Chapter 46

The Old Curiosity Shop

by Charles Dickens

It was the poor schoolmaster. No other than the poor
schoolmaster. Scarcely less moved and surprised by the sight of the
child than she had been on recognising him, he stood, for a moment,
silent and confounded by this unexpected apparition, without even the
presence of mind to raise her from the ground.

But, quickly recovering his self-possession, he threw down his
stick and book, and dropping on one knee beside her, endeavoured, by
such simple means as occurred to him, to restore her to herself;
while her grandfather, standing idly by, wrung his hands, and
implored her with many endearing expressions to speak to him, were it
only a word.

'She is quite exhausted,' said the schoolmaster, glancing upward
into his face. 'You have taxed her powers too far, friend.'

'She is perishing of want,' rejoined the old man. 'I never
thought how weak and ill she was, till now.'

Casting a look upon him, half-reproachful and
half-compassionate, the schoolmaster took the child in his arms, and,
bidding the old man gather up her little basket and follow him
directly, bore her away at his utmost speed.

There was a small inn within sight, to which, it would seem, he
had been directing his steps when so unexpectedly overtaken. Towards
this place he hurried with his unconscious burden, and rushing into
the kitchen, and calling upon the company there assembled to make way
for God's sake, deposited it on a chair before the fire.

The company, who rose in confusion on the schoolmaster's
entrance, did as people usually do under such circumstances.
Everybody called for his or her favourite remedy, which nobody
brought; each cried for more air, at the same time carefully
excluding what air there was, by closing round the object of
sympathy; and all wondered why somebody else didn't do what it never
appeared to occur to them might be done by themselves.

The landlady, however, who possessed more readiness and activity
than any of them, and who had withal a quicker perception of the
merits of the case, soon came running in, with a little hot brandy
and water, followed by her servant-girl, carrying vinegar, hartshorn,
smelling-salts, and such other restoratives; which, being duly
administered, recovered the child so far as to enable her to thank
them in a faint voice, and to extend her hand to the poor
schoolmaster, who stood, with an anxious face, hard by. Without
suffering her to speak another word, or so much as to stir a finger
any more, the women straightway carried her off to bed; and, having
covered her up warm, bathed her cold feet, and wrapped them in
flannel, they despatched a messenger for the doctor.

The doctor, who was a red-nosed gentleman with a great bunch of
seals dangling below a waistcoat of ribbed black satin, arrived with
all speed, and taking his seat by the bedside of poor Nell, drew out
his watch, and felt her pulse. Then he looked at her tongue, then he
felt her pulse again, and while he did so, he eyed the half-emptied
wine-glass as if in profound abstraction.

'I should give her,' said the doctor at length, 'a tea-spoonful,
every now and then, of hot brandy and water.'

'Why, that's exactly what we've done, sir!' said the delighted
landlady.

'I should also,' observed the doctor, who had passed the
foot-bath on the stairs, 'I should also,' said the doctor, in the
voice of an oracle, 'put her feet in hot water, and wrap them up in
flannel. I should likewise,' said the doctor with increased
solemnity, 'give her something light for supper--the wing of a
roasted fowl now--'

'Why, goodness gracious me, sir, it's cooking at the kitchen
fire this instant!' cried the landlady. And so indeed it was, for
the schoolmaster had ordered it to be put down, and it was getting on
so well that the doctor might have smelt it if he had tried; perhaps
he did.

'You may then,' said the doctor, rising gravely, 'give her a
glass of hot mulled port wine, if she likes wine--'

'And a toast, Sir?' suggested the landlady. 'Ay,' said the
doctor, in the tone of a man who makes a dignified concession. 'And
a toast--of bread. But be very particular to make it of bread, if
you please, ma'am.'

With which parting injunction, slowly and portentously
delivered, the doctor departed, leaving the whole house in admiration
of that wisdom which tallied so closely with their own. Everybody
said he was a very shrewd doctor indeed, and knew perfectly what
people's constitutions were; which there appears some reason to
suppose he did.

While her supper was preparing, the child fell into a refreshing
sleep, from which they were obliged to rouse her when it was ready.
As she evinced extraordinary uneasiness on learning that her
grandfather was below stairs, and as she was greatly troubled at the
thought of their being apart, he took his supper with her. Finding
her still very restless on this head, they made him up a bed in an
inner room, to which he presently retired. The key of this chamber
happened by good fortune to be on that side of the door which was in
Nell's room; she turned it on him when the landlady had withdrawn,
and crept to bed again with a thankful heart.

