The Old Curiosity Shop

Chapter 30

At length the play came to an end, and Mr Isaac List rose the only
winner. Mat and the landlord bore their losses with professional
fortitude. Isaac pocketed his gains with the air of a man who had
quite made up his mind to win, all along, and was neither surprised
nor pleased.

Nell's little purse was exhausted; but although it lay empty by his
side, and the other players had now risen from the table, the old
man sat poring over the cards, dealing them as they had been dealt
before, and turning up the different hands to see what each man
would have held if they had still been playing. He was quite
absorbed in this occupation, when the child drew near and laid her
hand upon his shoulder, telling him it was near midnight.

'See the curse of poverty, Nell,' he said, pointing to the packs he
had spread out upon the table. 'If I could have gone on a little
longer, only a little longer, the luck would have turned on my
side. Yes, it's as plain as the marks upon the cards. See here--
and there--and here again.'

'Put them away,' urged the child. 'Try to forget them.'

'Try to forget them!' he rejoined, raising his haggard face to
hers, and regarding her with an incredulous stare. 'To forget
them! How are we ever to grow rich if I forget them?'

The child could only shake her head.

'No, no, Nell,' said the old man, patting her cheek; 'they must not
be forgotten. We must make amends for this as soon as we can.
Patience--patience, and we'll right thee yet, I promise thee.
Lose to-day, win to-morrow. And nothing can be won without anxiety
and care--nothing. Come, I am ready.'

'Do you know what the time is?' said Mr Groves, who was smoking
with his friends. 'Past twelve o'clock--'

'--And a rainy night,' added the stout man.

'The Valiant Soldier, by James Groves. Good beds. Cheap
entertainment for man and beast,' said Mr Groves, quoting his
sign-board. 'Half-past twelve o'clock.'

'It's very late,' said the uneasy child. 'I wish we had gone
before. What will they think of us! It will be two o'clock by the
time we get back. What would it cost, sir, if we stopped here?'

'Two good beds, one-and-sixpence; supper and beer one shilling;
total two shillings and sixpence,' replied the Valiant Soldier.

Now, Nell had still the piece of gold sewn in her dress; and when
she came to consider the lateness of the hour, and the somnolent
habits of Mrs Jarley, and to imagine the state of consternation in
which they would certainly throw that good lady by knocking her up
in the middle of the night--and when she reflected, on the other
hand, that if they remained where they were, and rose early in the
morning, they might get back before she awoke, and could plead the
violence of the storm by which they had been overtaken, as a good
apology for their absence--she decided, after a great deal of
hesitation, to remain. She therefore took her grandfather aside,
and telling him that she had still enough left to defray the cost
of their lodging, proposed that they should stay there for the
night.

'If I had had but that money before--If I had only known of it a
few minutes ago!' muttered the old man.

'We will decide to stop here if you please,' said Nell, turning
hastily to the landlord.

'I think that's prudent,' returned Mr Groves. 'You shall have your
suppers directly.'

Accordingly, when Mr Groves had smoked his pipe out, knocked out
the ashes, and placed it carefully in a corner of the fire-place,
with the bowl downwards, he brought in the bread and cheese, and
beer, with many high encomiums upon their excellence, and bade his
guests fall to, and make themselves at home. Nell and her
grandfather ate sparingly, for both were occupied with their own
reflections; the other gentlemen, for whose constitutions beer was
too weak and tame a liquid, consoled themselves with spirits and
tobacco.

As they would leave the house very early in the morning, the child
was anxious to pay for their entertainment before they retired to
bed. But as she felt the necessity of concealing her
little hoard from her grandfather, and had to change the piece of
gold, she took it secretly from its place of concealment, and
embraced an opportunity of following the landlord when he went out
of the room, and tendered it to him in the little bar.

'Will you give me the change here, if you please?' said the child.

Mr James Groves was evidently surprised, and looked at the money,
and rang it, and looked at the child, and at the money again, as
though he had a mind to inquire how she came by it. The coin being
genuine, however, and changed at his house, he probably felt, like
a wise landlord, that it was no business of his. At any rate, he
counted out the change, and gave it her. The child was returning
to the room where they had passed the evening, when she fancied she
saw a figure just gliding in at the door. There was nothing but a
long dark passage between this door and the place where she had
changed the money, and, being very certain that no person had
passed in or out while she stood there, the thought struck her that
she had been watched.

But by whom? When she re-entered the room, she found its inmates
exactly as she had left them. The stout fellow lay upon two
chairs, resting his head on his hand, and the squinting man reposed
in a similar attitude on the opposite side of the table. Between
them sat her grandfather, looking intently at the winner with a
kind of hungry admiration, and hanging upon his words as if he were
some superior being. She was puzzled for a moment, and looked
round to see if any else were there. No. Then she asked her
grandfather in a whisper whether anybody had left the room while
she was absent. 'No,' he said, 'nobody.'

