The Old Curiosity Shop
were seated in the old church porch, patiently awaiting the
schoolmaster’s return!
CHAPTER 48
Popular rumour concerning the single gentleman and his errand,
travelling from mouth to mouth, and waxing stronger in the marvellous
as it was bandied about--for your popular rumour, unlike the rolling
stone of the proverb, is one which gathers a deal of moss in its
wanderings up and down--occasioned his dismounting at the inn-door to
be looked upon as an exciting and attractive spectacle, which could
scarcely be enough admired; and drew together a large concourse of
idlers, who having recently been, as it were, thrown out of employment
by the closing of the wax-work and the completion of the nuptial
ceremonies, considered his arrival as little else than a special
providence, and hailed it with demonstrations of the liveliest joy.
Not at all participating in the general sensation, but wearing the
depressed and wearied look of one who sought to meditate on his
disappointment in silence and privacy, the single gentleman alighted,
and handed out Kit’s mother with a gloomy politeness which impressed
the lookers-on extremely. That done, he gave her his arm and escorted
her into the house, while several active waiters ran on before as a
skirmishing party, to clear the way and to show the room which was
ready for their reception.
‘Any room will do,’ said the single gentleman. ‘Let it be near at
hand, that’s all.’
‘Close here, sir, if you please to walk this way.’
‘Would the gentleman like this room?’ said a voice, as a little
out-of-the-way door at the foot of the well staircase flew briskly open
and a head popped out. ‘He’s quite welcome to it. He’s as welcome as
flowers in May, or coals at Christmas. Would you like this room, sir?
Honour me by walking in. Do me the favour, pray.’
‘Goodness gracious me!’ cried Kit’s mother, falling back in extreme
surprise, ‘only think of this!’
She had some reason to be astonished, for the person who proffered the
gracious invitation was no other than Daniel Quilp. The little door
out of which he had thrust his head was close to the inn larder; and
there he stood, bowing with grotesque politeness; as much at his ease
as if the door were that of his own house; blighting all the legs of
mutton and cold roast fowls by his close companionship, and looking
like the evil genius of the cellars come from underground upon some
work of mischief.
‘Would you do me the honour?’ said Quilp.
‘I prefer being alone,’ replied the single gentleman.
‘Oh!’ said Quilp. And with that, he darted in again with one jerk and
clapped the little door to, like a figure in a Dutch clock when the
hour strikes.
‘Why it was only last night, sir,’ whispered Kit’s mother, ‘that I left
him in Little Bethel.’
‘Indeed!’ said her fellow-passenger. ‘When did that person come here,
waiter?’
‘Come down by the night-coach, this morning, sir.’
‘Humph! And when is he going?’
‘Can’t say, sir, really. When the chambermaid asked him just now if he
should want a bed, sir, he first made faces at her, and then wanted to
kiss her.’
‘Beg him to walk this way,’ said the single gentleman. ‘I should be
glad to exchange a word with him, tell him. Beg him to come at once,
do you hear?’
The man stared on receiving these instructions, for the single
gentleman had not only displayed as much astonishment as Kit’s mother
at sight of the dwarf, but, standing in no fear of him, had been at
less pains to conceal his dislike and repugnance. He departed on his
errand, however, and immediately returned, ushering in its object.
‘Your servant, sir,’ said the dwarf, ‘I encountered your messenger
half-way. I thought you’d allow me to pay my compliments to you. I
hope you’re well. I hope you’re very well.’
There was a short pause, while the dwarf, with half-shut eyes and
puckered face, stood waiting for an answer. Receiving none, he turned
towards his more familiar acquaintance.
‘Christopher’s mother!’ he cried. ‘Such a dear lady, such a worthy
woman, so blest in her honest son! How is Christopher’s mother? Have
change of air and scene improved her? Her little family too, and
Christopher? Do they thrive? Do they flourish? Are they growing into
worthy citizens, eh?’
Making his voice ascend in the scale with every succeeding question, Mr
Quilp finished in a shrill squeak, and subsided into the panting look
which was customary with him, and which, whether it were assumed or
natural, had equally the effect of banishing all expression from his
face, and rendering it, as far as it afforded any index to his mood or
meaning, a perfect blank.
‘Mr Quilp,’ said the single gentleman.
The dwarf put his hand to his great flapped ear, and counterfeited the
closest attention.
‘We two have met before--’
‘Surely,’ cried Quilp, nodding his head. ‘Oh surely, sir. Such an
honour and pleasure--it’s both, Christopher’s mother, it’s both--is
not to be forgotten so soon. By no means!’
‘You may remember that the day I arrived in London, and found the house
to which I drove, empty and deserted, I was directed by some of the
neighbours to you, and waited upon you without stopping for rest or
refreshment?’
‘How precipitate that was, and yet what an earnest and vigorous
measure!’ said Quilp, conferring with himself, in imitation of his
friend Mr Sampson Brass.
‘I found,’ said the single gentleman, ‘you most unaccountably, in
possession of everything that had so recently belonged to another man,
and that other man, who up to the time of your entering upon his
property had been looked upon as affluent, reduced to sudden beggary,
and driven from house and home.’
‘We had warrant for what we did, my good sir,’ rejoined Quilp, ‘we had
our warrant. Don’t say driven either. He went of his own
accord--vanished in the night, sir.’
