The Old Curiosity Shop
have it anywhere but in his face: which being, as we have already seen,
of a harsh and repulsive character, was not oiled so easily, but
frowned above all the smooth speeches--one of nature’s beacons, warning
off those who navigated the shoals and breakers of the World, or of
that dangerous strait the Law, and admonishing them to seek less
treacherous harbours and try their fortune elsewhere.
While Mr Brass by turns overwhelmed his clerk with compliments and
inspected the ten-pound note, Miss Sally showed little emotion and that
of no pleasurable kind, for as the tendency of her legal practice had
been to fix her thoughts on small gains and gripings, and to whet and
sharpen her natural wisdom, she was not a little disappointed that the
single gentleman had obtained the lodgings at such an easy rate,
arguing that when he was seen to have set his mind upon them, he should
have been at the least charged double or treble the usual terms, and
that, in exact proportion as he pressed forward, Mr Swiveller should
have hung back. But neither the good opinion of Mr Brass, nor the
dissatisfaction of Miss Sally, wrought any impression upon that young
gentleman, who, throwing the responsibility of this and all other acts
and deeds thereafter to be done by him, upon his unlucky destiny, was
quite resigned and comfortable: fully prepared for the worst, and
philosophically indifferent to the best.
‘Good morning, Mr Richard,’ said Brass, on the second day of Mr
Swiveller’s clerkship. ‘Sally found you a second-hand stool, Sir,
yesterday evening, in Whitechapel. She’s a rare fellow at a bargain, I
can tell you, Mr Richard. You’ll find that a first-rate stool, Sir,
take my word for it.’
‘It’s rather a crazy one to look at,’ said Dick.
‘You’ll find it a most amazing stool to sit down upon, you may depend,’
returned Mr Brass. ‘It was bought in the open street just opposite the
hospital, and as it has been standing there a month of two, it has got
rather dusty and a little brown from being in the sun, that’s all.’
‘I hope it hasn’t got any fevers or anything of that sort in it,’ said
Dick, sitting himself down discontentedly, between Mr Sampson and the
chaste Sally. ‘One of the legs is longer than the others.’
‘Then we get a bit of timber in, Sir,’ retorted Brass. ‘Ha, ha, ha!
We get a bit of timber in, Sir, and that’s another advantage of my
sister’s going to market for us. Miss Brass, Mr Richard is the--’
‘Will you keep quiet?’ interrupted the fair subject of these remarks,
looking up from her papers. ‘How am I to work if you keep on
chattering?’
‘What an uncertain chap you are!’ returned the lawyer. ‘Sometimes
you’re all for a chat. At another time you’re all for work. A man
never knows what humour he’ll find you in.’
‘I’m in a working humour now,’ said Sally, ‘so don’t disturb me, if you
please. And don’t take him,’ Miss Sally pointed with the feather of
her pen to Richard, ‘off his business. He won’t do more than he can
help, I dare say.’
Mr Brass had evidently a strong inclination to make an angry reply, but
was deterred by prudent or timid considerations, as he only muttered
something about aggravation and a vagabond; not associating the terms
with any individual, but mentioning them as connected with some
abstract ideas which happened to occur to him. They went on writing
for a long time in silence after this--in such a dull silence that Mr
Swiveller (who required excitement) had several times fallen asleep,
and written divers strange words in an unknown character with his eyes
shut, when Miss Sally at length broke in upon the monotony of the
office by pulling out the little tin box, taking a noisy pinch of
snuff, and then expressing her opinion that Mr Richard Swiveller had
‘done it.’
‘Done what, ma’am?’ said Richard.
‘Do you know,’ returned Miss Brass, ‘that the lodger isn’t up yet--
that nothing has been seen or heard of him since he went to bed
yesterday afternoon?’
‘Well, ma’am,’ said Dick, ‘I suppose he may sleep his ten pound out, in
peace and quietness, if he likes.’
‘Ah! I begin to think he’ll never wake,’ observed Miss Sally.
‘It’s a very remarkable circumstance,’ said Brass, laying down his pen;
‘really, very remarkable. Mr Richard, you’ll remember, if this
gentleman should be found to have hung himself to the bed-post, or any
unpleasant accident of that kind should happen--you’ll remember, Mr
Richard, that this ten pound note was given to you in part payment of
two years’ rent? You’ll bear that in mind, Mr Richard; you had better
make a note of it, sir, in case you should ever be called upon to give
evidence.’
Mr Swiveller took a large sheet of foolscap, and with a countenance of
profound gravity, began to make a very small note in one corner.
‘We can never be too cautious,’ said Mr Brass. ‘There is a deal of
wickedness going about the world, a deal of wickedness. Did the
gentleman happen to say, Sir--but never mind that at present, sir;
finish that little memorandum first.’
Dick did so, and handed it to Mr Brass, who had dismounted from his
stool, and was walking up and down the office.
‘Oh, this is the memorandum, is it?’ said Brass, running his eye over
the document. ‘Very good. Now, Mr Richard, did the gentleman say
anything else?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure, Mr Richard,’ said Brass, solemnly, ‘that the gentleman
said nothing else?’
‘Devil a word, Sir,’ replied Dick.
‘Think again, Sir,’ said Brass; ‘it’s my duty, Sir, in the position in
which I stand, and as an honourable member of the legal profession--the
first profession in this country, Sir, or in any other country, or in
any of the planets that shine above us at night and are supposed to be
inhabited--it’s my duty, Sir, as an honourable member of that
profession, not to put to you a leading question in a matter of this
delicacy and importance. Did the gentleman, Sir, who took the first
floor of you yesterday afternoon, and who brought with him a box of
property--a box of property--say anything more than is set down in this
memorandum?’
