The Old Curiosity Shop
gambler drove his noisy trade, and bellowed to the idle passersby to
stop and try their chance; the crowd grew thicker and more noisy; gilt
gingerbread in blanket-stalls exposed its glories to the dust; and
often a four-horse carriage, dashing by, obscured all objects in the
gritty cloud it raised, and left them, stunned and blinded, far behind.
It was dark before they reached the town itself, and long indeed the
few last miles had been. Here all was tumult and confusion; the
streets were filled with throngs of people--many strangers were there,
it seemed, by the looks they cast about--the church-bells rang out
their noisy peals, and flags streamed from windows and house-tops. In
the large inn-yards waiters flitted to and fro and ran against each
other, horses clattered on the uneven stones, carriage steps fell
rattling down, and sickening smells from many dinners came in a heavy
lukewarm breath upon the sense. In the smaller public-houses, fiddles
with all their might and main were squeaking out the tune to staggering
feet; drunken men, oblivious of the burden of their song, joined in a
senseless howl, which drowned the tinkling of the feeble bell and made
them savage for their drink; vagabond groups assembled round the doors
to see the stroller woman dance, and add their uproar to the shrill
flageolet and deafening drum.
Through this delirious scene, the child, frightened and repelled by all
she saw, led on her bewildered charge, clinging close to her conductor,
and trembling lest in the press she should be separated from him and
left to find her way alone. Quickening their steps to get clear of all
the roar and riot, they at length passed through the town and made for
the race-course, which was upon an open heath, situated on an eminence,
a full mile distant from its furthest bounds.
Although there were many people here, none of the best favoured or best
clad, busily erecting tents and driving stakes in the ground, and
hurrying to and fro with dusty feet and many a grumbled oath--although
there were tired children cradled on heaps of straw between the wheels
of carts, crying themselves to sleep--and poor lean horses and donkeys
just turned loose, grazing among the men and women, and pots and
kettles, and half-lighted fires, and ends of candles flaring and
wasting in the air--for all this, the child felt it an escape from the
town and drew her breath more freely. After a scanty supper, the
purchase of which reduced her little stock so low, that she had only a
few halfpence with which to buy a breakfast on the morrow, she and the
old man lay down to rest in a corner of a tent, and slept, despite the
busy preparations that were going on around them all night long.
And now they had come to the time when they must beg their bread. Soon
after sunrise in the morning she stole out from the tent, and rambling
into some fields at a short distance, plucked a few wild roses and such
humble flowers, purposing to make them into little nosegays and offer
them to the ladies in the carriages when the company arrived. Her
thoughts were not idle while she was thus employed; when she returned
and was seated beside the old man in one corner of the tent, tying her
flowers together, while the two men lay dozing in another corner, she
plucked him by the sleeve, and slightly glancing towards them, said, in
a low voice--
‘Grandfather, don’t look at those I talk of, and don’t seem as if I
spoke of anything but what I am about. What was that you told me
before we left the old house? That if they knew what we were going to
do, they would say that you were mad, and part us?’
The old man turned to her with an aspect of wild terror; but she
checked him by a look, and bidding him hold some flowers while she tied
them up, and so bringing her lips closer to his ear, said--
‘I know that was what you told me. You needn’t speak, dear. I
recollect it very well. It was not likely that I should forget it.
Grandfather, these men suspect that we have secretly left our friends,
and mean to carry us before some gentleman and have us taken care of
and sent back. If you let your hand tremble so, we can never get away
from them, but if you’re only quiet now, we shall do so, easily.’
‘How?’ muttered the old man. ‘Dear Nelly, how? They will shut me up
in a stone room, dark and cold, and chain me up to the wall, Nell--flog
me with whips, and never let me see thee more!’
‘You’re trembling again,’ said the child. ‘Keep close to me all day.
Never mind them, don’t look at them, but me. I shall find a time when
we can steal away. When I do, mind you come with me, and do not stop
or speak a word. Hush! That’s all.’
‘Halloa! what are you up to, my dear?’ said Mr Codlin, raising his
head, and yawning. Then observing that his companion was fast asleep,
he added in an earnest whisper, ‘Codlin’s the friend, remember--not
Short.’
‘Making some nosegays,’ the child replied; ‘I am going to try and sell
some, these three days of the races. Will you have one--as a present I
mean?’
Mr Codlin would have risen to receive it, but the child hurried towards
him and placed it in his hand. He stuck it in his buttonhole with an
air of ineffable complacency for a misanthrope, and leering exultingly
at the unconscious Short, muttered, as he laid himself down again, ‘Tom
Codlin’s the friend, by G--!’
As the morning wore on, the tents assumed a gayer and more brilliant
appearance, and long lines of carriages came rolling softly on the
turf. Men who had lounged about all night in smock-frocks and leather
leggings, came out in silken vests and hats and plumes, as jugglers or
mountebanks; or in gorgeous liveries as soft-spoken servants at
gambling booths; or in sturdy yeoman dress as decoys at unlawful games.
