Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens [top ten ebook reader .TXT] 📗

sagacity and mystery—to have the goodness to ‘sing out,’ and he would make up the difference from his pocket. Casually consulting his big watch, as a deep means of dazzling the establishment, and impressing it with a sense of property, the Captain then kissed his hook to his niece, and retired outside the window, where it was a choice sight to see his great face looking in from time to time, among the silks and ribbons, with an obvious misgiving that Florence had been spirited away by a back door.

‘Dear Captain Cuttle,’ said Florence, when she came out with a parcel, the size of which greatly disappointed the Captain, who had expected to see a porter following with a bale of goods, ‘I don’t want this money, indeed. I have not spent any of it. I have money of my own.’

‘My lady lass,’ returned the baffled Captain, looking straight down the street before them, ‘take care on it for me, will you be so good, till such time as I ask ye for it?’

‘May I put it back in its usual place,’ said Florence, ‘and keep it there?’

The Captain was not at all gratified by this proposal, but he answered, ‘Ay, ay, put it anywheres, my lady lass, so long as you know where to find it again. It ain’t o’ no use to me,’ said the Captain. ‘I wonder I haven’t chucked it away afore now.

The Captain was quite disheartened for the moment, but he revived at the first touch of Florence’s arm, and they returned with the same precautions as they had come; the Captain opening the door of the little Midshipman’s berth, and diving in, with a suddenness which his great practice only could have taught him. During Florence’s slumber in the morning, he had engaged the daughter of an elderly lady who usually sat under a blue umbrella in Leadenhall Market, selling poultry, to come and put her room in order, and render her any little services she required; and this damsel now appearing, Florence found everything about her as convenient and orderly, if not as handsome, as in the terrible dream she had once called Home.

When they were alone again, the Captain insisted on her eating a slice of dry toast, and drinking a glass of spiced negus (which he made to perfection); and, encouraging her with every kind word and inconsequential quotation he could possibly think of, led her upstairs to her bedroom. But he too had something on his mind, and was not easy in his manner.

‘Good-night, dear heart,’ said Captain Cuttle to her at her chamber-door.

Florence raised her lips to his face, and kissed him.

At any other time the Captain would have been overbalanced by such a token of her affection and gratitude; but now, although he was very sensible of it, he looked in her face with even more uneasiness than he had testified before, and seemed unwilling to leave her.

‘Poor Wal’r!’ said the Captain.

‘Poor, poor Walter!’ sighed Florence.

‘Drownded, ain’t he?’ said the Captain.

Florence shook her head, and sighed.

‘Good-night, my lady lass!’ said Captain Cuttle, putting out his hand.

‘God bless you, dear, kind friend!’

But the Captain lingered still.

‘Is anything the matter, dear Captain Cuttle?’ said Florence, easily alarmed in her then state of mind. ‘Have you anything to tell me?’

‘To tell you, lady lass!’ replied the Captain, meeting her eyes in confusion. ‘No, no; what should I have to tell you, pretty! You don’t expect as I’ve got anything good to tell you, sure?’

‘No!’ said Florence, shaking her head.

The Captain looked at her wistfully, and repeated ‘No,’— still lingering, and still showing embarrassment.

‘Poor Wal’r!’ said the Captain. ‘My Wal’r, as I used to call you! Old Sol Gills’s nevy! Welcome to all as knowed you, as the flowers in May! Where are you got to, brave boy? Drownded, ain’t he?’

Concluding his apostrophe with this abrupt appeal to Florence, the Captain bade her good-night, and descended the stairs, while Florence remained at the top, holding the candle out to light him down. He was lost in the obscurity, and, judging from the sound of his receding footsteps, was in the act of turning into the little parlour, when his head and shoulders unexpectedly emerged again, as from the deep, apparently for no other purpose than to repeat, ‘Drownded, ain’t he, pretty?’ For when he had said that in a tone of tender condolence, he disappeared.

Florence was very sorry that she should unwittingly, though naturally, have awakened these associations in the mind of her protector, by taking refuge there; and sitting down before the little table where the Captain had arranged the telescope and song-book, and those other rarities, thought of Walter, and of all that was connected with him in the past, until she could have almost wished to lie down on her bed and fade away. But in her lonely yearning to the dead whom she had loved, no thought of home—no possibility of going back—no presentation of it as yet existing, or as sheltering her father—once entered her thoughts. She had seen the murder done. In the last lingering natural aspect in which she had cherished him through so much, he had been torn out of her heart, defaced, and slain. The thought of it was so appalling to her, that she covered her eyes, and shrunk trembling from the least remembrance of the deed, or of the cruel hand that did it. If her fond heart could have held his image after that, it must have broken; but it could not; and the void was filled with a wild dread that fled from all confronting with its shattered fragments—with such a dread as could have risen out of nothing but the depths of such a love, so wronged.

She dared not look into the glass; for the sight of the darkening mark upon her bosom made her afraid of herself, as if she bore about her something wicked. She covered it up, with a hasty, faltering hand, and in the dark; and laid her weary head down, weeping.

