The Old Curiosity Shop

Chapter 16

The sun was setting when they reached the wicket-gate at which the
path began, and, as the rain falls upon the just and unjust alike,
it shed its warm tint even upon the resting-places of the dead, and
bade them be of good hope for its rising on the morrow. The church
was old and grey, with ivy clinging to the walls, and round the
porch. Shunning the tombs, it crept about the mounds, beneath which
slept poor humble men: twining for them the first wreaths they had
ever won, but wreaths less liable to wither and far more lasting in
their kind, than some which were graven deep in stone and marble,
and told in pompous terms of virtues meekly hidden for many a year,
and only revealed at last to executors and mourning legatees.

The clergyman's horse, stumbling with a dull blunt sound among the
graves, was cropping the grass; at once deriving orthodox
consolation from the dead parishioners, and enforcing last Sunday's
text that this was what all flesh came to; a lean ass who had
sought to expound it also, without being qualified and ordained,
was pricking his ears in an empty pound hard by, and looking with
hungry eyes upon his priestly neighbour.

The old man and the child quitted the gravel path, and strayed
among the tombs; for there the ground was soft, and easy to their
tired feet. As they passed behind the church, they heard voices
near at hand, and presently came on those who had spoken.

They were two men who were seated in easy attitudes upon the grass,
and so busily engaged as to be at first unconscious of intruders.
It was not difficult to divine that they were of a class of
itinerant showmen--exhibitors of the freaks of Punch--for,
perched cross-legged upon a tombstone behind them, was a figure of
that hero himself, his nose and chin as hooked and his face as
beaming as usual. Perhaps his imperturbable character was never
more strikingly developed, for he preserved his usual equable smile
notwithstanding that his body was dangling in a most uncomfortable
position, all loose and limp and shapeless, while his long peaked
cap, unequally balanced against his exceedingly slight legs,
threatened every instant to bring him toppling down.

In part scattered upon the ground at the feet of the two men, and
in part jumbled together in a long flat box, were the other persons
of the Drama. The hero's wife and one child, the hobby-horse, the
doctor, the foreign gentleman who not being familiar with the
language is unable in the representation to express his ideas
otherwise than by the utterance of the word 'Shallabalah' three
distinct times, the radical neighbour who will by no means admit
that a tin bell is an organ, the executioner, and the devil, were
all here. Their owners had evidently come to that spot to make some
needful repairs in the stage arrangements, for one of them was
engaged in binding together a small gallows with thread, while the
other was intent upon fixing a new black wig, with the aid of a
small hammer and some tacks, upon the head of the radical
neighbour, who had been beaten bald.

They raised their eyes when the old man and his young companion
were close upon them, and pausing in their work, returned their
looks of curiosity. One of them, the actual exhibitor no doubt, was
a little merry-faced man with a twinkling eye and a red nose, who
seemed to have unconsciously imbibed something of his hero's
character. The other--that was he who took the money--had rather
a careful and cautious look, which was perhaps inseparable from his
occupation also.

The merry man was the first to greet the strangers with a nod; and
following the old man's eyes, he observed that perhaps that was the
first time he had ever seen a Punch off the stage. (Punch, it may
be remarked, seemed to be pointing with the tip of his cap to a
most flourishing epitaph, and to be chuckling over it with all his
heart.)

'Why do you come here to do this?' said the old man, sitting down
beside them, and looking at the figures with extreme delight.

'Why you see,' rejoined the little man, 'we're putting up for
to-night at the public-house yonder, and it wouldn't do to let 'em
see the present company undergoing repair.'

'No!' cried the old man, making signs to Nell to listen, 'why not,
eh? why not?'

'Because it would destroy all the delusion, and take away all the
interest, wouldn't it?' replied the little man. 'Would you care a
ha'penny for the Lord Chancellor if you know'd him in private and
without his wig?---certainly not.'

'Good!' said the old man, venturing to touch one of the puppets,
and drawing away his hand with a shrill laugh. 'Are you going to
show 'em to-night? are you?'

'That is the intention, governor,' replied the other, 'and unless
I'm much mistaken, Tommy Codlin is a calculating at this minute
what we've lost through your coming upon us. Cheer up, Tommy, it
can't be much.'

The little man accompanied these latter words with a wink,
expressive of the estimate he had formed of the travellers'
finances.

To this Mr Codlin, who had a surly, grumbling manner, replied, as
he twitched Punch off the tombstone and flung him into the box,
'I don't care if we haven't lost a farden, but you're too free. If
you stood in front of the curtain and see the public's faces as I
do, you'd know human natur' better.'

'Ah! it's been the spoiling of you, Tommy, your taking to that
branch,' rejoined his companion. 'When you played the ghost in the
reg'lar drama in the fairs, you believed in everything--except
ghosts. But now you're a universal mistruster. I never see a man so
changed.'

'Never mind,' said Mr Codlin, with the air of a discontented
philosopher. 'I know better now, and p'raps I'm sorry for it.'

Turning over the figures in the box like one who knew and despised
them, Mr Codlin drew one forth and held it up for the inspection of
his friend:

'Look here; here's all this judy's clothes falling to pieces again.
You haven't got a needle and thread I suppose?'

