The Old Curiosity Shop
very best policy. Time,’ said Mr Witherden, pulling out his watch, ‘in
a business like this, is exceedingly precious. Favour us with your
decision as speedily as possible, ma’am.’
With a smile upon her face, and looking at each of the three by turns,
Miss Brass took two or three more pinches of snuff, and having by this
time very little left, travelled round and round the box with her
forefinger and thumb, scraping up another. Having disposed of this
likewise and put the box carefully in her pocket, she said,--
‘I am to accept or reject at once, am I?’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Witherden.
The charming creature was opening her lips to speak in reply, when the
door was hastily opened too, and the head of Sampson Brass was thrust
into the room.
‘Excuse me,’ said the gentleman hastily. ‘Wait a bit!’
So saying, and quite indifferent to the astonishment his presence
occasioned, he crept in, shut the door, kissed his greasy glove as
servilely as if it were the dust, and made a most abject bow.
‘Sarah,’ said Brass, ‘hold your tongue if you please, and let me speak.
Gentlemen, if I could express the pleasure it gives me to see three
such men in a happy unity of feeling and concord of sentiment, I think
you would hardly believe me. But though I am unfortunate--nay,
gentlemen, criminal, if we are to use harsh expressions in a company
like this--still, I have my feelings like other men. I have heard of a
poet, who remarked that feelings were the common lot of all. If he
could have been a pig, gentlemen, and have uttered that sentiment, he
would still have been immortal.’
‘If you’re not an idiot,’ said Miss Brass harshly, ‘hold your peace.’
‘Sarah, my dear,’ returned her brother, ‘thank you. But I know what I
am about, my love, and will take the liberty of expressing myself
accordingly. Mr Witherden, Sir, your handkerchief is hanging out of
your pocket--would you allow me to--,
As Mr Brass advanced to remedy this accident, the Notary shrunk from
him with an air of disgust. Brass, who over and above his usual
prepossessing qualities, had a scratched face, a green shade over one
eye, and a hat grievously crushed, stopped short, and looked round with
a pitiful smile.
‘He shuns me,’ said Sampson, ‘even when I would, as I may say, heap
coals of fire upon his head. Well! Ah! But I am a falling house, and
the rats (if I may be allowed the expression in reference to a
gentleman I respect and love beyond everything) fly from me!
Gentlemen--regarding your conversation just now, I happened to see my
sister on her way here, and, wondering where she could be going to, and
being--may I venture to say?--naturally of a suspicious turn, followed
her. Since then, I have been listening.’
‘If you’re not mad,’ interposed Miss Sally, ‘stop there, and say no
more.’
‘Sarah, my dear,’ rejoined Brass with undiminished politeness, ‘I thank
you kindly, but will still proceed. Mr Witherden, sir, as we have the
honour to be members of the same profession--to say nothing of that
other gentleman having been my lodger, and having partaken, as one may
say, of the hospitality of my roof--I think you might have given me the
refusal of this offer in the first instance. I do indeed. Now, my
dear Sir,’ cried Brass, seeing that the Notary was about to interrupt
him, ‘suffer me to speak, I beg.’
Mr Witherden was silent, and Brass went on.
‘If you will do me the favour,’ he said, holding up the green shade,
and revealing an eye most horribly discoloured, ‘to look at this, you
will naturally inquire, in your own minds, how did I get it. If you
look from that, to my face, you will wonder what could have been the
cause of all these scratches. And if from them to my hat, how it came
into the state in which you see it. Gentlemen,’ said Brass, striking
the hat fiercely with his clenched hand, ‘to all these questions I
answer--Quilp!’
The three gentlemen looked at each other, but said nothing.
‘I say,’ pursued Brass, glancing aside at his sister, as though he were
talking for her information, and speaking with a snarling malignity, in
violent contrast to his usual smoothness, ‘that I answer to all these
questions,--Quilp--Quilp, who deludes me into his infernal den, and
takes a delight in looking on and chuckling while I scorch, and burn,
and bruise, and maim myself--Quilp, who never once, no never once, in
all our communications together, has treated me otherwise than as a
dog--Quilp, whom I have always hated with my whole heart, but never so
much as lately. He gives me the cold shoulder on this very matter as
if he had had nothing to do with it, instead of being the first to
propose it. I can’t trust him. In one of his howling, raving, blazing
humours, I believe he’d let it out, if it was murder, and never think
of himself so long as he could terrify me. Now,’ said Brass, picking
up his hat again and replacing the shade over his eye, and actually
crouching down, in the excess of his servility, ‘what does all this
lead to?--what should you say it led me to, gentlemen?--could you guess
at all near the mark?’
Nobody spoke. Brass stood smirking for a little while, as if he had
propounded some choice conundrum; and then said:
‘To be short with you, then, it leads me to this. If the truth has
come out, as it plainly has in a manner that there’s no standing up
against--and a very sublime and grand thing is Truth, gentlemen, in its
way, though like other sublime and grand things, such as thunder-storms
and that, we’re not always over and above glad to see it--I had better
turn upon this man than let this man turn upon me. It’s clear to me
that I am done for. Therefore, if anybody is to split, I had better be
the person and have the advantage of it. Sarah, my dear, comparatively
speaking you’re safe. I relate these circumstances for my own profit.’
