The Old Curiosity Shop
fact upon him on the mere suspicion, turned about and followed his
young mistress, who had by this time taken her leave of Mrs Quilp and
departed.
‘You’re a keen questioner, an’t you, Mrs Quilp?’ said the dwarf,
turning upon her as soon as they were left alone.
‘What more could I do?’ returned his wife mildly.
‘What more could you do!’ sneered Quilp, ‘couldn’t you have done
something less? Couldn’t you have done what you had to do, without
appearing in your favourite part of the crocodile, you minx?’
‘I am very sorry for the child, Quilp,’ said his wife. ‘Surely I’ve
done enough. I’ve led her on to tell her secret she supposed we were
alone; and you were by, God forgive me.’
‘You led her on! You did a great deal truly!’ said Quilp. ‘What did I
tell you about making me creak the door? It’s lucky for you that from
what she let fall, I’ve got the clue I want, for if I hadn’t, I’d have
visited the failure upon you, I can tell you.’
Mrs Quilp being fully persuaded of this, made no reply. Her husband
added with some exultation,
‘But you may thank your fortunate stars--the same stars that made you
Mrs Quilp--you may thank them that I’m upon the old gentleman’s track,
and have got a new light. So let me hear no more about this matter now
or at any other time, and don’t get anything too nice for dinner, for I
shan’t be home to it.’
So saying, Mr Quilp put his hat on and took himself off, and Mrs Quilp,
who was afflicted beyond measure by the recollection of the part she
had just acted, shut herself up in her chamber, and smothering her head
in the bed-clothes bemoaned her fault more bitterly than many less
tender-hearted persons would have mourned a much greater offence; for,
in the majority of cases, conscience is an elastic and very flexible
article, which will bear a deal of stretching and adapt itself to a
great variety of circumstances. Some people by prudent management and
leaving it off piece by piece like a flannel waistcoat in warm weather,
even contrive, in time, to dispense with it altogether; but there be
others who can assume the garment and throw it off at pleasure; and
this, being the greatest and most convenient improvement, is the one
most in vogue.
CHAPTER 7
‘Fred,’ said Mr Swiveller, ‘remember the once popular melody of Begone
dull care; fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of
friendship; and pass the rosy wine.’
Mr Richard Swiveller’s apartments were in the neighbourhood of Drury
Lane, and in addition to this convenience of situation had the
advantage of being over a tobacconist’s shop, so that he was enabled to
procure a refreshing sneeze at any time by merely stepping out upon the
staircase, and was saved the trouble and expense of maintaining a
snuff-box. It was in these apartments that Mr Swiveller made use of the
expressions above recorded for the consolation and encouragement of his
desponding friend; and it may not be uninteresting or improper to
remark that even these brief observations partook in a double sense of
the figurative and poetical character of Mr Swiveller’s mind, as the
rosy wine was in fact represented by one glass of cold gin-and-water,
which was replenished as occasion required from a bottle and jug upon
the table, and was passed from one to another, in a scarcity of
tumblers which, as Mr Swiveller’s was a bachelor’s establishment, may
be acknowledged without a blush. By a like pleasant fiction his single
chamber was always mentioned in a plural number. In its disengaged
times, the tobacconist had announced it in his window as ‘apartments’
for a single gentleman, and Mr Swiveller, following up the hint, never
failed to speak of it as his rooms, his lodgings, or his chambers,
conveying to his hearers a notion of indefinite space, and leaving
their imaginations to wander through long suites of lofty halls, at
pleasure.
In this flight of fancy, Mr Swiveller was assisted by a deceptive piece
of furniture, in reality a bedstead, but in semblance a bookcase, which
occupied a prominent situation in his chamber and seemed to defy
suspicion and challenge inquiry. There is no doubt that by day Mr
Swiveller firmly believed this secret convenience to be a bookcase and
nothing more; that he closed his eyes to the bed, resolutely denied the
existence of the blankets, and spurned the bolster from his thoughts.
No word of its real use, no hint of its nightly service, no allusion to
its peculiar properties, had ever passed between him and his most
intimate friends. Implicit faith in the deception was the first article
of his creed. To be the friend of Swiveller you must reject all
circumstantial evidence, all reason, observation, and experience, and
repose a blind belief in the bookcase. It was his pet weakness, and he
cherished it.
‘Fred!’ said Mr Swiveller, finding that his former adjuration had been
productive of no effect. ‘Pass the rosy.’
Young Trent with an impatient gesture pushed the glass towards him, and
fell again in the moody attitude from which he had been unwillingly
roused.
‘I’ll give you, Fred,’ said his friend, stirring the mixture, ‘a little
sentiment appropriate to the occasion. Here’s May the--’
‘Pshaw!’ interposed the other. ‘You worry me to death with your
chattering. You can be merry under any circumstances.’
‘Why, Mr Trent,’ returned Dick, ‘there is a proverb which talks about
being merry and wise. There are some people who can be merry and can’t
be wise, and some who can be wise (or think they can) and can’t be
merry. I’m one of the first sort. If the proverb’s a good ‘un, I
suppose it’s better to keep to half of it than none; at all events, I’d
rather be merry and not wise, than like you, neither one nor t’other.’
‘Bah!’ muttered his friend, peevishly.
