“Then, Wal’r,” said the Captain, suddenly diving into one of his pockets and bringing up the two teaspoons and the sugar-tongs, with which he had armed himself to meet such an objection, “take this here trifle of plate, instead.”
“No, no, I couldn’t indeed!” cried Walter, “a thousand thanks! Don’t throw them away, Captain Cuttle!” for the Captain was about to jerk them overboard. “They’ll be of much more use to you than me. Give me your stick. I have often thought I should like to have it. There! Goodbye, Captain Cuttle! Take care of my Uncle! Uncle Sol, God bless you!”
They were over the side in the confusion, before Walter caught another glimpse of either; and when he ran up to the stern, and looked after them, he saw his Uncle hanging down his head in the boat, and Captain Cuttle rapping him on the back with the great silver watch (it must have been very painful), and gesticulating hopefully with the teaspoons and sugar-tongs. Catching sight of Walter, Captain Cuttle dropped the property into the bottom of the boat with perfect unconcern, being evidently oblivious of its existence, and pulling off the glazed hat hailed him lustily. The glazed hat made quite a show in the sun with its glistening, and the Captain continued to wave it until he could be seen no longer. Then the confusion on board, which had been rapidly increasing, reached its height; two or three other boats went away with a cheer; the sails shone bright and full above, as Walter watched them spread their surface to the favourable breeze; the water flew in sparkles from the prow; and off upon her voyage went the Son and Heir, as hopefully and trippingly as many another son and heir, gone down, had started on his way before her.
Day after day, old Sol and Captain Cuttle kept her reckoning in the little back parlour and worked out her course, with the chart spread before them on the round table. At night, when old Sol climbed upstairs, so lonely, to the attic where it sometimes blew great guns, he looked up at the stars and listened to the wind, and kept a longer watch than would have fallen to his lot on board the ship. The last bottle of the old Madeira, which had had its cruising days, and known its dangers of the deep, lay silently beneath its dust and cobwebs, in the meanwhile, undisturbed.
XX
Mr. Dombey Goes Upon a Journey
“Mr. Dombey, Sir,” said Major Bagstock, “Joey B. is not in general a man of sentiment, for Joseph is tough. But Joe has his feelings, Sir, and when they are awakened—Damme, Mr. Dombey,” cried the Major with sudden ferocity, “this is weakness, and I won’t submit to it!”
Major Bagstock delivered himself of these expressions on receiving Mr. Dombey as his guest at the head of his own staircase in Princess’s Place. Mr. Dombey had come to breakfast with the Major, previous to their setting forth on their trip; and the ill-starved Native had already undergone a world of misery arising out of the muffins, while, in connection with the general question of boiled eggs, life was a burden to him.
“It is not for an old soldier of the Bagstock breed,” observed the Major, relapsing into a mild state, “to deliver himself up, a prey to his own emotions; but—damme, Sir,” cried the Major, in another spasm of ferocity, “I condole with you!”
The Major’s purple visage deepened in its hue, and the Major’s lobster eyes stood out in bolder relief, as he shook Mr. Dombey by the hand, imparting to that peaceful action as defiant a character as if it had been the prelude to his immediately boxing Mr. Dombey for a thousand pounds a side and the championship of England. With a rotatory motion of his head, and a wheeze very like the cough of a horse, the Major then conducted his visitor to the sitting-room, and there welcomed him (having now composed his feelings) with the freedom and frankness of a travelling companion.
“Dombey,” said the Major, “I’m glad to see you. I’m proud to see you. There are not many men in Europe to whom J. Bagstock would say that—for Josh is blunt. Sir: it’s his nature—but Joey B. is proud to see you, Dombey.”
“Major,” returned Mr. Dombey, “you are very obliging.”
“No, Sir,” said the Major, “Devil a bit! That’s not my character. If that had been Joe’s character, Joe might have been, by this time, Lieutenant-General Sir Joseph Bagstock, K.C.B., and might have received you in very different quarters. You don’t know old Joe yet, I find. But this occasion, being special, is a source of pride to me. By the Lord, Sir,” said the Major resolutely, “it’s an honour to me!”
Mr. Dombey, in his estimation of himself and his money, felt that this was very true, and therefore did not dispute the point. But the instinctive recognition of such a truth by the Major, and his plain avowal of it, were very agreeable. It was a confirmation to Mr. Dombey, if he had required any, of his not being mistaken in the Major. It was an assurance to him that his power extended beyond his own immediate sphere; and that the Major, as an officer and a gentleman, had a no less becoming sense of it, than the beadle of the Royal Exchange.
And if it were ever consolatory to know this, or the like of this, it was consolatory then, when the impotence of his will, the instability of his hopes, the feebleness of wealth, had been so direfully impressed upon him. What could it do, his boy had asked him. Sometimes, thinking of the baby question, he could hardly forbear inquiring, himself, what could it do indeed: what had it done?
But these were lonely thoughts, bred late at night in the sullen despondency and
