The Old Curiosity Shop
gardening-tools, a basket, and a pair of gloves which were lying in one
of the walks, old Mr Garland had been at work in it that very morning.
Kit looked about him, and admired, and looked again, and this a great
many times before he could make up his mind to turn his head another
way and ring the bell. There was abundance of time to look about him
again though, when he had rung it, for nobody came, so after ringing it
twice or thrice he sat down upon his box, and waited.
He rang the bell a great many times, and yet nobody came. But at last,
as he was sitting upon the box thinking about giants’ castles, and
princesses tied up to pegs by the hair of their heads, and dragons
bursting out from behind gates, and other incidents of the like nature,
common in story-books to youths of low degree on their first visit to
strange houses, the door was gently opened, and a little servant-girl,
very tidy, modest, and demure, but very pretty too, appeared.
‘I suppose you’re Christopher, sir,’ said the servant-girl.
Kit got off the box, and said yes, he was.
‘I’m afraid you’ve rung a good many times perhaps,’ she rejoined, ‘but
we couldn’t hear you, because we’ve been catching the pony.’
Kit rather wondered what this meant, but as he couldn’t stop there,
asking questions, he shouldered the box again and followed the girl
into the hall, where through a back-door he descried Mr Garland leading
Whisker in triumph up the garden, after that self-willed pony had (as
he afterwards learned) dodged the family round a small paddock in the
rear, for one hour and three quarters.
The old gentleman received him very kindly and so did the old lady,
whose previous good opinion of him was greatly enhanced by his wiping
his boots on the mat until the soles of his feet burnt again. He was
then taken into the parlour to be inspected in his new clothes; and
when he had been surveyed several times, and had afforded by his
appearance unlimited satisfaction, he was taken into the stable (where
the pony received him with uncommon complaisance); and thence into the
little chamber he had already observed, which was very clean and
comfortable: and thence into the garden, in which the old gentleman
told him he would be taught to employ himself, and where he told him,
besides, what great things he meant to do to make him comfortable, and
happy, if he found he deserved it. All these kindnesses, Kit
acknowledged with various expressions of gratitude, and so many touches
of the new hat, that the brim suffered considerably. When the old
gentleman had said all he had to say in the way of promise and advice,
and Kit had said all he had to say in the way of assurance and
thankfulness, he was handed over again to the old lady, who, summoning
the little servant-girl (whose name was Barbara) instructed her to take
him down stairs and give him something to eat and drink, after his walk.
Down stairs, therefore, Kit went; and at the bottom of the stairs there
was such a kitchen as was never before seen or heard of out of a
toy-shop window, with everything in it as bright and glowing, and as
precisely ordered too, as Barbara herself. And in this kitchen, Kit
sat himself down at a table as white as a tablecloth, to eat cold meat,
and drink small ale, and use his knife and fork the more awkwardly,
because there was an unknown Barbara looking on and observing him.
It did not appear, however, that there was anything remarkably
tremendous about this strange Barbara, who having lived a very quiet
life, blushed very much and was quite as embarrassed and uncertain what
she ought to say or do, as Kit could possibly be. When he had sat for
some little time, attentive to the ticking of the sober clock, he
ventured to glance curiously at the dresser, and there, among the
plates and dishes, were Barbara’s little work-box with a sliding lid to
shut in the balls of cotton, and Barbara’s prayer-book, and Barbara’s
hymn-book, and Barbara’s Bible. Barbara’s little looking-glass hung in
a good light near the window, and Barbara’s bonnet was on a nail behind
the door. From all these mute signs and tokens of her presence, he
naturally glanced at Barbara herself, who sat as mute as they, shelling
peas into a dish; and just when Kit was looking at her eyelashes and
wondering--quite in the simplicity of his heart--what colour her eyes
might be, it perversely happened that Barbara raised her head a little
to look at him, when both pair of eyes were hastily withdrawn, and Kit
leant over his plate, and Barbara over her pea-shells, each in extreme
confusion at having been detected by the other.
CHAPTER 23
Mr Richard Swiveller wending homeward from the Wilderness (for such was
the appropriate name of Quilp’s choice retreat), after a sinuous and
corkscrew fashion, with many checks and stumbles; after stopping
suddenly and staring about him, then as suddenly running forward for a
few paces, and as suddenly halting again and shaking his head; doing
everything with a jerk and nothing by premeditation;--Mr Richard
Swiveller wending his way homeward after this fashion, which is
considered by evil-minded men to be symbolical of intoxication, and is
not held by such persons to denote that state of deep wisdom and
reflection in which the actor knows himself to be, began to think that
possibly he had misplaced his confidence and that the dwarf might not
be precisely the sort of person to whom to entrust a secret of such
delicacy and importance. And being led and tempted on by this
remorseful thought into a condition which the evil-minded class before
referred to would term the maudlin state or stage of drunkenness, it
occurred to Mr Swiveller to cast his hat upon the ground, and moan,
crying aloud that he was an unhappy orphan, and that if he had not been
an unhappy orphan things had never come to this.
‘Left an infant by my parents, at an early age,’ said Mr Swiveller,
bewailing his hard lot, ‘cast upon the world in my tenderest period,
and thrown upon the mercies of a deluding dwarf, who can wonder at my
weakness! Here’s a miserable orphan for you. Here,’ said Mr Swiveller
raising his voice to a high pitch, and looking sleepily round, ‘is a
miserable orphan!’
