
'You may say nonsense! I ain't offended, Miss. I hope you may be able
to think in your own conscience that it is nonsense; you'll find your
spirits all the better for it in this - you'll excuse my being so free - in
this burying-ground of a place; which is wearing of me down. Master Paul's a
little restless in his sleep. Pat his back, if you please.'
'Of course you think,' said Berry, gently doing what she was asked,
'that he has been nursed by his mother, too?'
'Betsey Jane,' returned Mrs Wickam in her most solemn tones, 'was put
upon as that child has been put upon, and changed as that child has changed.
I have seen her sit, often and often, think, think, thinking, like him. I
have seen her look, often and often, old, old, old, like him. I have heard
her, many a time, talk just like him. I consider that child and Betsey Jane
on the same footing entirely, Miss Berry.'
'Is your Uncle's child alive?' asked Berry.
'Yes, Miss, she is alive,' returned Mrs Wickam with an air of triumph,
for it was evident. Miss Berry expected the reverse; 'and is married to a
silver-chaser. Oh yes, Miss, SHE is alive,' said Mrs Wickam, laying strong
stress on her nominative case.
It being clear that somebody was dead, Mrs Pipchin's niece inquired who
it was.
'I wouldn't wish to make you uneasy,' returned Mrs Wickam, pursuing her
supper. Don't ask me.'
This was the surest way of being asked again. Miss Berry repeated her
question, therefore; and after some resistance, and reluctance, Mrs Wickam
laid down her knife, and again glancing round the room and at Paul in bed,
replied:
'She took fancies to people; whimsical fancies, some of them; others,
affections that one might expect to see - only stronger than common. They
all died.'
This was so very unexpected and awful to Mrs Pipchin's niece, that she
sat upright on the hard edge of the bedstead, breathing short, and surveying
her informant with looks of undisguised alarm.
Mrs Wickam shook her left fore-finger stealthily towards the bed where
Florence lay; then turned it upside down, and made several emphatic points
at the floor; immediately below which was the parlour in which Mrs Pipchin
habitually consumed the toast.
'Remember my words, Miss Berry,' said Mrs Wickam, 'and be thankful that
Master Paul is not too fond of you. I am, that he's not too fond of me, I
assure you; though there isn't much to live for - you'll excuse my being so
free - in this jail of a house!'
Miss Berry's emotion might have led to her patting Paul too hard on the
back, or might have produced a cessation of that soothing monotony, but he
turned in his bed just now, and, presently awaking, sat up in it with his
hair hot and wet from the effects of some childish dream, and asked for
Florence.
She was out of her own bed at the first sound of his voice; and bending
over his pillow immediately, sang him to sleep again. Mrs Wickam shaking her
head, and letting fall several tears, pointed out the little group to Berry,
and turned her eyes up to the ceiling.
'He's asleep now, my dear,' said Mrs Wickam after a pause, 'you'd
better go to bed again. Don't you feel cold?'
'No, nurse,' said Florence, laughing. 'Not at all.'
'Ah!' sighed Mrs Wickam, and she shook her head again, expressing to
the watchful Berry, 'we shall be cold enough, some of us, by and by!'
Berry took the frugal supper-tray, with which Mrs Wickam had by this
time done, and bade her good-night.
'Good-night, Miss!' returned Wickam softly. 'Good-night! Your aunt is
an old lady, Miss Berry, and it's what you must have looked for, often.'
This consolatory farewell, Mrs Wickam accompanied with a look of
heartfelt anguish; and being left alone with the two children again, and
becoming conscious that the wind was blowing mournfully, she indulged in
melancholy - that cheapest and most accessible of luxuries - until she was
overpowered by slumber.
Although the niece of Mrs Pipchin did not expect to find that exemplary
dragon prostrate on the hearth-rug when she went downstairs, she was
relieved to find her unusually fractious and severe, and with every present
appearance of intending to live a long time to be a comfort to all who knew
her. Nor had she any symptoms of declining, in the course of the ensuing
week, when the constitutional viands still continued to disappear in regular
succession, notwithstanding that Paul studied her as attentively as ever,
and occupied his usual seat between the black skirts and the fender, with
unwavering constancy.
