The Old Curiosity Shop
shutter which I had heard the boy put up before he left the house) and
with another farewell whose clear and tender note I have recalled a
thousand times, held it until we had passed out. The old man paused a
moment while it was gently closed and fastened on the inside, and
satisfied that this was done, walked on at a slow pace. At the
street-corner he stopped, and regarding me with a troubled countenance
said that our ways were widely different and that he must take his
leave. I would have spoken, but summoning up more alacrity than might
have been expected in one of his appearance, he hurried away. I could
see that twice or thrice he looked back as if to ascertain if I were
still watching him, or perhaps to assure himself that I was not
following at a distance. The obscurity of the night favoured his
disappearance, and his figure was soon beyond my sight.
I remained standing on the spot where he had left me, unwilling to
depart, and yet unknowing why I should loiter there. I looked wistfully
into the street we had lately quitted, and after a time directed my
steps that way. I passed and repassed the house, and stopped and
listened at the door; all was dark, and silent as the grave.
Yet I lingered about, and could not tear myself away, thinking of all
possible harm that might happen to the child--of fires and robberies
and even murder--and feeling as if some evil must ensue if I turned my
back upon the place. The closing of a door or window in the street
brought me before the curiosity-dealer’s once more; I crossed the road
and looked up at the house to assure myself that the noise had not come
from there. No, it was black, cold, and lifeless as before.
There were few passengers astir; the street was sad and dismal, and
pretty well my own. A few stragglers from the theatres hurried by, and
now and then I turned aside to avoid some noisy drunkard as he reeled
homewards, but these interruptions were not frequent and soon ceased.
The clocks struck one. Still I paced up and down, promising myself that
every time should be the last, and breaking faith with myself on some
new plea as often as I did so.
The more I thought of what the old man had said, and of his looks and
bearing, the less I could account for what I had seen and heard. I had
a strong misgiving that his nightly absence was for no good purpose. I
had only come to know the fact through the innocence of the child, and
though the old man was by at the time, and saw my undisguised surprise,
he had preserved a strange mystery upon the subject and offered no word
of explanation. These reflections naturally recalled again more
strongly than before his haggard face, his wandering manner, his
restless anxious looks. His affection for the child might not be
inconsistent with villany of the worst kind; even that very affection
was in itself an extraordinary contradiction, or how could he leave her
thus? Disposed as I was to think badly of him, I never doubted that his
love for her was real. I could not admit the thought, remembering what
had passed between us, and the tone of voice in which he had called her
by her name.
‘Stay here of course,’ the child had said in answer to my question, ‘I
always do!’ What could take him from home by night, and every night! I
called up all the strange tales I had ever heard of dark and secret
deeds committed in great towns and escaping detection for a long series
of years; wild as many of these stories were, I could not find one
adapted to this mystery, which only became the more impenetrable, in
proportion as I sought to solve it.
Occupied with such thoughts as these, and a crowd of others all tending
to the same point, I continued to pace the street for two long hours;
at length the rain began to descend heavily, and then over-powered by
fatigue though no less interested than I had been at first, I engaged
the nearest coach and so got home. A cheerful fire was blazing on the
hearth, the lamp burnt brightly, my clock received me with its old
familiar welcome; everything was quiet, warm and cheering, and in happy
contrast to the gloom and darkness I had quitted.
But all that night, waking or in my sleep, the same thoughts recurred
and the same images retained possession of my brain. I had ever before
me the old dark murky rooms--the gaunt suits of mail with their ghostly
silent air--the faces all awry, grinning from wood and stone--the dust
and rust and worm that lives in wood--and alone in the midst of all
this lumber and decay and ugly age, the beautiful child in her gentle
slumber, smiling through her light and sunny dreams.
CHAPTER 2
After combating, for nearly a week, the feeling which impelled me to
revisit the place I had quitted under the circumstances already
detailed, I yielded to it at length; and determining that this time I
would present myself by the light of day, bent my steps thither early
in the morning.
I walked past the house, and took several turns in the street, with
that kind of hesitation which is natural to a man who is conscious that
the visit he is about to pay is unexpected, and may not be very
acceptable. However, as the door of the shop was shut, and it did not
appear likely that I should be recognized by those within, if I
continued merely to pass up and down before it, I soon conquered this
irresolution, and found myself in the Curiosity Dealer’s warehouse.
The old man and another person were together in the back part, and
there seemed to have been high words between them, for their voices
which were raised to a very high pitch suddenly stopped on my entering,
and the old man advancing hastily towards me, said in a tremulous tone
that he was very glad I had come.
‘You interrupted us at a critical moment,’ said he, pointing to the man
whom I had found in company with him; ‘this fellow will murder me one
of these days. He would have done so, long ago, if he had dared.’
‘Bah! You would swear away my life if you could,’ returned the other,
after bestowing a stare and a frown on me; ‘we all know that!’
‘I almost think I could,’ cried the old man, turning feebly upon him.
‘If oaths, or prayers, or words, could rid me of you, they should. I
would be quit of you, and would be relieved if you were dead.’
