Chapter 62.

The Old Curiosity Shop

by Charles Dickens

A faint light, twinkling from the window of the counting-house on
Quilp's wharf, and looking inflamed and red through the night-fog, as
though it suffered from it like an eye, forewarned Mr Sampson Brass,
as he approached the wooden cabin with a cautious step, that the
excellent proprietor, his esteemed client, was inside, and probably
waiting with his accustomed patience and sweetness of temper the
fulfilment of the appointment which now brought Mr Brass within his
fair domain.

'A treacherous place to pick one's steps in, of a dark night,'
muttered Sampson, as he stumbled for the twentieth time over some
stray lumber, and limped in pain. 'I believe that boy strews the
ground differently every day, on purpose to bruise and maim one;
unless his master does it with his own hands, which is more than
likely. I hate to come to this place without Sally. She's more
protection than a dozen men.'

As he paid this compliment to the merit of the absent charmer,
Mr Brass came to a halt; looking doubtfully towards the light, and
over his shoulder.

'What's he about, I wonder?' murmured the lawyer, standing on
tiptoe, and endeavouring to obtain a glimpse of what was passing
inside, which at that distance was impossible--'drinking, I
suppose,--making himself more fiery and furious, and heating his
malice and mischievousness till they boil. I'm always afraid to come
here by myself, when his account's a pretty large one. I don't
believe he'd mind throttling me, and dropping me softly into the
river when the tide was at its strongest, any more than he'd mind
killing a rat--indeed I don't know whether he wouldn't consider it a
pleasant joke. Hark! Now he's singing!'

Mr Quilp was certainly entertaining himself with vocal exercise,
but it was rather a kind of chant than a song; being a monotonous
repetition of one sentence in a very rapid manner, with a long stress
upon the last word, which he swelled into a dismal roar. Nor did the
burden of this performance bear any reference to love, or war, or
wine, or loyalty, or any other, the standard topics of song, but to a
subject not often set to music or generally known in ballads; the
words being these:--'The worthy magistrate, after remarking that the
prisoner would find some difficulty in persuading a jury to believe
his tale, committed him to take his trial at the approaching
sessions; and directed the customary recognisances to be entered into
for the pros-e-cu-tion.'

Every time he came to this concluding word, and had exhausted
all possible stress upon it, Quilp burst into a shriek of laughter,
and began again.

'He's dreadfully imprudent,' muttered Brass, after he had
listened to two or three repetitions of the chant. 'Horribly
imprudent. I wish he was dumb. I wish he was deaf. I wish he was
blind. Hang him,' cried Brass, as the chant began again. 'I wish he
was dead!'

Giving utterance to these friendly aspirations in behalf of his
client, Mr Sampson composed his face into its usual state of
smoothness, and waiting until the shriek came again and was dying
away, went up to the wooden house, and knocked at the door.

'Come in!' cried the dwarf.

'How do you do to-night sir?' said Sampson, peeping in. 'Ha ha
ha! How do you do sir? Oh dear me, how very whimsical! Amazingly
whimsical to be sure!'

'Come in, you fool!' returned the dwarf, 'and don't stand there
shaking your head and showing your teeth. Come in, you false
witness, you perjurer, you suborner of evidence, come in!'

'He has the richest humour!' cried Brass, shutting the door
behind him; 'the most amazing vein of comicality! But isn't it
rather injudicious, sir--?'

'What?' demanded Quilp. 'What, Judas?'

'Judas!' cried Brass. 'He has such extraordinary spirits! His
humour is so extremely playful! Judas! Oh yes--dear me, how very
good! Ha ha ha!' All this time, Sampson was rubbing his hands, and
staring, with ludicrous surprise and dismay, at a great, goggle-eyed,
blunt-nosed figure-head of some old ship, which was reared up against
the wall in a corner near the stove, looking like a goblin or hideous
idol whom the dwarf worshipped. A mass of timber on its head, carved
into the dim and distant semblance of a cocked hat, together with a
representation of a star on the left breast and epaulettes on the
shoulders, denoted that it was intended for the effigy of some famous
admiral; but, without those helps, any observer might have supposed
it the authentic portrait of a distinguished merman, or great
sea-monster. Being originally much too large for the apartment which
it was now employed to decorate, it had been sawn short off at the
waist. Even in this state it reached from floor to ceiling; and
thrusting itself forward, with that excessively wide-awake aspect,
and air of somewhat obtrusive politeness, by which figure-heads are
usually characterised, seemed to reduce everything else to mere pigmy
proportions.