With that, Mr Brass, in a great hurry, revealed the whole story;
bearing as heavily as possible on his amiable employer, and making
himself out to be rather a saint-like and holy character, though
subject--he acknowledged--to human weaknesses. He concluded thus:
‘Now, gentlemen, I am not a man who does things by halves. Being in
for a penny, I am ready, as the saying is, to be in for a pound. You
must do with me what you please, and take me where you please. If you
wish to have this in writing, we’ll reduce it into manuscript
immediately. You will be tender with me, I am sure. I am quite
confident you will be tender with me. You are men of honour, and have
feeling hearts. I yielded from necessity to Quilp, for though
necessity has no law, she has her lawyers. I yield to you from
necessity too; from policy besides; and because of feelings that have
been a pretty long time working within me. Punish Quilp, gentlemen.
Weigh heavily upon him. Grind him down. Tread him under foot. He has
done as much by me, for many and many a day.’
Having now arrived at the conclusion of his discourse, Sampson checked
the current of his wrath, kissed his glove again, and smiled as only
parasites and cowards can.
‘And this,’ said Miss Brass, raising her head, with which she had
hitherto sat resting on her hands, and surveying him from head to foot
with a bitter sneer, ‘this is my brother, is it! This is my brother,
that I have worked and toiled for, and believed to have had something
of the man in him!’
‘Sarah, my dear,’ returned Sampson, rubbing his hands feebly; ‘you
disturb our friends. Besides you--you’re disappointed, Sarah, and, not
knowing what you say, expose yourself.’
‘Yes, you pitiful dastard,’ retorted the lovely damsel, ‘I understand
you. You feared that I should be beforehand with you. But do you
think that I would have been enticed to say a word! I’d have scorned
it, if they had tried and tempted me for twenty years.’
‘He he!’ simpered Brass, who, in his deep debasement, really seemed to
have changed sexes with his sister, and to have made over to her any
spark of manliness he might have possessed. ‘You think so, Sarah, you
think so perhaps; but you would have acted quite different, my good
fellow. You will not have forgotten that it was a maxim with
Foxey--our revered father, gentlemen--“Always suspect everybody.”
That’s the maxim to go through life with! If you were not actually
about to purchase your own safety when I showed myself, I suspect you’d
have done it by this time. And therefore I’ve done it myself, and
spared you the trouble as well as the shame. The shame, gentlemen,’
added Brass, allowing himself to be slightly overcome, ‘if there is
any, is mine. It’s better that a female should be spared it.’
With deference to the better opinion of Mr Brass, and more particularly
to the authority of his Great Ancestor, it may be doubted, with
humility, whether the elevating principle laid down by the latter
gentleman, and acted upon by his descendant, is always a prudent one,
or attended in practice with the desired results. This is, beyond
question, a bold and presumptuous doubt, inasmuch as many distinguished
characters, called men of the world, long-headed customers, knowing
dogs, shrewd fellows, capital hands at business, and the like, have
made, and do daily make, this axiom their polar star and compass.
Still, the doubt may be gently insinuated. And in illustration it may
be observed, that if Mr Brass, not being over-suspicious, had, without
prying and listening, left his sister to manage the conference on their
joint behalf, or prying and listening, had not been in such a mighty
hurry to anticipate her (which he would not have been, but for his
distrust and jealousy), he would probably have found himself much
better off in the end. Thus, it will always happen that these men of
the world, who go through it in armour, defend themselves from quite as
much good as evil; to say nothing of the inconvenience and absurdity of
mounting guard with a microscope at all times, and of wearing a coat of
mail on the most innocent occasions.
The three gentlemen spoke together apart, for a few moments. At the
end of their consultation, which was very brief, the Notary pointed to
the writing materials on the table, and informed Mr Brass that if he
wished to make any statement in writing, he had the opportunity of
doing so. At the same time he felt bound to tell him that they would
require his attendance, presently, before a justice of the peace, and
that in what he did or said, he was guided entirely by his own
discretion.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Brass, drawing off his glove, and crawling in spirit
upon the ground before them, ‘I will justify the tenderness with which
I know I shall be treated; and as, without tenderness, I should, now
that this discovery has been made, stand in the worst position of the
three, you may depend upon it I will make a clean breast. Mr
Witherden, sir, a kind of faintness is upon my spirits--if you would
do me the favour to ring the bell and order up a glass of something
warm and spicy, I shall, notwithstanding what has passed, have a
melancholy pleasure in drinking your good health. I had hoped,’ said
Brass, looking round with a mournful smile, ‘to have seen you three
gentlemen, one day or another, with your legs under the mahogany in my
humble parlour in the Marks. But hopes are fleeting. Dear me!’
Mr Brass found himself so exceedingly affected, at this point, that he
could say or do nothing more until some refreshment arrived. Having
partaken of it, pretty freely for one in his agitated state, he sat
down to write.
The lovely Sarah, now with her arms folded, and now with her hands
clasped behind her, paced the room with manly strides while her brother
was thus employed, and sometimes stopped to pull out her snuff-box and
bite the lid. She continued to pace up and down until she was quite