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.
Today, 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
steadfastly. 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!
h—h!”
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, and 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! Whoo-oop! 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! Whoo-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 could go to Captain
Cuttle’s house; hear from his own lips, what he thought of the absence
of any tidings of the 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
succumbed 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 Cuttle 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
evidently 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
ship-shape.” 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 kept it. That’s the long and
short of the 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:
“Bunsby, my lad, how fares it?”
A deep, gruff, husky utterance, which seemed to have no connexion with
Bunsby, and certainly had not the least effect upon his face, replied,
“Ay, ay, shipmet, how goes it?” At the same time Bunsby’s right hand
and arm, emerging from a pocket, shook the Captain’s, and went back
again.
“Bunsby,” said the Captain, striking home at once, “here you are; a man
of mind, and a man as can give an opinion. Here’s a young lady as wants
to take that opinion, in regard of my friend Wal”r; likewise my t’other
friend, Sol Gills, which is a character for you to come within hail of,
being a man of science, which is the mother of invention, and knows no
law. Bunsby, will you wear, to oblige me, and come along with us?”
[Illustration]
The great commander, who seemed by expression of his visage to be
always on the look-out for something in the extremest distance, and to
have no ocular knowledge of anything within ten miles, made no reply
whatever.
“Here is a man,” said the Captain, addressing himself to his fair
auditors, and indicating the commander with his outstretched hook,
“that has fell down, more than any man alive; that has had more
accidents happen to his own self than the Seamen’s Hospital to all
hands; that took as many spars and bars and bolts about the outside of
his head when he was young, as you’d want a order for on Chatham-yard
to build a pleasure yacht with; and yet that his opinions in that way,
it’s my belief, for there ain’t nothing like ’em afloat or ashore.”
The stolid commander appeared by a very slight vibration in his elbows,
to express some satisfaction in this encomium; but if his face had been
as distant as his gaze was, it could hardly have enlightened the
beholders less in reference to anything that was passing in his
thoughts.
“Shipmet,” said Bunsby, all of a sudden, and stooping down to look out
under some interposing spar, “what’ll the ladies drink?”
Captain Cuttle, whose delicacy was shocked by such an inquiry in
connection with Florence, drew the sage aside, and seeming to explain
in his ear, accompanied him below; where, that he might not take
offence, the Captain drank a dram himself, which Florence and Susan,
glancing down the open skylight, saw the sage, with difficulty finding
room for himself between his berth and a very little brass fireplace,
serve out for self and friend. They soon reappeared on deck, and
Captain Cuttle, triumphing in the success of his enterprise, conducted
Florence back to the coach, while Bunsby followed, escorting Miss
Nipper, whom he hugged upon the way (much to that young lady’s
indignation) with his pilot-coated arm, like a blue bear.
The Captain put his oracle inside, and gloried so much in having
secured him, and having got that mind into a hackney-coach, that he
could not refrain from often peeping in at Florence through the little
window behind the driver, and testifying his delight in smiles, and
also in taps upon his forehead, to hint to her that the brain of Bunsby
was hard at it. In the meantime, Bunsby, still hugging Miss Nipper (for
his friend, the Captain, had not exaggerated the softness of his
heart), uniformly preserved his gravity of deportment, and showed no
other consciousness of her or anything.
Uncle Sol, who had come home, received them at the door, and ushered
them immediately into the little back parlour: strangely altered by the
absence of Walter. On the table, and about the room, were the charts
and maps on which the heavy-hearted Instrument-maker had again and
again tracked the missing vessel across the sea, and on which, with a
pair of compasses that he still had in his hand, he had been measuring,
a minute before, how far she must have driven, to have driven here or
there: and trying to demonstrate that a long time must elapse before
hope was exhausted.
“Whether she can have run,” said Uncle Sol, looking wistfully over the
chart; “but no, that’s almost impossible or whether she can have been
forced by stress of weather,—but that’s not reasonably likely. Or
whether there is any hope she so far changed her course as—but even I
can hardly hope that!” With such broken suggestions, poor old Uncle Sol
roamed over the great sheet before him, and could not find a speck of
hopeful probability in it large enough to set one small point of the
compasses upon.
