The Old Curiosity Shop
Meanwhile, Mr Swiveller, on the top of the stool, drew himself into as
flat a shape as possible against the wall, and looked, not
unconcernedly, down upon the single gentleman, who appeared at the door
growling and cursing in a very awful manner, and, with the boots in his
hand, seemed to have an intention of hurling them down stairs on
speculation. This idea, however, he abandoned. He was turning into
his room again, still growling vengefully, when his eyes met those of
the watchful Richard.
‘Have YOU been making that horrible noise?’ said the single gentleman.
‘I have been helping, sir,’ returned Dick, keeping his eye upon him,
and waving the ruler gently in his right hand, as an indication of what
the single gentleman had to expect if he attempted any violence.
‘How dare you then,’ said the lodger, ‘Eh?’
To this, Dick made no other reply than by inquiring whether the lodger
held it to be consistent with the conduct and character of a gentleman
to go to sleep for six-and-twenty hours at a stretch, and whether the
peace of an amiable and virtuous family was to weigh as nothing in the
balance.
‘Is my peace nothing?’ said the single gentleman.
‘Is their peace nothing, sir?’ returned Dick. ‘I don’t wish to hold
out any threats, sir--indeed the law does not allow of threats, for to
threaten is an indictable offence--but if ever you do that again, take
care you’re not sat upon by the coroner and buried in a cross road
before you wake. We have been distracted with fears that you were
dead, Sir,’ said Dick, gently sliding to the ground, ‘and the short and
the long of it is, that we cannot allow single gentlemen to come into
this establishment and sleep like double gentlemen without paying extra
for it.’
‘Indeed!’ cried the lodger.
‘Yes, Sir, indeed,’ returned Dick, yielding to his destiny and saying
whatever came uppermost; ‘an equal quantity of slumber was never got
out of one bed and bedstead, and if you’re going to sleep in that way,
you must pay for a double-bedded room.’
Instead of being thrown into a greater passion by these remarks, the
lodger lapsed into a broad grin and looked at Mr Swiveller with
twinkling eyes. He was a brown-faced sun-burnt man, and appeared
browner and more sun-burnt from having a white nightcap on. As it was
clear that he was a choleric fellow in some respects, Mr Swiveller was
relieved to find him in such good humour, and, to encourage him in it,
smiled himself.
The lodger, in the testiness of being so rudely roused, had pushed his
nightcap very much on one side of his bald head. This gave him a
rakish eccentric air which, now that he had leisure to observe it,
charmed Mr Swiveller exceedingly; therefore, by way of propitiation, he
expressed his hope that the gentleman was going to get up, and further
that he would never do so any more.
‘Come here, you impudent rascal!’ was the lodger’s answer as he
re-entered his room.
Mr Swiveller followed him in, leaving the stool outside, but reserving
the ruler in case of a surprise. He rather congratulated himself on
his prudence when the single gentleman, without notice or explanation
of any kind, double-locked the door.
‘Can you drink anything?’ was his next inquiry.
Mr Swiveller replied that he had very recently been assuaging the pangs
of thirst, but that he was still open to ‘a modest quencher,’ if the
materials were at hand. Without another word spoken on either side,
the lodger took from his great trunk, a kind of temple, shining as of
polished silver, and placed it carefully on the table.
Greatly interested in his proceedings, Mr Swiveller observed him
closely. Into one little chamber of this temple, he dropped an egg;
into another some coffee; into a third a compact piece of raw steak
from a neat tin case; into a fourth, he poured some water. Then, with
the aid of a phosphorus-box and some matches, he procured a light and
applied it to a spirit-lamp which had a place of its own below the
temple; then, he shut down the lids of all the little chambers; then he
opened them; and then, by some wonderful and unseen agency, the steak
was done, the egg was boiled, the coffee was accurately prepared, and
his breakfast was ready.
‘Hot water--’ said the lodger, handing it to Mr Swiveller with as much
coolness as if he had a kitchen fire before him--‘extraordinary
rum--sugar--and a travelling glass. Mix for yourself. And make haste.’
Dick complied, his eyes wandering all the time from the temple on the
table, which seemed to do everything, to the great trunk which seemed
to hold everything. The lodger took his breakfast like a man who was
used to work these miracles, and thought nothing of them.
‘The man of the house is a lawyer, is he not?’ said the lodger.
Dick nodded. The rum was amazing.
‘The woman of the house--what’s she?’
‘A dragon,’ said Dick.
The single gentleman, perhaps because he had met with such things in
his travels, or perhaps because he WAS a single gentleman, evinced no
surprise, but merely inquired ‘Wife or sister?’--‘Sister,’ said
Dick.--‘So much the better,’ said the single gentleman, ‘he can get rid
of her when he likes.’
‘I want to do as I like, young man,’ he added after a short silence;
‘to go to bed when I like, get up when I like, come in when I like, go
out when I like--to be asked no questions and be surrounded by no
spies. In this last respect, servants are the devil. There’s only one
here.’
‘And a very little one,’ said Dick.
‘And a very little one,’ repeated the lodger. ‘Well, the place will
suit me, will it?’
‘Yes,’ said Dick.
‘Sharks, I suppose?’ said the lodger.
Dick nodded assent, and drained his glass.
