The Old Curiosity Shop
you, sir.’
‘Then, you see, my good fellow,’ said the single gentleman, ‘that while
we have no doubt whatever of the truth of this disclosure, which has so
providentially come to light--’
‘Meaning hers?’ said Dick, pointing towards the Marchioness.
‘--Meaning hers, of course. While we have no doubt of that, or that a
proper use of it would procure the poor lad’s immediate pardon and
liberation, we have a great doubt whether it would, by itself, enable
us to reach Quilp, the chief agent in this villany. I should tell you
that this doubt has been confirmed into something very nearly
approaching certainty by the best opinions we have been enabled, in
this short space of time, to take upon the subject. You’ll agree with
us, that to give him even the most distant chance of escape, if we
could help it, would be monstrous. You say with us, no doubt, if
somebody must escape, let it be any one but he.’
‘Yes,’ returned Dick, ‘certainly. That is if somebody must--but upon
my word, I’m unwilling that anybody should. Since laws were made for
every degree, to curb vice in others as well as in me--and so forth
you know--doesn’t it strike you in that light?’
The single gentleman smiled as if the light in which Mr Swiveller had
put the question were not the clearest in the world, and proceeded to
explain that they contemplated proceeding by stratagem in the first
instance; and that their design was to endeavour to extort a confession
from the gentle Sarah.
‘When she finds how much we know, and how we know it,’ he said, ‘and
that she is clearly compromised already, we are not without strong
hopes that we may be enabled through her means to punish the other two
effectually. If we could do that, she might go scot-free for aught I
cared.’
Dick received this project in anything but a gracious manner,
representing with as much warmth as he was then capable of showing,
that they would find the old buck (meaning Sarah) more difficult to
manage than Quilp himself--that, for any tampering, terrifying, or
cajolery, she was a very unpromising and unyielding subject--that she
was of a kind of brass not easily melted or moulded into shape--in
short, that they were no match for her, and would be signally defeated.
But it was in vain to urge them to adopt some other course. The single
gentleman has been described as explaining their joint intentions, but
it should have been written that they all spoke together; that if any
one of them by chance held his peace for a moment, he stood gasping and
panting for an opportunity to strike in again: in a word, that they had
reached that pitch of impatience and anxiety where men can neither be
persuaded nor reasoned with; and that it would have been as easy to
turn the most impetuous wind that ever blew, as to prevail on them to
reconsider their determination. So, after telling Mr Swiveller how
they had not lost sight of Kit’s mother and the children; how they had
never once even lost sight of Kit himself, but had been unremitting in
their endeavours to procure a mitigation of his sentence; how they had
been perfectly distracted between the strong proofs of his guilt, and
their own fading hopes of his innocence; and how he, Richard Swiveller,
might keep his mind at rest, for everything should be happily adjusted
between that time and night;--after telling him all this, and adding a
great many kind and cordial expressions, personal to himself, which it
is unnecessary to recite, Mr Garland, the notary, and the single
gentleman, took their leaves at a very critical time, or Richard
Swiveller must assuredly have been driven into another fever, whereof
the results might have been fatal.
Mr Abel remained behind, very often looking at his watch and at the
room door, until Mr Swiveller was roused from a short nap, by the
setting-down on the landing-place outside, as from the shoulders of a
porter, of some giant load, which seemed to shake the house, and made
the little physic bottles on the mantel-shelf ring again. Directly
this sound reached his ears, Mr Abel started up, and hobbled to the
door, and opened it; and behold! there stood a strong man, with a
mighty hamper, which, being hauled into the room and presently
unpacked, disgorged such treasures as tea, and coffee, and wine, and
rusks, and oranges, and grapes, and fowls ready trussed for boiling,
and calves’-foot jelly, and arrow-root, and sago, and other delicate
restoratives, that the small servant, who had never thought it possible
that such things could be, except in shops, stood rooted to the spot in
her one shoe, with her mouth and eyes watering in unison, and her power
of speech quite gone. But, not so Mr Abel; or the strong man who
emptied the hamper, big as it was, in a twinkling; and not so the nice
old lady, who appeared so suddenly that she might have come out of the
hamper too (it was quite large enough), and who, bustling about on
tiptoe and without noise--now here, now there, now everywhere at
once--began to fill out the jelly in tea-cups, and to make chicken
broth in small saucepans, and to peel oranges for the sick man and to
cut them up in little pieces, and to ply the small servant with glasses
of wine and choice bits of everything until more substantial meat could
be prepared for her refreshment. The whole of which appearances were
so unexpected and bewildering, that Mr Swiveller, when he had taken two
oranges and a little jelly, and had seen the strong man walk off with
the empty basket, plainly leaving all that abundance for his use and
benefit, was fain to lie down and fall asleep again, from sheer
inability to entertain such wonders in his mind.
Meanwhile, the single gentleman, the Notary, and Mr Garland, repaired
to a certain coffee-house, and from that place indited and sent a
letter to Miss Sally Brass, requesting her, in terms mysterious and
brief, to favour an unknown friend who wished to consult her, with her
company there, as speedily as possible. The communication performed
its errand so well, that within ten minutes of the messenger’s return
and report of its delivery, Miss Brass herself was announced.
