The Old Curiosity Shop

by Dickens, Charles

  in the house, as an assertion of his claim against all comers; and

  then set about making his quarters comfortable, after his own fashion.

  To this end, Mr Quilp encamped in the back parlour, having first

  put an effectual stop to any further business by shutting up the

  shop. Having looked out, from among the old furniture, the

  handsomest and most commodious chair he could possibly find (which

  he reserved for his own use) and an especially hideous and

  uncomfortable one (which he considerately appropriated to the

  accommodation of his friend) he caused them to be carried into this

  room, and took up his position in great state. The apartment was

  very far removed from the old man's chamber, but Mr Quilp deemed it

  prudent, as a precaution against infection from fever, and a means

  of wholesome fumigation, not only to smoke, himself, without

  cessation, but to insist upon it that his legal friend did the

  like. Moreover, he sent an express to the wharf for the tumbling

  boy, who arriving with all despatch was enjoined to sit himself

  down in another chair just inside the door, continually to smoke a

  great pipe which the dwarf had provided for the purpose, and to

  take it from his lips under any pretence whatever, were it only for

  one minute at a time, if he dared. These arrangements completed, Mr

  Quilp looked round him with chuckling satisfaction, and remarked

  that he called that comfort.

  The legal gentleman, whose melodious name was Brass, might have

  called it comfort also but for two drawbacks: one was, that he

  could by no exertion sit easy in his chair, the seat of which was

  very hard, angular, slippery, and sloping; the other, that

  tobacco-smoke always caused him great internal discomposure and

  annoyance. But as he was quite a creature of Mr Quilp's and had a

  thousand reasons for conciliating his good opinion, he tried to smile,

  and nodded his acquiescence with the best grace he could assume.

  This Brass was an attorney of no very good repute, from Bevis Marks

  in the city of London; he was a tall, meagre man, with a nose like

  a wen, a protruding forehead, retreating eyes, and hair of a deep

  red. He wore a long black surtout reaching nearly to his ankles,

  short black trousers, high shoes, and cotton stockings of a bluish

  grey. He had a cringing manner, but a very harsh voice; and his

  blandest smiles were so extremely forbidding, that to have had his

  company under the least repulsive circumstances, one would have

  wished him to be out of temper that he might only scowl.

  Quilp looked at his legal adviser, and seeing that he was winking

  very much in the anguish of his pipe, that he sometimes shuddered

  when he happened to inhale its full flavour, and that he constantly

  fanned the smoke from him, was quite overjoyed and rubbed his hands

  with glee.

  'Smoke away, you dog,' said Quilp, turning to the boy; 'fill your

  pipe again and smoke it fast, down to the last whiff, or I'll put

  the sealing-waxed end of it in the fire and rub it red hot upon

  your tongue.'

  Luckily the boy was case-hardened, and would have smoked a small

  lime-kiln if anybody had treated him with it. Wherefore, he only

  muttered a brief defiance of his master, and did as he was ordered.

  'Is it good, Brass, is it nice, is it fragrant, do you feel like

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  the Grand Turk?" said Quilp.

  Mr Brass thought that if he did, the Grand Turk's feelings were by

  no means to be envied, but he said it was famous, and he had no

  doubt he felt very like that Potentate.

  'This is the way to keep off fever,' said Quilp, 'this is the way

  to keep off every calamity of life! We'll never leave off, all the

  time we stop here--smoke away, you dog, or you shall swallow the

  pipe!'

  'Shall we stop here long, Mr Quilp?' inquired his legal friend,

  when the dwarf had given his boy this gentle admonition.

  'We must stop, I suppose, till the old gentleman up stairs is

  dead,' returned Quilp.

  'He he he!' laughed Mr Brass, 'oh! very good!'

  'Smoke away!' cried Quilp. 'Never stop! You can talk as you smoke.

  Don't lose time.'

  'He he he!' cried Brass faintly, as he again applied himself to the

  odious pipe. 'But if he should get better, Mr Quilp?'

  'Then we shall stop till he does, and no longer,' returned the

  dwarf.

  'How kind it is of you, Sir, to wait till then!' said Brass. 'Some

  people, Sir, would have sold or removed the goods--oh dear, the

  very instant the law allowed 'em. Some people, Sir, would have been

  all flintiness and granite. Some people, sir, would have--'

  'Some people would have spared themselves the jabbering of such a

  parrot as you,' interposed the dwarf.

  'He he he!' cried Brass. 'You have such spirits!'

  The smoking sentinel at the door interposed in this place, and

  without taking his pipe from his lips, growled,

  'Here's the gal a comin' down.'

  'The what, you dog?' said Quilp.

  'The gal,' returned the boy. 'Are you deaf?'

  'Oh!' said Quilp, drawing in his breath with great relish as if he

  were taking soup, 'you and I will have such a settling presently;

  there's such a scratching and bruising in store for you, my dear

  young friend! Aha! Nelly! How is he now, my duck of diamonds?"