It must have been her fancy then; and yet it was strange, that,
without anything in her previous thoughts to lead to it, she should
have imagined this figure so very distinctly. She was still
wondering and thinking of it, when a girl came to light her to bed.

The old man took leave of the company at the same time, and they
went up stairs together. It was a great, rambling house, with dull
corridors and wide staircases which the flaring candles seemed to
make more gloomy. She left her grandfather in his chamber, and
followed her guide to another, which was at the end of a passage,
and approached by some half-dozen crazy steps. This was prepared
for her. The girl lingered a little while to talk, and tell her
grievances. She had not a good place, she said; the wages were
low, and the work was hard. She was going to leave it in a
fortnight; the child couldn't recommend her to another, she
supposed? Instead she was afraid another would be difficult to
get after living there, for the house had a very indifferent
character; there was far too much card-playing, and such like.
She was very much mistaken if some of the people who
came there oftenest were quite as honest as they might be, but she
wouldn't have it known that she had said so, for the world. Then
there were some rambling allusions to a rejected sweetheart, who
had threatened to go a soldiering--a final promise of knocking at
the door early in the morning--and 'Good night.'

The child did not feel comfortable when she was left alone. She
could not help thinking of the figure stealing through the passage
down stairs; and what the girl had said did not tend to reassure
her. The men were very ill-looking. They might get their living
by robbing and murdering travellers. Who could tell?

Reasoning herself out of these fears, or losing sight of them for
a little while, there came the anxiety to which the adventures of
the night gave rise. Here was the old passion awakened again in
her grandfather's breast, and to what further distraction it might
tempt him Heaven only knew. What fears their absence might have
occasioned already! Persons might be seeking for them even then.
Would they be forgiven in the morning, or turned adrift again! Oh!
why had they stopped in that strange place? It would have been
better, under any circumstances, to have gone on!

At last, sleep gradually stole upon her--a broken, fitful sleep,
troubled by dreams of falling from high towers, and waking with a
start and in great terror. A deeper slumber followed this--and
then--What! That figure in the room.

A figure was there. Yes, she had drawn up the blind to admit the
light when it should be dawn, and there, between the foot of the
bed and the dark casement, it crouched and slunk along, groping its
way with noiseless hands, and stealing round the bed. She had no
voice to cry for help, no power to move, but lay still, watching
it.

On it came--on, silently and stealthily, to the bed's head. The
breath so near her pillow, that she shrunk back into it, lest those
wandering hands should light upon her face. Back again it stole to
the window--then turned its head towards her.

The dark form was a mere blot upon the lighter darkness of the
room, but she saw the turning of the head, and felt and knew how
the eyes looked and the ears listened. There it remained,
motionless as she. At length, still keeping the face towards her,
it busied its hands in something, and she heard the chink of money.

Then, on it came again, silent and stealthy as before, and
replacing the garments it had taken from the bedside, dropped upon
its hands and knees, and crawled away. How slowly it seemed to
move, now that she could hear but not see it, creeping along the
floor! It reached the door at last, and stood upon its feet. The
steps creaked beneath its noiseless tread, and it was gone.

The first impulse of the child was to fly from the terror of being
by herself in that room--to have somebody by--not to be alone--
and then her power of speech would be restored. With no
consciousness of having moved, she gained the door.

There was the dreadful shadow, pausing at the bottom of the steps.

She could not pass it; she might have done so, perhaps, in the
darkness without being seized, but her blood curdled at the
thought. The figure stood quite still, and so did she; not boldly,
but of necessity; for going back into the room was hardly less
terrible than going on.

The rain beat fast and furiously without, and ran down in plashing
streams from the thatched roof. Some summer insect, with no escape
into the air, flew blindly to and fro, beating its body against the
walls and ceiling, and filling the silent place with murmurs. The
figure moved again. The child involuntarily did the same. Once in
her grandfather's room, she would be safe.

It crept along the passage until it came to the very door she
longed so ardently to reach. The child, in the agony of being so
near, had almost darted forward with the design of bursting into
the room and closing it behind her, when the figure stopped again.

The idea flashed suddenly upon her--what if it entered there, and
had a design upon the old man's life! She turned faint and sick.
It did. It went in. There was a light inside. The figure was now
within the chamber, and she, still dumb--quite dumb, and almost
senseless--stood looking on.

The door was partly open. Not knowing what she meant to do, but
meaning to preserve him or be killed herself, she staggered forward
and looked in.

What sight was that which met her view!

The bed had not been lain on, but was smooth and empty. And at a
table sat the old man himself; the only living creature there; his
white face pinched and sharpened by the greediness which made his
eyes unnaturally bright--counting the money of which his hands had
robbed her.