The Old Curiosity Shop
The child’s voice was lost in sobs as she dropped upon the old man’s
neck; nor did she weep alone.
These were not words for other ears, nor was it a scene for other eyes.
And yet other ears and eyes were there and greedily taking in all that
passed, and moreover they were the ears and eyes of no less a person
than Mr Daniel Quilp, who, having entered unseen when the child first
placed herself at the old man’s side, refrained--actuated, no doubt, by
motives of the purest delicacy--from interrupting the conversation, and
stood looking on with his accustomed grin. Standing, however, being a
tiresome attitude to a gentleman already fatigued with walking, and the
dwarf being one of that kind of persons who usually make themselves at
home, he soon cast his eyes upon a chair, into which he skipped with
uncommon agility, and perching himself on the back with his feet upon
the seat, was thus enabled to look on and listen with greater comfort
to himself, besides gratifying at the same time that taste for doing
something fantastic and monkey-like, which on all occasions had strong
possession of him. Here, then, he sat, one leg cocked carelessly over
the other, his chin resting on the palm of his hand, his head turned a
little on one side, and his ugly features twisted into a complacent
grimace. And in this position the old man, happening in course of time
to look that way, at length chanced to see him: to his unbounded
astonishment.
The child uttered a suppressed shriek on beholding this agreeable
figure; in their first surprise both she and the old man, not knowing
what to say, and half doubting its reality, looked shrinkingly at it.
Not at all disconcerted by this reception, Daniel Quilp preserved the
same attitude, merely nodding twice or thrice with great condescension.
At length, the old man pronounced his name, and inquired how he came
there.
‘Through the door,’ said Quilp pointing over his shoulder with his
thumb. ‘I’m not quite small enough to get through key-holes. I wish I
was. I want to have some talk with you, particularly, and in private.
With nobody present, neighbour. Good-bye, little Nelly.’
Nell looked at the old man, who nodded to her to retire, and kissed her
cheek.
‘Ah!’ said the dwarf, smacking his lips, ‘what a nice kiss that
was--just upon the rosy part. What a capital kiss!’
Nell was none the slower in going away, for this remark. Quilp looked
after her with an admiring leer, and when she had closed the door, fell
to complimenting the old man upon her charms.
‘Such a fresh, blooming, modest little bud, neighbour,’ said Quilp,
nursing his short leg, and making his eyes twinkle very much; ‘such a
chubby, rosy, cosy, little Nell!’
The old man answered by a forced smile, and was plainly struggling with
a feeling of the keenest and most exquisite impatience. It was not
lost upon Quilp, who delighted in torturing him, or indeed anybody
else, when he could.
‘She’s so,’ said Quilp, speaking very slowly, and feigning to be quite
absorbed in the subject, ‘so small, so compact, so beautifully
modelled, so fair, with such blue veins and such a transparent skin,
and such little feet, and such winning ways--but bless me, you’re
nervous! Why neighbour, what’s the matter? I swear to you,’ continued
the dwarf dismounting from the chair and sitting down in it, with a
careful slowness of gesture very different from the rapidity with which
he had sprung up unheard, ‘I swear to you that I had no idea old blood
ran so fast or kept so warm. I thought it was sluggish in its course,
and cool, quite cool. I am pretty sure it ought to be. Yours must be
out of order, neighbour.’
‘I believe it is,’ groaned the old man, clasping his head with both
hands. ‘There’s burning fever here, and something now and then to
which I fear to give a name.’
The dwarf said never a word, but watched his companion as he paced
restlessly up and down the room, and presently returned to his seat.
Here he remained, with his head bowed upon his breast for some time,
and then suddenly raising it, said,
‘Once, and once for all, have you brought me any money?’
‘No!’ returned Quilp.
‘Then,’ said the old man, clenching his hands desperately, and looking
upwards, ‘the child and I are lost!’
‘Neighbour,’ said Quilp glancing sternly at him, and beating his hand
twice or thrice upon the table to attract his wandering attention, ‘let
me be plain with you, and play a fairer game than when you held all the
cards, and I saw but the backs and nothing more. You have no secret
from me now.’
The old man looked up, trembling.
‘You are surprised,’ said Quilp. ‘Well, perhaps that’s natural. You
have no secret from me now, I say; no, not one. For now, I know, that
all those sums of money, that all those loans, advances, and supplies
that you have had from me, have found their way to--shall I say the
word?’
‘Aye!’ replied the old man, ‘say it, if you will.’
‘To the gaming-table,’ rejoined Quilp, ‘your nightly haunt. This was
the precious scheme to make your fortune, was it; this was the secret
certain source of wealth in which I was to have sunk my money (if I had
been the fool you took me for); this was your inexhaustible mine of
gold, your El Dorado, eh?’
‘Yes,’ cried the old man, turning upon him with gleaming eyes, ‘it was.
It is. It will be, till I die.’
‘That I should have been blinded,’ said Quilp looking contemptuously at
him, ‘by a mere shallow gambler!’
‘I am no gambler,’ cried the old man fiercely. ‘I call Heaven to
witness that I never played for gain of mine, or love of play; that at
every piece I staked, I whispered to myself that orphan’s name and
called on Heaven to bless the venture;--which it never did. Whom did
it prosper? Who were those with whom I played? Men who lived by
plunder, profligacy, and riot; squandering their gold in doing ill, and
propagating vice and evil. My winnings would have been from them, my
winnings would have been bestowed to the last farthing on a young
sinless child whose life they would have sweetened and made happy.
