The Old Curiosity Shop

by Dickens, Charles

  '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.'

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  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

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  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

  fri
end? 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

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  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 abstraction, he noted every circumstance of his behaviour,

  and when he withdrew with his family, shot out after him. In fine,

  he traced them to the notary's house; learnt the destination of the

  carriage from one of the postilions; and knowing that a fast

  night-coach started for the same place, at the very hour which was

  on the point of striking, from a street hard by, darted round to

  the coach-office without more ado, and took his seat upon the roof.

  After passing and repassing the carriage on the road, and being

  passed and repassed by it sundry times in the course of the night,

  according as their stoppages were longer or shorter; or their rate

  of travelling varied, they reached the town almost together. Quilp

  kept the chaise in sight, mingled with the crowd, learnt the single

  gentleman's errand, and its failure, and having possessed himself

  of all that it was material to know, hurried off, reached the inn

  before him, had the interview just now detailed, and shut himself

  up in the little room in which he hastily reviewed all these

  occurrences.

  'You are there, are you, my friend?' he repeated, greedily biting

  his nails. 'I am suspected and thrown aside, and Kit's the

  confidential agent, is he? I shall have to dispose of him, I fear.

  If we had come up with them this morning,' he continued, after a

  thoughtful pause, 'I was ready to prove a pretty good claim. I

  could have made my profit. But for these canting hypocrites, the

  lad and his mother, I could get this fiery gentleman as comfortably

  into my net as our old friend--our mutual friend, ha! ha!--and

  chubby, rosy Nell. At the worst, it's a golden opportunity, not to

  be lost. Let us find them first, and I'll find means of draining

  you of some of your superfluous cash, sir, while there are prison

  bars, and bolts, and locks, to keep your friend or kinsman safely.

  I hate your virtuous people!' said the dwarf, throwing off a bumper

  of brandy, and smacking his lips, 'ah! I hate 'em every one!'

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  This was not a mere empty vaunt, but a deliberate avowal of his

  real sentiments; for Mr Quilp, who loved nobody, had by little and

  little come to hate everybody nearly or remotely connected with his

  ruined client: --the old man himself, because he had been able to

  deceive him and elude his vigilance --the child, because she was

  the object of Mrs Quilp's commiseration and constant self-reproach

  --the single gentleman, because of his unconcealed aversion to

  himself --Kit and his mother, most mortally, for the reasons shown.

  Above and beyond that general feeling of opposition to them, which

  would have been inseparable from his ravenous desire to enrich

  himself by these altered circumstances, Daniel Quilp hated them

  every one.

  In this amiable mood, Mr Quilp enlivened himself and his hatreds

  with more brandy, and then, changing his quarters, withdrew to an

  obscure alehouse, under cover of which seclusion he instituted all

  possible inquiries that might lead to the discovery of the old man

  and his grandchild. But all was in vain. Not the slightest trace

  or clue could be obtained. They had left the town by night; no one

  had seen them go; no one had met them on the road; the driver of no

  coach, cart, or waggon, had seen any travellers answering their

  description; nobody had fallen in with them, or heard of them.

  Convinced at last that for the present all such attempts were

  hopeless, he appointed two or three scouts, with promises of large

  rewards in case of their forwarding him any intelligence, and

  returned to London by next day's coach.

  It was some gratifica
tion to Mr Quilp to find, as he took his place

  upon the roof, that Kit's mother was alone inside; from which

  circumstance he derived in the course of the journey much

  cheerfulness of spirit, inasmuch as her solitary condition enabled

  him to terrify her with many extraordinary annoyances; such as

  hanging over the side of the coach at the risk of his life, and

  staring in with his great goggle eyes, which seemed in hers the

  more horrible from his face being upside down; dodging her in this

  way from one window to another; getting nimbly down whenever they

  changed horses and thrusting his head in at the window with a

  dismal squint: which ingenious tortures had such an effect upon Mrs

  Nubbles, that she was quite unable for the time to resist the

  belief that Mr Quilp did in his own person represent and embody

  that Evil Power, who was so vigorously attacked at Little Bethel,

  and who, by reason of her backslidings in respect of Astley's and

  oysters, was now frolicsome and rampant.

  Kit, having been apprised by letter of his mother's intended

  return, was waiting for her at the coach-office; and great was his

  surprise when he saw, leering over the coachman's shoulder like

  some familiar demon, invisible to all eyes but his, the well-known

  face of Quilp.

  'How are you, Christopher?' croaked the dwarf from the coach-top.

  'All right, Christopher. Mother's inside.'

  'Why, how did he come here, mother?' whispered Kit.

  'I don't know how he came or why, my dear,' rejoined Mrs Nubbles,

  dismounting with her son's assistance, 'but he has been a

  terrifying of me out of my seven senses all this blessed day.'

  'He has?' cried Kit.

  'You wouldn't believe it, that you wouldn't,' replied his mother,

  'but don't say a word to him, for I really don't believe he's

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  human. Hush! Don't turn round as if I was talking of him, but

  he's a squinting at me now in the full blaze of the coach-lamp,

  quite awful!'

  In spite of his mother's injunction, Kit turned sharply round to

  look. Mr Quilp was serenely gazing at the stars, quite absorbed in

  celestial contemplation.

  'Oh, he's the artfullest creetur!' cried Mrs Nubbles. 'But come

  away. Don't speak to him for the world.'

  'Yes I will, mother. What nonsense. I say, sir--'

  Mr Quilp affected to start, and looked smilingly round.