The Old Curiosity Shop

Chapter 2

After combating, for nearly a week, the feeling which impelled me to
revisit the place I had quitted under the circumstances already
detailed, I yielded to it at length; and determining that this time I
would present myself by the light of day, bent my steps thither early
in the morning.

I walked past the house, and took several turns in the street, with
that kind of hesitation which is natural to a man who is conscious
that the visit he is about to pay is unexpected, and may not be very
acceptable. However, as the door of the shop was shut, and it did not
appear likely that I should be recognized by those within, if I
continued merely to pass up and down before it, I soon conquered
this irresolution, and found myself in the Curiosity Dealer's
warehouse.

The old man and another person were together in the back part, and
there seemed to have been high words between them, for their voices
which were raised to a very high pitch suddenly stopped on my
entering, and the old man advancing hastily towards me, said in a
tremulous tone that he was very glad I had come.

'You interrupted us at a critical moment,' said he, pointing to the
man whom I had found in company with him; 'this fellow will
murder me one of these days. He would have done so, long ago, if
he had dared.'

'Bah! You would swear away my life if you could,' returned the
other, after bestowing a stare and a frown on me; 'we all know that!'

'I almost think I could,' cried the old man, turning feebly upon him.
'If oaths, or prayers, or words, could rid me of you, they should. I
would be quit of you, and would be relieved if you were dead.'

'I know it,' returned the other. 'I said so, didn't I? But neither oaths,
or prayers, nor words, WILL kill me, and therefore I live, and mean
to live.'

'And his mother died!' cried the old man, passionately clasping his
hands and looking upward; 'and this is Heaven's justice!'

The other stood lunging with his foot upon a chair, and regarded him
with a contemptuous sneer. He was a young man of one-and-twenty
or thereabouts; well made, and certainly handsome, though the
expression of his face was far from prepossessing, having in
common with his manner and even his dress, a dissipated, insolent
air which repelled one.

'Justice or no justice,' said the young fellow, 'here I am and here I
shall stop till such time as I think fit to go, unless you send for
assistance to put me out--which you won't do, I know. I tell you
again that I want to see my sister.'

'YOUR sister!' said the old man bitterly.

'Ah! You can't change the relationship,' returned the other. 'If you
could, you'd have done it long ago. I want to see my sister, that you
keep cooped up here, poisoning her mind with your sly secrets and
pretending an affection for her that you may work her to death, and
add a few scraped shillings every week to the money you can hardly
count. I want to see her; and I will.'

'Here's a moralist to talk of poisoned minds! Here's a generous spirit
to scorn scraped-up shillings!' cried the old man, turning from him
to me. 'A profligate, sir, who has forfeited every claim not only
upon those who have the misfortune to be of his blood, but upon
society which knows nothing of him but his misdeeds. A liar too,' he
added, in a lower voice as he drew closer to me, 'who knows how
dear she is to me, and seeks to wound me even there, because there
is a stranger nearby.'

'Strangers are nothing to me, grandfather,' said the young fellow
catching at the word, 'nor I to them, I hope. The best they can do, is
to keep an eye to their business and leave me to mind. There's a
friend of mine waiting outside, and as it seems that I may have to
wait some time, I'll call him in, with your leave.'

Saying this, he stepped to the door, and looking down the street
beckoned several times to some unseen person, who, to judge from
the air of impatience with which these signals were accompanied,
required a great quantity of persuasion to induce him to advance. At
length there sauntered up, on the opposite side of the way--with a
bad pretense of passing by accident--a figure conspicuous for its dirty
smartness, which after a great many frowns and jerks of the head, in
resistence of the invitation, ultimately crossed the road and was
brought into the shop.

'There. It's Dick Swiveller,' said the young fellow, pushing him in.
'Sit down, Swiveller.'

'But is the old min agreeable?' said Mr Swiveller in an undertone.