What would they have contracted? The means of corruption,
wretchedness, and misery. Who would not have hoped in such a cause?
Tell me that! Who would not have hoped as I did?’
‘When did you first begin this mad career?’ asked Quilp, his taunting
inclination subdued, for a moment, by the old man’s grief and wildness.
‘When did I first begin?’ he rejoined, passing his hand across his
brow. ‘When was it, that I first began? When should it be, but when I
began to think how little I had saved, how long a time it took to save
at all, how short a time I might have at my age to live, and how she
would be left to the rough mercies of the world, with barely enough to
keep her from the sorrows that wait on poverty; then it was that I
began to think about it.’
‘After you first came to me to get your precious grandson packed off to
sea?’ said Quilp.
‘Shortly after that,’ replied the old man. ‘I thought of it a long
time, and had it in my sleep for months. Then I began. I found no
pleasure in it, I expected none. What has it ever brought me but
anxious days and sleepless nights; but loss of health and peace of
mind, and gain of feebleness and sorrow!’
‘You lost what money you had laid by, first, and then came to me.
While I thought you were making your fortune (as you said you were) you
were making yourself a beggar, eh? Dear me! And so it comes to pass
that I hold every security you could scrape together, and a bill of
sale upon the--upon the stock and property,’ said Quilp standing up and
looking about him, as if to assure himself that none of it had been
taken away. ‘But did you never win?’
‘Never!’ groaned the old man. ‘Never won back my loss!’
‘I thought,’ sneered the dwarf, ‘that if a man played long enough he
was sure to win at last, or, at the worst, not to come off a loser.’
‘And so he is,’ cried the old man, suddenly rousing himself from his
state of despondency, and lashed into the most violent excitement, ‘so
he is; I have felt that from the first, I have always known it, I’ve
seen it, I never felt it half so strongly as I feel it now. Quilp, I
have dreamed, three nights, of winning the same large sum, I never
could dream that dream before, though I have often tried. Do not
desert me, now I have this chance. I have no resource but you, give me
some help, let me try this one last hope.’
The dwarf shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.
‘See, Quilp, good tender-hearted Quilp,’ said the old man, drawing some
scraps of paper from his pocket with a trembling hand, and clasping the
dwarf’s arm, ‘only see here. Look at these figures, the result of long
calculation, and painful and hard experience. I MUST win. I only want
a little help once more, a few pounds, but two score pounds, dear
Quilp.’
‘The last advance was seventy,’ said the dwarf; ‘and it went in one
night.’
‘I know it did,’ answered the old man, ‘but that was the very worst
fortune of all, and the time had not come then. Quilp, consider,
consider,’ the old man cried, trembling so much the while, that the
papers in his hand fluttered as if they were shaken by the wind, ‘that
orphan child! If I were alone, I could die with gladness--perhaps even
anticipate that doom which is dealt out so unequally: coming, as it
does, on the proud and happy in their strength, and shunning the needy
and afflicted, and all who court it in their despair--but what I have
done, has been for her. Help me for her sake I implore you; not for
mine; for hers!’
‘I’m sorry I’ve got an appointment in the city,’ said Quilp, looking at
his watch with perfect self-possession, ‘or I should have been very
glad to have spent half an hour with you while you composed yourself,
very glad.’
‘Nay, Quilp, good Quilp,’ gasped the old man, catching at his skirts,
‘you and I have talked together, more than once, of her poor mother’s
story. The fear of her coming to poverty has perhaps been bred in me
by that. Do not be hard upon me, but take that into account. You are
a great gainer by me. Oh spare me the money for this one last hope!’
‘I couldn’t do it really,’ said Quilp with unusual politeness, ‘though
I tell you what--and this is a circumstance worth bearing in mind as
showing how the sharpest among us may be taken in sometimes--I was so
deceived by the penurious way in which you lived, alone with Nelly--’
‘All done to save money for tempting fortune, and to make her triumph
greater,’ cried the old man.
‘Yes, yes, I understand that now,’ said Quilp; ‘but I was going to say,
I was so deceived by that, your miserly way, the reputation you had
among those who knew you of being rich, and your repeated assurances
that you would make of my advances treble and quadruple the interest
you paid me, that I’d have advanced you, even now, what you want, on
your simple note of hand, if I hadn’t unexpectedly become acquainted
with your secret way of life.’
‘Who is it,’ retorted the old man desperately, ‘that, notwithstanding
all my caution, told you? Come. Let me know the name--the person.’
The crafty dwarf, bethinking himself that his giving up the child would
lead to the disclosure of the artifice he had employed, which, as
nothing was to be gained by it, it was well to conceal, stopped short
in his answer and said, ‘Now, who do you think?’
‘It was Kit, it must have been the boy; he played the spy, and you
tampered with him?’ said the old man.
‘How came you to think of him?’ said the dwarf in a tone of great
commiseration. ‘Yes, it was Kit. Poor Kit!’
So saying, he nodded in a friendly manner, and took his leave: stopping
when he had passed the outer door a little distance, and grinning with
extraordinary delight.