The Old Curiosity Shop

Chapter 7

'Fred,' said Mr Swiveller, 'remember the once popular melody of
Begone dull care; fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of
friendship; and pass the rosy wine.'

Mr Richard Swiveller's apartments were in the neighbourhood of
Drury Lane, and in addition to this convenience of situation had the
advantage of being over a tobacconist's shop, so that he was enabled
to procure a refreshing sneeze at any time by merely stepping out
upon the staircase, and was saved the trouble and expense of
maintaining a snuff-box. It was in these apartments that Mr Swiveller
made use of the expressions above recorded for the consolation and
encouragement of his desponding friend; and it may not be
uninteresting or improper to remark that even these brief
observations partook in a double sense of the figurative and poetical
character of Mr Swiveller's mind, as the rosy wine was in fact
represented by one glass of cold gin-and-water, which was
replenished as occasion required from a bottle and jug upon the
table, and was passed from one to another, in a scarcity of tumblers
which, as Mr Swiveller's was a bachelor's establishment, may be
acknowledged without a blush. By a like pleasant fiction his single
chamber was always mentioned in a plural number. In its disengaged
times, the tobacconist had announced it in his window as
'apartments' for a single gentleman, and Mr Swiveller, following up
the hint, never failed to speak of it as his rooms, his lodgings, or his
chambers, conveying to his hearers a notion of indefinite space, and
leaving their imaginations to wander through long suites of lofty
halls, at pleasure.

In this flight of fancy, Mr Swiveller was assisted by a deceptive
piece of furniture, in reality a bedstead, but in semblance a bookcase,
which occupied a prominent situation in his chamber and seemed to
defy suspicion and challenge inquiry. There is no doubt that by day
Mr Swiveller firmly believed this secret convenience to be a
bookcase and nothing more; that he closed his eyes to the bed,
resolutely denied the existence of the blankets, and spurned the
bolster from his thoughts. No word of its real use, no hint of its
nightly service, no allusion to its peculiar properties, had ever passed
between him and his most intimate friends. Implicit faith in the
deception was the first article of his creed. To be the friend of
Swiveller you must reject all circumstantial evidence, all reason,
observation, and experience, and repose a blind belief in the
bookcase. It was his pet weakness, and he cherished it.

'Fred!' said Mr Swiveller, finding that his former adjuration had
been productive of no effect. 'Pass the rosy.'

Young Trent with an impatient gesture pushed the glass towards him,
and fell again in the the moddy attitude from which he had been
unwillingly roused.

'I'll give you, Fred,' said his friend, stirring the mixture, 'a little
sentiment appropriate to the occasion. Here's May the ---'

'Pshaw!' interposed the other. 'You worry me to death with your
chattering. You can be merry under any circumstances.'

'Why, Mr Trent,' returned Dick, 'there is a proverb which talks
about being merry and wise. There are some people who can be
merry and can't be wise, and some who can be wise (or think they
can) and can't be merry. I'm one of the first sort. If the proverb's a
good 'un, I supose it's better to keep to half of it than none; at all
events, I'd rather be merry and not wise, than like you, neither one
nor t'other.'

'Bah!' muttered his friend, peevishly.

'With all my heart,' said Mr Swiveller. 'In the polite circles I believe
this sort of thing isn't usually said to a gentleman in his own
apartments, but never mind that. Make yourself at home,' adding to
this retort an observation to the effect that his friend appeared to be
rather 'cranky' in point of temper, Richards Swiveller finished the
rosy and applied himself to the composition of another glassful, in
which, after tasting it with great relish, he proposed a toast to an
imaginary company.

'Gentlemen, I'll give you, if you please, Success to the ancient
family of the Swivellers, and good luck to Mr Richard in particular--Mr
Richard, gentlemen,'
said Dick with great emphasis, 'who spends
all his money on his friends and is Bah!'d for his pains. Hear, hear!'

'Dick!' said the other, returning to his seat after having paced the
room twice or thrice, 'will you talk seriously for two minutes, if I
show you a way to make your fortune with very little trouble?'