Mr Swiveller complied, and looking about him with a propritiatory
smile, observed that last week was a fine week for the ducks, and
this week was a fine week for the dust; he also observed that whilst
standing by the post at the street-corner, he had observed a pig with
a straw in his mouth issuing out of the tobacco-shop, from which
appearance he augured that another fine week for the ducks was
approaching, and that rain would certainly ensue. He furthermore
took occasion to apologize for any negligence that might be
perceptible in his dress, on the ground that last night he had had 'the
sun very strong in his eyes'; by which expression he was understood
to convey to his hearers in the most delicate manner possible, the
information that he had been extremely drunk.

'But what,' said Mr Swiveller with a sigh, 'what is the odds so long
as the fire of soul is kindled at the taper of conwiviality, and the
wing of friendship never moults a feather! What is the odds so long
as the spirit is expanded by means of rosy wine, and the present
moment is the least happiest of our existence!'

'You needn't act the chairman here,' said his friend, half aside.

'Fred!' cried Mr Swiveller, tapping his nose, 'a word to the wise is
sufficient for them--we may be good and happy without riches, Fred.
Say not another syllable. I know my cue; smart is the word. Only
one little whisper, Fred--is the old min friendly?'

'Never you mind,' repled his friend.

'Right again, quite right,' said Mr Swiveller, 'caution is the word,
and caution is the act.' with that, he winked as if in preservation of
some deep secret, and folding his arms and leaning back in his chair,
looked up at the ceiling with profound gravity.

It was perhaps not very unreasonable to suspect from what had
already passed, that Mr Swiveller was not quite recovered from the
effects of the powerful sunlight to which he had made allusion; but if
no such suspicion had been awakened by his speech, his wiry hair,
dull eyes, and sallow face would still have been strong witnesses
against him. His attire was not, as he had himself hinted, remarkable
for the nicest arrangement, but was in a state of disorder which
strongly induced the idea that he had gone to bed in it. It consisted of
a brown body-coat with a great many brass buttons up the front and
only one behind, a bright check neckerchief, a plaid waistcoat, soiled
white trousers, and a very limp hat, worn with the wrong side
foremost, to hide a hole in the brim. The breast of his coat was
ornamented with an outside pocket from which there peeped forth the
cleanest end of a very large and very ill-favoured handkerchief; his
dirty wristbands were pulled on as far as possible and ostentatiously
folded back over his cuffs; he displayed no gloves, and carried a
yellow cane having at the top a bone hand with the semblance of a
ring on its little finger and a black ball in its grasp. With all these
personal advantages (to which may be added a strong savour of
tobacco-smoke, and a prevailing greasiness of appearance) Mr
Swiveller leant back in his chair with his eyes fixed on the ceiling,
and occasionally pitching his voice to the needful key, obliged the
company with a few bars of an intensely dismal air, and then, in the
middle of a note, relapsed into his former silence.

The old man sat himself down in a chair, and with folded hands,
looked sometimes at his grandson and sometimes at his strange
companion, as if he were utterly powerless and had no resource but
to leave them to do as they pleased. The young man reclined against
a table at no great distance from his friend, in apparent indifference
to everything that had passed; and I--who felt the difficulty of any
interference, notwithstanding that the old man had appealed to me,
both by words and looks--made the best feint I could of being
occupied in examining some of the goods that were disposed for sale,
and paying very little attention to a person before me.

The silence was not of long duration, for Mr Swiveller, after
favouring us with several melodious assurances that his heart was in
the Highlands, and that he wanted but his Arab steed as a
preliminary to the achievement of great feats of valour and loyalty,
removed his eyes from the ceiling and subsided into prose again.

'Fred,' said Mr Swiveller stopping short, as if the idea had suddenly
occurred to him, and speaking in the same audible whisper as before,
'is the old min friendly?'

'What does it matter?' returned his friend peevishly.

'No, but IS he?' said Dick.

'Yes, of course. What do I care whether he is or not?'

Emboldened as it seemed by this reply to enter into a more general
conversation, Mr Swiveller plainly laid himself out to captivate our
attention.