  'He's very bad,' replied the weeping child.

  'What a pretty little Nell!' cried Quilp.

  'Oh beautiful, sir, beautiful indeed,' said Brass. 'Quite

  charming.'

  'Has she come to sit upon Quilp's knee,' said the dwarf, in what he

  meant to be a soothing tone, 'or is she going to bed in her own

  little room inside here? Which is poor Nelly going to do?'

  'What a remarkable pleasant way he has with children!' muttered

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  Brass, as if in confidence between himself and the ceiling; 'upon

  my word it's quite a treat to hear him.'

  'I'm not going to stay at all,' faltered Nell. 'I want a few things

  out of that room, and then I--I--won't come down here any more.'

  'And a very nice little room it is!' said the dwarf looking into it

  as the child entered. 'Quite a bower! You're sure you're not going

  to use it; you're sure you're not coming back, Nelly?'

  'No,' replied the child, hurrying away, with the few articles of

  dress she had come to remove; 'never again! Never again.'

  'She's very sensitive,' said Quilp, looking after her. 'Very

  sensitive; that's a pity. The bedstead is much about my size. I

  think I shall make it MY little room.'

  Mr Brass encouraging this idea, as he would have encouraged any

  other emanating from the same source, the dwarf walked in to try

  the effect. This he did, by throwing himself on his back upon the

  bed with his pipe in his mouth, and then kicking up his legs and

  smoking violently. Mr Brass applauding this picture very much, and

  the bed being soft and comfortable, Mr Quilp determined to use it,

  both as a sleeping place by night and as a kind of Div
an by day;

  and in order that it might be converted to the latter purpose at

  once, remained where he was, and smoked his pipe out. The legal

  gentleman being by this time rather giddy and perplexed in his

  ideas (for this was one of the operations of the tobacco on his

  nervous system), took the opportunity of slinking away into the

  open air, where, in course of time, he recovered sufficiently to

  return with a countenance of tolerable composure. He was soon led

  on by the malicious dwarf to smoke himself into a relapse, and in

  that state stumbled upon a settee where he slept till morning.

  Such were Mr Quilp's first proceedings on entering upon his new

  property. He was, for some days, restrained by business from

  performing any particular pranks, as his time was pretty well

  occupied between taking, with the assistance of Mr Brass, a minute

  inventory of all the goods in the place, and going abroad upon his

  other concerns which happily engaged him for several hours at a

  time. His avarice and caution being, now, thoroughly awakened,

  however, he was never absent from the house one night; and his

  eagerness for some termination, good or bad, to the old man's

  disorder, increasing rapidly, as the time passed by, soon began to

  vent itself in open murmurs and exclamations of impatience.

  Nell shrank timidly from all the dwarf's advances towards

  conversation, and fled from the very sound of his voice; nor were

  the lawyer's smiles less terrible to her than Quilp's grimaces. She

  lived in such continual dread and apprehension of meeting one or

  other of them on the stairs or in the passages if she stirred from

  her grandfather's chamber, that she seldom left it, for a moment,

  until late at night, when the silence encouraged her to venture

  forth and breathe the purer air of some empty room.

  One night, she had stolen to her usual window, and was sitting

  there very sorrowfully--for the old man had been worse that day--

  when she thought she heard her name pronounced by a voice in the

  street. Looking down, she recognised Kit, whose endeavours to

  attract her attention had roused her from her sad reflections.

  'Miss Nell!' said the boy in a low voice.

  'Yes,' replied the child, doubtful whether she ought to hold any

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  communication with the supposed culprit, but inclining to her old

  favourite still; 'what do you want?'

  'I have wanted to say a word to you, for a long time,' the boy

  replied, 'but the people below have driven me away and wouldn't let

  me see you. You don't believe--I hope you don't really believe--

  that I deserve to be cast off as I have been; do you, miss?'

  'I must believe it,' returned the child. 'Or why would grandfather

  have been so angry with you?'

  'I don't know,' replied Kit. 'I'm sure I never deserved it from

  him, no, nor from you. I can say that, with a true and honest

  heart, any way. And then to be driven from the door, when I only

  came to ask how old master was--!'

  'They never told me that,' said the child. 'I didn't know it

  indeed. I wouldn't have had them do it for the world.'

  'Thank'ee, miss,' returned Kit, 'it's comfortable to hear you say

  that. I said I never would believe that it was your doing.'

  'That was right!' said the child eagerly.

  'Miss Nell,' cried the boy coming under the window, and speaking in

  a lower tone, 'there are new masters down stairs. It's a change for

  you.'

  'It is indeed,' replied the child.

  'And so it will be for him when he gets better,' said the boy,

  pointing towards the sick room.

  '--If he ever does,' added the child, unable to restrain her tears.

  'Oh, he'll do that, he'll do that,' said Kit. 'I'm sure he will.