The schoolmaster sat for a long time smoking his pipe by the
kitchen fire, which was now deserted, thinking, with a very happy
face, on the fortunate chance which had brought him so opportunely to
the child's assistance, and parrying, as well as in his simple way he
could, the inquisitive cross-examination of the landlady, who had a
great curiosity to be made acquainted with every particular of Nell's
life and history. The poor schoolmaster was so open-hearted, and so
little versed in the most ordinary cunning or deceit, that she could
not have failed to succeed in the first five minutes, but that he
happened to be unacquainted with what she wished to know; and so he
told her. The landlady, by no means satisfied with this assurance,
which she considered an ingenious evasion of the question, rejoined
that he had his reasons of course. Heaven forbid that she should
wish to pry into the affairs of her customers, which indeed were no
business of hers, who had so many of her own. She had merely asked a
civil question, and to be sure she knew it would meet with a civil
answer. She was quite satisfied--quite. She had rather perhaps that
he would have said at once that he didn't choose to be communicative,
because that would have been plain and intelligible. However, she
had no right to be offended of course. He was the best judge, and
had a perfect right to say what he pleased; nobody could dispute that
for a moment. Oh dear, no!

'I assure you, my good lady,' said the mild schoolmaster, 'that
I have told you the plain truth. As I hope to be saved, I have told
you the truth.'

'Why then, I do believe you are in earnest,' rejoined the
landlady, with ready good-humour, 'and I'm very sorry I have teazed
you. But curiosity you know is the curse of our sex, and that's the
fact.' The landlord scratched his head, as if he thought the curse
sometimes involved the other sex likewise; but he was prevented from
making any remark to that effect, if he had it in contemplation to do
so, by the schoolmaster's rejoinder.

'You should question me for half-a-dozen hours at a sitting, and
welcome, and I would answer you patiently for the kindness of heart
you have shown to-night, if I could,' he said. 'As it is, please to
take care of her in the morning, and let me know early how she is;
and to understand that I am paymaster for the three.'

So, parting with them on most friendly terms (not the less
cordial perhaps for this last direction), the schoolmaster went to
his bed, and the host and hostess to theirs.

The report in the morning was, that the child was better, but
was extremely weak, and would at least require a day's rest, and
careful nursing, before she could proceed upon her journey. The
schoolmaster received this communication with perfect cheerfulness,
observing that he had a day to spare--two days for that matter-- and
could very well afford to wait. As the patient was to sit up in the
evening, he appointed to visit her in her room at a certain hour, and
rambling out with his book, did not return until the hour arrived.

Nell could not help weeping when they were left alone; whereat,
and at sight of her pale face and wasted figure, the simple
schoolmaster shed a few tears himself, at the same time showing in
very energetic language how foolish it was to do so, and how very
easily it could be avoided, if one tried.

'It makes me unhappy even in the midst of all this kindness'
said the child, 'to think that we should be a burden upon you. How
can I ever thank you? If I had not met you so far from home, I must
have died, and he would have been left alone.'

'We'll not talk about dying,' said the schoolmaster; 'and as to
burdens, I have made my fortune since you slept at my cottage.'

'Indeed!' cried the child joyfully.

'Oh yes,' returned her friend. 'I have been appointed clerk and
schoolmaster to a village a long way from here--and a long way from
the old one as you may suppose--at five-and-thirty pounds a year.
Five-and-thirty pounds!'

'I am very glad,' said the child, 'so very, very glad.'

'I am on my way there now,' resumed the schoolmaster. 'They
allowed me the stage-coach-hire--outside stage-coach-hire all the
way. Bless you, they grudge me nothing. But as the time at which I
am expected there, left me ample leisure, I determined to walk
instead. How glad I am, to think I did so!'

'How glad should we be!'

'Yes, yes,' said the schoolmaster, moving restlessly in his
chair, 'certainly, that's very true. But you--where are you going,
where are you coming from, what have you been doing since you left
me, what had you been doing before? Now, tell me--do tell me. I
know very little of the world, and perhaps you are better fitted to
advise me in its affairs than I am qualified to give advice to you;
but I am very sincere, and I have a reason (you have not forgotten
it) for loving you. I have felt since that time as if my love for
him who died, had been transferred to you who stood beside his bed.
If this,' he added, looking upwards, 'is the beautiful creation that
springs from ashes, let its peace prosper with me, as I deal tenderly
and compassionately by this young child!'