He began by remarking that soda-water, though a good thing in the
abstract, was apt to lie cold upon the stomach unless qualified with
ginger, or a small infusion of brandy, which latter article he held to
be preferable in all cases, saving for the one consideration of
expense. Nobody venturing to dispute these positions, he proceeded
to observe that the human hair was a great retainer of tobacco-smoke, and
that the young
gentlemen of Westminster and Eton, after
eating vast quantities of apples to conceal any scent of cigars from
their anxious friends, were usually detected in consequence of their
heads possessing this remarkable property; when he concluded that if
the Royal Society would turn their attention to the circumstance, and
endeavour to find in the resources of science a means of preventing
such untoward revelations, they might indeed be looked upon as
benefactors to mankind. These opinions being equally
incontrovertible with those he had already pronounced, he went on to
inform us that Jamaica rum, though unquestionably an agreeable
spirit of great richness and flavour, had the drawback of remaining
constantly present to the taste next day; and nobody being venturous
enough to argue this point either, he increased in confidence and
became yet more companionable and communicative.

'It's a devil of a thing, gentlemen,' said Mr Swiveller, 'when
relations fall out and disagree. If the wing of friendship should never
moult a feather, the wing of relationship should never be clipped, but
be always expanded and serene. Why should a grandson and
grandfather peg away at each other with mutual wiolence when all
might be bliss and concord. Why not jine hands and forgit it?'

'Hold your tongue,' said his friend.

'Sir,' replied Mr Swiveller, 'don't you interrupt the chair.
Gentlemen, how does the case stand, upon the present occasion?
Here is a jolly old grandfather--I say it with the utmost respect--and
here is a wild, young grandson. The jolly old grandfather says to the
wild young grandson, 'I have brought you up and educated you,
Fred; I have put you in the way of getting on in life; you have bolted
a little out of course, as young fellows often do; and you shall never
have another chance, nor the ghost of half a one.' The wild young
grandson makes answer to this and says, 'You're as rich as rich can
be; you have been at no uncommon expense on my account, you're
saving up piles of money for my little sister that lives with you in a
secret, stealthy, hugger-muggering kind of way and with no manner
of enjoyment--why can't you stand a trifle for your grown-up
relation?' The jolly old grandfather unto this, retorts, not only that
he declines to fork out with that cheerful readiness which is always
so agreeable and pleasant in a gentleman of his time of life, but that
he will bow up, and call names, and make reflections whenever they
meet. Then the plain question is, an't it a pity that this state of things
should continue, and how much better would it be for the gentleman
to hand over a reasonable amount of tin, and make it all right and
comfortable?'

Having delivered this oration with a great many waves and flourishes
of the hand, Mr Swiveller abruptly thrust the head of his cane into
his mouth as if to prevent himself from impairing the effect of his
speech by adding one other word.

'Why do you hunt and persecute me, God help me!' said the old man
turning to his grandson. 'Why do you bring your prolifigate
companions here? How often am I to tell you that my life is one of
care and self-denial, and that I am poor?'

'How often am I to tell you,' returned the other, looking coldly at
him, 'that I know better?'

'You have chosen your own path,' said the old man. 'Follow it.
Leave Nell and me to toil and work.'

'Nell will be a woman soon,' returned the other, 'and, bred in your
faith, she'll forget her brother unless he shows himself sometimes.'

'Take care,' said the old man with sparkling eyes, 'that she does not
forget you when you would have her memory keenest. Take care that
the day don't come when you walk barefoot in the streets, and she
rides by in a gay carriage of her own.'

'You mean when she has your money?' retorted the other. 'How like
a poor man he talks!'

'And yet,' said the old man dropping his voice and speaking like one
who thinks aloud, 'how poor we are, and what a life it is! The cause
is a young child's guiltless of all harm or wrong, but nothing goes
well with it! Hope and patience, hope and patience!'

These words were uttered in too low a tone to reach the ears of the
young men. Mr Swiveller appeared to think the they implied some
mental struggle consequent upon the powerful effect of his address,
for he poked his friend with his cane and whispered his conviction
that he had administered 'a clincher,' and that he expected a
commission on the profits. Discovering his mistake after a while, he
appeared to grow rather sleeply and discontented, and had more than
once suggested the proprieity of an immediate departure, when the
door opened, and the child herself appeared.