The Old Curiosity Shop
away with slow and cautious steps, keeping in the shadow of the hedges,
or forcing a path through them or the dry ditches, until she could
emerge upon the road at a point beyond their range of vision. Then she
fled homeward as quickly as she could, torn and bleeding from the
wounds of thorns and briars, but more lacerated in mind, and threw
herself upon her bed, distracted.
The first idea that flashed upon her mind was flight, instant flight;
dragging him from that place, and rather dying of want upon the
roadside, than ever exposing him again to such terrible temptations.
Then, she remembered that the crime was not to be committed until next
night, and there was the intermediate time for thinking, and resolving
what to do. Then, she was distracted with a horrible fear that he
might be committing it at that moment; with a dread of hearing shrieks
and cries piercing the silence of the night; with fearful thoughts of
what he might be tempted and led on to do, if he were detected in the
act, and had but a woman to struggle with. It was impossible to bear
such torture. She stole to the room where the money was, opened the
door, and looked in. God be praised! He was not there, and she was
sleeping soundly.
She went back to her own room, and tried to prepare herself for bed.
But who could sleep--sleep! who could lie passively down, distracted by
such terrors? They came upon her more and more strongly yet. Half
undressed, and with her hair in wild disorder, she flew to the old
man’s bedside, clasped him by the wrist, and roused him from his sleep.
‘What’s this!’ he cried, starting up in bed, and fixing his eyes upon
her spectral face.
‘I have had a dreadful dream,’ said the child, with an energy that
nothing but such terrors could have inspired. ‘A dreadful, horrible
dream. I have had it once before. It is a dream of grey-haired men
like you, in darkened rooms by night, robbing sleepers of their gold.
Up, up!’
The old man shook in every joint, and folded his hands like one who
prays.
‘Not to me,’ said the child, ‘not to me--to Heaven, to save us from
such deeds! This dream is too real. I cannot sleep, I cannot stay
here, I cannot leave you alone under the roof where such dreams come.
Up! We must fly.’
He looked at her as if she were a spirit--she might have been for all
the look of earth she had--and trembled more and more.
‘There is no time to lose; I will not lose one minute,’ said the child.
‘Up! and away with me!’
‘To-night?’ murmured the old man.
‘Yes, to-night,’ replied the child. ‘To-morrow night will be too late.
The dream will have come again. Nothing but flight can save us. Up!’
The old man rose from his bed: his forehead bedewed with the cold sweat
of fear: and, bending before the child as if she had been an angel
messenger sent to lead him where she would, made ready to follow her.
She took him by the hand and led him on. As they passed the door of the
room he had proposed to rob, she shuddered and looked up into his
face. What a white face was that, and with what a look did he meet
hers!
She took him to her own chamber, and, still holding him by the hand as
if she feared to lose him for an instant, gathered together the little
stock she had, and hung her basket on her arm. The old man took his
wallet from her hands and strapped it on his shoulders--his staff,
too, she had brought away--and then she led him forth.
Through the strait streets, and narrow crooked outskirts, their
trembling feet passed quickly. Up the steep hill too, crowned by the
old grey castle, they toiled with rapid steps, and had not once looked
behind.
But as they drew nearer the ruined walls, the moon rose in all her
gentle glory, and, from their venerable age, garlanded with ivy, moss,
and waving grass, the child looked back upon the sleeping town, deep in
the valley’s shade: and on the far-off river with its winding track of
light: and on the distant hills; and as she did so, she clasped the
hand she held, less firmly, and bursting into tears, fell upon the old
man’s neck.
CHAPTER 43
Her momentary weakness past, the child again summoned the resolution
which had until now sustained her, and, endeavouring to keep steadily
in her view the one idea that they were flying from disgrace and crime,
and that her grandfather’s preservation must depend solely on her
firmness, unaided by one word of advice or any helping hand, urged him
onward and looked back no more.
While he, subdued and abashed, seemed to crouch before her, and to
shrink and cower down, as if in the presence of some superior creature,
the child herself was sensible of a new feeling within her, which
elevated her nature, and inspired her with an energy and confidence she
had never known. There was no divided responsibility now; the whole
burden of their two lives had fallen upon her, and henceforth she must
think and act for both. ‘I have saved him,’ she thought. ‘In all
dangers and distresses, I will remember that.’
At any other time, the recollection of having deserted the friend who
had shown them so much homely kindness, without a word of
justification--the thought that they were guilty, in appearance, of
treachery and ingratitude--even the having parted from the two
sisters--would have filled her with sorrow and regret. But now, all
other considerations were lost in the new uncertainties and anxieties
of their wild and wandering life; and the very desperation of their
condition roused and stimulated her.
In the pale moonlight, which lent a wanness of its own to the delicate
face where thoughtful care already mingled with the winning grace and
loveliness of youth, the too bright eye, the spiritual head, the lips
that pressed each other with such high resolve and courage of the
heart, the slight figure firm in its bearing and yet so very weak, told
their silent tale; but told it only to the wind that rustled by, which,
taking up its burden, carried, perhaps to some mother’s pillow, faint
dreams of childhood fading in its bloom, and resting in the sleep that
knows no waking.