‘Come, don’t be a fool,’ said Miss Sally.
Dick looked at her, and then at Brass, and then at Miss Sally again,
and still said ‘No.’
‘Pooh, pooh! Deuce take it, Mr Richard, how dull you are!’ cried
Brass, relaxing into a smile. ‘Did he say anything about his
property?--there!’
‘That’s the way to put it,’ said Miss Sally, nodding to her brother.
‘Did he say, for instance,’ added Brass, in a kind of comfortable, cozy
tone--‘I don’t assert that he did say so, mind; I only ask you, to
refresh your memory--did he say, for instance, that he was a stranger
in London--that it was not his humour or within his ability to give any
references--that he felt we had a right to require them--and that, in
case anything should happen to him, at any time, he particularly
desired that whatever property he had upon the premises should be
considered mine, as some slight recompense for the trouble and
annoyance I should sustain--and were you, in short,’ added Brass, still
more comfortably and cozily than before, ‘were you induced to accept
him on my behalf, as a tenant, upon those conditions?’
‘Certainly not,’ replied Dick.
‘Why then, Mr Richard,’ said Brass, darting at him a supercilious and
reproachful look, ‘it’s my opinion that you’ve mistaken your calling,
and will never make a lawyer.’
‘Not if you live a thousand years,’ added Miss Sally. Whereupon the
brother and sister took each a noisy pinch of snuff from the little tin
box, and fell into a gloomy thoughtfulness.
Nothing further passed up to Mr Swiveller’s dinner-time, which was at
three o’clock, and seemed about three weeks in coming. At the first
stroke of the hour, the new clerk disappeared. At the last stroke of
five, he reappeared, and the office, as if by magic, became fragrant
with the smell of gin and water and lemon-peel.
‘Mr Richard,’ said Brass, ‘this man’s not up yet. Nothing will wake
him, sir. What’s to be done?’
‘I should let him have his sleep out,’ returned Dick.
‘Sleep out!’ cried Brass; ‘why he has been asleep now, six-and-twenty
hours. We have been moving chests of drawers over his head, we have
knocked double knocks at the street-door, we have made the servant-girl
fall down stairs several times (she’s a light weight, and it don’t hurt
her much,) but nothing wakes him.’
‘Perhaps a ladder,’ suggested Dick, ‘and getting in at the first-floor
window--’
‘But then there’s a door between; besides, the neighbours would be up
in arms,’ said Brass.
‘What do you say to getting on the roof of the house through the
trap-door, and dropping down the chimney?’ suggested Dick.
‘That would be an excellent plan,’ said Brass, ‘if anybody would be--’
and here he looked very hard at Mr Swiveller--‘would be kind, and
friendly, and generous enough, to undertake it. I dare say it would
not be anything like as disagreeable as one supposes.’
Dick had made the suggestion, thinking that the duty might possibly
fall within Miss Sally’s department. As he said nothing further, and
declined taking the hint, Mr Brass was fain to propose that they should
go up stairs together, and make a last effort to awaken the sleeper by
some less violent means, which, if they failed on this last trial, must
positively be succeeded by stronger measures. Mr Swiveller, assenting,
armed himself with his stool and the large ruler, and repaired with his
employer to the scene of action, where Miss Brass was already ringing a
hand-bell with all her might, and yet without producing the smallest
effect upon their mysterious lodger.
‘There are his boots, Mr Richard!’ said Brass.
‘Very obstinate-looking articles they are too,’ quoth Richard
Swiveller. And truly, they were as sturdy and bluff a pair of boots as
one would wish to see; as firmly planted on the ground as if their
owner’s legs and feet had been in them; and seeming, with their broad
soles and blunt toes, to hold possession of their place by main force.
‘I can’t see anything but the curtain of the bed,’ said Brass, applying
his eye to the keyhole of the door. ‘Is he a strong man, Mr Richard?’
‘Very,’ answered Dick.
‘It would be an extremely unpleasant circumstance if he was to bounce
out suddenly,’ said Brass. ‘Keep the stairs clear. I should be more
than a match for him, of course, but I’m the master of the house, and
the laws of hospitality must be respected.--Hallo there! Hallo, hallo!’
While Mr Brass, with his eye curiously twisted into the keyhole,
uttered these sounds as a means of attracting the lodger’s attention,
and while Miss Brass plied the hand-bell, Mr Swiveller put his stool
close against the wall by the side of the door, and mounting on the top
and standing bolt upright, so that if the lodger did make a rush, he
would most probably pass him in its onward fury, began a violent
battery with the ruler upon the upper panels of the door. Captivated
with his own ingenuity, and confident in the strength of his position,
which he had taken up after the method of those hardy individuals who
open the pit and gallery doors of theatres on crowded nights, Mr
Swiveller rained down such a shower of blows, that the noise of the
bell was drowned; and the small servant, who lingered on the stairs
below, ready to fly at a moment’s notice, was obliged to hold her ears
lest she should be rendered deaf for life.
Suddenly the door was unlocked on the inside, and flung violently open.
The small servant flew to the coal-cellar; Miss Sally dived into her
own bed-room; Mr Brass, who was not remarkable for personal courage,
ran into the next street, and finding that nobody followed him, armed
with a poker or other offensive weapon, put his hands in his pockets,
walked very slowly all at once, and whistled.