The Captain did not go to bed for a long time. He walked to and fro in the shop and in the little parlour, for a full hour, and, appearing to have composed himself by that exercise, sat down with a grave and thoughtful face, and read out of a Prayer-book the forms of prayer appointed to be used at sea. These were not easily disposed of; the good Captain being a mighty slow, gruff reader, and frequently stopping at a hard word to give himself such encouragement as ‘Now, my lad! With a will!’ or, ‘Steady, Ed’ard Cuttle, steady!’ which had a great effect in helping him out of any difficulty. Moreover, his spectacles greatly interfered with his powers of vision. But notwithstanding these drawbacks, the Captain, being heartily in earnest, read the service to the very last line, and with genuine feeling too; and approving of it very much when he had done, turned in, under the counter (but not before he had been upstairs, and listened at Florence’s door), with a serene breast, and a most benevolent visage.

The Captain turned out several times in the course of the night, to assure himself that his charge was resting quietly; and once, at daybreak, found that she was awake: for she called to know if it were he, on hearing footsteps near her door.

‘Yes, my lady lass,’ replied the Captain, in a growling whisper. ‘Are you all right, di’mond?’

Florence thanked him, and said ‘Yes.’

The Captain could not lose so favourable an opportunity of applying his mouth to the keyhole, and calling through it, like a hoarse breeze, ‘Poor Wal’r! Drownded, ain’t he?’ after which he withdrew, and turning in again, slept till seven o’clock.

Nor was he free from his uneasy and embarrassed manner all that day; though Florence, being busy with her needle in the little parlour, was more calm and tranquil than she had been on the day preceding. Almost always when she raised her eyes from her work, she observed the captain looking at her, and thoughtfully stroking his chin; and he so often hitched his arm-chair close to her, as if he were going to say something very confidential, and hitched it away again, as not being able to make up his mind how to begin, that in the course of the day he cruised completely round the parlour in that frail bark, and more than once went ashore against the wainscot or the closet door, in a very distressed condition.

It was not until the twilight that Captain Cuttle, fairly dropping anchor, at last, by the side of Florence, began to talk at all connectedly. But when the light of the fire was shining on the walls and ceiling of the little room, and on the tea-board and the cups and saucers that were ranged upon the table, and on her calm face turned towards the flame, and reflecting it in the tears that filled her eyes, the Captain broke a long silence thus:

‘You never was at sea, my own?’

‘No,’ replied Florence.

‘Ay,’ said the Captain, reverentially; ‘it’s a almighty element. There’s wonders in the deep, my pretty. Think on it when the winds is roaring and the waves is rowling. Think on it when the stormy nights is so pitch dark,’ said the Captain, solemnly holding up his hook, ‘as you can’t see your hand afore you, excepting when the wiwid lightning reweals the same; and when you drive, drive, drive through the storm and dark, as if you was a driving, head on, to the world without end, evermore, amen, and when found making a note of. Them’s the times, my beauty, when a man may say to his messmate (previously a overhauling of the wollume), “A stiff nor’wester’s blowing, Bill; hark, don’t you hear it roar now! Lord help ‘em, how I pitys all unhappy folks ashore now!”’ Which quotation, as particularly applicable to the terrors of the ocean, the Captain delivered in a most impressive manner, concluding with a sonorous ‘Stand by!’

‘Were you ever in a dreadful storm?’ asked Florence.

‘Why ay, my lady lass, I’ve seen my share of bad weather,’ said the Captain, tremulously wiping his head, ‘and I’ve had my share of knocking about; but—but it ain’t of myself as I was a meaning to speak. Our dear boy,’ drawing closer to her, ‘Wal’r, darling, as was drownded.’

The Captain spoke in such a trembling voice, and looked at Florence with a face so pale and agitated, that she clung to his hand in affright.

‘Your face is changed,’ cried Florence. ‘You are altered in a moment. What is it? Dear Captain Cuttle, it turns me cold to see you!’

‘What! Lady lass,’ returned the Captain, supporting her with his hand, ‘don’t be took aback. No, no! All’s well, all’s well, my dear. As I was a saying—Wal’r—he’s—he’s drownded. Ain’t he?’

Florence looked at him intently; her colour came and went; and she laid her hand upon her breast.

‘There’s perils and dangers on the deep, my beauty,’ said the Captain; ‘and over many a brave ship, and many and many a bould heart, the secret waters has closed up, and never told no tales. But there’s escapes upon the deep, too, and sometimes one man out of a score,—ah! maybe out of a hundred, pretty,—has been saved by the mercy of God, and come home after being given over for dead, and told of all hands lost. I—I know a story, Heart’s Delight,’ stammered the Captain, ‘o’ this natur, as was told to me once; and being on this here tack, and you and me sitting alone by the fire, maybe you’d like to hear me tell it. Would you, deary?’

Florence, trembling with an agitation which she could not control or understand, involuntarily followed his glance, which went behind her into the shop, where a lamp was burning. The instant that she turned her head, the Captain sprung out of his chair, and interposed his hand.

‘There’s nothing there,