DOMBEY & SON (Illustrated). Charles Dickens
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slipper on. He hung the rabbit-skin over his left arm; gave the right to Florence; and felt, not to say like Richard Whittington—that is a tame comparison—but like Saint George of England, with the dragon lying dead before him.
‘Don’t cry, Miss Dombey,’ said Walter, in a transport of enthusiasm. ‘What a wonderful thing for me that I am here! You are as safe now as if you were guarded by a whole boat’s crew of picked men from a man-of-war. Oh, don’t cry.’
‘I won’t cry any more,’ said Florence. ‘I am only crying for joy.’
‘Crying for joy!’ thought Walter, ‘and I’m the cause of it! Come along, Miss Dombey. There’s the other shoe off now! Take mine, Miss Dombey.’
‘No, no, no,’ said Florence, checking him in the act of impetuously pulling off his own. ‘These do better. These do very well.’
‘Why, to be sure,’ said Walter, glancing at her foot, ‘mine are a mile too large. What am I thinking about! You never could walk in mine! Come along, Miss Dombey. Let me see the villain who will dare molest you now.’
So Walter, looking immensely fierce, led off Florence, looking very happy; and they went arm-in-arm along the streets, perfectly indifferent to any astonishment that their appearance might or did excite by the way.
It was growing dark and foggy, and beginning to rain too; but they cared nothing for this: being both wholly absorbed in the late adventures of Florence, which she related with the innocent good faith and confidence of her years, while Walter listened as if, far from the mud and grease of Thames Street, they were rambling alone among the broad leaves and tall trees of some desert island in the tropics—as he very likely fancied, for the time, they were.
‘Have we far to go?’ asked Florence at last, lilting up her eyes to her companion’s face.
‘Ah! By-the-bye,’ said Walter, stopping, ‘let me see; where are we? Oh! I know. But the offices are shut up now, Miss Dombey. There’s nobody there. Mr Dombey has gone home long ago. I suppose we must go home too? or, stay. Suppose I take you to my Uncle’s, where I live—it’s very near here—and go to your house in a coach to tell them you are safe, and bring you back some clothes. Won’t that be best?’
‘I think so,’ answered Florence. ‘Don’t you? What do you think?’
As they stood deliberating in the street, a man passed them, who glanced quickly at Walter as he went by, as if he recognised him; but seeming to correct that first impression, he passed on without stopping.
‘Why, I think it’s Mr Carker,’ said Walter. ‘Carker in our House. Not Carker our Manager, Miss Dombey—the other Carker; the Junior—Halloa! Mr Carker!’
‘Is that Walter Gay?’ said the other, stopping and returning. ‘I couldn’t believe it, with such a strange companion.’
As he stood near a lamp, listening with surprise to Walter’s hurried explanation, he presented a remarkable contrast to the two youthful figures arm-in-arm before him. He was not old, but his hair was white; his body was bent, or bowed as if by the weight of some great trouble: and there were deep lines in his worn and melancholy face. The fire of his eyes, the expression of his features, the very voice in which he spoke, were all subdued and quenched, as if the spirit within him lay in ashes. He was respectably, though very plainly dressed, in black; but his clothes, moulded to the general character of his figure, seemed to shrink and abase themselves upon him, and to join in the sorrowful solicitation which the whole man from head to foot expressed, to be left unnoticed, and alone in his humility.
And yet his interest in youth and hopefulness was not extinguished with the other embers of his soul, for he watched the boy’s earnest countenance as he spoke with unusual sympathy, though with an inexplicable show of trouble and compassion, which escaped into his looks, however hard he strove to hold it prisoner. When Walter, in conclusion, put to him the question he had put to Florence, he still stood glancing at him with the same expression, as if he had read some fate upon his face, mournfully at variance with its present brightness.
‘What do you advise, Mr Carker?’ said Walter, smiling. ‘You always give me good advice, you know, when you do speak to me. That’s not often, though.’
‘I think your own idea is the best,’ he answered: looking from Florence to Walter, and back again.
‘Mr Carker,’ said Walter, brightening with a generous thought, ‘Come! Here’s a chance for you. Go you to Mr Dombey’s, and be the messenger of good news. It may do you some good, Sir. I’ll remain at home. You shall go.’
‘I!’ returned the other.
‘Yes. Why not, Mr Carker?’ said the boy.
He merely shook him by the hand in answer; he seemed in a manner ashamed and afraid even to do that; and bidding him good-night, and advising him to make haste, turned away.
‘Come, Miss Dombey,’ said Walter, looking after him as they turned away also, ‘we’ll go to my Uncle’s as quick as we can. Did you ever hear Mr Dombey speak of Mr Carker the Junior, Miss Florence?’
‘No,’ returned the child, mildly, ‘I don’t often hear Papa speak.’
‘Ah! true! more shame for him,’ thought Walter. After a minute’s pause, during which he had been looking down upon the gentle patient little face moving on at his side, he said, ‘The strangest man, Mr Carker the Junior is, Miss Florence, that ever you heard of. If you could understand what an extraordinary interest he takes in me, and yet how he shuns me and avoids me; and what a low place he holds in our office, and how he is never advanced, and never complains, though year after year he sees young men passed over his head, and though his brother (younger than he is), is our head Manager, you would be as much puzzled about him as I am.’
As Florence could hardly be expected to understand much about it, Walter bestirred himself with his accustomed boyish animation and restlessness to change the subject; and one of the unfortunate shoes coming off again opportunely, proposed to carry Florence to his uncle’s in his arms. Florence, though very tired, laughingly declined the proposal, lest he should let her fall; and as they were already near the wooden Midshipman, and as Walter went on to cite various precedents, from shipwrecks and other moving accidents, where younger boys than he had triumphantly rescued and carried off older girls than Florence, they were still in full conversation about it when they arrived at the Instrument-maker’s door.
‘Holloa, Uncle Sol!’ cried Walter, bursting into the shop, and speaking incoherently and out of breath, from that time forth, for the rest of the evening. ‘Here’s a wonderful adventure! Here’s Mr Dombey’s daughter lost in the streets, and robbed of her clothes by an old witch of a woman—found by me—brought home to our parlour to rest—look here!’
‘Good Heaven!’ said Uncle Sol, starting back against his favourite compass-case. ‘It can’t be! Well, I—’
‘No, nor anybody else,’ said Walter, anticipating the rest. ‘Nobody would, nobody could, you know. Here! just help me lift the little sofa near the fire, will you, Uncle Sol—take care of the plates—cut some dinner for her, will you, Uncle—throw those shoes under the grate. Miss Florence—put your feet on the fender to dry—how damp they are—here’s an adventure, Uncle, eh?—God bless my soul, how hot I am!’
Solomon Gills was quite as hot, by sympathy, and in excessive bewilderment. He patted Florence’s head, pressed her to eat, pressed her to drink, rubbed the soles of her feet with his pocket-handkerchief heated at the fire, followed his locomotive nephew with his eyes, and ears, and had no clear perception of anything except that he was being constantly knocked against and tumbled over by that excited young gentleman, as he darted about the room attempting to accomplish twenty things at once, and doing nothing at all.
‘Here, wait a minute, Uncle,’ he continued, catching up a candle, ‘till I run upstairs, and get another jacket on, and then I’ll be off. I say, Uncle, isn’t this an adventure?’
‘My dear boy,’ said Solomon,