Chapter Chapter 47 · 第47章
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!