The Old Curiosity Shop
appeared to the child--that if he so much as moved a muscle, he, the
preacher, would be literally, and not figuratively, ‘down upon him’
that instant. In this fearful state of things, distracted by the
sudden appearance of Kit, and fascinated by the eyes of the preacher,
the miserable Jacob sat bolt upright, wholly incapable of motion,
strongly disposed to cry but afraid to do so, and returning his
pastor’s gaze until his infant eyes seemed starting from their sockets.
‘If I must do it openly, I must,’ thought Kit. With that he walked
softly out of his pew and into his mother’s, and as Mr Swiveller would
have observed if he had been present, ‘collared’ the baby without
speaking a word.
‘Hush, mother!’ whispered Kit. ‘Come along with me, I’ve got something
to tell you.’
‘Where am I?’ said Mrs Nubbles.
‘In this blessed Little Bethel,’ returned her son, peevishly.
‘Blessed indeed!’ cried Mrs Nubbles, catching at the word. ‘Oh,
Christopher, how have I been edified this night!’
‘Yes, yes, I know,’ said Kit hastily; ‘but come along, mother,
everybody’s looking at us. Don’t make a noise--bring Jacob--that’s
right!’
‘Stay, Satan, stay!’ cried the preacher, as Kit was moving off.
‘This gentleman says you’re to stay, Christopher,’ whispered his mother.
‘Stay, Satan, stay!’ roared the preacher again. ‘Tempt not the woman
that doth incline her ear to thee, but harken to the voice of him that
calleth. He hath a lamb from the fold!’ cried the preacher, raising
his voice still higher and pointing to the baby. ‘He beareth off a
lamb, a precious lamb! He goeth about, like a wolf in the night
season, and inveigleth the tender lambs!’
Kit was the best-tempered fellow in the world, but considering this
strong language, and being somewhat excited by the circumstances in
which he was placed, he faced round to the pulpit with the baby in his
arms, and replied aloud, ‘No, I don’t. He’s my brother.’
‘He’s MY brother!’ cried the preacher.
‘He isn’t,’ said Kit indignantly. ‘How can you say such a thing? And
don’t call me names if you please; what harm have I done? I shouldn’t
have come to take ‘em away, unless I was obliged, you may depend upon
that. I wanted to do it very quiet, but you wouldn’t let me. Now, you
have the goodness to abuse Satan and them, as much as you like, Sir,
and to let me alone if you please.’
So saying, Kit marched out of the chapel, followed by his mother and
little Jacob, and found himself in the open air, with an indistinct
recollection of having seen the people wake up and look surprised, and
of Quilp having remained, throughout the interruption, in his old
attitude, without moving his eyes from the ceiling, or appearing to
take the smallest notice of anything that passed.
‘Oh Kit!’ said his mother, with her handkerchief to her eyes, ‘what
have you done! I never can go there again--never!’
‘I’m glad of it, mother. What was there in the little bit of pleasure
you took last night that made it necessary for you to be low-spirited
and sorrowful tonight? That’s the way you do. If you’re happy or
merry ever, you come here to say, along with that chap, that you’re
sorry for it. More shame for you, mother, I was going to say.’
‘Hush, dear!’ said Mrs Nubbles; ‘you don’t mean what you say I know,
but you’re talking sinfulness.’
‘Don’t mean it? But I do mean it!’ retorted Kit. ‘I don’t believe,
mother, that harmless cheerfulness and good humour are thought greater
sins in Heaven than shirt-collars are, and I do believe that those
chaps are just about as right and sensible in putting down the one as
in leaving off the other--that’s my belief. But I won’t say anything
more about it, if you’ll promise not to cry, that’s all; and you take
the baby that’s a lighter weight, and give me little Jacob; and as we
go along (which we must do pretty quick) I’ll give you the news I
bring, which will surprise you a little, I can tell you. There--that’s
right. Now you look as if you’d never seen Little Bethel in all your
life, as I hope you never will again; and here’s the baby; and little
Jacob, you get atop of my back and catch hold of me tight round the
neck, and whenever a Little Bethel parson calls you a precious lamb or
says your brother’s one, you tell him it’s the truest things he’s said
for a twelvemonth, and that if he’d got a little more of the lamb
himself, and less of the mint-sauce--not being quite so sharp and sour
over it--I should like him all the better. That’s what you’ve got to
say to him, Jacob.’
Talking on in this way, half in jest and half in earnest, and cheering
up his mother, the children, and himself, by the one simple process of
determining to be in a good humour, Kit led them briskly forward; and
on the road home, he related what had passed at the Notary’s house, and
the purpose with which he had intruded on the solemnities of Little
Bethel.
His mother was not a little startled on learning what service was
required of her, and presently fell into a confusion of ideas, of which
the most prominent were that it was a great honour and dignity to ride
in a post-chaise, and that it was a moral impossibility to leave the
children behind. But this objection, and a great many others, founded
on certain articles of dress being at the wash, and certain other
articles having no existence in the wardrobe of Mrs Nubbles, were
overcome by Kit, who opposed to each and every of them, the pleasure of
recovering Nell, and the delight it would be to bring her back in
triumph.
‘There’s only ten minutes now, mother,’ said Kit when they reached
home. ‘There’s a bandbox. Throw in what you want, and we’ll be off
directly.’