The plain, frank kindness of the honest schoolmaster, the
affectionate earnestness of his speech and manner, the truth which
was stamped upon his every word and look, gave the child a confidence
in him, which the utmost arts of treachery and dissimulation could
never have awakened in her breast. She told him all--that they had
no friend or relative--that she had fled with the old man, to save
him from a madhouse and all the miseries he dreaded--that she was
flying now, to save him from himself-- and that she sought an asylum
in some remote and primitive place, where the temptation before which
he fell would never enter, and her late sorrows and distresses could
have no place.

The schoolmaster heard her with astonishment. 'This child!'--he
thought--'Has this child heroically persevered under all doubts and
dangers, struggled with poverty and suffering, upheld and sustained
by strong affection and the consciousness of rectitude alone! And
yet the world is full of such heroism. Have I yet to learn that the
hardest and best-borne trials are those which are never chronicled in
any earthly record, and are suffered every day! And should I be
surprised to hear the story of this child!'

What more he thought or said, matters not. It was concluded
that Nell and her grandfather should accompany him to the village
whither he was bound, and that he should endeavour to find them some
humble occupation by which they could subsist. 'We shall be sure to
succeed,' said the schoolmaster, heartily. 'The cause is too good a
one to fail.'

They arranged to proceed upon their journey next evening, as a
stage-waggon, which travelled for some distance on the same road as
they must take, would stop at the inn to change horses, and the
driver for a small gratuity would give Nell a place inside. A
bargain was soon struck when the waggon came; and in due time it
rolled away; with the child comfortably bestowed among the softer
packages, her grandfather and the schoolmaster walking on beside the
driver, and the landlady and all the good folks of the inn screaming
out their good wishes and farewells.

What a soothing, luxurious, drowsy way of travelling, to lie
inside that slowly-moving mountain, listening to the tinkling of the
horses' bells, the occasional smacking of the carter's whip, the
smooth rolling of the great broad wheels, the rattle of the harness,
the cheery good-nights of passing travellers jogging past on little
short-stepped horses--all made pleasantly indistinct by the thick
awning, which seemed made for lazy listening under, till one fell
asleep! The very going to sleep, still with an indistinct idea, as
the head jogged to and fro upon the pillow, of moving onward with no
trouble or fatigue, and hearing all these sounds like dreamy music,
lulling to the senses--and the slow waking up, and finding one's self
staring out through the breezy curtain half-opened in the front, far
up into the cold bright sky with its countless stars, and downward at
the driver's lantern dancing on like its namesake Jack of the swamps
and marshes, and sideways at the dark grim trees, and forward at the
long bare road rising up, up, up, until it stopped abruptly at a
sharp high ridge as if there were no more road, and all beyond was
sky--and the stopping at the inn to bait, and being helped out, and
going into a room with fire and candles, and winking very much, and
being agreeably reminded that the night was cold, and anxious for
very comfort's sake to think it colder than it was!--What a delicious
journey was that journey in the waggon.

Then the going on again--so fresh at first, and shortly
afterwards so sleepy. The waking from a sound nap as the mail came
dashing past like a highway comet, with gleaming lamps and rattling
hoofs, and visions of a guard behind, standing up to keep his feet
warm, and of a gentleman in a fur cap opening his eyes and looking
wild and stupefied--the stopping at the turnpike where the man was
gone to bed, and knocking at the door until he answered with a
smothered shout from under the bed-clothes in the little room above,
where the faint light was burning, and presently came down,
night-capped and shivering, to throw the gate wide open, and wish all
waggons off the road except by day. The cold sharp interval between
night and morning--the distant streak of light widening and
spreading, and turning from grey to white, and from white to yellow,
and from yellow to burning red--the presence of day, with all its
cheerfulness and life--men and horses at the plough--birds in the
trees and hedges, and boys in solitary fields, frightening them away
with rattles. The coming to a town--people busy in the markets;
light carts and chaises round the tavern yard; tradesmen standing at
their doors; men running horses up and down the street for sale; pigs
plunging and grunting in the dirty distance, getting off with long
strings at their legs, running into clean chemists' shops and being
dislodged with brooms by 'prentices; the night coach changing
horses--the passengers cheerless, cold, ugly, and discontented, with
three months' growth of hair in one night--the coachman fresh as from
a band-box, and exquisitely beautiful by contrast:--so much bustle,
so many things in motion, such a variety of incidents--when was there
a journey with so many delights as that journey in the waggon!