'You've shown me so many,' returned Dick; 'and nothing has come
of any one of 'em but empty pockets ---'

'You'll tell a different story of this one, before a very long time is
over,' said his companion, drawing his chair to the table. 'You saw
my sister Nell?'

'What about her?' returned Dick.

'She has a pretty face, has she not?'

'Why, certainly,' replied Dick. 'I must say for her that there's not
any very strong family likeness between her and you.'

'Has she a pretty face,' repeated his friend impatiently.

'Yes,' said Dick, 'she has a pretty face, a very pretty face. What of
that?'

'I'll tell you,' returned his friend. 'It's very plain that the old man
and I will remain at daggers drawn to the end of our lives, and that I
have nothing to expect from him. You see that, I suppose?'

'A bat might see that, with the sun shining,' said Dick.

'It's equally plain that the money which the old flint--rot him--first
taught me to expect that I should share with her at his death, will all
be hers, is it not?'

'I should said it was,' replied Dick; 'unless the way in which I put
the case to him, made an impression. It may have done so. It was
powerful, Fred. 'Here is a jolly old grandfather'--that was strong, I
thought--very friendly and natural. Did it strike you in that way?'

It didn't strike him,' returned the other, 'so we needn't discuss it.
Now look here. Nell is nearly fourteen.'

'Fine girl of her age, but small,' observed Richard Swiveller
parenthetically.

'If I am to go on, be quiet for one minute,' returned Trent, fretting at
the slight interest the other appeared to take in the conversation.
'Now I'm coming to the point.'

'That's right,' said Dick.

'The girl has strong affections, and brought up as she has been, may,
at her age, be easily influenced and persuaded. If I take her in hand,
I will be bound by a very little coaxing and threatening to bend her
to my will. Not to beat about the bush (for the advantages of the
scheme would take a week to tell) what's to prevent your marrying
her?'

Richard Swiveller, who had been looking over the rim of the tumbler
while his companion addressed the foregoing remarks to him with
great energy and earnestness of manner, no sooner heard these words
than he evinced the utmost consternation, and with difficulty
ejaculated the monosyllable:

'What!'

'I say, what's to prevent,' repeated the other with a steadiness of
manner, of the effect of which upon his companion he was well
assured by long experience, 'what's to prevent your marrying her?'

'And she 'nearly fourteen'!' cried Dick.

'I don't mean marrying her now'--returned the brother angrily; 'say
in two year's time, in three, in four. Does the old man look like a
long-liver?'

'He don't look like it,' said Dick shaking his head, 'but these old
people--there's no trusting them, Fred. There's an aunt of mind
down in Dorsetshire that was going to die when I was eight years
old, and hasn't kept her word yet. They're so aggravating, so
unprincipled, so spiteful--unless there's apoplexy in the family, Fred,
you can't calculate upon 'em, and even then they deceive you just as
often as not.'

'Look at the worst side of the question then,' said Trent as steadily
as before, and keeping his eyes upon his friend. 'Suppose he lives.'

'To be sure,' said Dick. 'There's the rub.'

'I say,' resumed his friend, 'suppose he lives, and I persuaded, or if
the word sounds more feasible, forced Nell to a secret marriage with
you. What do you think would come of that?'

'A family and an annual income of nothing, to keep 'em on,' said
Richard Swiveller after some reflection.

'I tell you,' returned the other with an increased earnestness, which,
whether it were real or assumed, had the same effect on his
companion, 'that he lives for her, that his whole energies and
thoughts are bound up in her, that he would no more disinherit her
for an act of disobedience than he would take me into his favour
again for any act of obedience or virtue that I could possibly be
guilty of. He could not do it. You or any other man with eyes in his
head may see that, if he chooses.'

'It seems improbable certainly,' said Dick, musing.

'It seems improbable because it is improbable,' his friend returned.
'If you would furnish him with an additional inducement to forgive
you, let there be an irreconcilable breach, a most deadly quarrel,
between you and me--let there be a pretense of such a thing, I mean,
of course--and he'll do fast enough. As to Nell, constant dropping
will wear away a stone; you know you may trust to me as far as she
is concerned. So, whether he lives or dies, what does it come to?
That you become the sole inheritor of the wealth of this rich old
hunks, that you and I spend it together, and that you get into the
bargain a beautiful young wife.'