The night crept on apace, the moon went down, the stars grew pale and
dim, and morning, cold as they, slowly approached. Then, from behind a
distant hill, the noble sun rose up, driving the mists in phantom
shapes before it, and clearing the earth of their ghostly forms till
darkness came again. When it had climbed higher into the sky, and
there was warmth in its cheerful beams, they laid them down to sleep,
upon a bank, hard by some water.
But Nell retained her grasp upon the old man’s arm, and long after he
was slumbering soundly, watched him with untiring eyes. Fatigue stole
over her at last; her grasp relaxed, tightened, relaxed again, and they
slept side by side.
A confused sound of voices, mingling with her dreams, awoke her. A man
of very uncouth and rough appearance was standing over them, and two of
his companions were looking on, from a long heavy boat which had come
close to the bank while they were sleeping. The boat had neither oar
nor sail, but was towed by a couple of horses, who, with the rope to
which they were harnessed slack and dripping in the water, were resting
on the path.
‘Holloa!’ said the man roughly. ‘What’s the matter here?’
‘We were only asleep, Sir,’ said Nell. ‘We have been walking all
night.’
‘A pair of queer travellers to be walking all night,’ observed the man
who had first accosted them. ‘One of you is a trifle too old for that
sort of work, and the other a trifle too young. Where are you going?’
Nell faltered, and pointed at hazard towards the West, upon which the
man inquired if she meant a certain town which he named. Nell, to
avoid more questioning, said ‘Yes, that was the place.’
‘Where have you come from?’ was the next question; and this being an
easier one to answer, Nell mentioned the name of the village in which
their friend the schoolmaster dwelt, as being less likely to be known
to the men or to provoke further inquiry.
‘I thought somebody had been robbing and ill-using you, might be,’ said
the man. ‘That’s all. Good day.’
Returning his salute and feeling greatly relieved by his departure,
Nell looked after him as he mounted one of the horses, and the boat
went on. It had not gone very far, when it stopped again, and she saw
the men beckoning to her.
‘Did you call to me?’ said Nell, running up to them.
‘You may go with us if you like,’ replied one of those in the boat.
‘We’re going to the same place.’
The child hesitated for a moment. Thinking, as she had thought with
great trepidation more than once before, that the men whom she had seen
with her grandfather might, perhaps, in their eagerness for the booty,
follow them, and regaining their influence over him, set hers at
nought; and that if they went with these men, all traces of them must
surely be lost at that spot; determined to accept the offer. The boat
came close to the bank again, and before she had had any more time for
consideration, she and her grandfather were on board, and gliding
smoothly down the canal.
The sun shone pleasantly on the bright water, which was sometimes
shaded by trees, and sometimes open to a wide extent of country,
intersected by running streams, and rich with wooded hills, cultivated
land, and sheltered farms. Now and then, a village with its modest
spire, thatched roofs, and gable-ends, would peep out from among the
trees; and, more than once, a distant town, with great church towers
looming through its smoke, and high factories or workshops rising above
the mass of houses, would come in view, and, by the length of time it
lingered in the distance, show them how slowly they travelled. Their
way lay, for the most part, through the low grounds, and open plains;
and except these distant places, and occasionally some men working in
the fields, or lounging on the bridges under which they passed, to see
them creep along, nothing encroached on their monotonous and secluded
track.
Nell was rather disheartened, when they stopped at a kind of wharf late
in the afternoon, to learn from one of the men that they would not
reach their place of destination until next day, and that, if she had
no provision with her, she had better buy it there. She had but a few
pence, having already bargained with them for some bread, but even of
these it was necessary to be very careful, as they were on their way to
an utterly strange place, with no resource whatever. A small loaf and
a morsel of cheese, therefore, were all she could afford, and with
these she took her place in the boat again, and, after half an hour’s
delay during which the men were drinking at the public-house, proceeded
on the journey.
They brought some beer and spirits into the boat with them, and what
with drinking freely before, and again now, were soon in a fair way of
being quarrelsome and intoxicated. Avoiding the small cabin,
therefore, which was very dark and filthy, and to which they often
invited both her and her grandfather, Nell sat in the open air with the
old man by her side: listening to their boisterous hosts with a
palpitating heart, and almost wishing herself safe on shore again
though she should have to walk all night.
They were, in truth, very rugged, noisy fellows, and quite brutal among
themselves, though civil enough to their two passengers. Thus, when a
quarrel arose between the man who was steering and his friend in the
cabin, upon the question who had first suggested the propriety of
offering Nell some beer, and when the quarrel led to a scuffle in which
they beat each other fearfully, to her inexpressible terror, neither
visited his displeasure upon her, but each contented himself with
venting it on his adversary, on whom, in addition to blows, he bestowed