บทที่ บทที่ 36 · 第36章

As the single gentleman after some weeks’ occupation of his lodgings,

still declined to correspond, by word or gesture, either with Mr Brass

or his sister Sally, but invariably chose Richard Swiveller as his

channel of communication; and as he proved himself in all respects a

highly desirable inmate, paying for everything beforehand, giving very

little trouble, making no noise, and keeping early hours; Mr Richard

imperceptibly rose to an important position in the family, as one who

had influence over this mysterious lodger, and could negotiate with

him, for good or evil, when nobody else durst approach his person.

If the truth must be told, even Mr Swiveller’s approaches to the single

gentleman were of a very distant kind, and met with small

encouragement; but, as he never returned from a monosyllabic conference

with the unknown, without quoting such expressions as ‘Swiveller, I

know I can rely upon you,’--‘I have no hesitation in saying, Swiveller,

that I entertain a regard for you,’--‘Swiveller, you are my friend, and

will stand by me I am sure,’ with many other short speeches of the same

familiar and confiding kind, purporting to have been addressed by the

single gentleman to himself, and to form the staple of their ordinary

discourse, neither Mr Brass nor Miss Sally for a moment questioned the

extent of his influence, but accorded to him their fullest and most

unqualified belief.

But quite apart from, and independent of, this source of popularity, Mr

Swiveller had another, which promised to be equally enduring, and to

lighten his position considerably.

He found favour in the eyes of Miss Sally Brass. Let not the light

scorners of female fascination erect their ears to listen to a new tale

of love which shall serve them for a jest; for Miss Brass, however

accurately formed to be beloved, was not of the loving kind. That

amiable virgin, having clung to the skirts of the Law from her earliest

youth; having sustained herself by their aid, as it were, in her first

running alone, and maintained a firm grasp upon them ever since; had

passed her life in a kind of legal childhood. She had been remarkable,

when a tender prattler for an uncommon talent in counterfeiting the

walk and manner of a bailiff: in which character she had learned to tap

her little playfellows on the shoulder, and to carry them off to

imaginary sponging-houses, with a correctness of imitation which was

the surprise and delight of all who witnessed her performances, and

which was only to be exceeded by her exquisite manner of putting an

execution into her doll’s house, and taking an exact inventory of the

chairs and tables. These artless sports had naturally soothed and

cheered the decline of her widowed father: a most exemplary gentleman

(called ‘old Foxey’ by his friends from his extreme sagacity,) who

encouraged them to the utmost, and whose chief regret, on finding that

he drew near to Houndsditch churchyard, was, that his daughter could

not take out an attorney’s certificate and hold a place upon the roll.

Filled with this affectionate and touching sorrow, he had solemnly

confided her to his son Sampson as an invaluable auxiliary; and from

the old gentleman’s decease to the period of which we treat, Miss Sally

Brass had been the prop and pillar of his business.

It is obvious that, having devoted herself from infancy to this one

pursuit and study, Miss Brass could know but little of the world,

otherwise than in connection with the law; and that from a lady gifted

with such high tastes, proficiency in those gentler and softer arts in

which women usually excel, was scarcely to be looked for. Miss Sally’s

accomplishments were all of a masculine and strictly legal kind. They

began with the practice of an attorney and they ended with it. She was

in a state of lawful innocence, so to speak. The law had been her

nurse. And, as bandy-legs or such physical deformities in children are

held to be the consequence of bad nursing, so, if in a mind so

beautiful any moral twist or handiness could be found, Miss Sally

Brass’s nurse was alone to blame.

It was upon this lady, then, that Mr Swiveller burst in full freshness as

something new and hitherto undreamed of, lighting up the office with

scraps of song and merriment, conjuring with inkstands and boxes of

wafers, catching three oranges in one hand, balancing stools upon his

chin and penknives on his nose, and constantly performing a hundred

other feats with equal ingenuity; for with such unbendings did Richard,

in Mr Brass’s absence, relieve the tedium of his confinement. These

social qualities, which Miss Sally first discovered by accident,

gradually made such an impression upon her, that she would entreat Mr

Swiveller to relax as though she were not by, which Mr Swiveller,

nothing loth, would readily consent to do. By these means a friendship

sprung up between them. Mr Swiveller gradually came to look upon her

as her brother Sampson did, and as he would have looked upon any other

clerk. He imparted to her the mystery of going the odd man or plain

Newmarket for fruit, ginger-beer, baked potatoes, or even a modest

quencher, of which Miss Brass did not scruple to partake. He would

often persuade her to undertake his share of writing in addition to her

own; nay, he would sometimes reward her with a hearty slap on the back,

and protest that she was a devilish good fellow, a jolly dog, and so

forth; all of which compliments Miss Sally would receive in entire good

part and with perfect satisfaction.

One circumstance troubled Mr Swiveller’s mind very much, and that was

that the small servant always remained somewhere in the bowels of the

earth under Bevis Marks, and never came to the surface unless the

single gentleman rang his bell, when she would answer it and

immediately disappear again. She never went out, or came into the

office, or had a clean face, or took off the coarse apron, or looked

out of any one of the windows, or stood at the street-door for a breath

of air, or had any rest or enjoyment whatever. Nobody ever came to see

her, nobody spoke of her, nobody cared about her. Mr Brass had said

once, that he believed she was a ‘love-child’ (which means anything but

a child of love), and that was all the information Richard Swiveller

could obtain.