  You mustn't be cast down, Miss Nell. Now don't be, pray!'

  These words of encouragement and consolation were few and roughly

  said, but they affected the child and made her, for the moment,

  weep the more.

  'He'll be sure to get better now,' said the boy anxiously, 'if you

  don't give way to low spirits and turn ill yourself, which would

  make him worse and throw him back, just as he was recovering. When

  he does, say a good word--say a kind word for me, Miss Nell!'

  'They tell me I must not even mention your name to him for a long,

  long time,' rejoined the child, 'I dare not; and even if I might,

  what good would a kind word do you, Kit? We shall be very poor. We

  shall scarcely have bread to eat.'

  'It's not that I may be taken back,' said the boy, 'that I ask the

  favour of you. It isn't for the sake of food and wages that I've

  been waiting about so long in hopes to see you. Don't think that

  I'd come in a time of trouble to talk of such things as them.'

  The child looked gratefully and kindly at him, but waited that he

  might speak again.

  'No, it's not that,' said Kit hesitating, 'it's something very

  different from that. I haven't got much sense, I know, but if he

  could be brought to believe that I'd been a faithful servant to

  him, doing the best I could, and never meaning harm, perhaps he

  mightn't--'

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  Here Kit faltered so long that the child entreated him to speak

  out, and quickly, for it was very late, and time to shut the

  window.

  'Perhaps he mightn't think it over venturesome of me to say--well

  then, to say this,' cried Kit with sudden boldness. 'This home is

  gone from you and him. Mother and I have got a poor one, but that's

  better than this with all these people here; and why not come

  there, till he's had time to look about, and find a better!'

  The child did not speak. Kit, in the relief of having made his

  proposition, found his tongue loosened, and spoke out in its favour

  with his utmost eloquence.

  'You think,' said the boy, 'that it's very small and inconvenient.

  So it is, but it's very clean. Perhaps you think it would be noisy,

  but there's not a quieter court than ours in all the town. Don't be

  afraid of the children; the baby hardly ever cries, and the other

  one is very good--besides, I'd mind 'em. They wouldn't vex you

  much, I'm sure. Do try, Miss Nell, do try. The little front room up

  stairs is very pleasant. You can see a piece of the church-clock,

  through the chimneys, and almost tell the time; mother says it

  would be just the thing for you, and so it would, and you'd have

  her to wait upon you both, and me to run of errands. We don't mean

  money, bless you; you're not to think of that! Will you try him,

  Miss Nell? Only say you'll try him. Do try to make old master come,

  and ask him first what I have done. Will you only promise that,

  Miss Nell?'

  Before the child could reply to this earnest solicitation, the

  street-door opened, and Mr Brass thrusting out his night-capped

  head called in a surly voice, 'Who's there!' Kit immediately glided

  away, and Nell, closing the window softly, drew back into the room.

  Before Mr Brass had rep
eated his inquiry many times, Mr Quilp, also

  embellished with a night-cap, emerged from the same door and looked

  carefully up and down the street, and up at all the windows of the

  house, from the opposite side. Finding that there was nobody in

  sight, he presently returned into the house with his legal friend,

  protesting (as the child heard from the staircase), that there was

  a league and plot against him; that he was in danger of being

  robbed and plundered by a band of conspirators who prowled about

  the house at all seasons; and that he would delay no longer but

  take immediate steps for disposing of the property and returning to

  his own peaceful roof. Having growled forth these, and a great many

  other threats of the same nature, he coiled himself once more in

  the child's little bed, and Nell crept softly up the stairs.

  It was natural enough that her short and unfinished dialogue with

  Kit should leave a strong impression on her mind, and influence her

  dreams that night and her recollections for a long, long time.

  Surrounded by unfeeling creditors, and mercenary attendants upon

  the sick, and meeting in the height of her anxiety and sorrow with

  little regard or sympathy even from the women about her, it is not

  surprising that the affectionate heart of the child should have

  been touched to the quick by one kind and generous spirit, however

  uncouth the temple in which it dwelt. Thank Heaven that the temples

  of such spirits are not made with hands, and that they may be even more

  worthily hung with poor patch-work than with purple and fine linen!

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  CHAPTER 12

  At length, the crisis of the old man's disorder was past, and he

  began to mend. By very slow and feeble degrees his consciousness

  came back; but the mind was weakened and its functions were

  impaired. He was patient, and quiet; often sat brooding, but not

  despondently, for a long space; was easily amused, even by a

  sun-beam on the wall or ceiling; made no complaint that the days

  were long, or the nights tedious; and appeared indeed to have lost

  all count of time, and every sense of care or weariness. He would

  sit, for hours together, with Nell's small hand in his, playing

  with the fingers and stopping sometimes to smooth her hair or kiss

  her brow; and, when he saw that tears were glistening in her eyes,

  would look, amazed, about him for the cause, and forget his wonder