Chapter 47

The Old Curiosity Shop

by Charles Dickens

Kit's mother and the single gentleman--upon whose track it is
expedient to follow with hurried steps, lest this history should be
chargeable with inconstancy, and the offence of leaving its
characters in situations of uncertainty and doubt--Kit's mother and
the single gentleman, speeding onward in the post-chaise- and-four
whose departure from the Notary's door we have already witnessed,
soon left the town behind them, and struck fire from the flints of
the broad highway.

The good woman, being not a little embarrassed by the novelty of
her situation, and certain material apprehensions that perhaps by
this time little Jacob, or the baby, or both, had fallen into the
fire, or tumbled down stairs, or had been squeezed behind doors, or
had scalded their windpipes in endeavouring to allay their thirst at
the spouts of tea-kettles, preserved an uneasy silence; and meeting
from the window the eyes of turnpike-men, omnibus-drivers, and
others, felt in the new dignity of her position like a mourner at a
funeral, who, not being greatly afflicted by the loss of the
departed, recognizes his every-day acquaintance from the window of
the mourning coach, but is constrained to preserve a decent
solemnity, and the appearance of being indifferent to all external
objects.

To have been indifferent to the companionship of the single
gentleman would have been tantamount to being gifted with nerves of
steel. Never did chaise inclose, or horses draw, such a restless
gentleman as he. He never sat in the same position for two minutes
together, but was perpetually tossing his arms and legs about,
pulling up the sashes and letting them violently down, or thrusting
his head out of one window to draw it in again and thrust it out of
another. He carried in his pocket, too, a fire-box of mysterious and
unknown construction; and as sure as ever Kit's mother closed her
eyes, so surely--whisk, rattle, fizz--there was the single gentleman
consulting his watch by a flame of fire, and letting the sparks fall
down among the straw as if there were no such thing as a possibility
of himself and Kit's mother being roasted alive before the boys could
stop their horses. Whenever they halted to change, there he was--out
of the carriage without letting down the steps, bursting about the
inn-yard like a lighted cracker, pulling out his watch by lamp-light
and forgetting to look at it before he put it up again, and in short
committing so many extravagances that Kit's mother was quite afraid
of him. Then, when the horses were to, in he came like a Harlequin,
and before they had gone a mile, out came the watch and the fire-box
together, and Kit's mother as wide awake again, with no hope of a
wink of sleep for that stage.

'Are you comfortable?' the single gentleman would say after one
of these exploits, turning sharply round.

'Quite, Sir, thank you.'

'Are you sure? An't you cold?'

'It is a little chilly, Sir,' Kit's mother would reply.

'I knew it!' cried the single gentleman, letting down one of the
front glasses. 'She wants some brandy and water! Of course she
does. How could I forget it? Hallo! Stop at the next inn, and call
out for a glass of hot brandy and water.'

It was in vain for Kit's mother to protest that she stood in
need of nothing of the kind. The single gentleman was inexorable;
and whenever he had exhausted all other modes and fashions of
restlessness, it invariably occurred to him that Kit's mother wanted
brandy and water.

In this way they travelled on until near midnight, when they
stopped to supper, for which meal the single gentleman ordered
everything eatable that the house contained; and because Kit's mother
didn't eat everything at once, and eat it all, he took it into his
head that she must be ill.

'You're faint,' said the single gentleman, who did nothing
himself but walk about the room. 'I see what's the matter with you,
ma'am. You're faint.'

'Thank you, sir, I'm not indeed.'

'I know you are. I'm sure of it. I drag this poor woman from
the bosom of her family at a minute's notice, and she goes on getting
fainter and fainter before my eyes. I'm a pretty fellow! How many
children have you got, ma'am?'

'Two, sir, besides Kit.'

'Boys, ma'am?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Are they christened?'

'Only half baptised as yet, sir.'

'I'm godfather to both of 'em. Remember that, if you please,
ma'am. You had better have some mulled wine.'

'I couldn't touch a drop indeed, sir.'

'You must,' said the single gentleman. 'I see you want it. I
ought to have thought of it before.'

Immediately flying to the bell, and calling for mulled wine as
impetuously as if it had been wanted for instant use in the recovery
of some person apparently drowned, the single gentleman made Kit's
mother swallow a bumper of it at such a high temperature that the
tears ran down her face, and then hustled her off to the chaise
again, where--not impossibly from the effects of this agreeable
sedative--she soon became insensible to his restlessness, and fell
fast asleep. Nor were the happy effects of this prescription of a
transitory nature, as, notwithstanding that the distance was greater,
and the journey longer, than the single gentleman had anticipated,
she did not awake until it was broad day, and they were clattering
over the pavement of a town.

'This is the place!' cried her companion, letting down all the
glasses. 'Drive to the wax-work!'

The boy on the wheeler touched his hat, and setting spurs to his
horse, to the end that they might go in brilliantly, all four broke
into a smart canter, and dashed through the streets with a noise that
brought the good folks wondering to their doors and windows, and
drowned the sober voices of the town-clocks as they chimed out
half-past eight. They drove up to a door round which a crowd of
persons were collected, and there stopped.

'What's this?' said the single gentleman thrusting out his head.
'Is anything the matter here?'