‘I know it,’ returned the other. ‘I said so, didn’t I? But neither
oaths, or prayers, nor words, WILL kill me, and therefore I live, and
mean to live.’
‘And his mother died!’ cried the old man, passionately clasping his
hands and looking upward; ‘and this is Heaven’s justice!’
The other stood lounging with his foot upon a chair, and regarded him
with a contemptuous sneer. He was a young man of one-and-twenty or
thereabouts; well made, and certainly handsome, though the expression
of his face was far from prepossessing, having in common with his
manner and even his dress, a dissipated, insolent air which repelled
one.
‘Justice or no justice,’ said the young fellow, ‘here I am and here I
shall stop till such time as I think fit to go, unless you send for
assistance to put me out--which you won’t do, I know. I tell you again
that I want to see my sister.’
‘YOUR sister!’ said the old man bitterly.
‘Ah! You can’t change the relationship,’ returned the other. ‘If you
could, you’d have done it long ago. I want to see my sister, that you
keep cooped up here, poisoning her mind with your sly secrets and
pretending an affection for her that you may work her to death, and add
a few scraped shillings every week to the money you can hardly count. I
want to see her; and I will.’
‘Here’s a moralist to talk of poisoned minds! Here’s a generous spirit
to scorn scraped-up shillings!’ cried the old man, turning from him to
me. ‘A profligate, sir, who has forfeited every claim not only upon
those who have the misfortune to be of his blood, but upon society
which knows nothing of him but his misdeeds. A liar too,’ he added, in
a lower voice as he drew closer to me, ‘who knows how dear she is to
me, and seeks to wound me even there, because there is a stranger
nearby.’
‘Strangers are nothing to me, grandfather,’ said the young fellow
catching at the word, ‘nor I to them, I hope. The best they can do, is
to keep an eye to their business and leave me to mine. There’s a friend
of mine waiting outside, and as it seems that I may have to wait some
time, I’ll call him in, with your leave.’
Saying this, he stepped to the door, and looking down the street
beckoned several times to some unseen person, who, to judge from the
air of impatience with which these signals were accompanied, required a
great quantity of persuasion to induce him to advance. At length there
sauntered up, on the opposite side of the way--with a bad pretense of
passing by accident--a figure conspicuous for its dirty smartness,
which after a great many frowns and jerks of the head, in resistance of
the invitation, ultimately crossed the road and was brought into the
shop.
‘There. It’s Dick Swiveller,’ said the young fellow, pushing him in.
‘Sit down, Swiveller.’
‘But is the old min agreeable?’ said Mr Swiveller in an undertone.
Mr Swiveller complied, and looking about him with a propitiatory smile,
observed that last week was a fine week for the ducks, and this week
was a fine week for the dust; he also observed that whilst standing by
the post at the street-corner, he had observed a pig with a straw in
his mouth issuing out of the tobacco-shop, from which appearance he
augured that another fine week for the ducks was approaching, and that
rain would certainly ensue. He furthermore took occasion to apologize
for any negligence that might be perceptible in his dress, on the
ground that last night he had had ‘the sun very strong in his eyes’; by
which expression he was understood to convey to his hearers in the most
delicate manner possible, the information that he had been extremely
drunk.
‘But what,’ said Mr Swiveller with a sigh, ‘what is the odds so long as
the fire of soul is kindled at the taper of conwiviality, and the wing
of friendship never moults a feather! What is the odds so long as the
spirit is expanded by means of rosy wine, and the present moment is the
least happiest of our existence!’
‘You needn’t act the chairman here,’ said his friend, half aside.
‘Fred!’ cried Mr Swiveller, tapping his nose, ‘a word to the wise is
sufficient for them--we may be good and happy without riches, Fred.
Say not another syllable. I know my cue; smart is the word. Only one
little whisper, Fred--is the old min friendly?’
‘Never you mind,’ replied his friend.
‘Right again, quite right,’ said Mr Swiveller, ‘caution is the word,
and caution is the act.’ with that, he winked as if in preservation of
some deep secret, and folding his arms and leaning back in his chair,
looked up at the ceiling with profound gravity.
It was perhaps not very unreasonable to suspect from what had already
passed, that Mr Swiveller was not quite recovered from the effects of
the powerful sunlight to which he had made allusion; but if no such
suspicion had been awakened by his speech, his wiry hair, dull eyes,
and sallow face would still have been strong witnesses against him. His
attire was not, as he had himself hinted, remarkable for the nicest
arrangement, but was in a state of disorder which strongly induced the
idea that he had gone to bed in it. It consisted of a brown body-coat
with a great many brass buttons up the front and only one behind, a
bright check neckerchief, a plaid waistcoat, soiled white trousers, and
a very limp hat, worn with the wrong side foremost, to hide a hole in
the brim. The breast of his coat was ornamented with an outside pocket
from which there peeped forth the cleanest end of a very large and very
ill-favoured handkerchief; his dirty wristbands were pulled on as far