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

would be odd if I couldn’t get on without a young dog like you a great deal better than with you. As to dinner being ready, it’s been ready this half hour and waiting for you. As to being hungry, I am!’

‘Come along then, Uncle!’ cried the boy. ‘Hurrah for the admiral!’

‘Confound the admiral!’ returned Solomon Gills. ‘You mean the Lord Mayor.’

‘No I don’t!’ cried the boy. ‘Hurrah for the admiral! Hurrah for the admiral! For-ward!’

At this word of command, the Welsh wig and its wearer were borne without resistance into the back parlour, as at the head of a boarding party of five hundred men; and Uncle Sol and his nephew were speedily engaged on a fried sole with a prospect of steak to follow.

‘The Lord Mayor, Wally,’ said Solomon, ‘for ever! No more admirals. The Lord Mayor’s your admiral.’

‘Oh, is he though!’ said the boy, shaking his head. ‘Why, the Sword Bearer’s better than him. He draws his sword sometimes.’

‘And a pretty figure he cuts with it for his pains,’ returned the Uncle. ‘Listen to me, Wally, listen to me. Look on the mantelshelf.’

‘Why who has cocked my silver mug up there, on a nail?’ exclaimed the boy.

‘I have,’ said his Uncle. ‘No more mugs now. We must begin to drink out of glasses to-day, Walter. We are men of business. We belong to the City. We started in life this morning.’

‘Well, Uncle,’ said the boy, ‘I’ll drink out of anything you like, so long as I can drink to you. Here’s to you, Uncle Sol, and Hurrah for the—’

‘Lord Mayor,’ interrupted the old man.

‘For the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, Common Council, and Livery,’ said the boy. ‘Long life to ‘em!’

The uncle nodded his head with great satisfaction. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘let’s hear something about the Firm.’

‘Oh! there’s not much to be told about the Firm, Uncle,’ said the boy, plying his knife and fork. ‘It’s a precious dark set of offices, and in the room where I sit, there’s a high fender, and an iron safe, and some cards about ships that are going to sail, and an almanack, and some desks and stools, and an inkbottle, and some books, and some boxes, and a lot of cobwebs, and in one of ‘em, just over my head, a shrivelled-up blue-bottle that looks as if it had hung there ever so long.’

‘Nothing else?’ said the Uncle.

‘No, nothing else, except an old birdcage (I wonder how that ever came there!) and a coal-scuttle.’

‘No bankers’ books, or cheque books, or bills, or such tokens of wealth rolling in from day to day?’ said old Sol, looking wistfully at his nephew out of the fog that always seemed to hang about him, and laying an unctuous emphasis upon the words.

‘Oh yes, plenty of that I suppose,’ returned his nephew carelessly; ‘but all that sort of thing’s in Mr Carker’s room, or Mr Morfin’s, or Mr Dombey’s.’

‘Has Mr Dombey been there to-day?’ inquired the Uncle.

‘Oh yes! In and out all day.’

‘He didn’t take any notice of you, I suppose?’.

‘Yes he did. He walked up to my seat,—I wish he wasn’t so solemn and stiff, Uncle,—and said, “Oh! you are the son of Mr Gills the Ships’ Instrument-maker.” “Nephew, Sir,” I said. “I said nephew, boy,” said he. But I could take my oath he said son, Uncle.’

‘You’re mistaken I daresay. It’s no matter.’

‘No, it’s no matter, but he needn’t have been so sharp, I thought. There was no harm in it though he did say son. Then he told me that you had spoken to him about me, and that he had found me employment in the House accordingly, and that I was expected to be attentive and punctual, and then he went away. I thought he didn’t seem to like me much.’

‘You mean, I suppose,’ observed the Instrument-maker, ‘that you didn’t seem to like him much?’

‘Well, Uncle,’ returned the boy, laughing. ‘Perhaps so; I never thought of that.’

Solomon looked a little graver as he finished his dinner, and glanced from time to time at the boy’s bright face. When dinner was done, and the cloth was cleared away (the entertainment had been brought from a neighbouring eating-house), he lighted a candle, and went down below into a little cellar, while his nephew, standing on the mouldy staircase, dutifully held the light. After a moment’s groping here and there, he presently returned with a very ancient-looking bottle, covered with dust and dirt.

‘Why, Uncle Sol!’ said the boy, ‘what are you about? that’s the wonderful Madeira!—there’s only one more bottle!’

Uncle Sol nodded his head, implying that he knew very well what he was about; and having drawn the cork in solemn silence, filled two glasses and set the bottle and a third clean glass on the table.

‘You shall drink the other bottle, Wally,’ he said, ‘when you come to good fortune; when you are a thriving, respected, happy man; when the start in life you have made to-day shall have brought you, as I pray Heaven it may!—to a smooth part of the course you have to run, my child. My love to you!’

Some of the fog that hung about old Sol seemed to have got into his throat; for he spoke huskily. His hand shook too, as he clinked his glass against his nephew’s. But having once got the wine to his lips, he tossed it off like a man, and smacked them afterwards.

‘Dear Uncle,’ said the boy, affecting to make light of it, while the tears stood in his eyes, ‘for the honour you have done me, et cetera, et cetera. I shall now beg to propose Mr Solomon Gills with three times three and one cheer more. Hurrah! and you’ll return thanks, Uncle, when we drink the last bottle together; won’t you?’