'Do you know it?' said the dwarf, watching Sampson's eyes. 'Do
you see the likeness?'

'Eh?' said Brass, holding his head on one side, and throwing it
a little back, as connoisseurs do. 'Now I look at it again, I fancy
I see a--yes, there certainly is something in the smile that reminds
me of--and yet upon my word I--'

Now, the fact was, that Sampson, having never seen anything in
the smallest degree resembling this substantial phantom, was much
perplexed; being uncertain whether Mr Quilp considered it like
himself, and had therefore bought it for a family portrait; or
whether he was pleased to consider it as the likeness of some enemy.
He was not very long in doubt; for, while he was surveying it with
that knowing look which people assume when they are contemplating for
the first time portraits which they ought to recognise but don't, the
dwarf threw down the newspaper from which he had been chanting the
words already quoted, and seizing a rusty iron bar, which he used in
lieu of poker, dealt the figure such a stroke on the nose that it
rocked again.

'Is it like Kit--is it his picture, his image, his very self?'
cried the dwarf, aiming a shower of blows at the insensible
countenance, and covering it with deep dimples. 'Is it the exact
model and counterpart of the dog--is it--is it--is it?' And with
every repetition of the question, he battered the great image, until
the perspiration streamed down his face with the violence of the
exercise.

Although this might have been a very comical thing to look at
from a secure gallery, as a bull-fight is found to be a comfortable
spectacle by those who are not in the arena, and a house on fire is
better than a play to people who don't live near it, there was
something in the earnestness of Mr Quilp's manner which made his
legal adviser feel that the counting-house was a little too small,
and a deal too lonely, for the complete enjoyment of these humours.
Therefore, he stood as far off as he could, while the dwarf was thus
engaged; whimpering out but feeble applause; and when Quilp left off
and sat down again from pure exhaustion, approached with more
obsequiousness than ever.

'Excellent indeed!' cried Brass. 'He he! Oh, very good Sir.
You know,' said Sampson, looking round as if in appeal to the bruised
animal, 'he's quite a remarkable man--quite!'

'Sit down,' said the dwarf. 'I bought the dog yesterday. I've
been screwing gimlets into him, and sticking forks in his eyes, and
cutting my name on him. I mean to burn him at last.'

'Ha ha!' cried Brass. 'Extremely entertaining, indeed!'

'Come here,' said Quilp, beckoning him to draw near. 'What's
injudicious, hey?'

'Nothing Sir--nothing. Scarcely worth mentioning Sir; but I
thought that song--admirably humorous in itself you know--was perhaps
rather--'

'Yes,' said Quilp, 'rather what?'

'Just bordering, or as one may say remotely verging, upon the
confines of injudiciousness perhaps, Sir,' returned Brass, looking
timidly at the dwarf's cunning eyes, which were turned towards the
fire and reflected its red light.

'Why?' inquired Quilp, without looking up.

'Why, you know, sir,' returned Brass, venturing to be more
familiar: '--the fact is, sir, that any allusion to these little
combinings together, of friends, for objects in themselves extremely
laudable, but which the law terms conspiracies, are--you take me,
sir?--best kept snug and among friends, you know.'

'Eh!' said Quilp, looking up with a perfectly vacant
countenance. 'What do you mean?'

'Cautious, exceedingly cautious, very right and proper!' cried
Brass, nodding his head. 'Mum, sir, even here--my meaning, sir,
exactly.'

'Your meaning exactly, you brazen scarecrow,--what's your
meaning?' retorted Quilp. 'Why do you talk to me of combining
together? Do I combine? Do I know anything about your
combinings?'

'No no, sir--certainly not; not by any means,' returned
Brass.

'if you so wink and nod at me,' said the dwarf, looking about
him as if for his poker, 'I'll spoil the expression of your monkey's
face, I will.' 'Don't put yourself out of the way I beg, sir,'
rejoined Brass, checking himself with great alacrity. 'You're quite
right, sir, quite right. I shouldn't have mentioned the subject,
sir. It's much better not to. You're quite right, sir. Let us
change it, if you please. You were asking, sir, Sally told me, about
our lodger. He has not returned, sir.'

'No?' said Quilp, heating some rum in a little saucepan, and
watching it to prevent its boiling over. 'Why not?'

'Why, sir,' returned Brass, 'he--dear me, Mr Quilp, sir--'

'What's the matter?' said the dwarf, stopping his hand in the
act of carrying the saucepan to his mouth.