Florence saw immediately—it would have been difficult to help
seeing—that there was a singular, indescribable change in the old man,
and that while his manner was far more restless and unsettled than
usual, there was yet a curious, contradictory decision in it, that
perplexed her very much. She fancied once that he spoke wildly, and at
random; for on her saying she regretted not to have seen him when she
had been there before that morning, he at first replied that he had
been to see her, and directly afterwards seemed to wish to recall that
answer.
“You have been to see me?” said Florence. “Today?”
“Yes, my dear young lady,” returned Uncle Sol, looking at her and away
from her in a confused manner. “I wished to see you with my own eyes,
and to hear you with my own ears, once more before—” There he stopped.
“Before when? Before what?” said Florence, putting her hand upon his
arm.
“Did I say ‘before?’” replied old Sol. “If I did, I must have meant
before we should have news of my dear boy.”
“You are not well,” said Florence, tenderly. “You have been so very
anxious I am sure you are not well.”
“I am as well,” returned the old man, shutting up his right hand, and
holding it out to show her: “as well and firm as any man at my time of
life can hope to be. See! It’s steady. Is its master not as capable of
resolution and fortitude as many a younger man? I think so. We shall
see.”
There was that in his manner more than in his words, though they
remained with her too, which impressed Florence so much, that she would
have confided her uneasiness to Captain Cuttle at that moment, if the
Captain had not seized that moment for expounding the state of
circumstance, on which the opinion of the sagacious Bunsby was
requested, and entreating that profound authority to deliver the same.
Bunsby, whose eye continued to be addressed to somewhere about the
half-way house between London and Gravesend, two or three times put out
his rough right arm, as seeking to wind it for inspiration round the
fair form of Miss Nipper; but that young female having withdrawn
herself, in displeasure, to the opposite side of the table, the soft
heart of the Commander of the Cautious Clara met with no response to
its impulses. After sundry failures in this wise, the Commander,
addressing himself to nobody, thus spake; or rather the voice within
him said of its own accord, and quite independent of himself, as if he
were possessed by a gruff spirit:
“My name’s Jack Bunsby!”
“He was christened John,” cried the delighted Captain Cuttle. “Hear
him!”
“And what I says,” pursued the voice, after some deliberation, “I
stands to.”
The Captain, with Florence on his arm, nodded at the auditory, and
seemed to say, “Now he’s coming out. This is what I meant when I
brought him.”
“Whereby,” proceeded the voice, “why not? If so, what odds? Can any man
say otherwise? No. Awast then!”
When it had pursued its train of argument to this point, the voice
stopped, and rested. It then proceeded very slowly, thus:
“Do I believe that this here Son and Heir’s gone down, my lads? Mayhap.
Do I say so? Which? If a skipper stands out by Sen’ George’s Channel,
making for the Downs, what’s right ahead of him? The Goodwins. He isn’t
forced to run upon the Goodwins, but he may. The bearings of this
observation lays in the application on it. That ain’t no part of my
duty. Awast then, keep a bright look-out for’ard, and good luck to
you!”
The voice here went out of the back parlour and into the street, taking
the Commander of the Cautious Clara with it, and accompanying him on
board again with all convenient expedition, where he immediately turned
in, and refreshed his mind with a nap.
The students of the sage’s precepts, left to their own application of
his wisdom—upon a principle which was the main leg of the Bunsby
tripod, as it is perchance of some other oracular stools—looked upon
one another in a little uncertainty; while Rob the Grinder, who had
taken the innocent freedom of peering in, and listening, through the
skylight in the roof, came softly down from the leads, in a state of
very dense confusion. Captain Cuttle, however, whose admiration of
Bunsby was, if possible, enhanced by the splendid manner in which he
had justified his reputation and come through this solemn reference,
proceeded to explain that Bunsby meant nothing but confidence; that
Bunsby had no misgivings; and that such an opinion as that man had
given, coming from such a mind as his, was Hope’s own anchor, with good
roads to cast it in. Florence endeavoured to believe that the Captain
was right; but the Nipper, with her arms tight folded, shook her head
in resolute denial, and had no more trust in Bunsby than in Mr Perch
himself.
