“But, good Gracious, Miss Dombey don’t know—” Mr. Toots began.
“Why, I ask you, as a feeling heart,” said the Captain, dropping his voice, “why should she know? why should she be made to know, until such time as there wam’t any help for it? She took to old Sol Gills, did that sweet creetur, with a kindness, with a affability, with a—what’s the good of saying so? you know her.”
“I should hope so,” chuckled Mr. Toots, with a conscious blush that suffused his whole countenance.
“And you come here from her?” said the Captain.
“I should think so,” chuckled Mr. Toots.
“Then all I need observe, is,” said the Captain, “that you know a angel, and are chartered by a angel.”
Mr. Toots instantly seized the Captain’s hand, and requested the favour of his friendship.
“Upon my word and honour,” said Mr. Toots, earnestly, “I should be very much obliged to you if you’d improve my acquaintance. I should like to know you, Captain, very much. I really am in want of a friend, I am. Little Dombey was my friend at old Blimber’s, and would have been now, if he’d have lived. The Chicken,” said Mr. Toots, in a forlorn whisper, “is very well—admirable in his way—the sharpest man perhaps in the world; there’s not a move he isn’t up to, everybody says so—but I don’t know—he’s not everything. So she is an angel, Captain. If there is an angel anywhere, it’s Miss Dombey. That’s what I’ve always said. Really though, you know,” said Mr. Toots, “I should be very much obliged to you if you’d cultivate my acquaintance.”
Captain Cuttle received this proposal in a polite manner, but still without committing himself to its acceptance; merely observing, “Ay, ay, my lad. We shall see, we shall see;” and reminding Mr. Toots of his immediate mission, by inquiring to what he was indebted for the honour of that visit.
“Why the fact is,” replied Mr. Toots, “that it’s the young woman I come from. Not Miss Dombey—Susan, you know.”
The Captain nodded his head once, with a grave expression of face indicative of his regarding that young woman with serious respect.
“And I’ll tell you how it happens,” said Mr. Toots. “You know, I go and call sometimes, on Miss Dombey. I don’t go there on purpose, you know, but I happen to be in the neighbourhood very often; and when I find myself there, why—why I call.”
“Nat’rally,” observed the Captain.
“Yes,” said Mr. Toots. “I called this afternoon. Upon my word and honour, I don’t think it’s possible to form an idea of the angel Miss Dombey was this afternoon.”
The Captain answered with a jerk of his head, implying that it might not be easy to some people, but was quite so to him.
“As I was coming out,” said Mr. Toots, “the young woman, in the most unexpected manner, took me into the pantry.”
The Captain seemed, for the moment, to object to this proceeding; and leaning back in his chair, looked at Mr. Toots with a distrustful, if not threatening visage.
“Where she brought out,” said Mr. Toots, “this newspaper. She told me that she had kept it from Miss Dombey all day, on account of something that was in it, about somebody that she and Dombey used to know; and then she read the passage to me. Very well. Then she said—wait a minute; what was it she said, though!”
Mr. Toots, endeavouring to concentrate his mental powers on this question, unintentionally fixed the Captain’s eye, and was so much discomposed by its stern expression, that his difficulty in resuming the thread of his subject was enhanced to a painful extent.
“Oh!” said Mr. Toots after long consideration. “Oh, ah! Yes! She said that she hoped there was a bare possibility that it mightn’t be true; and that as she couldn’t very well come out herself, without surprising Miss Dombey, would I go down to Mr. Solomon Gills the Instrument-maker’s in this street, who was the party’s Uncle, and ask whether he believed it was true, or had heard anything else in the City. She said, if he couldn’t speak to me, no doubt Captain Cuttle could. By the by!” said Mr. Toots, as the discovery flashed upon him, “you, you know!”
The Captain glanced at the newspaper in Mr. Toots’s hand, and breathed short and hurriedly.
“Well,” pursued Mr. Toots, “the reason why I’m rather late is, because I went up as far as Finchley first, to get some uncommonly fine chickweed that grows there, for Miss Dombey’s bird. But I came on here, directly afterwards. You’ve seen the paper, I suppose?”
The Captain, who had become cautious of reading the news, lest he should find himself advertised at full length by Mrs. MacStinger, shook his head.
“Shall I read the passage to you?” inquired Mr. Toots.
The Captain making a sign in the affirmative, Mr. Toots read as follows, from the Shipping Intelligence:
“ ‘Southampton. The barque Defiance, Henry James, Commander, arrived in this port today, with a cargo of sugar, coffee, and rum, reports that being becalmed on the sixth day of her passage home from Jamaica, in’—in such and such a latitude, you know,” said Mr. Toots, after making a feeble dash at the figures, and tumbling over them.
“Ay!” cried the Captain, striking his clenched hand on the table. “Heave ahead, my lad!”
“—latitude,” repeated Mr. Toots, with a startled glance at the Captain, “and longitude so-and-so—‘the lookout observed, half an hour before sunset, some fragments of a wreck, drifting at about the distance of a mile. The weather being clear, and the barque making no way, a boat was hoisted out, with orders to inspect the same, when they were found to consist of sundry large spars, and a part of the main rigging of an English brig, of about five hundred tons burden, together with a portion of the stem on which the words and letters “Son and H⸺” were