'You have forgotten the water, sir,' said Brass. 'And--excuse
me, sir--but it's burning hot.'

Deigning no other than a practical answer to this remonstrance,
Mr Quilp raised the hot saucepan to his lips, and deliberately drank
off all the spirit it contained, which might have been in quantity
about half a pint, and had been but a moment before, when he took it
off the fire, bubbling and hissing fiercely. Having swallowed this
gentle stimulant, and shaken his fist at the admiral, he bade Mr
Brass proceed.

'But first,' said Quilp, with his accustomed grin, 'have a drop
yourself--a nice drop--a good, warm, fiery drop.'

'Why, sir,' replied Brass, 'if there was such a thing as a
mouthful of water that could be got without trouble--'

'There's no such thing to be had here,' cried the dwarf. 'Water
for lawyers! Melted lead and brimstone, you mean, nice hot
blistering pitch and tar--that's the thing for them--eh, Brass,
eh?'

'Ha ha ha!' laughed Mr Brass. 'Oh very biting! and yet it's
like being tickled--there's a pleasure in it too, sir!'

'Drink that,' said the dwarf, who had by this time heated some
more. 'Toss it off, don't leave any heeltap, scorch your throat and
be happy!'

The wretched Sampson took a few short sips of the liquor, which
immediately distilled itself into burning tears, and in that form
came rolling down his cheeks into the pipkin again, turning the
colour of his face and eyelids to a deep red, and giving rise to a
violent fit of coughing, in the midst of which he was still heard to
declare, with the constancy of a martyr, that it was 'beautiful
indeed!' While he was yet in unspeakable agonies, the dwarf renewed
their conversation.

'The lodger,' said Quilp, '--what about him?' 'He is still,
sir,' returned Brass, with intervals of coughing, 'stopping with the
Garland family. He has only been home once, Sir, since the day of
the examination of that culprit. He informed Mr Richard, sir, that
he couldn't bear the house after what had taken place; that he was
wretched in it; and that he looked upon himself as being in a certain
kind of way the cause of the occurrence.--A very excellent lodger
Sir. I hope we may not lose him.'

'Yah!' cried the dwarf. 'Never thinking of anybody but
yourself-- why don't you retrench then--scrape up, hoard, economise,
eh?'

'Why, sir,' replied Brass, 'upon my word I think Sarah's as good
an economiser as any going. I do indeed, Mr Quilp.'

'Moisten your clay, wet the other eye, drink, man!' cried the
dwarf. 'You took a clerk to oblige me.'

'Delighted, sir, I am sure, at any time,' replied Sampson.
'Yes, Sir, I did.'

'Then now you may discharge him,' said Quilp. 'There's a means
of retrenchment for you at once.'

'Discharge Mr Richard, sir?' cried Brass.

'Have you more than one clerk, you parrot, that you ask the
question? Yes.'

'Upon my word, Sir,' said Brass, 'I wasn't prepared for
this-'

'How could you be?' sneered the dwarf, 'when I wasn't? How
often am I to tell you that I brought him to you that I might always
have my eye on him and know where he was--and that I had a plot, a
scheme, a little quiet piece of enjoyment afoot, of which the very
cream and essence was, that this old man and grandchild (who have
sunk underground I think) should be, while he and his precious friend
believed them rich, in reality as poor as frozen rats?'

'I quite understood that, sir,' rejoined Brass.
'Thoroughly.'

'Well, Sir,' retorted Quilp, 'and do you understand now, that
they're not poor--that they can't be, if they have such men as your
lodger searching for them, and scouring the country far and wide?'

'Of course I do, Sir,' said Sampson.

'Of course you do,' retorted the dwarf, viciously snapping at
his words. 'Of course do you understand then, that it's no matter
what comes of this fellow? of course do you understand that for any
other purpose he's no man for me, nor for you?'

'I have frequently said to Sarah, sir,' returned Brass, 'that he
was of no use at all in the business. You can't put any confidence
in him, sir. If you'll believe me I've found that fellow, in the
commonest little matters of the office that have been trusted to him,
blurting out the truth, though expressly cautioned. The aggravation
of that chap sir, has exceeded anything you can imagine, it has
indeed. Nothing but the respect and obligation I owe to you,
sir--'

As it was plain that Sampson was bent on a complimentary
harangue, unless he received a timely interruption, Mr Quilp politely
tapped him on the crown of his head with the little saucepan, and
requested that he would be so obliging as to hold his peace.

