Chương Chương 11 · 第11章

Quiet and solitude were destined to hold uninterrupted rule no longer,

beneath the roof that sheltered the child. Next morning, the old man

was in a raging fever accompanied with delirium; and sinking under the

influence of this disorder he lay for many weeks in imminent peril of

his life. There was watching enough, now, but it was the watching of

strangers who made a greedy trade of it, and who, in the intervals in

their attendance upon the sick man huddled together with a ghastly

good-fellowship, and ate and drank and made merry; for disease and

death were their ordinary household gods.

Yet, in all the hurry and crowding of such a time, the child was more

alone than she had ever been before; alone in spirit, alone in her

devotion to him who was wasting away upon his burning bed; alone in her

unfeigned sorrow, and her unpurchased sympathy. Day after day, and

night after night, found her still by the pillow of the unconscious

sufferer, still anticipating his every want, still listening to those

repetitions of her name and those anxieties and cares for her, which

were ever uppermost among his feverish wanderings.

The house was no longer theirs. Even the sick chamber seemed to be

retained, on the uncertain tenure of Mr Quilp’s favour. The old man’s

illness had not lasted many days when he took formal possession of the

premises and all upon them, in virtue of certain legal powers to that

effect, which few understood and none presumed to call in question.

This important step secured, with the assistance of a man of law whom

he brought with him for the purpose, the dwarf proceeded to establish

himself and his coadjutor in the house, as an assertion of his claim

against all comers; and then set about making his quarters comfortable,

after his own fashion.

To this end, Mr Quilp encamped in the back parlour, having first put an

effectual stop to any further business by shutting up the shop. Having

looked out, from among the old furniture, the handsomest and most

commodious chair he could possibly find (which he reserved for his own

use) and an especially hideous and uncomfortable one (which he

considerately appropriated to the accommodation of his friend) he

caused them to be carried into this room, and took up his position in

great state. The apartment was very far removed from the old man’s

chamber, but Mr Quilp deemed it prudent, as a precaution against

infection from fever, and a means of wholesome fumigation, not only to

smoke, himself, without cessation, but to insist upon it that his legal

friend did the like. Moreover, he sent an express to the wharf for the

tumbling boy, who arriving with all despatch was enjoined to sit

himself down in another chair just inside the door, continually to

smoke a great pipe which the dwarf had provided for the purpose, and to

take it from his lips under any pretence whatever, were it only for one

minute at a time, if he dared. These arrangements completed, Mr Quilp

looked round him with chuckling satisfaction, and remarked that he

called that comfort.

The legal gentleman, whose melodious name was Brass, might have called

it comfort also but for two drawbacks: one was, that he could by no

exertion sit easy in his chair, the seat of which was very hard,

angular, slippery, and sloping; the other, that tobacco-smoke always

caused him great internal discomposure and annoyance. But as he was

quite a creature of Mr Quilp’s and had a thousand reasons for

conciliating his good opinion, he tried to smile, and nodded his

acquiescence with the best grace he could assume.

This Brass was an attorney of no very good repute, from Bevis Marks in

the city of London; he was a tall, meagre man, with a nose like a wen,

a protruding forehead, retreating eyes, and hair of a deep red. He

wore a long black surtout reaching nearly to his ankles, short black

trousers, high shoes, and cotton stockings of a bluish grey. He had a

cringing manner, but a very harsh voice; and his blandest smiles were

so extremely forbidding, that to have had his company under the least

repulsive circumstances, one would have wished him to be out of temper

that he might only scowl.

Quilp looked at his legal adviser, and seeing that he was winking very

much in the anguish of his pipe, that he sometimes shuddered when he

happened to inhale its full flavour, and that he constantly fanned the

smoke from him, was quite overjoyed and rubbed his hands with glee.

‘Smoke away, you dog,’ said Quilp, turning to the boy; ‘fill your pipe

again and smoke it fast, down to the last whiff, or I’ll put the

sealing-waxed end of it in the fire and rub it red hot upon your

tongue.’

Luckily the boy was case-hardened, and would have smoked a small

lime-kiln if anybody had treated him with it. Wherefore, he only

muttered a brief defiance of his master, and did as he was ordered.

‘Is it good, Brass, is it nice, is it fragrant, do you feel like the

Grand Turk?’ said Quilp.

Mr Brass thought that if he did, the Grand Turk’s feelings were by no

means to be envied, but he said it was famous, and he had no doubt he

felt very like that Potentate.

‘This is the way to keep off fever,’ said Quilp, ‘this is the way to

keep off every calamity of life! We’ll never leave off, all the time

we stop here--smoke away, you dog, or you shall swallow the pipe!’

‘Shall we stop here long, Mr Quilp?’ inquired his legal friend, when

the dwarf had given his boy this gentle admonition.

‘We must stop, I suppose, till the old gentleman up stairs is dead,’

returned Quilp.

‘He he he!’ laughed Mr Brass, ‘oh! very good!’

‘Smoke away!’ cried Quilp. ‘Never stop! You can talk as you smoke.

Don’t lose time.’

‘He he he!’ cried Brass faintly, as he again applied himself to the

odious pipe. ‘But if he should get better, Mr Quilp?’

‘Then we shall stop till he does, and no longer,’ returned the dwarf.