Black-eyed gipsy girls, hooded in showy handkerchiefs, sallied forth to
tell fortunes, and pale slender women with consumptive faces lingered
upon the footsteps of ventriloquists and conjurors, and counted the
sixpences with anxious eyes long before they were gained. As many of
the children as could be kept within bounds, were stowed away, with all
the other signs of dirt and poverty, among the donkeys, carts, and
horses; and as many as could not be thus disposed of ran in and out in
all intricate spots, crept between people’s legs and carriage wheels,
and came forth unharmed from under horses’ hoofs. The dancing-dogs,
the stilts, the little lady and the tall man, and all the other
attractions, with organs out of number and bands innumerable, emerged
from the holes and corners in which they had passed the night, and
flourished boldly in the sun.
Along the uncleared course, Short led his party, sounding the brazen
trumpet and revelling in the voice of Punch; and at his heels went
Thomas Codlin, bearing the show as usual, and keeping his eye on Nelly
and her grandfather, as they rather lingered in the rear. The child
bore upon her arm the little basket with her flowers, and sometimes
stopped, with timid and modest looks, to offer them at some gay
carriage; but alas! there were many bolder beggars there, gipsies who
promised husbands, and other adepts in their trade, and although some
ladies smiled gently as they shook their heads, and others cried to the
gentlemen beside them ‘See, what a pretty face!’ they let the pretty
face pass on, and never thought that it looked tired or hungry.
There was but one lady who seemed to understand the child, and she was
one who sat alone in a handsome carriage, while two young men in
dashing clothes, who had just dismounted from it, talked and laughed
loudly at a little distance, appearing to forget her, quite. There
were many ladies all around, but they turned their backs, or looked
another way, or at the two young men (not unfavourably at them), and
left her to herself. She motioned away a gipsy-woman urgent to tell
her fortune, saying that it was told already and had been for some
years, but called the child towards her, and taking her flowers put
money into her trembling hand, and bade her go home and keep at home
for God’s sake.
Many a time they went up and down those long, long lines, seeing
everything but the horses and the race; when the bell rang to clear the
course, going back to rest among the carts and donkeys, and not coming
out again until the heat was over. Many a time, too, was Punch
displayed in the full zenith of his humour, but all this while the eye
of Thomas Codlin was upon them, and to escape without notice was
impracticable.
At length, late in the day, Mr Codlin pitched the show in a convenient
spot, and the spectators were soon in the very triumph of the scene.
The child, sitting down with the old man close behind it, had been
thinking how strange it was that horses who were such fine honest
creatures should seem to make vagabonds of all the men they drew about
them, when a loud laugh at some extemporaneous witticism of Mr Short’s,
having allusion to the circumstances of the day, roused her from her
meditation and caused her to look around.
If they were ever to get away unseen, that was the very moment. Short
was plying the quarter-staves vigorously and knocking the characters in
the fury of the combat against the sides of the show, the people were
looking on with laughing faces, and Mr Codlin had relaxed into a grim
smile as his roving eye detected hands going into waistcoat pockets and
groping secretly for sixpences. If they were ever to get away unseen,
that was the very moment. They seized it, and fled.
They made a path through booths and carriages and throngs of people,
and never once stopped to look behind. The bell was ringing and the
course was cleared by the time they reached the ropes, but they dashed
across it insensible to the shouts and screeching that assailed them
for breaking in upon its sanctity, and creeping under the brow of the
hill at a quick pace, made for the open fields.
CHAPTER 20
Day after day as he bent his steps homeward, returning from some new
effort to procure employment, Kit raised his eyes to the window of the
little room he had so much commended to the child, and hoped to see
some indication of her presence. His own earnest wish, coupled with
the assurance he had received from Quilp, filled him with the belief
that she would yet arrive to claim the humble shelter he had offered,
and from the death of each day’s hope another hope sprung up to live
to-morrow.
‘I think they must certainly come to-morrow, eh mother?’ said Kit,
laying aside his hat with a weary air and sighing as he spoke. ‘They
have been gone a week. They surely couldn’t stop away more than a
week, could they now?’
The mother shook her head, and reminded him how often he had been
disappointed already.
‘For the matter of that,’ said Kit, ‘you speak true and sensible
enough, as you always do, mother. Still, I do consider that a week is
quite long enough for ‘em to be rambling about; don’t you say so?’
‘Quite long enough, Kit, longer than enough, but they may not come back
for all that.’
Kit was for a moment disposed to be vexed by this contradiction, and
not the less so from having anticipated it in his own mind and knowing
how just it was. But the impulse was only momentary, and the vexed
look became a kind one before it had crossed the room.
‘Then what do you think, mother, has become of ‘em? You don’t think
they’ve gone to sea, anyhow?’
‘Not gone for sailors, certainly,’ returned the mother with a smile.
‘But I can’t help thinking that they have gone to some foreign country.’
‘I say,’ cried Kit with a rueful face, ‘don’t talk like that, mother.’
‘I am afraid they have, and that’s the truth,’ she said. ‘It’s the
talk of all the neighbours, and there are some even that know of their