‘Then,’ said somebody hard by, ‘let me be a father to you.’
Mr Swiveller swayed himself to and fro to preserve his balance, and,
looking into a kind of haze which seemed to surround him, at last
perceived two eyes dimly twinkling through the mist, which he observed
after a short time were in the neighbourhood of a nose and mouth.
Casting his eyes down towards that quarter in which, with reference to
a man’s face, his legs are usually to be found, he observed that the
face had a body attached; and when he looked more intently he was
satisfied that the person was Mr Quilp, who indeed had been in his
company all the time, but whom he had some vague idea of having left a
mile or two behind.
‘You have deceived an orphan, Sir,’ said Mr Swiveller solemnly.’
‘I! I’m a second father to you,’ replied Quilp.
‘You my father, Sir!’ retorted Dick. ‘Being all right myself, Sir, I
request to be left alone--instantly, Sir.’
‘What a funny fellow you are!’ cried Quilp.
‘Go, Sir,’ returned Dick, leaning against a post and waving his hand.
‘Go, deceiver, go, some day, Sir, p’r’aps you’ll waken, from pleasure’s
dream to know, the grief of orphans forsaken. Will you go, Sir?’
The dwarf taking no heed of this adjuration, Mr Swiveller advanced with
the view of inflicting upon him condign chastisement. But forgetting
his purpose or changing his mind before he came close to him, he seized
his hand and vowed eternal friendship, declaring with an agreeable
frankness that from that time forth they were brothers in everything
but personal appearance. Then he told his secret over again, with the
addition of being pathetic on the subject of Miss Wackles, who, he gave
Mr Quilp to understand, was the occasion of any slight incoherency he
might observe in his speech at that moment, which was attributable
solely to the strength of his affection and not to rosy wine or other
fermented liquor. And then they went on arm-in-arm, very lovingly
together.
‘I’m as sharp,’ said Quilp to him, at parting, ‘as sharp as a ferret,
and as cunning as a weazel. You bring Trent to me; assure him that I’m
his friend though I fear he a little distrusts me (I don’t know why, I
have not deserved it); and you’ve both of you made your fortunes--in
perspective.’
‘That’s the worst of it,’ returned Dick. ‘These fortunes in
perspective look such a long way off.’
‘But they look smaller than they really are, on that account,’ said
Quilp, pressing his arm. ‘You’ll have no conception of the value of
your prize until you draw close to it. Mark that.’
‘D’ye think not?’ said Dick.
‘Aye, I do; and I am certain of what I say, that’s better,’ returned
the dwarf. ‘You bring Trent to me. Tell him I am his friend and
yours--why shouldn’t I be?’
‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t, certainly,’ replied Dick, ‘and
perhaps there are a great many why you should--at least there would be
nothing strange in your wanting to be my friend, if you were a choice
spirit, but then you know you’re not a choice spirit.’
‘I not a choice spirit?’ cried Quilp.
‘Devil a bit, sir,’ returned Dick. ‘A man of your appearance couldn’t
be. If you’re any spirit at all, sir, you’re an evil spirit. Choice
spirits,’ added Dick, smiting himself on the breast, ‘are quite a
different looking sort of people, you may take your oath of that, sir.’
Quilp glanced at his free-spoken friend with a mingled expression of
cunning and dislike, and wringing his hand almost at the same moment,
declared that he was an uncommon character and had his warmest esteem.
With that they parted; Mr Swiveller to make the best of his way home
and sleep himself sober; and Quilp to cogitate upon the discovery he
had made, and exult in the prospect of the rich field of enjoyment and
reprisal it opened to him.
It was not without great reluctance and misgiving that Mr Swiveller,
next morning, his head racked by the fumes of the renowned Schiedam,
repaired to the lodging of his friend Trent (which was in the roof of
an old house in an old ghostly inn), and recounted by very slow degrees
what had yesterday taken place between him and Quilp. Nor was it
without great surprise and much speculation on Quilp’s probable
motives, nor without many bitter comments on Dick Swiveller’s folly,
that his friend received the tale.
‘I don’t defend myself, Fred,’ said the penitent Richard; ‘but the
fellow has such a queer way with him and is such an artful dog, that
first of all he set me upon thinking whether there was any harm in
telling him, and while I was thinking, screwed it out of me. If you
had seen him drink and smoke, as I did, you couldn’t have kept anything
from him. He’s a Salamander you know, that’s what he is.’
Without inquiring whether Salamanders were of necessity good
confidential agents, or whether a fire-proof man was as a matter of
course trustworthy, Frederick Trent threw himself into a chair, and,
burying his head in his hands, endeavoured to fathom the motives which
had led Quilp to insinuate himself into Richard Swiveller’s
confidence;--for that the disclosure was of his seeking, and had not
been spontaneously revealed by Dick, was sufficiently plain from
Quilp’s seeking his company and enticing him away.
The dwarf had twice encountered him when he was endeavouring to obtain
intelligence of the fugitives. This, perhaps, as he had not shown any
previous anxiety about them, was enough to awaken suspicion in the
breast of a creature so jealous and distrustful by nature, setting
aside any additional impulse to curiosity that he might have derived