But as Paul himself was no stronger at the expiration of that time than
he had been on his first arrival, though he looked much healthier in the
face, a little carriage was got for him, in which he could lie at his ease,
with an alphabet and other elementary works of reference, and be wheeled
down to the sea-side. Consistent in his odd tastes, the child set aside a
ruddy-faced lad who was proposed as the drawer of this carriage, and
selected, instead, his grandfather - a weazen, old, crab-faced man, in a
suit of battered oilskin, who had got tough and stringy from long pickling
in salt water, and who smelt like a weedy sea-beach when the tide is out.
With this notable attendant to pull him along, and Florence always
walking by his side, and the despondent Wickam bringing up the rear, he went
down to the margin of the ocean every day; and there he would sit or lie in
his carriage for hours together: never so distressed as by the company of
children - Florence alone excepted, always.
'Go away, if you please,' he would say to any child who came to bear
him company. Thank you, but I don't want you.'
Some small voice, near his ear, would ask him how he was, perhaps.
'I am very well, I thank you,' he would answer. 'But you had better go
and play, if you please.'
Then he would turn his head, and watch the child away, and say to
Florence, 'We don't want any others, do we? Kiss me, Floy.'
He had even a dislike, at such times, to the company of Wickam, and was
well pleased when she strolled away, as she generally did, to pick up shells
and acquaintances. His favourite spot was quite a lonely one, far away from
most loungers; and with Florence sitting by his side at work, or reading to
him, or talking to him, and the wind blowing on his face, and the water
coming up among the wheels of his bed, he wanted nothing more.
'Floy,' he said one day, 'where's India, where that boy's friends
live?'
'Oh, it's a long, long distance off,' said Florence, raising her eyes
from her work.
'Weeks off?' asked Paul.
'Yes dear. Many weeks' journey, night and day.'
'If you were in India, Floy,' said Paul, after being silent for a
minute, 'I should - what is it that Mama did? I forget.'
'Loved me!' answered Florence.
'No, no. Don't I love you now, Floy? What is it? - Died. in you were in
India, I should die, Floy.'
She hurriedly put her work aside, and laid her head down on his pillow,
caressing him. And so would she, she said, if he were there. He would be
better soon.
'Oh! I am a great deal better now!' he answered. 'I don't mean that. I
mean that I should die of being so sorry and so lonely, Floy!'
Another time, in the same place, he fell asleep, and slept quietly for
a long time. Awaking suddenly, he listened, started up, and sat listening.
Florence asked him what he thought he heard.
'I want to know what it says,' he answered, looking steadily in her
face. 'The sea' Floy, what is it that it keeps on saying?'
She told him that it was only the noise of the rolling waves.
'Yes, yes,' he said. 'But I know that they are always saying something.
Always the same thing. What place is over there?' He rose up, looking
eagerly at the horizon.
She told him that there was another country opposite, but he said he
didn't mean that: he meant further away - farther away!
Very often afterwards, in the midst of their talk, he would break off,
to try to understand what it was that the waves were always saying; and
would rise up in his couch to look towards that invisible region, far away.
In which the Wooden Midshipman gets into Trouble
That spice of romance and love of the marvellous, of which there was a
pretty strong infusion in the nature of young Walter Gay, and which the
guardianship of his Uncle, old Solomon Gills, had not very much weakened by
the waters of stern practical experience, was the occasion of his attaching
an uncommon and delightful interest to the adventure of Florence with Good
Mrs Brown. He pampered and cherished it in his memory, especially that part
of it with which he had been associated: until it became the spoiled child
of his fancy, and took its own way, and did what it liked with it.
The recollection of those incidents, and his own share in them, may
have been made the more captivating, perhaps, by the weekly dreamings of old
Sol and Captain Cuttle on Sundays. Hardly a Sunday passed, without
mysterious references being made by one or other of those worthy chums to
Richard Whittington; and the latter gentleman had even gone so far as to
purchase a ballad of considerable antiquity, that had long fluttered among
many others, chiefly expressive of maritime sentiments, on a dead wall in
the Commercial Road: which poetical performance set forth the courtship and
nuptials of a promising young coal-whipper with a certain 'lovely Peg,' the
accomplished daughter of the master and part-owner of a Newcastle collier.
