The Old Curiosity Shop
‘Not very. They said he was wandering in his head yesterday, dear boy,
and so they said the day before. But that’s a part of that kind of
disorder; it’s not a bad sign--not at all a bad sign.’
The child was silent. He walked to the door, and looked wistfully out.
The shadows of night were gathering, and all was still.
‘If he could lean upon anybody’s arm, he would come to me, I know,’ he
said, returning into the room. ‘He always came into the garden to say
good night. But perhaps his illness has only just taken a favourable
turn, and it’s too late for him to come out, for it’s very damp and
there’s a heavy dew. It’s much better he shouldn’t come to-night.’
The schoolmaster lighted a candle, fastened the window-shutter, and
closed the door. But after he had done this, and sat silent a little
time, he took down his hat, and said he would go and satisfy himself,
if Nell would sit up till he returned. The child readily complied, and
he went out.
She sat there half-an-hour or more, feeling the place very strange and
lonely, for she had prevailed upon the old man to go to bed, and there
was nothing to be heard but the ticking of an old clock, and the
whistling of the wind among the trees. When he returned, he took his
seat in the chimney corner, but remained silent for a long time. At
length he turned to her, and speaking very gently, hoped she would say
a prayer that night for a sick child.
‘My favourite scholar!’ said the poor schoolmaster, smoking a pipe he
had forgotten to light, and looking mournfully round upon the walls.
‘It is a little hand to have done all that, and waste away with
sickness. It is a very, very little hand!’
CHAPTER 25
After a sound night’s rest in a chamber in the thatched roof, in which
it seemed the sexton had for some years been a lodger, but which he had
lately deserted for a wife and a cottage of his own, the child rose
early in the morning and descended to the room where she had supped
last night. As the schoolmaster had already left his bed and gone out,
she bestirred herself to make it neat and comfortable, and had just
finished its arrangement when the kind host returned.
He thanked her many times, and said that the old dame who usually did
such offices for him had gone to nurse the little scholar whom he had
told her of. The child asked how he was, and hoped he was better.
‘No,’ rejoined the schoolmaster shaking his head sorrowfully, ‘no
better. They even say he is worse.’
‘I am very sorry for that, Sir,’ said the child.
The poor schoolmaster appeared to be gratified by her earnest manner,
but yet rendered more uneasy by it, for he added hastily that anxious
people often magnified an evil and thought it greater than it was; ‘for
my part,’ he said, in his quiet, patient way, ‘I hope it’s not so. I
don’t think he can be worse.’
The child asked his leave to prepare breakfast, and her grandfather
coming down stairs, they all three partook of it together. While the
meal was in progress, their host remarked that the old man seemed much
fatigued, and evidently stood in need of rest.
‘If the journey you have before you is a long one,’ he said, ‘and don’t
press you for one day, you’re very welcome to pass another night here.
I should really be glad if you would, friend.’
He saw that the old man looked at Nell, uncertain whether to accept or
decline his offer; and added,
‘I shall be glad to have your young companion with me for one day. If
you can do a charity to a lone man, and rest yourself at the same time,
do so. If you must proceed upon your journey, I wish you well through
it, and will walk a little way with you before school begins.’
‘What are we to do, Nell?’ said the old man irresolutely, ‘say what
we’re to do, dear.’
It required no great persuasion to induce the child to answer that they
had better accept the invitation and remain. She was happy to show her
gratitude to the kind schoolmaster by busying herself in the
performance of such household duties as his little cottage stood in
need of. When these were done, she took some needle-work from her
basket, and sat herself down upon a stool beside the lattice, where the
honeysuckle and woodbine entwined their tender stems, and stealing into
the room filled it with their delicious breath. Her grandfather was
basking in the sun outside, breathing the perfume of the flowers, and
idly watching the clouds as they floated on before the light summer
wind.
As the schoolmaster, after arranging the two forms in due order, took
his seat behind his desk and made other preparations for school, the
child was apprehensive that she might be in the way, and offered to
withdraw to her little bedroom. But this he would not allow, and as he
seemed pleased to have her there, she remained, busying herself with
her work.
‘Have you many scholars, sir?’ she asked.
The poor schoolmaster shook his head, and said that they barely filled
the two forms.
‘Are the others clever, sir?’ asked the child, glancing at the trophies
on the wall.
‘Good boys,’ returned the schoolmaster, ‘good boys enough, my dear, but
they’ll never do like that.’
A small white-headed boy with a sunburnt face appeared at the door
while he was speaking, and stopping there to make a rustic bow, came in
and took his seat upon one of the forms. The white-headed boy then put
an open book, astonishingly dog’s-eared upon his knees, and thrusting
his hands into his pockets began counting the marbles with which they
were filled; displaying in the expression of his face a remarkable
capacity of totally abstracting his mind from the spelling on which his
eyes were fixed. Soon afterwards another white-headed little boy came
straggling in, and after him a red-headed lad, and after him two more
with white heads, and then one with a flaxen poll, and so on until the
forms were occupied by a dozen boys or thereabouts, with heads of every
colour but grey, and ranging in their ages from four years old to
fourteen years or more; for the legs of the youngest were a long way
from the floor when he sat upon the form, and the eldest was a heavy
good-tempered foolish fellow, about half a head taller than the
schoolmaster.