‘With all my heart,’ said Mr Swiveller. ‘In the polite circles I
believe this sort of thing isn’t usually said to a gentleman in his own
apartments, but never mind that. Make yourself at home,’ adding to this
retort an observation to the effect that his friend appeared to be
rather ‘cranky’ in point of temper, Richard Swiveller finished the
rosy and applied himself to the composition of another glassful, in
which, after tasting it with great relish, he proposed a toast to an
imaginary company.
‘Gentlemen, I’ll give you, if you please, Success to the ancient family
of the Swivellers, and good luck to Mr Richard in particular--Mr
Richard, gentlemen,’ said Dick with great emphasis, ‘who spends all his
money on his friends and is Bah!’d for his pains. Hear, hear!’
‘Dick!’ said the other, returning to his seat after having paced the
room twice or thrice, ‘will you talk seriously for two minutes, if I
show you a way to make your fortune with very little trouble?’
‘You’ve shown me so many,’ returned Dick; ‘and nothing has come of any
one of ‘em but empty pockets--’
‘You’ll tell a different story of this one, before a very long time is
over,’ said his companion, drawing his chair to the table. ‘You saw my
sister Nell?’
‘What about her?’ returned Dick.
‘She has a pretty face, has she not?’
‘Why, certainly,’ replied Dick. ‘I must say for her that there’s not
any very strong family likeness between her and you.’
‘Has she a pretty face,’ repeated his friend impatiently.
‘Yes,’ said Dick, ‘she has a pretty face, a very pretty face. What of
that?’
‘I’ll tell you,’ returned his friend. ‘It’s very plain that the old man
and I will remain at daggers drawn to the end of our lives, and that I
have nothing to expect from him. You see that, I suppose?’
‘A bat might see that, with the sun shining,’ said Dick.
‘It’s equally plain that the money which the old flint--rot him--first
taught me to expect that I should share with her at his death, will all
be hers, is it not?’
‘I should said it was,’ replied Dick; ‘unless the way in which I put
the case to him, made an impression. It may have done so. It was
powerful, Fred. ‘Here is a jolly old grandfather’--that was strong, I
thought--very friendly and natural. Did it strike you in that way?’
‘It didn’t strike him,’ returned the other, ‘so we needn’t discuss it.
Now look here. Nell is nearly fourteen.’
‘Fine girl of her age, but small,’ observed Richard Swiveller
parenthetically.
‘If I am to go on, be quiet for one minute,’ returned Trent, fretting
at the slight interest the other appeared to take in the conversation.
‘Now I’m coming to the point.’
‘That’s right,’ said Dick.
‘The girl has strong affections, and brought up as she has been, may,
at her age, be easily influenced and persuaded. If I take her in hand,
I will be bound by a very little coaxing and threatening to bend her to
my will. Not to beat about the bush (for the advantages of the scheme
would take a week to tell) what’s to prevent your marrying her?’
Richard Swiveller, who had been looking over the rim of the tumbler
while his companion addressed the foregoing remarks to him with great
energy and earnestness of manner, no sooner heard these words than he
evinced the utmost consternation, and with difficulty ejaculated the
monosyllable:
‘What!’
‘I say, what’s to prevent,’ repeated the other with a steadiness of
manner, of the effect of which upon his companion he was well assured
by long experience, ‘what’s to prevent your marrying her?’
‘And she “nearly fourteen”!’ cried Dick.
‘I don’t mean marrying her now’--returned the brother angrily; ‘say in
two year’s time, in three, in four. Does the old man look like a
long-liver?’
‘He don’t look like it,’ said Dick shaking his head, ‘but these old
people--there’s no trusting them, Fred. There’s an aunt of mine down in
Dorsetshire that was going to die when I was eight years old, and
hasn’t kept her word yet. They’re so aggravating, so unprincipled, so
spiteful--unless there’s apoplexy in the family, Fred, you can’t
calculate upon ‘em, and even then they deceive you just as often as
not.’
‘Look at the worst side of the question then,’ said Trent as steadily
as before, and keeping his eyes upon his friend. ‘Suppose he lives.’
‘To be sure,’ said Dick. ‘There’s the rub.’
‘I say,’ resumed his friend, ‘suppose he lives, and I persuaded, or if
the word sounds more feasible, forced Nell to a secret marriage with
you. What do you think would come of that?’
‘A family and an annual income of nothing, to keep ‘em on,’ said
Richard Swiveller after some reflection.
‘I tell you,’ returned the other with an increased earnestness, which,
whether it were real or assumed, had the same effect on his companion,
‘that he lives for her, that his whole energies and thoughts are bound
up in her, that he would no more disinherit her for an act of
disobedience than he would take me into his favour again for any act of
obedience or virtue that I could possibly be guilty of. He could not do
it. You or any other man with eyes in his head may see that, if he
chooses.’
‘It seems improbable certainly,’ said Dick, musing.
‘It seems improbable because it is improbable,’ his friend returned.
‘If you would furnish him with an additional inducement to forgive you,
let there be an irreconcilable breach, a most deadly quarrel, between
you and me--let there be a pretense of such a thing, I mean, of
course--and he’ll do fast enough. As to Nell, constant dropping will
wear away a stone; you know you may trust to me as far as she is
concerned. So, whether he lives or dies, what does it come to? That
you become the sole inheritor of the wealth of this rich old hunks,
that you and I spend it together, and that you get into the bargain a
beautiful young wife.’
‘I suppose there’s no doubt about his being rich’--said Dick.
‘Doubt! Did you hear what he let fall the other day when we were
there? Doubt! What will you doubt next, Dick?’