In this stirring legend, Captain Cuttle descried a profound metaphysical
bearing on the case of Walter and Florence; and it excited him so much, that
on very festive occasions, as birthdays and a few other non-Dominical
holidays, he would roar through the whole song in the little back parlour;
making an amazing shake on the word Pe-e-eg, with which every verse
concluded, in compliment to the heroine of the piece.
But a frank, free-spirited, open-hearted boy, is not much given to
analysing the nature of his own feelings, however strong their hold upon
him: and Walter would have found it difficult to decide this point. He had a
great affection for the wharf where he had encountered Florence, and for the
streets (albeit not enchanting in themselves) by which they had come home.
The shoes that had so often tumbled off by the way, he preserved in his own
room; and, sitting in the little back parlour of an evening, he had drawn a
whole gallery of fancy portraits of Good Mrs Brown. It may be that he became
a little smarter in his dress after that memorable occasion; and he
certainly liked in his leisure time to walk towards that quarter of the town
where Mr Dombey's house was situated, on the vague chance of passing little
Florence in the street. But the sentiment of all this was as boyish and
innocent as could be. Florence was very pretty, and it is pleasant to admire
a pretty face. Florence was defenceless and weak, and it was a proud thought
that he had been able to render her any protection and assistance. Florence
was the most grateful little creature in the world, and it was delightful to
see her bright gratitude beaming in her face. Florence was neglected and
coldly looked upon, and his breast was full of youthful interest for the
slighted child in her dull, stately home.
Thus it came about that, perhaps some half-a-dozen times in the course
of the year, Walter pulled off his hat to Florence in the street, and
Florence would stop to shake hands. Mrs Wickam (who, with a characteristic
alteration of his name, invariably spoke of him as 'Young Graves') was so
well used to this, knowing the story of their acquaintance, that she took no
heed of it at all. Miss Nipper, on the other hand, rather looked out for
these occasions: her sensitive young heart being secretly propitiated by
Walter's good looks, and inclining to the belief that its sentiments were
responded to.
In this way, Walter, so far from forgetting or losing sight of his
acquaintance with Florence, only remembered it better and better. As to its
adventurous beginning, and all those little circumstances which gave it a
distinctive character and relish, he took them into account, more as a
pleasant story very agreeable to his imagination, and not to be dismissed
from it, than as a part of any matter of fact with which he was concerned.
They set off Florence very much, to his fancy; but not himself. Sometimes he
thought (and then he walked very fast) what a grand thing it would have been
for him to have been going to sea on the day after that first meeting, and
to have gone, and to have done wonders there, and to have stopped away a
long time, and to have come back an Admiral of all the colours of the
dolphin, or at least a Post-Captain with epaulettes of insupportable
brightness, and have married Florence (then a beautiful young woman) in
spite of Mr Dombey's teeth, cravat, and watch-chain, and borne her away to
the blue shores of somewhere or other, triumphantly. But these flights of
fancy seldom burnished the brass plate of Dombey and Son's Offices into a
tablet of golden hope, or shed a brilliant lustre on their dirty skylights;
and when the Captain and Uncle Sol talked about Richard Whittington and
masters' daughters, Walter felt that he understood his true position at
Dombey and Son's, much better than they did.
So it was that he went on doing what he had to do from day to day, in a
cheerful, pains-taking, merry spirit; and saw through the sanguine
complexion of Uncle Sol and Captain Cuttle; and yet entertained a thousand
indistinct and visionary fancies of his own, to which theirs were work-a-day
probabilities. Such was his condition at the Pipchin period, when he looked
a little older than of yore, but not much; and was the same light-footed,
light-hearted, light-headed lad, as when he charged into the parlour at the
head of Uncle Sol and the imaginary boarders, and lighted him to bring up
the Madeira.
'Uncle Sol,' said Walter, 'I don't think you're well. You haven't eaten
any breakfast. I shall bring a doctor to you, if you go on like this.'
'He can't give me what I want, my boy,' said Uncle Sol. 'At least he is
in good practice if he can - and then he wouldn't.'
'What is it, Uncle? Customers?'
'Ay,' returned Solomon, with a sigh. 'Customers would do.'