Sometimes walking for a mile or two while her grandfather rode
inside, and sometimes even prevailing upon the schoolmaster to take
her place and lie down to rest, Nell travelled on very happily until
they came to a large town, where the waggon stopped, and where they
spent a night. They passed a large church; and in the streets were a
number of old houses, built of a kind of earth or plaster, crossed
and re-crossed in a great many directions with black beams, which
gave them a remarkable and very ancient look. The doors, too, were
arched and low, some with oaken portals and quaint benches, where the
former inhabitants had sat on summer evenings. The windows were
latticed in little diamond panes, that seemed to wink and blink upon
the passengers as if they were dim of sight. They had long since got
clear of the smoke and furnaces, except in one or two solitary
instances, where a factory planted among fields withered the space
about it, like a burning mountain. When they had passed through this
town, they entered again upon the country, and began to draw near
their place of destination.

It was not so near, however, but that they spent another night
upon the road; not that their doing so was quite an act of necessity,
but that the schoolmaster, when they approached within a few miles of
his village, had a fidgety sense of his dignity as the new clerk, and
was unwilling to make his entry in dusty shoes, and travel-disordered
dress. It was a fine, clear, autumn morning, when they came upon the
scene of his promotion, and stopped to contemplate its beauties.

'See--here's the church!' cried the delighted schoolmaster in a
low voice; 'and that old building close beside it, is the school-
house, I'll be sworn. Five-and-thirty pounds a-year in this
beautiful place!'

They admired everything--the old grey porch, the mullioned
windows, the venerable gravestones dotting the green churchyard, the
ancient tower, the very weathercock; the brown thatched roofs of
cottage, barn, and homestead, peeping from among the trees; the
stream that rippled by the distant water-mill; the blue Welsh
mountains far away. It was for such a spot the child had wearied in
the dense, dark, miserable haunts of labour. Upon her bed of ashes,
and amidst the squalid horrors through which they had forced their
way, visions of such scenes--beautiful indeed, but not more beautiful
than this sweet reality--had been always present to her mind. They
had seemed to melt into a dim and airy distance, as the prospect of
ever beholding them again grew fainter; but, as they receded, she had
loved and panted for them more.

'I must leave you somewhere for a few minutes,' said the
schoolmaster, at length breaking the silence into which they had
fallen in their gladness. 'I have a letter to present, and inquiries
to make, you know. Where shall I take you? To the little inn
yonder?'

'Let us wait here,' rejoined Nell. 'The gate is open. We will
sit in the church porch till you come back.'

'A good place too,' said the schoolmaster, leading the way
towards it, disencumbering himself of his portmanteau, and placing it
on the stone seat. 'Be sure that I come back with good news, and am
not long gone!'

So, the happy schoolmaster put on a bran-new pair of gloves
which he had carried in a little parcel in his pocket all the way,
and hurried off, full of ardour and excitement.

The child watched him from the porch until the intervening
foliage hid him from her view, and then stepped softly out into the
old churchyard--so solemn and quiet that every rustle of her dress
upon the fallen leaves, which strewed the path and made her footsteps
noiseless, seemed an invasion of its silence. It was a very aged,
ghostly place; the church had been built many hundreds of years ago,
and had once had a convent or monastery attached; for arches in
ruins, remains of oriel windows, and fragments of blackened walls,
were yet standing-, while other portions of the old building, which
had crumbled away and fallen down, were mingled with the churchyard
earth and overgrown with grass, as if they too claimed a
burying-place and sought to mix their ashes with the dust of men.
Hard by these gravestones of dead years, and forming a part of the
ruin which some pains had been taken to render habitable in modern
times, were two small dwellings with sunken windows and oaken doors,
fast hastening to decay, empty and desolate.

Upon these tenements, the attention of the child became
exclusively riveted. She knew not why. The church, the ruin, the
antiquated graves, had equal claims at least upon a stranger's
thoughts, but from the moment when her eyes first rested on these two
dwellings, she could turn to nothing else. Even when she had made
the circuit of the enclosure, and, returning to the porch, sat
pensively waiting for their friend, she took her station where she
could still look upon them, and felt as if fascinated towards that
spot.