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
abode, 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 the 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 shade. 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 his table, changing them as one by one they
withered, and he did not come back, preparing something for him every day, and
leaving some timid mark of her presence near his usual seat. To-day, it was a
little painted stand for his watch; to-morrow 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, excepting 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 God-send.'
`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 any one might almost make away with, with a
touch, and really it would be a blessed event for all parties if some one 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, 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 any one 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 conscious-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 firstborn 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 should 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 arguments.
In fine, 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 Heart's-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 doe us part, and when the stormy winds do blow, do blow, do
blow--overhaul the Catechism,' said the Captain parenthetically, `and there
you'll find them expressions--if it would console Sol Gills to have the opinion
of a seafaring man as has got a mind equal to any undertaking that he puts it
alongside of, and as was all but smashed in his 'prenticeship, and of which the
name is Bunsby, that 'ere man shall give him such an opinion in his own parlour
as'll stun him. Ah!' said Captain Cuttle, vauntingly, `as much as if he'd gone
and knocked his head again a door!'
`Let us take this gentleman to see him, and let us hear what he says,' cried
Florence. `Will you go with us now? We have a coach here.'
Again the Captain clapped his hand to his head, on which the hard glazed hat
was not, and looked discomfited. But at this instant a most remarkable
phenomenon occurred. The door opening, without any note of preparation, and
apparently of itself, the hard glazed hat in question skimmed into the room like
a bird, and alighted heavily at the Captain's feet. The door then shut as
violently as it had opened, and nothing ensued in explanation of the prodigy.
Captain Cuttle picked up his hat, and having turned it over with a look of
interest and welcome, began to polish it on his sleeve. While doing so, the
Captain eyed his visitors intently, and said in a low voice:
`You see I should have bore down on Sol Gills yesterday, and this morning,
but she--she took it away and kep it. That's the long and short 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 think, 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 is 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.
`Aye, aye!' 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 breast-bone 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, `Aye,
aye, 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 as 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 inwention, and knows no law. Bunsby, will you
wear, to oblige me, and come along with us?'
The great commander, who seemed by the 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 got his opinions in
that way, it's my belief, for there an'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. `To-day?'
`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 circumstances 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 an'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 to-day, Ned!' said the old man quickly, and appearing to be
unaccountably startled by the proposition. `Not to-day. 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 to-day.'
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 to-morrow 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.
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