Chapter 2

The Old Curiosity Shop

by Charles Dickens

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.