The little man shook his head, and scratched it ruefully as he
contemplated this severe indisposition of a principal performer.
Seeing that they were at a loss, the child said timidly:

'I have a needle, Sir, in my basket, and thread too. Will you let
me try to mend it for you? I think I could do it neater than you
could.'

Even Mr Codlin had nothing to urge against a proposal so
seasonable. Nelly, kneeling down beside the box, was soon busily
engaged in her task, and accomplishing it to a miracle.

While she was thus engaged, the merry little man looked at her with
an interest which did not appear to be diminished when he glanced
at her helpless companion. When she had finished her work he
thanked her, and inquired whither they were travelling.

'N--no further to-night, I think,' said the child, looking towards
her grandfather.

'If you're wanting a place to stop at,' the man remarked, 'I should
advise you to take up at the same house with us. That's it. The
long, low, white house there. It's very cheap.'

The old man, notwithstanding his fatigue, would have remained in
the churchyard all night if his new acquaintances had remained
there too. As he yielded to this suggestion a ready and rapturous
assent, they all rose and walked away together; he keeping close to
the box of puppets in which he was quite absorbed, the merry little
man carrying it slung over his arm by a strap attached to it for
the purpose, Nelly having hold of her grandfather's hand, and Mr
Codlin sauntering slowly behind, casting up at the church tower and
neighbouring trees such looks as he was accustomed in town-practice
to direct to drawing-room and nursery windows, when seeking for a
profitable spot on which to plant the show.

The public-house was kept by a fat old landlord and landlady who
made no objection to receiving their new guests, but praised
Nelly's beauty and were at once prepossessed in her behalf. There
was no other company in the kitchen but the two showmen, and the
child felt very thankful that they had fallen upon such good
quarters. The landlady was very much astonished to learn that they
had come all the way from London, and appeared to have no little
curiosity touching their farther destination. The child parried her
inquiries as well as she could, and with no great trouble, for
finding that they appeared to give her pain, the old lady desisted.

'These two gentlemen have ordered supper in an hour's time,' she
said, taking her into the bar; 'and your best plan will be to sup
with them. Meanwhile you shall have a little taste of something
that'll do you good, for I'm sure you must want it after all you've
gone through to-day. Now, don't look after the old gentleman,
because when you've drank that, he shall have some too.'

As nothing could induce the child to leave him alone, however, or
to touch anything in which he was not the first and greatest
sharer, the old lady was obliged to help him first. When they had
been thus refreshed, the whole house hurried away into an empty
stable where the show stood, and where, by the light of a few
flaring candles stuck round a hoop which hung by a line from the
ceiling, it was to be forthwith exhibited.

And now Mr Thomas Codlin, the misanthrope, after blowing away at
the Pan's pipes until he was intensely wretched, took his station
on one side of the checked drapery which concealed the mover of the
figures, and putting his hands in his pockets prepared to reply to
all questions and remarks of Punch, and to make a dismal feint of
being his most intimate private friend, of believing in him to the
fullest and most unlimited extent, of knowing that he enjoyed day
and night a merry and glorious existence in that temple, and that
he was at all times and under every circumstance the same
intelligent and joyful person that the spectators then beheld him.
All this Mr Codlin did with the air of a man who had made up his
mind for the worst and was quite resigned; his eye slowly wandering
about during the briskest repartee to observe the effect upon the
audience, and particularly the impression made upon the landlord
and landlady, which might be productive of very important results
in connexion with the supper.

Upon this head, however, he had no cause for any anxiety, for the
whole performance was applauded to the echo, and voluntary
contributions were showered in with a liberality which testified
yet more strongly to the general delight. Among the laughter none
was more loud and frequent than the old man's. Nell's was unheard,
for she, poor child, with her head drooping on his shoulder, had
fallen asleep, and slept too soundly to be roused by any of his
efforts to awaken her to a participation in his glee.

The supper was very good, but she was too tired to eat, and yet
would not leave the old man until she had kissed him in his bed.
He, happily insensible to every care and anxiety, sat listening
with a vacant smile and admiring face to all that his new friend
said; and it was not until they retired yawning to their room, that
he followed the child up stairs.

It was but a loft partitioned into two compartments, where they
were to rest, but they were well pleased with their lodging and had
hoped for none so good. The old man was uneasy when he had lain
down, and begged that Nell would come and sit at his bedside as she
had done for so many nights. She hastened to him, and sat there
till he slept.

There was a little window, hardly more than a chink in the wall, in
her room, and when she left him, she opened it, quite wondering at
the silence. The sight of the old church, and the graves about it
in the moonlight, and the dark trees whispering among themselves,
made her more thoughtful than before. She closed the window again,
and sitting down upon the bed, thought of the life that was before them.

She had a little money, but it was very little, and when that was
gone, they must begin to beg. There was one piece of gold among it,
and an emergency might come when its worth to them would be
increased a hundred fold. It would be best to hide this coin, and
never produce it unless their case was absolutely desperate, and no
other resource was left them.

Her resolution taken, she sewed the piece of gold into her dress,
and going to bed with a lighter heart sunk into a deep slumber.