Dombey and Son

Captain attached to it, was not wholly superfluous; for, on the previous day, so much excitement had been occasioned in the neighbourhood, by the shutters remaining unopened, that the Instrument-maker’s house had been honoured with an unusual share of public observation, and had been intently stared at from the opposite side of the way, by groups of hungry gazers, at any time between sunrise and sunset. The idlers and vagabonds had been particularly interested in the Captain’s fate; constantly grovelling in the mud to apply their eyes to the cellar-grating, under the shopwindow, and delighting their imaginations with the fancy that they could see a piece of his coat as he hung in a corner; though this settlement of him was stoutly disputed by an opposite faction, who were of opinion that he lay murdered with a hammer, on the stairs. It was not without exciting some discontent, therefore, that the subject of these rumours was seen early in the morning standing at his shop-door as hale and hearty as if nothing had happened; and the beadle of that quarter, a man of an ambitious character, who had expected to have the distinction of being present at the breaking open of the door, and of giving evidence in full uniform before the coroner, went so far as to say to an opposite neighbour, that the chap in the glazed hat had better not try it on there⁠—without more particularly mentioning what⁠—and further, that he, the Beadle, would keep his eye upon him.

“Captain Cuttle,” said Walter, musing, when they stood resting from their labours at the shop-door, looking down the old familiar street; it being still early in the morning; “nothing at all of Uncle Sol, in all that time!”

“Nothing at all, my lad,” replied the Captain, shaking his head.

“Gone in search of me, dear, kind old man,” said Walter: “yet never write to you! But why not? He says, in effect, in this packet that you gave me,” taking the paper from his pocket, which had been opened in the presence of the enlightened Bunsby, “that if you never hear from him before opening it, you may believe him dead. Heaven forbid! But you would have heard of him, even if he were dead! Someone would have written, surely, by his desire, if he could not; and have said, ‘on such a day, there died in my house,’ or ‘under my care,’ or so forth, ‘Mr. Solomon Gills of London, who left this last remembrance and this last request to you.’ ”

The Captain, who had never climbed to such a clear height of probability before, was greatly impressed by the wide prospect it opened, and answered, with a thoughtful shake of his head, “Well said, my lad; wery well said.”

“I have been thinking of this, or, at least,” said Walter, colouring, “I have been thinking of one thing and another, all through a sleepless night, and I cannot believe, Captain Cuttle, but that my Uncle Sol (Lord bless him!) is alive, and will return. I don’t so much wonder at his going away, because, leaving out of consideration that spice of the marvellous which was always in his character, and his great affection for me, before which every other consideration of his life became nothing, as no one ought to know so well as I who had the best of fathers in him,”⁠—Walter’s voice was indistinct and husky here, and he looked away, along the street⁠—“leaving that out of consideration, I say, I have often read and heard of people who, having some near and dear relative, who was supposed to be shipwrecked at sea, have gone down to live on that part of the seashore where any tidings of the missing ship might be expected to arrive, though only an hour or two sooner than elsewhere, or have even gone upon her track to the place whither she was bound, as if their going would create intelligence. I think I should do such a thing myself, as soon as another, or sooner than many, perhaps. But why my Uncle shouldn’t write to you, when he so clearly intended to do so, or how he should die abroad, and you not know it through some other hand, I cannot make out.”

Captain Cuttle observed, with a shake of his head, that Jack Bunsby himself hadn’t made it out, and that he was a man as could give a pretty taut opinion too.

“If my Uncle had been a heedless young man, likely to be entrapped by jovial company to some drinking-place, where he was to be got rid of for the sake of what money he might have about him,” said Walter; “or if he had been a reckless sailor, going ashore with two or three months’ pay in his pocket, I could understand his disappearing, and leaving no trace behind. But, being what he was⁠—and is, I hope⁠—I can’t believe it.”

“Wal’r, my lad,” inquired the Captain, wistfully eyeing him as he pondered and pondered, “what do you make of it, then?”

“Captain Cuttle,” returned Walter, “I don’t know what to make of it. I suppose he never has written! There is no doubt about that?”

“If so be as Sol Gills wrote, my lad,” replied the Captain, argumentatively, “where’s his dispatch?”

“Say that he entrusted it to some private hand,” suggested Walter, “and that it has been forgotten, or carelessly thrown aside, or lost. Even that is more probable to me, than the other event. In short, I not only cannot bear to contemplate that other event, Captain Cuttle, but I can’t, and won’t.”

“Hope, you see, Wal’r,” said the Captain, sagely, “Hope. It’s that as animates you. Hope is a buoy, for which you overhaul your Little Warbler, sentimental diwision, but Lord, my lad, like any other buoy, it only floats; it can’t be steered nowhere. Along with the figurehead of Hope,” said the Captain, “there’s a anchor; but what’s the good of my having a anchor, if I can’t find no bottom to let