The Old Curiosity Shop
and asked no questions--But I can, if you like.’
‘Is this man in town?’ said the impatient single gentleman. ‘Speak
faster.’
‘No he isn’t, but he will be to-morrow, for he lodges in our house,’
replied Mr Short rapidly.
‘Then bring him here,’ said the single gentleman. ‘Here’s a sovereign
a-piece. If I can find these people through your means, it is but a
prelude to twenty more. Return to me to-morrow, and keep your own
counsel on this subject--though I need hardly tell you that; for you’ll
do so for your own sakes. Now, give me your address, and leave me.’
The address was given, the two men departed, the crowd went with them,
and the single gentleman for two mortal hours walked in uncommon
agitation up and down his room, over the wondering heads of Mr
Swiveller and Miss Sally Brass.
CHAPTER 38
Kit--for it happens at this juncture, not only that we have breathing
time to follow his fortunes, but that the necessities of these
adventures so adapt themselves to our ease and inclination as to call
upon us imperatively to pursue the track we most desire to take--Kit,
while the matters treated of in the last fifteen chapters were yet in
progress, was, as the reader may suppose, gradually familiarising
himself more and more with Mr and Mrs Garland, Mr Abel, the pony, and
Barbara, and gradually coming to consider them one and all as his
particular private friends, and Abel Cottage, Finchley, as his own
proper home.
Stay--the words are written, and may go, but if they convey any notion
that Kit, in the plentiful board and comfortable lodging of his new
abode, began to think slightingly of the poor fare and furniture of his
old dwelling, they do their office badly and commit injustice. Who so
mindful of those he left at home--albeit they were but a mother and two
young babies--as Kit? What boastful father in the fulness of his heart
ever related such wonders of his infant prodigy, as Kit never wearied
of telling Barbara in the evening time, concerning little Jacob? Was
there ever such a mother as Kit’s mother, on her son’s showing; or was
there ever such comfort in poverty as in the poverty of Kit’s family,
if any correct judgment might be arrived at, from his own glowing
account!
And let me linger in this place, for an instant, to remark that if ever
household affections and loves are graceful things, they are graceful
in the poor. The ties that bind the wealthy and the proud to home may
be forged on earth, but those which link the poor man to his humble
hearth are of the truer metal and bear the stamp of Heaven. The man of
high descent may love the halls and lands of his inheritance as part of
himself: as trophies of his birth and power; his associations with them
are associations of pride and wealth and triumph; the poor man’s
attachment to the tenements he holds, which strangers have held before,
and may to-morrow occupy again, has a worthier root, struck deep into a
purer soil. His household gods are of flesh and blood, with no alloy
of silver, gold, or precious stone; he has no property but in the
affections of his own heart; and when they endear bare floors and
walls, despite of rags and toil and scanty fare, that man has his love
of home from God, and his rude hut becomes a solemn place.
Oh! if those who rule the destinies of nations would but remember
this--if they would but think how hard it is for the very poor to have
engendered in their hearts, that love of home from which all domestic
virtues spring, when they live in dense and squalid masses where social
decency is lost, or rather never found--if they would but turn aside
from the wide thoroughfares and great houses, and strive to improve the
wretched dwellings in bye-ways where only Poverty may walk--many low
roofs would point more truly to the sky, than the loftiest steeple that
now rears proudly up from the midst of guilt, and crime, and horrible
disease, to mock them by its contrast. In hollow voices from
Workhouse, Hospital, and jail, this truth is preached from day to day,
and has been proclaimed for years. It is no light matter--no outcry
from the working vulgar--no mere question of the people’s health and
comforts that may be whistled down on Wednesday nights. In love of
home, the love of country has its rise; and who are the truer patriots
or the better in time of need--those who venerate the land, owning its
wood, and stream, and earth, and all that they produce? or those who
love their country, boasting not a foot of ground in all its wide
domain!
Kit knew nothing about such questions, but he knew that his old home
was a very poor place, and that his new one was very unlike it, and yet
he was constantly looking back with grateful satisfaction and
affectionate anxiety, and often indited square-folded letters to his
mother, enclosing a shilling or eighteenpence or such other small
remittance, which Mr Abel’s liberality enabled him to make. Sometimes
being in the neighbourhood, he had leisure to call upon her, and then
great was the joy and pride of Kit’s mother, and extremely noisy the
satisfaction of little Jacob and the baby, and cordial the
congratulations of the whole court, who listened with admiring ears to
the accounts of Abel Cottage, and could never be told too much of its
wonders and magnificence.
Although Kit was in the very highest favour with the old lady and
gentleman, and Mr Abel, and Barbara, it is certain that no member of
the family evinced such a remarkable partiality for him as the
self-willed pony, who, from being the most obstinate and opinionated
pony on the face of the earth, was, in his hands, the meekest and most
tractable of animals. It is true that in exact proportion as he became
manageable by Kit he became utterly ungovernable by anybody else (as if
he had determined to keep him in the family at all risks and hazards),
and that, even under the guidance of his favourite, he would sometimes
perform a great variety of strange freaks and capers, to the extreme
discomposure of the old lady’s nerves; but as Kit always represented
that this was only his fun, or a way he had of showing his attachment
to his employers, Mrs Garland gradually suffered herself to be
persuaded into the belief, in which she at last became so strongly
confirmed, that if, in one of these ebullitions, he had overturned the
chaise, she would have been quite satisfied that he did it with the
very best intentions.