At the top of the first form--the post of honour in the school--was the
vacant place of the little sick scholar, and at the head of the row of
pegs on which those who came in hats or caps were wont to hang them up,
one was left empty. No boy attempted to violate the sanctity of seat
or peg, but many a one looked from the empty spaces to the
schoolmaster, and whispered his idle neighbour behind his hand.
Then began the hum of conning over lessons and getting them by heart,
the whispered jest and stealthy game, and all the noise and drawl of
school; and in the midst of the din sat the poor schoolmaster, the very
image of meekness and simplicity, vainly attempting to fix his mind
upon the duties of the day, and to forget his little friend. But the
tedium of his office reminded him more strongly of the willing scholar,
and his thoughts were rambling from his pupils--it was plain.
None knew this better than the idlest boys, who, growing bolder with
impunity, waxed louder and more daring; playing odd-or-even under the
master’s eye, eating apples openly and without rebuke, pinching each
other in sport or malice without the least reserve, and cutting their
autographs in the very legs of his desk. The puzzled dunce, who stood
beside it to say his lesson out of book, looked no longer at the
ceiling for forgotten words, but drew closer to the master’s elbow and
boldly cast his eye upon the page; the wag of the little troop squinted
and made grimaces (at the smallest boy of course), holding no book
before his face, and his approving audience knew no constraint in their
delight. If the master did chance to rouse himself and seem alive to
what was going on, the noise subsided for a moment and no eyes met his
but wore a studious and a deeply humble look; but the instant he
relapsed again, it broke out afresh, and ten times louder than before.
Oh! how some of those idle fellows longed to be outside, and how they
looked at the open door and window, as if they half meditated rushing
violently out, plunging into the woods, and being wild boys and savages
from that time forth. What rebellious thoughts of the cool river, and
some shady bathing-place beneath willow trees with branches dipping in
the water, kept tempting and urging that sturdy boy, who, with his
shirt-collar unbuttoned and flung back as far as it could go, sat
fanning his flushed face with a spelling-book, wishing himself a whale,
or a tittlebat, or a fly, or anything but a boy at school on that hot,
broiling day! Heat! ask that other boy, whose seat being nearest to
the door gave him opportunities of gliding out into the garden and
driving his companions to madness by dipping his face into the bucket
of the well and then rolling on the grass--ask him if there were ever
such a day as that, when even the bees were diving deep down into the
cups of flowers and stopping there, as if they had made up their minds
to retire from business and be manufacturers of honey no more. The day
was made for laziness, and lying on one’s back in green places, and
staring at the sky till its brightness forced one to shut one’s eyes
and go to sleep; and was this a time to be poring over musty books in a
dark room, slighted by the very sun itself? Monstrous!
Nell sat by the window occupied with her work, but attentive still to
all that passed, though sometimes rather timid of the boisterous boys.
The lessons over, writing time began; and there being but one desk and
that the master’s, each boy sat at it in turn and laboured at his
crooked copy, while the master walked about. This was a quieter time;
for he would come and look over the writer’s shoulder, and tell him
mildly to observe how such a letter was turned in such a copy on the
wall, praise such an up-stroke here and such a down-stroke there, and
bid him take it for his model. Then he would stop and tell them what
the sick child had said last night, and how he had longed to be among
them once again; and such was the poor schoolmaster’s gentle and
affectionate manner, that the boys seemed quite remorseful that they
had worried him so much, and were absolutely quiet; eating no apples,
cutting no names, inflicting no pinches, and making no grimaces, for
full two minutes afterwards.
‘I think, boys,’ said the schoolmaster when the clock struck twelve,
‘that I shall give an extra half-holiday this afternoon.’
At this intelligence, the boys, led on and headed by the tall boy,
raised a great shout, in the midst of which the master was seen to
speak, but could not be heard. As he held up his hand, however, in
token of his wish that they should be silent, they were considerate
enough to leave off, as soon as the longest-winded among them were
quite out of breath.
‘You must promise me first,’ said the schoolmaster, ‘that you’ll not be
noisy, or at least, if you are, that you’ll go away and be so--away out
of the village I mean. I’m sure you wouldn’t disturb your old playmate
and companion.’
There was a general murmur (and perhaps a very sincere one, for they
were but boys) in the negative; and the tall boy, perhaps as sincerely
as any of them, called those about him to witness that he had only
shouted in a whisper.
‘Then pray don’t forget, there’s my dear scholars,’ said the
schoolmaster, ‘what I have asked you, and do it as a favour to me. Be
as happy as you can, and don’t be unmindful that you are blessed with
health. Good-bye all!’
‘Thank’ee, Sir,’ and ‘good-bye, Sir,’ were said a good many times in a
variety of voices, and the boys went out very slowly and softly. But