'Confound it, Uncle!' said Walter, putting down his breakfast cup with
a clatter, and striking his hand on the table: 'when I see the people going
up and down the street in shoals all day, and passing and re-passing the
shop every minute, by scores, I feel half tempted to rush out, collar
somebody, bring him in, and make him buy fifty pounds' worth of instruments
for ready money. What are you looking in at the door for? - ' continued
Walter, apostrophizing an old gentleman with a powdered head (inaudibly to
him of course), who was staring at a ship's telescope with all his might and
main. 'That's no use. I could do that. Come in and buy it!'
The old gentleman, however, having satiated his curiosity, walked
calmly away.
'There he goes!' said Walter. 'That's the way with 'em all. But, Uncle
- I say, Uncle Sol' - for the old man was meditating and had not responded
to his first appeal. 'Don't be cast down. Don't be out of spirits, Uncle.
When orders do come, they'll come in such a crowd, you won't be able to
execute 'em.'
'I shall be past executing 'em, whenever they come, my boy,' returned
Solomon Gills. 'They'll never come to this shop again, till I am out of t.'
'I say, Uncle! You musn't really, you know!' urged Walter. 'Don't!'
Old Sol endeavoured to assume a cheery look, and smiled across the
little table at him as pleasantly as he could.
'There's nothing more than usual the matter; is there, Uncle?' said
Walter, leaning his elbows on the tea tray, and bending over, to speak the
more confidentially and kindly. 'Be open with me, Uncle, if there is, and
tell me all about it.'
'No, no, no,' returned Old Sol. 'More than usual? No, no. What should
there be the matter more than usual?'
Walter answered with an incredulous shake of his head. 'That's what I
want to know,' he said, 'and you ask me! I'll tell you what, Uncle, when I
see you like this, I am quite sorry that I live with you.'
Old Sol opened his eyes involuntarily.
'Yes. Though nobody ever was happier than I am and always have been
with you, I am quite sorry that I live with you, when I see you with
anything in your mind.'
'I am a little dull at such times, I know,' observed Solomon, meekly
rubbing his hands.
'What I mean, Uncle Sol,' pursued Walter, bending over a little more to
pat him on the shoulder, 'is, that then I feel you ought to have, sitting
here and pouring out the tea instead of me, a nice little dumpling of a
wife, you know, - a comfortable, capital, cosy old lady, who was just a
match for you, and knew how to manage you, and keep you in good heart. Here
am I, as loving a nephew as ever was (I am sure I ought to be!) but I am
only a nephew, and I can't be such a companion to you when you're low and
out of sorts as she would have made herself, years ago, though I'm sure I'd
give any money if I could cheer you up. And so I say, when I see you with
anything on your mind, that I feel quite sorry you haven't got somebody
better about you than a blundering young rough-and-tough boy like me, who
has got the will to console you, Uncle, but hasn't got the way - hasn't got
the way,' repeated Walter, reaching over further yet, to shake his Uncle by
the hand.
'Wally, my dear boy,' said Solomon, 'if the cosy little old lady had
taken her place in this parlour five and forty years ago, I never could have
been fonder of her than I am of you.'
'I know that, Uncle Sol,' returned Walter. 'Lord bless you, I know
that. But you wouldn't have had the whole weight of any uncomfortable
secrets if she had been with you, because she would have known how to
relieve you of 'em, and I don't.'
'Yes, yes, you do,' returned the Instrument-maker.
'Well then, what's the matter, Uncle Sol?' said Walter, coaxingly.
'Come! What's the matter?'
Solomon Gills persisted that there was nothing the matter; and
maintained it so resolutely, that his nephew had no resource but to make a
very indifferent imitation of believing him.
'All I can say is, Uncle Sol, that if there is - '
'But there isn't,' said Solomon.
'Very well,, said Walter. 'Then I've no more to say; and that's lucky,
for my time's up for going to business. I shall look in by-and-by when I'm
out, to see how you get on, Uncle. And mind, Uncle! I'll never believe you
again, and never tell you anything more about Mr Carker the Junior, if I
find out that you have been deceiving me!'
Solomon Gills laughingly defied him to find out anything of the kind;
and Walter, revolving in his thoughts all sorts of impracticable ways of
making fortunes and placing the wooden Midshipman in a position of
independence, betook himself to the offices of Dombey and Son with a heavier
countenance than he usually carried there.