Besides becoming in a short time a perfect marvel in all stable
matters, Kit soon made himself a very tolerable gardener, a handy
fellow within doors, and an indispensable attendant on Mr Abel, who
every day gave him some new proof of his confidence and approbation.
Mr Witherden the notary, too, regarded him with a friendly eye; and
even Mr Chuckster would sometimes condescend to give him a slight nod,
or to honour him with that peculiar form of recognition which is called
‘taking a sight,’ or to favour him with some other salute combining
pleasantry with patronage.
One morning Kit drove Mr Abel to the Notary’s office, as he sometimes
did, and having set him down at the house, was about to drive off to a
livery stable hard by, when this same Mr Chuckster emerged from the
office door, and cried ‘Woa-a-a-a-a-a!’--dwelling upon the note a long
time, for the purpose of striking terror into the pony’s heart, and
asserting the supremacy of man over the inferior animals.
‘Pull up, Snobby,’ cried Mr Chuckster, addressing himself to Kit.
‘You’re wanted inside here.’
‘Has Mr Abel forgotten anything, I wonder?’ said Kit as he dismounted.
‘Ask no questions, Snobby,’ returned Mr Chuckster, ‘but go and see.
Woa-a-a then, will you? If that pony was mine, I’d break him.’
‘You must be very gentle with him, if you please,’ said Kit, ‘or you’ll
find him troublesome. You’d better not keep on pulling his ears,
please. I know he won’t like it.’
To this remonstrance Mr Chuckster deigned no other answer, than
addressing Kit with a lofty and distant air as ‘young feller,’ and
requesting him to cut and come again with all speed. The ‘young
feller’ complying, Mr Chuckster put his hands in his pockets, and tried
to look as if he were not minding the pony, but happened to be lounging
there by accident.
Kit scraped his shoes very carefully (for he had not yet lost his
reverence for the bundles of papers and the tin boxes,) and tapped at
the office-door, which was quickly opened by the Notary himself.
‘Oh! come in, Christopher,’ said Mr Witherden.
‘Is that the lad?’ asked an elderly gentleman, but of a stout, bluff
figure--who was in the room.
‘That’s the lad,’ said Mr Witherden. ‘He fell in with my client, Mr
Garland, sir, at this very door. I have reason to think he is a good
lad, sir, and that you may believe what he says. Let me introduce Mr
Abel Garland, sir--his young master; my articled pupil, sir, and most
particular friend:--my most particular friend, sir,’ repeated the
Notary, drawing out his silk handkerchief and flourishing it about his
face.
‘Your servant, sir,’ said the stranger gentleman.
‘Yours, sir, I’m sure,’ replied Mr Abel mildly. ‘You were wishing to
speak to Christopher, sir?’
‘Yes, I was. Have I your permission?’
‘By all means.’
‘My business is no secret; or I should rather say it need be no secret
here,’ said the stranger, observing that Mr Abel and the Notary were
preparing to retire. ‘It relates to a dealer in curiosities with whom
he lived, and in whom I am earnestly and warmly interested. I have
been a stranger to this country, gentlemen, for very many years, and if
I am deficient in form and ceremony, I hope you will forgive me.’
‘No forgiveness is necessary, sir;--none whatever,’ replied the Notary.
And so said Mr Abel.
‘I have been making inquiries in the neighbourhood in which his old
master lived,’ said the stranger, ‘and I learn that he was served by
this lad. I have found out his mother’s house, and have been directed
by her to this place as the nearest in which I should be likely to find
him. That’s the cause of my presenting myself here this morning.’
‘I am very glad of any cause, sir,’ said the Notary, ‘which procures me
the honour of this visit.’
‘Sir,’ retorted the stranger, ‘you speak like a mere man of the world,
and I think you something better. Therefore, pray do not sink your
real character in paying unmeaning compliments to me.’
‘Hem!’ coughed the Notary. ‘You’re a plain speaker, sir.’
‘And a plain dealer,’ returned the stranger. ‘It may be my long
absence and inexperience that lead me to the conclusion; but if plain
speakers are scarce in this part of the world, I fancy plain dealers
are still scarcer. If my speaking should offend you, sir, my dealing,
I hope, will make amends.’
Mr Witherden seemed a little disconcerted by the elderly gentleman’s
mode of conducting the dialogue; and as for Kit, he looked at him in
open-mouthed astonishment: wondering what kind of language he would
address to him, if he talked in that free and easy way to a Notary. It
was with no harshness, however, though with something of constitutional
irritability and haste, that he turned to Kit and said:
‘If you think, my lad, that I am pursuing these inquiries with any
other view than that of serving and reclaiming those I am in search of,
you do me a very great wrong, and deceive yourself. Don’t be deceived,
I beg of you, but rely upon my assurance. The fact is, gentlemen,’ he
added, turning again to the Notary and his pupil, ‘that I am in a very
painful and wholly unexpected position. I came to this city with a
darling object at my heart, expecting to find no obstacle or difficulty
in the way of its attainment. I find myself suddenly checked and
stopped short, in the execution of my design, by a mystery which I