To tell how Kit then hustled into the box all sorts of things which
could, by no remote contingency, be wanted, and how he left out
everything likely to be of the smallest use; how a neighbour was
persuaded to come and stop with the children, and how the children at
first cried dismally, and then laughed heartily on being promised all
kinds of impossible and unheard-of toys; how Kit’s mother wouldn’t
leave off kissing them, and how Kit couldn’t make up his mind to be
vexed with her for doing it; would take more time and room than you and
I can spare. So, passing over all such matters, it is sufficient to
say that within a few minutes after the two hours had expired, Kit and
his mother arrived at the Notary’s door, where a post-chaise was
already waiting.
‘With four horses I declare!’ said Kit, quite aghast at the
preparations. ‘Well you ARE going to do it, mother! Here she is, Sir.
Here’s my mother. She’s quite ready, sir.’
‘That’s well,’ returned the gentleman. ‘Now, don’t be in a flutter,
ma’am; you’ll be taken great care of. Where’s the box with the new
clothing and necessaries for them?’
‘Here it is,’ said the Notary. ‘In with it, Christopher.’
‘All right, Sir,’ replied Kit. ‘Quite ready now, sir.’
‘Then come along,’ said the single gentleman. And thereupon he gave
his arm to Kit’s mother, handed her into the carriage as politely as
you please, and took his seat beside her.
Up went the steps, bang went the door, round whirled the wheels, and
off they rattled, with Kit’s mother hanging out at one window waving a
damp pocket-handkerchief and screaming out a great many messages to
little Jacob and the baby, of which nobody heard a word.
Kit stood in the middle of the road, and looked after them with tears
in his eyes--not brought there by the departure he witnessed, but by
the return to which he looked forward. ‘They went away,’ he thought,
‘on foot with nobody to speak to them or say a kind word at parting,
and they’ll come back, drawn by four horses, with this rich gentleman
for their friend, and all their troubles over! She’ll forget that she
taught me to write--’
Whatever Kit thought about after this, took some time to think of, for
he stood gazing up the lines of shining lamps, long after the chaise
had disappeared, and did not return into the house until the Notary and
Mr Abel, who had themselves lingered outside till the sound of the
wheels was no longer distinguishable, had several times wondered what
could possibly detain him.
CHAPTER 42
It behoves us to leave Kit for a while, thoughtful and expectant, and
to follow the fortunes of little Nell; resuming the thread of the
narrative at the point where it was left, some chapters back.
In one of those wanderings in the evening time, when, following the two
sisters at a humble distance, she felt, in her sympathy with them and
her recognition in their trials of something akin to her own loneliness
of spirit, a comfort and consolation which made such moments a time of
deep delight, though the softened pleasure they yielded was of that
kind which lives and dies in tears--in one of those wanderings at the
quiet hour of twilight, when sky, and earth, and air, and rippling
water, and sound of distant bells, claimed kindred with the emotions of
the solitary child, and inspired her with soothing thoughts, but not of
a child’s world or its easy joys--in one of those rambles which had now
become her only pleasure or relief from care, light had faded into
darkness and evening deepened into night, and still the young creature
lingered in the gloom; feeling a companionship in Nature so serene and
still, when noise of tongues and glare of garish lights would have been
solitude indeed.
The sisters had gone home, and she was alone. She raised her eyes to
the bright stars, looking down so mildly from the wide worlds of air,
and, gazing on them, found new stars burst upon her view, and more
beyond, and more beyond again, until the whole great expanse sparkled
with shining spheres, rising higher and higher in immeasurable space,
eternal in their numbers as in their changeless and incorruptible
existence. She bent over the calm river, and saw them shining in the
same majestic order as when the dove beheld them gleaming through the
swollen waters, upon the mountain tops down far below, and dead
mankind, a million fathoms deep.
The child sat silently beneath a tree, hushed in her very breath by the
stillness of the night, and all its attendant wonders. The time and
place awoke reflection, and she thought with a quiet hope--less hope,
perhaps, than resignation--on the past, and present, and what was yet
before her. Between the old man and herself there had come a gradual
separation, harder to bear than any former sorrow. Every evening, and
often in the day-time too, he was absent, alone; and although she well
knew where he went, and why--too well from the constant drain upon her
scanty purse and from his haggard looks--he evaded all inquiry,
maintained a strict reserve, and even shunned her presence.
She sat meditating sorrowfully upon this change, and mingling it, as it
were, with everything about her, when the distant church-clock bell
struck nine. Rising at the sound, she retraced her steps, and turned
thoughtfully towards the town.
She had gained a little wooden bridge, which, thrown across the stream,
led into a meadow in her way, when she came suddenly upon a ruddy
light, and looking forward more attentively, discerned that it
proceeded from what appeared to be an encampment of gipsies, who had
made a fire in one corner at no great distance from the path, and were
sitting or lying round it. As she was too poor to have any fear of
them, she did not alter her course (which, indeed, she could not have
done without going a long way round), but quickened her pace a little,
and kept straight on.
A movement of timid curiosity impelled her, when she approached the
spot, to glance towards the fire. There was a form between it and her,
the outline strongly developed against the light, which caused her to