'I suppose there's no doubt about his being rich'--said Dick.

'Doubt! Did you hear what he left fall the other day when we were
there? Doubt! What will you doubt next, Dick?'

It would be tedious to pursue the conversation through all its artful
windings, or to develope the gradual approaches by which the heart
of Richard Swiveller was gained. It is sufficient to know that vanity,
interest, poverty, and every spendthrift consideration urged him to
look upon the proposal with favour, and that where all other
inducements were wanting, the habitual carelessness of his
disposition stepped in and still weighed down the scale on the same
side. To these impulses must be added the complete ascendancy
which his friend had long been accustomed to exercise over him--an
ascendancy exerted in the beginning sorely at the expense of his
friend's vices, and was in nine cases out of ten looked upon as his
designing tempter when he was indeed nothing but his thoughtless,
light-headed tool.

The motives on the other side were something deeper than any which
Richard Swiveller entertained or understood, but these being left to
their own development, require no present elucidation. the
negotiation was concluded very pleasantly, and Mr Swiveller was in
the act of stating in flowery terms that he had no insurmountable
objection to marrying anybody plentifully endowed with money or
moveables, who could be induced to take him, when he was
interrupted in his observations by a knock at the door, and the
consequent necessity of crying 'Come in.'

The door was opened, but nothing came in except a soapy arm and a
strong gush of tobacco. The gush of tobacco came from the shop
downstairs, and the soapy arm proceeded from the body of a servant-girl,
who being then and
there engaged in cleaning the stars had just
drawn it out of a warm pail to take in a letter, which letter she now
held in her hand, proclaiming aloud with that quick perception of
surnames peculiar to her class that it was for Mister Snivelling.

Dick looked rather pale and foolish when he glanced at the direction,
and still more so when he came to look at the inside, observing that
it was one of the inconveniences of being a lady's man, and that it
was very easy to talk as they had been talking, but he had quite
forgotten her.

'Her. Who?' demanded Trent.

'Sophy Wackles,' said Dick.

'Who's she?'

'She's all my fancy painted her, sir, that's what she is,' said Mr
Swiveller, taking a long pull at 'the rosy' and looking gravely at his
friend. 'She's lovely, she's divine. You know her.'

'I remember,' said his companion carelessly. 'What of her?'

'Why, sir,' returned Dick, 'between Miss Sophia Wackles and the
humble individual who has now the honor to address you, warm and
tender sentiments have been engendered, sentiments of the most
honourable and inspiring kind. The Goddess Diana, sir, that calls
aloud for the chase, is not more particular in her behavior than
Sophia Wackles; I can tell you that.'

'Am I to believe there's anything real in what you say?' demanded
his friend; 'you don't mean to say that any love-making has been
going on?'

'Love-making, yes. Promising, no,' said Dick. 'There can be no
action for breach, that's one comfort. I've never committed myself in
writing, Fred.'

'And what's in the letter, pray?'

'A reminder, Fred, for to-night--a small party of twenty, making two
hundred light fantastic toes in all, supposing every lady and
gentleman to have the proper complement. It must go, if it's only to
begin breaking off the affair--I'll do it, don't you be afraid. I should
like to know whether she left this herself. If she did, unconscious of
any bar to her happiness, it's affecting, Fred.'

To solve this question, Mr Swiveller summoned the handmaid and
ascertained that Miss Sophy Wackles had indeed left the letter with
her own hands; and that she had come accompanied, for decorum's
sake no doubt, by a younger Miss Wackles; and that on learning that
Mr Swiveller was at home and being requested to walk upstairs, she
was extremely shocked and professed that she would rather die. Mr
Swiveller heard this account with a degree of admiration not
altogether consistent with the project in which he had just concurred,
but his friend attached very little importance to his behavior in this
respect, probably because he knew that he had influence sufficient to
control Richard Swiveller's proceedings in this or any other matter,
whenever he deemed it necessary, for the advancement of his own
purposes, to exert it.