They clinked their glasses again; and Walter, who was hoarding his wine, took a sip of it, and held the glass up to his eye with as critical an air as he could possibly assume.

His Uncle sat looking at him for some time in silence. When their eyes at last met, he began at once to pursue the theme that had occupied his thoughts, aloud, as if he had been speaking all the time.

‘You see, Walter,’ he said, ‘in truth this business is merely a habit with me. I am so accustomed to the habit that I could hardly live if I relinquished it: but there’s nothing doing, nothing doing. When that uniform was worn,’ pointing out towards the little Midshipman, ‘then indeed, fortunes were to be made, and were made. But competition, competition—new invention, new invention—alteration, alteration—the world’s gone past me. I hardly know where I am myself, much less where my customers are.’

‘Never mind ‘em, Uncle!’

‘Since you came home from weekly boarding-school at Peckham, for instance—and that’s ten days,’ said Solomon, ‘I don’t remember more than one person that has come into the shop.’

‘Two, Uncle, don’t you recollect? There was the man who came to ask for change for a sovereign—’

‘That’s the one,’ said Solomon.

‘Why Uncle! don’t you call the woman anybody, who came to ask the way to Mile-End Turnpike?’

‘Oh! it’s true,’ said Solomon, ‘I forgot her. Two persons.’

‘To be sure, they didn’t buy anything,’ cried the boy.

‘No. They didn’t buy anything,’ said Solomon, quietly.

‘Nor want anything,’ cried the boy.

‘No. If they had, they’d gone to another shop,’ said Solomon, in the same tone.

‘But there were two of ‘em, Uncle,’ cried the boy, as if that were a great triumph. ‘You said only one.’

‘Well, Wally,’ resumed the old man, after a short pause: ‘not being like the Savages who came on Robinson Crusoe’s Island, we can’t live on a man who asks for change for a sovereign, and a woman who inquires the way to Mile-End Turnpike. As I said just now, the world has gone past me. I don’t blame it; but I no longer understand it. Tradesmen are not the same as they used to be, apprentices are not the same, business is not the same, business commodities are not the same. Seven-eighths of my stock is old-fashioned. I am an old-fashioned man in an old-fashioned shop, in a street that is not the same as I remember it. I have fallen behind the time, and am too old to catch it again. Even the noise it makes a long way ahead, confuses me.’

Walter was going to speak, but his Uncle held up his hand.

‘Therefore, Wally—therefore it is that I am anxious you should be early in the busy world, and on the world’s track. I am only the ghost of this business—its substance vanished long ago; and when I die, its ghost will be laid. As it is clearly no inheritance for you then, I have thought it best to use for your advantage, almost the only fragment of the old connexion that stands by me, through long habit. Some people suppose me to be wealthy. I wish for your sake they were right. But whatever I leave behind me, or whatever I can give you, you in such a House as Dombey’s are in the road to use well and make the most of. Be diligent, try to like it, my dear boy, work for a steady independence, and be happy!’

‘I’ll do everything I can, Uncle, to deserve your affection. Indeed I will,’ said the boy, earnestly.

‘I know it,’ said Solomon. ‘I am sure of it,’ and he applied himself to a second glass of the old Madeira, with increased relish. ‘As to the Sea,’ he pursued, ‘that’s well enough in fiction, Wally, but it won’t do in fact: it won’t do at all. It’s natural enough that you should think about it, associating it with all these familiar things; but it won’t do, it won’t do.’

Solomon Gills rubbed his hands with an air of stealthy enjoyment, as he talked of the sea, though; and looked on the seafaring objects about him with inexpressible complacency.

‘Think of this wine for instance,’ said old Sol, ‘which has been to the East Indies and back, I’m not able to say how often, and has been once round the world. Think of the pitch-dark nights, the roaring winds, and rolling seas:’

‘The thunder, lightning, rain, hail, storm of all kinds,’ said the boy.

‘To be sure,’ said Solomon,—‘that this wine has passed through. Think what a straining and creaking of timbers and masts: what a whistling and howling of the gale through ropes and rigging:’

‘What a clambering aloft of men, vying with each other who shall lie out first upon the yards to furl the icy sails, while the ship rolls and pitches, like mad!’ cried his nephew.

‘Exactly so,’ said Solomon: ‘has gone on, over the old cask that held this wine. Why, when the Charming Sally went down in the—’

‘In the Baltic Sea, in the dead of night; five-and-twenty minutes past twelve when the captain’s watch stopped in his pocket; he lying dead against the main-mast—on the fourteenth of February, seventeen forty-nine!’ cried Walter, with great animation.

‘Ay, to be sure!’ cried old Sol, ‘quite right! Then, there were five hundred casks of such wine aboard; and all hands (except the first mate, first lieutenant, two seamen, and a lady, in a leaky boat) going to work to stave the casks, got drunk and died drunk, singing “Rule Britannia”, when she settled and went down, and ending with one awful scream in chorus.’

‘But when the George the Second drove ashore, Uncle, on the coast of Cornwall, in a dismal gale, two hours before daybreak, on the fourth of March, ‘seventy-one, she had near two hundred horses aboard; and the horses breaking loose down below, early in the gale, and tearing to and fro, and trampling each other to death, made such noises, and set up such human cries, that the crew believing the ship to be full of devils, some of the best men, losing heart and head, went overboard in despair, and only two were left alive, at last, to tell the tale.’

‘And when,’ said old Sol,