There lived in those days, round the corner - in Bishopsgate Street
Without - one Brogley, sworn broker and appraiser, who kept a shop where
every description of second-hand furniture was exhibited in the most
uncomfortable aspect, and under circumstances and in combinations the most
completely foreign to its purpose. Dozens of chairs hooked on to
washing-stands, which with difficulty poised themselves on the shoulders of
sideboards, which in their turn stood upon the wrong side of dining-tables,
gymnastic with their legs upward on the tops of other dining-tables, were
among its most reasonable arrangements. A banquet array of dish-covers,
wine-glasses, and decanters was generally to be seen, spread forth upon the
bosom of a four-post bedstead, for the entertainment of such genial company
as half-a-dozen pokers, and a hall lamp. A set of window curtains with no
windows belonging to them, would be seen gracefully draping a barricade of
chests of drawers, loaded with little jars from chemists' shops; while a
homeless hearthrug severed from its natural companion the fireside, braved
the shrewd east wind in its adversity, and trembled in melancholy accord
with the shrill complainings of a cabinet piano, wasting away, a string a
day, and faintly resounding to the noises of the street in its jangling and
distracted brain. Of motionless clocks that never stirred a finger, and
seemed as incapable of being successfully wound up, as the pecuniary affairs
of their former owners, there was always great choice in Mr Brogley's shop;
and various looking-glasses, accidentally placed at compound interest of
reflection and refraction, presented to the eye an eternal perspective of
bankruptcy and ruin.
Mr Brogley himself was a moist-eyed, pink-complexioned, crisp-haired
man, of a bulky figure and an easy temper - for that class of Caius Marius
who sits upon the ruins of other people's Carthages, can keep up his spirits
well enough. He had looked in at Solomon's shop sometimes, to ask a question
about articles in Solomon's way of business; and Walter knew him
sufficiently to give him good day when they met in the street. But as that
was the extent of the broker's acquaintance with Solomon Gills also, Walter
was not a little surprised when he came back in the course of the forenoon,
agreeably to his promise, to find Mr Brogley sitting in the back parlour
with his hands in his pockets, and his hat hanging up behind the door.
'Well, Uncle Sol!' said Walter. The old man was sitting ruefully on the
opposite side of the table, with his spectacles over his eyes, for a wonder,
instead of on his forehead. 'How are you now?'
Solomon shook his head, and waved one hand towards the broker, as
introducing him.
'Is there anything the matter?' asked Walter, with a catching in his
breath.
'No, no. There's nothing the matter, said Mr Brogley. 'Don't let it put
you out of the way.' Walter looked from the broker to his Uncle in mute
amazement. 'The fact is,' said Mr Brogley, 'there's a little payment on a
bond debt - three hundred and seventy odd, overdue: and I'm in possession.'
'In possession!' cried Walter, looking round at the shop.
'Ah!' said Mr Brogley, in confidential assent, and nodding his head as
if he would urge the advisability of their all being comfortable together.
'It's an execution. That's what it is. Don't let it put you out of the way.
I come myself, because of keeping it quiet and sociable. You know me. It's
quite private.'
'Uncle Sol!' faltered Walter.
'Wally, my boy,' returned his uncle. 'It's the first time. Such a
calamity never happened to me before. I'm an old man to begin.' Pushing up
his spectacles again (for they were useless any longer to conceal his
emotion), he covered his face with his hand, and sobbed aloud, and his tears
fell down upon his coffee-coloured waistcoat.
'Uncle Sol! Pray! oh don't!' exclaimed Walter, who really felt a thrill
of terror in seeing the old man weep. 'For God's sake don't do that. Mr
Brogley, what shall I do?'
'I should recommend you looking up a friend or so,' said Mr Brogley,
'and talking it over.'
'To be sure!' cried Walter, catching at anything. 'Certainly! Thankee.
Captain Cuttle's the man, Uncle. Wait till I run to Captain Cuttle. Keep
your eye upon my Uncle, will you, Mr Brogley, and make him as comfortable as
you can while I am gone? Don't despair, Uncle Sol. Try and keep a good
heart, there's a dear fellow!'
Saying this with great fervour, and disregarding the old man's broken
remonstrances, Walter dashed out of the shop again as hard as he could go;
and, having hurried round to the office to excuse himself on the plea of his
Uncle's sudden illness, set off, full speed, for Captain Cuttle's residence.