The philosopher seemed to have left Uncle Sol pretty much where he had
found him, for he still went roaming about the watery world, compasses
in hand, and discovering no rest for them. It was in pursuance of a
whisper in his ear from Florence, while the old man was absorbed in
this pursuit, that Captain Cuttle laid his heavy hand upon his
shoulder.
“What cheer, Sol Gills?” cried the Captain, heartily.
“But so-so, Ned,” returned the Instrument-maker. “I have been
remembering, all this afternoon, that on the very day when my boy
entered Dombey’s House, and came home late to dinner, sitting just
there where you stand, we talked of storm and shipwreck, and I could
hardly turn him from the subject.”
But meeting the eyes of Florence, which were fixed with earnest
scrutiny upon his face, the old man stopped and smiled.
“Stand by, old friend!” cried the Captain. “Look alive! I tell you
what, Sol Gills; arter I’ve convoyed Heart’s-delight safe home,” here
the Captain kissed his hook to Florence, “I’ll come back and take you
in tow for the rest of this blessed day. You’ll come and eat your
dinner along with me, Sol, somewheres or another.”
“Not today, Ned!” said the old man quickly, and appearing to be
unaccountably startled by the proposition. “Not today. I couldn’t do
it!”
“Why not?” returned the Captain, gazing at him in astonishment.
“I—I have so much to do. I—I mean to think of, and arrange. I couldn’t
do it, Ned, indeed. I must go out again, and be alone, and turn my mind
to many things today.”
The Captain looked at the Instrument-maker, and looked at Florence, and
again at the Instrument-maker. “To-morrow, then,” he suggested, at
last.
“Yes, yes. To-morrow,” said the old man. “Think of me to-morrow. Say
to-morrow.”
“I shall come here early, mind, Sol Gills,” stipulated the Captain.
“Yes, yes. The first thing tomorrow morning,” said old Sol; “and now
good-bye, Ned Cuttle, and God bless you!”
Squeezing both the Captain’s hands, with uncommon fervour, as he said
it, the old man turned to Florence, folded hers in his own, and put
them to his lips; then hurried her out to the coach with very singular
precipitation. Altogether, he made such an effect on Captain Cuttle
that the Captain lingered behind, and instructed Rob to be particularly
gentle and attentive to his master until the morning: which injunction
he strengthened with the payment of one shilling down, and the promise
of another sixpence before noon next day. This kind office performed,
Captain Cuttle, who considered himself the natural and lawful
body-guard of Florence, mounted the box with a mighty sense of his
trust, and escorted her home. At parting, he assured her that he would
stand by Sol Gills, close and true; and once again inquired of Susan
Nipper, unable to forget her gallant words in reference to Mrs
MacStinger, “Would you, do you think my dear, though?”
When the desolate house had closed upon the two, the Captain’s thoughts
reverted to the old Instrument-maker, and he felt uncomfortable.
Therefore, instead of going home, he walked up and down the street
several times, and, eking out his leisure until evening, dined late at
a certain angular little tavern in the City, with a public parlour like
a wedge, to which glazed hats much resorted. The Captain’s principal
intention was to pass Sol Gills’s, after dark, and look in through the
window: which he did, The parlour door stood open, and he could see his
old friend writing busily and steadily at the table within, while the
little Midshipman, already sheltered from the night dews, watched him
from the counter; under which Rob the Grinder made his own bed,
preparatory to shutting the shop. Reassured by the tranquillity that
reigned within the precincts of the wooden mariner, the Captain headed
for Brig Place, resolving to weigh anchor betimes in the morning.