‘Let them know my humour,’ said the single gentleman, rising. ‘If they
disturb me, they lose a good tenant. If they know me to be that, they
know enough. If they try to know more, it’s a notice to quit. It’s
better to understand these things at once. Good day.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Dick, halting in his passage to the door,
which the lodger prepared to open. ‘When he who adores thee has left
but the name--’
‘What do you mean?’
‘--But the name,’ said Dick--‘has left but the name--in case of letters
or parcels--’
‘I never have any,’ returned the lodger.
‘Or in the case anybody should call.’
‘Nobody ever calls on me.’
‘If any mistake should arise from not having the name, don’t say it was
my fault, Sir,’ added Dick, still lingering.--‘Oh blame not the bard--’
‘I’ll blame nobody,’ said the lodger, with such irascibility that in a
moment Dick found himself on the staircase, and the locked door between
them.
Mr Brass and Miss Sally were lurking hard by, having been, indeed, only
routed from the keyhole by Mr Swiveller’s abrupt exit. As their utmost
exertions had not enabled them to overhear a word of the interview,
however, in consequence of a quarrel for precedence, which, though
limited of necessity to pushes and pinches and such quiet pantomime,
had lasted the whole time, they hurried him down to the office to hear
his account of the conversation.
This Mr Swiveller gave them--faithfully as regarded the wishes and
character of the single gentleman, and poetically as concerned the
great trunk, of which he gave a description more remarkable for
brilliancy of imagination than a strict adherence to truth; declaring,
with many strong asseverations, that it contained a specimen of every
kind of rich food and wine, known in these times, and in particular
that it was of a self-acting kind and served up whatever was required,
as he supposed by clock-work. He also gave them to understand that the
cooking apparatus roasted a fine piece of sirloin of beef, weighing
about six pounds avoir-dupoise, in two minutes and a quarter, as he had
himself witnessed, and proved by his sense of taste; and further, that,
however the effect was produced, he had distinctly seen water boil and
bubble up when the single gentleman winked; from which facts he (Mr
Swiveller) was led to infer that the lodger was some great conjuror or
chemist, or both, whose residence under that roof could not fail at
some future days to shed a great credit and distinction on the name of
Brass, and add a new interest to the history of Bevis Marks.
There was one point which Mr Swiveller deemed it unnecessary to enlarge
upon, and that was the fact of the modest quencher, which, by reason of
its intrinsic strength and its coming close upon the heels of the
temperate beverage he had discussed at dinner, awakened a slight degree
of fever, and rendered necessary two or three other modest quenchers at
the public-house in the course of the evening.
CHAPTER 36
As the single gentleman after some weeks’ occupation of his lodgings,
still declined to correspond, by word or gesture, either with Mr Brass
or his sister Sally, but invariably chose Richard Swiveller as his
channel of communication; and as he proved himself in all respects a
highly desirable inmate, paying for everything beforehand, giving very
little trouble, making no noise, and keeping early hours; Mr Richard
imperceptibly rose to an important position in the family, as one who
had influence over this mysterious lodger, and could negotiate with
him, for good or evil, when nobody else durst approach his person.
If the truth must be told, even Mr Swiveller’s approaches to the single
gentleman were of a very distant kind, and met with small
encouragement; but, as he never returned from a monosyllabic conference
with the unknown, without quoting such expressions as ‘Swiveller, I
know I can rely upon you,’--‘I have no hesitation in saying, Swiveller,
that I entertain a regard for you,’--‘Swiveller, you are my friend, and
will stand by me I am sure,’ with many other short speeches of the same
familiar and confiding kind, purporting to have been addressed by the
single gentleman to himself, and to form the staple of their ordinary
discourse, neither Mr Brass nor Miss Sally for a moment questioned the
extent of his influence, but accorded to him their fullest and most
unqualified belief.
But quite apart from, and independent of, this source of popularity, Mr
Swiveller had another, which promised to be equally enduring, and to
lighten his position considerably.
He found favour in the eyes of Miss Sally Brass. Let not the light
scorners of female fascination erect their ears to listen to a new tale
of love which shall serve them for a jest; for Miss Brass, however
accurately formed to be beloved, was not of the loving kind. That
amiable virgin, having clung to the skirts of the Law from her earliest
youth; having sustained herself by their aid, as it were, in her first
running alone, and maintained a firm grasp upon them ever since; had
passed her life in a kind of legal childhood. She had been remarkable,
when a tender prattler for an uncommon talent in counterfeiting the
walk and manner of a bailiff: in which character she had learned to tap
her little playfellows on the shoulder, and to carry them off to
imaginary sponging-houses, with a correctness of imitation which was
the surprise and delight of all who witnessed her performances, and
which was only to be exceeded by her exquisite manner of putting an
execution into her doll’s house, and taking an exact inventory of the
chairs and tables. These artless sports had naturally soothed and
cheered the decline of her widowed father: a most exemplary gentleman
(called ‘old Foxey’ by his friends from his extreme sagacity,) who
encouraged them to the utmost, and whose chief regret, on finding that
he drew near to Houndsditch churchyard, was, that his daughter could
not take out an attorney’s certificate and hold a place upon the roll.
Filled with this affectionate and touching sorrow, he had solemnly