Everything seemed altered as he ran along the streets. There were the
usual entanglement and noise of carts, drays, omnibuses, waggons, and foot
passengers, but the misfortune that had fallen on the wooden Midshipman made
it strange and new. Houses and shops were different from what they used to
be, and bore Mr Brogley's warrant on their fronts in large characters. The
broker seemed to have got hold of the very churches; for their spires rose
into the sky with an unwonted air. Even the sky itself was changed, and had
an execution in it plainly.
Captain Cuttle lived on the brink of a little canal near the India
Docks, where there was a swivel bridge which opened now and then to let some
wandering monster of a ship come roamIng up the street like a stranded
leviathan. The gradual change from land to water, on the approach to Captain
Cuttle's lodgings, was curious. It began with the erection of flagstaffs, as
appurtenances to public-houses; then came slop-sellers' shops, with Guernsey
shirts, sou'wester hats, and canvas pantaloons, at once the tightest and the
loosest of their order, hanging up outside. These were succeeded by anchor
and chain-cable forges, where sledgehammers were dinging upon iron all day
long. Then came rows of houses, with little vane-surmounted masts uprearing
themselves from among the scarlet beans. Then, ditches. Then, pollard
willows. Then, more ditches. Then, unaccountable patches of dirty water,
hardly to be descried, for the ships that covered them. Then, the air was
perfumed with chips; and all other trades were swallowed up in mast, oar,
and block-making, and boatbuilding. Then, the ground grew marshy and
unsettled. Then, there was nothing to be smelt but rum and sugar. Then,
Captain Cuttle's lodgings - at once a first floor and a top storey, in Brig
Place - were close before you.
The Captain was one of those timber-looking men, suits of oak as well
as hearts, whom it is almost impossible for the liveliest imagination to
separate from any part of their dress, however insignificant. Accordingly,
when Walter knocked at the door, and the Captain instantly poked his head
out of one of his little front windows, and hailed him, with the hard glared
hat already on it, and the shirt-collar like a sail, and the wide suit of
blue, all standing as usual, Walter was as fully persuaded that he was
always in that state, as if the Captain had been a bird and those had been
his feathers.
'Wal'r, my lad!'said Captain Cuttle. 'Stand by and knock again. Hard!
It's washing day.'
Walter, in his impatience, gave a prodigious thump with the knocker.
'Hard it is!' said Captain Cuttle, and immediately drew in his head, as
if he expected a squall.
Nor was he mistaken: for a widow lady, with her sleeves rolled up to
her shoulders, and her arms frothy with soap-suds and smoking with hot
water, replied to the summons with startling rapidity. Before she looked at
Walter she looked at the knocker, and then, measuring him with her eyes from
head to foot, said she wondered he had left any of it.
'Captain Cuttle's at home, I know,' said Walter with a conciliatory
smile.
'Is he?' replied the widow lady. 'In-deed!'
'He has just been speaking to me,' said Walter, in breathless
explanation.
'Has he?' replied the widow lady. 'Then p'raps you'll give him Mrs
MacStinger's respects, and say that the next time he lowers himself and his
lodgings by talking out of the winder she'll thank him to come down and open
the door too.' Mrs MacStinger spoke loud, and listened for any observations
that might be offered from the first floor.
'I'll mention it,' said Walter, 'if you'll have the goodness to let me
in, Ma'am.'
For he was repelled by a wooden fortification extending across the
doorway, and put there to prevent the little MacStingers in their moments of
recreation from tumbling down the steps.
'A boy that can knock my door down,' said Mrs MacStinger,
contemptuously, 'can get over that, I should hope!' But Walter, taking this
as a permission to enter, and getting over it, Mrs MacStinger immediately
demanded whether an Englishwoman's house was her castle or not; and whether
she was to be broke in upon by 'raff.' On these subjects her thirst for
information was still very importunate, when Walter, having made his way up
the little staircase through an artificial fog occasioned by the washing,
which covered the banisters with a clammy perspiration, entered Captain
Cuttle's room, and found that gentleman in ambush behind the door.
'Never owed her a penny, Wal'r,' said Captain Cuttle, in a low voice,
and with visible marks of trepidation on his countenance. 'Done her a world
of good turns, and the children too. Vixen at times, though. Whew!'