‘It’s of no use asking the dragon,’ thought Dick one day, as he sat

contemplating the features of Miss Sally Brass. ‘I suspect if I asked

any questions on that head, our alliance would be at an end. I wonder

whether she is a dragon by-the-bye, or something in the mermaid way.

She has rather a scaly appearance. But mermaids are fond of looking at

themselves in the glass, which she can’t be. And they have a habit of

combing their hair, which she hasn’t. No, she’s a dragon.’

‘Where are you going, old fellow?’ said Dick aloud, as Miss Sally wiped

her pen as usual on the green dress, and uprose from her seat.

‘To dinner,’ answered the dragon.

‘To dinner!’ thought Dick, ‘that’s another circumstance. I don’t

believe that small servant ever has anything to eat.’

‘Sammy won’t be home,’ said Miss Brass. ‘Stop till I come back. I

sha’n’t be long.’

Dick nodded, and followed Miss Brass--with his eyes to the door, and

with his ears to a little back parlour, where she and her brother took

their meals.

‘Now,’ said Dick, walking up and down with his hands in his pockets,

‘I’d give something--if I had it--to know how they use that child, and

where they keep her. My mother must have been a very inquisitive

woman; I have no doubt I’m marked with a note of interrogation

somewhere. My feelings I smother, but thou hast been the cause of this

anguish, my--upon my word,’ said Mr Swiveller, checking himself and

falling thoughtfully into the client’s chair, ‘I should like to know

how they use her!’

After running on, in this way, for some time, Mr Swiveller softly

opened the office door, with the intention of darting across the street

for a glass of the mild porter. At that moment he caught a parting

glimpse of the brown head-dress of Miss Brass flitting down the kitchen

stairs. ‘And by Jove!’ thought Dick, ‘she’s going to feed the small

servant. Now or never!’

First peeping over the handrail and allowing the head-dress to

disappear in the darkness below, he groped his way down, and arrived at

the door of a back kitchen immediately after Miss Brass had entered the

same, bearing in her hand a cold leg of mutton. It was a very dark

miserable place, very low and very damp: the walls disfigured by a

thousand rents and blotches. The water was trickling out of a leaky

butt, and a most wretched cat was lapping up the drops with the sickly

eagerness of starvation. The grate, which was a wide one, was wound

and screwed up tight, so as to hold no more than a little thin sandwich

of fire. Everything was locked up; the coal-cellar, the candle-box,

the salt-box, the meat-safe, were all padlocked. There was nothing

that a beetle could have lunched upon. The pinched and meagre aspect

of the place would have killed a chameleon. He would have known, at

the first mouthful, that the air was not eatable, and must have given up

the ghost in despair. The small servant stood with humility in presence

of Miss Sally, and hung her head.

‘Are you there?’ said Miss Sally.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ was the answer in a weak voice.

‘Go further away from the leg of mutton, or you’ll be picking it, I

know,’ said Miss Sally.

The girl withdrew into a corner, while Miss Brass took a key from her

pocket, and opening the safe, brought from it a dreary waste of cold

potatoes, looking as eatable as Stonehenge. This she placed before the

small servant, ordering her to sit down before it, and then, taking up

a great carving-knife, made a mighty show of sharpening it upon the

carving-fork.

‘Do you see this?’ said Miss Brass, slicing off about two square inches

of cold mutton, after all this preparation, and holding it out on the

point of the fork.

The small servant looked hard enough at it with her hungry eyes to see

every shred of it, small as it was, and answered, ‘yes.’

‘Then don’t you ever go and say,’ retorted Miss Sally, ‘that you hadn’t

meat here. There, eat it up.’

This was soon done. ‘Now, do you want any more?’ said Miss Sally.

The hungry creature answered with a faint ‘No.’ They were evidently

going through an established form.

‘You’ve been helped once to meat,’ said Miss Brass, summing up the

facts; ‘you have had as much as you can eat, you’re asked if you want

any more, and you answer, ‘no!’ Then don’t you ever go and say you were

allowanced, mind that.’

With those words, Miss Sally put the meat away and locked the safe, and

then drawing near to the small servant, overlooked her while she

finished the potatoes.

It was plain that some extraordinary grudge was working in Miss Brass’s

gentle breast, and that it was that which impelled her, without the

smallest present cause, to rap the child with the blade of the knife,

now on her hand, now on her head, and now on her back, as if she found

it quite impossible to stand so close to her without administering a

few slight knocks. But Mr Swiveller was not a little surprised to see

his fellow-clerk, after walking slowly backwards towards the door, as

if she were trying to withdraw herself from the room but could not

accomplish it, dart suddenly forward, and falling on the small servant

give her some hard blows with her clenched hand. The victim cried, but

in a subdued manner as if she feared to raise her voice, and Miss

Sally, comforting herself with a pinch of snuff, ascended the stairs,

just as Richard had safely reached the office.