‘Pray ma’am,’ said the single gentleman, whom she found alone in the
room, ‘take a chair.’
Miss Brass sat herself down, in a very stiff and frigid state, and
seemed--as indeed she was--not a little astonished to find that the
lodger and her mysterious correspondent were one and the same person.
‘You did not expect to see me?’ said the single gentleman.
‘I didn’t think much about it,’ returned the beauty. ‘I supposed it
was business of some kind or other. If it’s about the apartments, of
course you’ll give my brother regular notice, you know--or money.
That’s very easily settled. You’re a responsible party, and in such a
case lawful money and lawful notice are pretty much the same.’
‘I am obliged to you for your good opinion,’ retorted the single
gentleman, ‘and quite concur in these sentiments. But that is not the
subject on which I wish to speak with you.’
‘Oh!’ said Sally. ‘Then just state the particulars, will you? I
suppose it’s professional business?’
‘Why, it is connected with the law, certainly.’
‘Very well,’ returned Miss Brass. ‘My brother and I are just the same.
I can take any instructions, or give you any advice.’
‘As there are other parties interested besides myself,’ said the single
gentleman, rising and opening the door of an inner room, ‘we had better
confer together. Miss Brass is here, gentlemen.’
Mr Garland and the Notary walked in, looking very grave; and, drawing up
two chairs, one on each side of the single gentleman, formed a kind of
fence round the gentle Sarah, and penned her into a corner. Her brother
Sampson under such circumstances would certainly have evinced some
confusion or anxiety, but she--all composure--pulled out the tin box,
and calmly took a pinch of snuff.
‘Miss Brass,’ said the Notary, taking the word at this crisis, ‘we
professional people understand each other, and, when we choose, can say
what we have to say, in very few words. You advertised a runaway
servant, the other day?’
‘Well,’ returned Miss Sally, with a sudden flush overspreading her
features, ‘what of that?’
‘She is found, ma’am,’ said the Notary, pulling out his
pocket-handkerchief with a flourish. ‘She is found.’
‘Who found her?’ demanded Sarah hastily.
‘We did, ma’am--we three. Only last night, or you would have heard
from us before.’
‘And now I have heard from you,’ said Miss Brass, folding her arms as
though she were about to deny something to the death, ‘what have you
got to say? Something you have got into your heads about her, of
course. Prove it, will you--that’s all. Prove it. You have found
her, you say. I can tell you (if you don’t know it) that you have
found the most artful, lying, pilfering, devilish little minx that was
ever born.--Have you got her here?’ she added, looking sharply round.
‘No, she is not here at present,’ returned the Notary. ‘But she is
quite safe.’
‘Ha!’ cried Sally, twitching a pinch of snuff out of her box, as
spitefully as if she were in the very act of wrenching off the small
servant’s nose; ‘she shall be safe enough from this time, I warrant
you.’
‘I hope so,’ replied the Notary. ‘Did it occur to you for the first
time, when you found she had run away, that there were two keys to your
kitchen door?’
Miss Sally took another pinch, and putting her head on one side, looked
at her questioner, with a curious kind of spasm about her mouth, but
with a cunning aspect of immense expression.
‘Two keys,’ repeated the Notary; ‘one of which gave her the
opportunities of roaming through the house at nights when you supposed
her fast locked up, and of overhearing confidential
consultations--among others, that particular conference, to be
described to-day before a justice, which you will have an opportunity
of hearing her relate; that conference which you and Mr Brass held
together, on the night before that most unfortunate and innocent young
man was accused of robbery, by a horrible device of which I will only
say that it may be characterised by the epithets which you have applied
to this wretched little witness, and by a few stronger ones besides.’
Sally took another pinch. Although her face was wonderfully composed,
it was apparent that she was wholly taken by surprise, and that what
she had expected to be taxed with, in connection with her small
servant, was something very different from this.
‘Come, come, Miss Brass,’ said the Notary, ‘you have great command of
feature, but you feel, I see, that by a chance which never entered your
imagination, this base design is revealed, and two of its plotters must
be brought to justice. Now, you know the pains and penalties you are
liable to, and so I need not dilate upon them, but I have a proposal to
make to you. You have the honour of being sister to one of the
greatest scoundrels unhung; and, if I may venture to say so to a lady,
you are in every respect quite worthy of him. But connected with you
two is a third party, a villain of the name of Quilp, the prime mover
of the whole diabolical device, who I believe to be worse than either.
For his sake, Miss Brass, do us the favour to reveal the whole history
of this affair. Let me remind you that your doing so, at our instance,
will place you in a safe and comfortable position--your present one is
not desirable--and cannot injure your brother; for against him and you
we have quite sufficient evidence (as you hear) already. I will not
say to you that we suggest this course in mercy (for, to tell you the
truth, we do not entertain any regard for you), but it is a necessity
to which we are reduced, and I recommend it to you as a matter of the