'I should go away, Captain Cuttle,' said Walter.
'Dursn't do it, Wal'r,' returned the Captain. 'She'd find me out,
wherever I went. Sit down. How's Gills?'
The Captain was dining (in his hat) off cold loin of mutton, porter,
and some smoking hot potatoes, which he had cooked himself, and took out of
a little saucepan before the fire as he wanted them. He unscrewed his hook
at dinner-time, and screwed a knife into its wooden socket instead, with
which he had already begun to peel one of these potatoes for Walter. His
rooms were very small, and strongly impregnated with tobacco-smoke, but snug
enough: everything being stowed away, as if there were an earthquake
regularly every half-hour.
'How's Gills?' inquired the Captain.
Walter, who had by this time recovered his breath, and lost his spirits
- or such temporary spirits as his rapid journey had given him - looked at
his questioner for a moment, said 'Oh, Captain Cuttle!' and burst into
tears.
No words can describe the Captain's consternation at this sight Mrs
MacStinger faded into nothing before it. He dropped the potato and the fork
- and would have dropped the knife too if he could - and sat gazing at the
boy, as if he expected to hear next moment that a gulf had opened in the
City, which had swallowed up his old friend, coffee-coloured suit, buttons,
chronometer, spectacles, and all.
But when Walter told him what was really the matter, Captain Cuttle,
after a moment's reflection, started up into full activity. He emptied out
of a little tin canister on the top shelf of the cupboard, his whole stock
of ready money (amounting to thirteen pounds and half-a-crown), which he
transferred to one of the pockets of his square blue coat; further enriched
that repository with the contents of his plate chest, consisting of two
withered atomies of tea-spoons, and an obsolete pair of knock-knee'd
sugar-tongs; pulled up his immense double-cased silver watch from the depths
in which it reposed, to assure himself that that valuable was sound and
whole; re-attached the hook to his right wrist; and seizing the stick
covered over with knobs, bade Walter come along.
Remembering, however, in the midst of his virtuous excitement, that Mrs
MacStinger might be lying in wait below, Captain Cuttle hesitated at last,
not without glancing at the window, as if he had some thoughts of escaping
by that unusual means of egress, rather than encounter his terrible enemy.
He decided, however, in favour of stratagem.
'Wal'r,' said the Captain, with a timid wink, 'go afore, my lad. Sing
out, "good-bye, Captain Cuttle," when you're in the passage, and shut the
door. Then wait at the corner of the street 'till you see me.
These directions were not issued without a previous knowledge of the
enemy's tactics, for when Walter got downstairs, Mrs MacStinger glided out
of the little back kitchen, like an avenging spirit. But not gliding out
upon the Captain, as she had expected, she merely made a further allusion to
the knocker, and glided in again.
Some five minutes elapsed before Captain Cuttle could summon courage to
attempt his escape; for Walter waited so long at the street corner, looking
back at the house, before there were any symptoms of the hard glazed hat. At
length the Captain burst out of the door with the suddenness of an
explosion, and coming towards him at a great pace, and never once looking
over his shoulder, pretended, as soon as they were well out of the street,
to whistle a tune.
'Uncle much hove down, Wal'r?' inquired the Captain, as they were
walking along.
'I am afraid so. If you had seen him this morning, you would never have
forgotten it.'
'Walk fast, Wal'r, my lad,' returned the Captain, mending his pace;
'and walk the same all the days of your life. Overhaul the catechism for
that advice, and keep it!'
The Captain was too busy with his own thoughts of Solomon Gills,
mingled perhaps with some reflections on his late escape from Mrs
MacStinger, to offer any further quotations on the way for Walter's moral
improvement They interchanged no other word until they arrived at old Sol's
door, where the unfortunate wooden Midshipman, with his instrument at his
eye, seemed to be surveying the whole horizon in search of some friend to
help him out of his difficulty.
'Gills!' said the Captain, hurrying into the back parlour, and taking
him by the hand quite tenderly. 'Lay your head well to the wind, and we'll
fight through it. All you've got to do,' said the Captain, with the
solemnity of a man who was delivering himself of one of the most precious
practical tenets ever discovered by human wisdom, 'is to lay your head well
to the wind, and we'll fight through it!'