‘No matter,’ said the single gentleman angrily. ‘He was gone.’
‘Yes, he was gone,’ said Quilp, with the same exasperating composure.
‘No doubt he was gone. The only question was, where. And it’s a
question still.’
‘Now, what am I to think,’ said the single gentleman, sternly regarding
him, ‘of you, who, plainly indisposed to give me any information
then--nay, obviously holding back, and sheltering yourself with all
kinds of cunning, trickery, and evasion--are dogging my footsteps now?’
‘I dogging!’ cried Quilp.
‘Why, are you not?’ returned his questioner, fretted into a state of
the utmost irritation. ‘Were you not a few hours since, sixty miles
off, and in the chapel to which this good woman goes to say her
prayers?’
‘She was there too, I think?’ said Quilp, still perfectly unmoved. ‘I
might say, if I was inclined to be rude, how do I know but you are
dogging MY footsteps. Yes, I was at chapel. What then? I’ve read in
books that pilgrims were used to go to chapel before they went on
journeys, to put up petitions for their safe return. Wise men!
journeys are very perilous--especially outside the coach. Wheels come
off, horses take fright, coachmen drive too fast, coaches overturn. I
always go to chapel before I start on journeys. It’s the last thing I
do on such occasions, indeed.’
That Quilp lied most heartily in this speech, it needed no very great
penetration to discover, although for anything that he suffered to
appear in his face, voice, or manner, he might have been clinging to
the truth with the quiet constancy of a martyr.
‘In the name of all that’s calculated to drive one crazy, man,’ said
the unfortunate single gentleman, ‘have you not, for some reason of
your own, taken upon yourself my errand? don’t you know with what
object I have come here, and if you do know, can you throw no light
upon it?’
‘You think I’m a conjuror, sir,’ replied Quilp, shrugging up his
shoulders. ‘If I was, I should tell my own fortune--and make it.’
‘Ah! we have said all we need say, I see,’ returned the other, throwing
himself impatiently upon a sofa. ‘Pray leave us, if you please.’
‘Willingly,’ returned Quilp. ‘Most willingly. Christopher’s mother,
my good soul, farewell. A pleasant journey--back, sir. Ahem!’
With these parting words, and with a grin upon his features altogether
indescribable, but which seemed to be compounded of every monstrous
grimace of which men or monkeys are capable, the dwarf slowly retreated
and closed the door behind him.
‘Oho!’ he said when he had regained his own room, and sat himself down
in a chair with his arms akimbo. ‘Oho! Are you there, my friend?
In-deed!’
Chuckling as though in very great glee, and recompensing himself for
the restraint he had lately put upon his countenance by twisting it
into all imaginable varieties of ugliness, Mr Quilp, rocking himself to
and fro in his chair and nursing his left leg at the same time, fell
into certain meditations, of which it may be necessary to relate the
substance.
First, he reviewed the circumstances which had led to his repairing to
that spot, which were briefly these. Dropping in at Mr Sampson Brass’s
office on the previous evening, in the absence of that gentleman and
his learned sister, he had lighted upon Mr Swiveller, who chanced at
the moment to be sprinkling a glass of warm gin and water on the dust
of the law, and to be moistening his clay, as the phrase goes, rather
copiously. But as clay in the abstract, when too much moistened,
becomes of a weak and uncertain consistency, breaking down in
unexpected places, retaining impressions but faintly, and preserving no
strength or steadiness of character, so Mr Swiveller’s clay, having
imbibed a considerable quantity of moisture, was in a very loose and
slippery state, insomuch that the various ideas impressed upon it were
fast losing their distinctive character, and running into each other.
It is not uncommon for human clay in this condition to value itself
above all things upon its great prudence and sagacity; and Mr
Swiveller, especially prizing himself upon these qualities, took
occasion to remark that he had made strange discoveries in connection
with the single gentleman who lodged above, which he had determined to
keep within his own bosom, and which neither tortures nor cajolery
should ever induce him to reveal. Of this determination Mr Quilp
expressed his high approval, and setting himself in the same breath to
goad Mr Swiveller on to further hints, soon made out that the single
gentleman had been seen in communication with Kit, and that this was
the secret which was never to be disclosed.
Possessed of this piece of information, Mr Quilp directly supposed that
the single gentleman above stairs must be the same individual who had
waited on him, and having assured himself by further inquiries that
this surmise was correct, had no difficulty in arriving at the
conclusion that the intent and object of his correspondence with Kit
was the recovery of his old client and the child. Burning with
curiosity to know what proceedings were afoot, he resolved to pounce
upon Kit’s mother as the person least able to resist his arts, and
consequently the most likely to be entrapped into such revelations as
he sought; so taking an abrupt leave of Mr Swiveller, he hurried to her
house. The good woman being from home, he made inquiries of a
neighbour, as Kit himself did soon afterwards, and being directed to
the chapel be took himself there, in order to waylay her, at the
conclusion of the service.
He had not sat in the chapel more than a quarter of an hour, and with
his eyes piously fixed upon the ceiling was chuckling inwardly over the
joke of his being there at all, when Kit himself appeared. Watchful as
a lynx, one glance showed the dwarf that he had come on business.
Absorbed in appearance, as we have seen, and feigning a profound