'Practical, sir, practical,' said Brass, rubbing the place and
smiling; 'but still extremely pleasant--immensely so!'

'Hearken to me, will you?' returned Quilp, 'or I'll be a little
more pleasant, presently. There's no chance of his comrade and
friend returning. The scamp has been obliged to fly, as I learn, for
some knavery, and has found his way abroad. Let him rot there.'

'Certainly, sir. Quite proper.--Forcible!' cried Brass,
glancing at the admiral again, as if he made a third in company.
'Extremely forcible!'

'I hate him,' said Quilp between his teeth, 'and have always
hated him, for family reasons. Besides, he was an intractable
ruffian; otherwise he would have been of use. This fellow is
pigeon-hearted and light-headed. I don't want him any longer. Let
him hang or drown--starve--go to the devil.'

'By all means, sir,' returned Brass. 'When would you wish him,
sir, to--ha, ha!--to make that little excursion?'

'When this trial's over,' said Quilp. 'As soon as that's ended,
send him about his business.'

'It shall be done, sir,' returned Brass; 'by all means. It will
be rather a blow to Sarah, sir, but she has all her feelings under
control. Ah, Mr Quilp, I often think, sir, if it had only pleased
Providence to bring you and Sarah together, in earlier life, what
blessed results would have flowed from such a union! You never saw
our dear father, sir?--A charming gentleman. Sarah was his pride and
joy, sir. He would have closed his eyes in bliss, would Foxey, Mr
Quilp, if he could have found her such a partner. You esteem her,
sir?'

'I love her,' croaked the dwarf.

'You're very good, Sir,' returned Brass, 'I am sure. Is there
any other order, sir, that I can take a note of, besides this little
matter of Mr Richard?'

'None,' replied the dwarf, seizing the saucepan. 'Let us drink
the lovely Sarah.'

'If we could do it in something, sir, that wasn't quite
boiling,' suggested Brass humbly, 'perhaps it would be better. I
think it will be more agreeable to Sarah's feelings, when she comes
to hear from me of the honour you have done her, if she learns it was
in liquor rather cooler than the last, Sir.'

But to these remonstrances, Mr Quilp turned a deaf ear. Sampson
Brass, who was, by this time, anything but sober, being compelled to
take further draughts of the same strong bowl, found that, instead of
at all contributing to his recovery, they had the novel effect of
making the counting-house spin round and round with extreme velocity,
and causing the floor and ceiling to heave in a very distressing
manner. After a brief stupor, he awoke to a consciousness of being
partly under the table and partly under the grate. This position not
being the most comfortable one he could have chosen for himself, he
managed to stagger to his feet, and, holding on by the admiral,
looked round for his host.

Mr Brass's first impression was, that his host was gone and had
left him there alone--perhaps locked him in for the night. A strong
smell of tobacco, however, suggested a new train of ideas, he looked
upward, and saw that the dwarf was smoking in his hammock.

'Good bye, Sir,' cried Brass faintly. 'Good bye, Sir.'

'Won't you stop all night?' said the dwarf, peeping out. 'Do
stop all night!'

'I couldn't indeed, Sir,' replied Brass, who was almost dead
from nausea and the closeness of the room. 'If you'd have the
goodness to show me a light, so that I may see my way across the
yard, sir--'

Quilp was out in an instant; not with his legs first, or his
head first, or his arms first, but bodily--altogether.

'To be sure,' he said, taking up a lantern, which was now the
only light in the place. 'Be careful how you go, my dear friend. Be
sure to pick your way among the timber, for all the rusty nails are
upwards. There's a dog in the lane. He bit a man last night, and a
woman the night before, and last Tuesday he killed a child--but that
was in play. Don't go too near him.'

'Which side of the road is he, sir?' asked Brass, in great
dismay.

'He lives on the right hand,' said Quilp, 'but sometimes he
hides on the left, ready for a spring. He's uncertain in that
respect. Mind you take care of yourself. I'll never forgive you if
you don't. There's the light out--never mind--you know the way--
straight on!' Quilp had slily shaded the light by holding it against
his breast, and now stood chuckling and shaking from head to foot in
a rapture of delight, as he heard the lawyer stumbling up the yard,
and now and then falling heavily down. At length, however, he got
quit of the place, and was out of hearing.

The dwarf shut himself up again, and sprang once more into his
hammock.