Old Sol returned the pressure of his hand, and thanked him.
Captain Cuttle, then, with a gravity suitable to the nature of the
occasion, put down upon the table the two tea-spoons and the sugar-tongs,
the silver watch, and the ready money; and asked Mr Brogley, the broker,
what the damage was.
'Come! What do you make of it?' said Captain Cuttle.
'Why, Lord help you!' returned the broker; 'you don't suppose that
property's of any use, do you?'
'Why not?' inquired the Captain.
'Why? The amount's three hundred and seventy, odd,' replied the broker.
'Never mind,' returned the Captain, though he was evidently dismayed by
the figures: 'all's fish that comes to your net, I suppose?'
'Certainly,' said Mr Brogley. 'But sprats ain't whales, you know.'
The philosophy of this observation seemed to strike the Captain. He
ruminated for a minute; eyeing the broker, meanwhile, as a deep genius; and
then called the Instrument-maker aside.
'Gills,' said Captain Cuttle, 'what's the bearings of this business?
Who's the creditor?'
'Hush!' returned the old man. 'Come away. Don't speak before Wally.
It's a matter of security for Wally's father - an old bond. I've paid a good
deal of it, Ned, but the times are so bad with me that I can't do more just
now. I've foreseen it, but I couldn't help it. Not a word before Wally, for
all the world.'
'You've got some money, haven't you?' whispered the Captain.
'Yes, yes - oh yes- I've got some,' returned old Sol, first putting his
hands into his empty pockets, and then squeezing his Welsh wig between them,
as if he thought he might wring some gold out of it; 'but I - the little I
have got, isn't convertible, Ned; it can't be got at. I have been trying to
do something with it for Wally, and I'm old fashioned, and behind the time.
It's here and there, and - and, in short, it's as good as nowhere,' said the
old man, looking in bewilderment about him.
He had so much the air of a half-witted person who had been hiding his
money in a variety of places, and had forgotten where, that the Captain
followed his eyes, not without a faint hope that he might remember some few
hundred pounds concealed up the chimney, or down in the cellar. But Solomon
Gills knew better than that.
'I'm behind the time altogether, my dear Ned,' said Sol, in resigned
despair, 'a long way. It's no use my lagging on so far behind it. The stock
had better be sold - it's worth more than this debt - and I had better go
and die somewhere, on the balance. I haven't any energy left. I don't
understand things. This had better be the end of it. Let 'em sell the stock
and take him down,' said the old man, pointing feebly to the wooden
Midshipman, 'and let us both be broken up together.'
'And what d'ye mean to do with Wal'r?'said the Captain. 'There, there!
Sit ye down, Gills, sit ye down, and let me think o' this. If I warn't a man
on a small annuity, that was large enough till to-day, I hadn't need to
think of it. But you only lay your head well to the wind,' said the Captain,
again administering that unanswerable piece of consolation, 'and you're all
right!'
Old Sol thanked him from his heart, and went and laid it against the
back parlour fire-place instead.
Captain Cuttle walked up and down the shop for some time, cogitating
profoundly, and bringing his bushy black eyebrows to bear so heavily on his
nose, like clouds setting on a mountain, that Walter was afraid to offer any
interruption to the current of his reflections. Mr Brogley, who was averse
to being any constraint upon the party, and who had an ingenious cast of
mind, went, softly whistling, among the stock; rattling weather-glasses,
shaking compasses as if they were physic, catching up keys with loadstones,
looking through telescopes, endeavouring to make himself acquainted with the
use of the globes, setting parallel rulers astride on to his nose, and
amusing himself with other philosophical transactions.
'Wal'r!' said the Captain at last. 'I've got it.'
'Have you, Captain Cuttle?' cried Walter, with great animation.
'Come this way, my lad,' said the Captain. 'The stock's the security.
I'm another. Your governor's the man to advance money.'
'Mr Dombey!' faltered Walter.
The Captain nodded gravely. 'Look at him,' he said. 'Look at Gills. If
they was to sell off these things now, he'd die of it. You know he would. We
mustn't leave a stone unturned - and there's a stone for you.'
'A stone! - Mr Dombey!' faltered Walter.
'You run round to the office, first of all, and see if he's there,'
said Captain Cuttle, clapping him on the back. 'Quick!'