'A wedding Sir, a wedding!' cried several voices. 'Hurrah!'

The single gentleman, rather bewildered by finding himself the
centre of this noisy throng, alighted with the assistance of one of
the postilions, and handed out Kit's mother, at sight of whom the
populace cried out, 'Here's another wedding!' and roared and leaped
for joy.

'The world has gone mad, I think,' said the single gentleman,
pressing through the concourse with his supposed bride. 'Stand back
here, will you, and let me knock.'

Anything that makes a noise is satisfactory to a crowd. A score
of dirty hands were raised directly to knock for him, and seldom has
a knocker of equal powers been made to produce more deafening sounds
than this particular engine on the occasion in question. Having
rendered these voluntary services, the throng modestly retired a
little, preferring that the single gentleman should bear their
consequences alone.

'Now, sir, what do you want!' said a man with a large white bow
at his button-hole, opening the door, and confronting him with a very
stoical aspect.

'Who has been married here, my friend?' said the single
gentleman.

'I have.'

'You! and to whom in the devil's name?'

'What right have you to ask?' returned the bridegroom, eyeing
him from top to toe.

'What right!' cried the single gentleman, drawing the arm of
Kit's mother more tightly through his own, for that good woman
evidently had it in contemplation to run away. 'A right you little
dream of. Mind, good people, if this fellow has been marrying a
minor--tut, tut, that can't be. Where is the child you have here, my
good fellow. You call her Nell. Where is she?'

As he propounded this question, which Kit's mother echoed,
somebody in a room near at hand, uttered a great shriek, and a stout
lady in a white dress came running to the door, and supported herself
upon the bridegroom's arm.

'Where is she!' cried this lady. 'What news have you brought
me? What has become of her?'

The single gentleman started back, and gazed upon the face of
the late Mrs Jarley (that morning wedded to the philosophic George,
to the eternal wrath and despair of Mr Slum the poet), with looks of
conflicting apprehension, disappointment, and incredulity. At length
he stammered out,

'I ask you where she is? What do you mean?'

'Oh sir!' cried the bride, 'If you have come here to do her any
good, why weren't you here a week ago?'

'She is not--not dead?' said the person to whom she addressed
herself, turning very pale.

'No, not so bad as that.'

'I thank God!' cried the single gentleman feebly. 'Let me come
in.'

They drew back to admit him, and when he had entered, closed the
door.

'You see in me, good people,' he said, turning to the newly-
married couple, 'one to whom life itself is not dearer than the two
persons whom I seek. They would not know me. My features are
strange to them, but if they or either of them are here, take this
good woman with you, and let them see her first, for her they both
know. If you deny them from any mistaken regard or fear for them,
judge of my intentions by their recognition of this person as their
old humble friend.'

'I always said it!' cried the bride, 'I knew she was not a
common child! Alas, sir! we have no power to help you, for all that
we could do, has been tried in vain.'

With that, they related to him, without disguise or concealment,
all that they knew of Nell and her grandfather, from their first
meeting with them, down to the time of their sudden disappearance;
adding (which was quite true) that they had made every possible
effort to trace them, but without success; having been at first in
great alarm for their safety, as well as on account of the suspicions
to which they themselves might one day be exposed in consequence of
their abrupt departure. They dwelt upon the old man's imbecility of
mind, upon the uneasiness the child had always testified when he was
absent, upon the company he had been supposed to keep, and upon the
increased depression which had gradually crept over her and changed
her both in health and spirits. Whether she had missed the old man
in the night, and knowing or conjecturing whither he had bent his
steps, had gone in pursuit, or whether they had left the house
together, they had no means of determining. Certain they considered
it, that there was but slender prospect left of hearing of them
again, and that whether their flight originated with the old man, or
with the child, there was now no hope of their return. To all this,
the single gentleman listened with the air of a man quite borne down
by grief and disappointment. He shed tears when they spoke of the
grandfather, and appeared in deep affliction.

Not to protract this portion of our narrative, and to make short
work of a long story, let it be briefly written that before the
interview came to a close, the single gentleman deemed he had
sufficient evidence of having been told the truth, and that he
endeavoured to force upon the bride and bridegroom an acknowledgment
of their kindness to the unfriended child, which, however, they
steadily declined accepting. In the end, the happy couple jolted
away in the caravan to spend their honeymoon in a country excursion;
and the single gentleman and Kit's mother stood ruefully before their
carriage-door.

'Where shall we drive you, sir?' said the post-boy.

'You may drive me,' said the single gentleman, 'to the--' He was
not going to add 'inn,' but he added it for the sake of Kit's mother;
and to the inn they went.

Rumours had already got abroad that the little girl who used to
show the wax-work, was the child of great people who had been stolen
from her parents in infancy, and had only just been traced. Opinion
was divided whether she was the daughter of a prince, a duke, an
earl, a viscount, or a baron, but all agreed upon the main fact, and
that the single gentleman was her father; and all bent forward to
catch a glimpse, though it were only of the tip of his noble nose, as
he rode away, desponding, in his four-horse chaise.

What would he have given to know, and what sorrow would have
been saved if he had only known, that at that moment both child and
grandfather were seated in the old church porch, patiently awaiting
the schoolmaster's return!