‘How kind it is of you, Sir, to wait till then!’ said Brass. ‘Some

people, Sir, would have sold or removed the goods--oh dear, the very

instant the law allowed ‘em. Some people, Sir, would have been all

flintiness and granite. Some people, sir, would have--’

‘Some people would have spared themselves the jabbering of such a

parrot as you,’ interposed the dwarf.

‘He he he!’ cried Brass. ‘You have such spirits!’

The smoking sentinel at the door interposed in this place, and without

taking his pipe from his lips, growled,

‘Here’s the gal a comin’ down.’

‘The what, you dog?’ said Quilp.

‘The gal,’ returned the boy. ‘Are you deaf?’

‘Oh!’ said Quilp, drawing in his breath with great relish as if he were

taking soup, ‘you and I will have such a settling presently; there’s

such a scratching and bruising in store for you, my dear young friend!

Aha! Nelly! How is he now, my duck of diamonds?’

‘He’s very bad,’ replied the weeping child.

‘What a pretty little Nell!’ cried Quilp.

‘Oh beautiful, sir, beautiful indeed,’ said Brass. ‘Quite charming.’

‘Has she come to sit upon Quilp’s knee,’ said the dwarf, in what he

meant to be a soothing tone, ‘or is she going to bed in her own little

room inside here? Which is poor Nelly going to do?’

‘What a remarkable pleasant way he has with children!’ muttered Brass,

as if in confidence between himself and the ceiling; ‘upon my word it’s

quite a treat to hear him.’

‘I’m not going to stay at all,’ faltered Nell. ‘I want a few things

out of that room, and then I--I--won’t come down here any more.’

‘And a very nice little room it is!’ said the dwarf looking into it as

the child entered. ‘Quite a bower! You’re sure you’re not going to

use it; you’re sure you’re not coming back, Nelly?’

‘No,’ replied the child, hurrying away, with the few articles of dress

she had come to remove; ‘never again! Never again.’

‘She’s very sensitive,’ said Quilp, looking after her. ‘Very

sensitive; that’s a pity. The bedstead is much about my size. I think

I shall make it MY little room.’

Mr Brass encouraging this idea, as he would have encouraged any other

emanating from the same source, the dwarf walked in to try the effect.

This he did, by throwing himself on his back upon the bed with his pipe

in his mouth, and then kicking up his legs and smoking violently. Mr

Brass applauding this picture very much, and the bed being soft and

comfortable, Mr Quilp determined to use it, both as a sleeping place by

night and as a kind of Divan by day; and in order that it might be

converted to the latter purpose at once, remained where he was, and

smoked his pipe out. The legal gentleman being by this time rather

giddy and perplexed in his ideas (for this was one of the operations of

the tobacco on his nervous system), took the opportunity of slinking

away into the open air, where, in course of time, he recovered

sufficiently to return with a countenance of tolerable composure. He

was soon led on by the malicious dwarf to smoke himself into a relapse,

and in that state stumbled upon a settee where he slept till morning.

Such were Mr Quilp’s first proceedings on entering upon his new

property. He was, for some days, restrained by business from

performing any particular pranks, as his time was pretty well occupied

between taking, with the assistance of Mr Brass, a minute inventory of

all the goods in the place, and going abroad upon his other concerns

which happily engaged him for several hours at a time. His avarice and

caution being, now, thoroughly awakened, however, he was never absent

from the house one night; and his eagerness for some termination, good

or bad, to the old man’s disorder, increasing rapidly, as the time

passed by, soon began to vent itself in open murmurs and exclamations

of impatience.

Nell shrank timidly from all the dwarf’s advances towards conversation,

and fled from the very sound of his voice; nor were the lawyer’s smiles

less terrible to her than Quilp’s grimaces. She lived in such

continual dread and apprehension of meeting one or other of them on the

stairs or in the passages if she stirred from her grandfather’s

chamber, that she seldom left it, for a moment, until late at night,

when the silence encouraged her to venture forth and breathe the purer

air of some empty room.

One night, she had stolen to her usual window, and was sitting there

very sorrowfully--for the old man had been worse that day--when she

thought she heard her name pronounced by a voice in the street.

Looking down, she recognised Kit, whose endeavours to attract her

attention had roused her from her sad reflections.

‘Miss Nell!’ said the boy in a low voice.

‘Yes,’ replied the child, doubtful whether she ought to hold any

communication with the supposed culprit, but inclining to her old

favourite still; ‘what do you want?’

‘I have wanted to say a word to you, for a long time,’ the boy replied,

‘but the people below have driven me away and wouldn’t let me see you.

You don’t believe--I hope you don’t really believe--that I deserve to

be cast off as I have been; do you, miss?’

‘I must believe it,’ returned the child. ‘Or why would grandfather

have been so angry with you?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied Kit. ‘I’m sure I never deserved it from him,

no, nor from you. I can say that, with a true and honest heart, any

way. And then to be driven from the door, when I only came to ask how

old master was--!’

‘They never told me that,’ said the child. ‘I didn’t know it indeed.

I wouldn’t have had them do it for the world.’

‘Thank’ee, miss,’ returned Kit, ‘it’s comfortable to hear you say that.

I said I never would believe that it was your doing.’

‘That was right!’ said the child eagerly.

‘Miss Nell,’ cried the boy coming under the window, and speaking in a

lower tone, ‘there are new masters down stairs. It’s a change for you.’

‘It is indeed,’ replied the child.

‘And so it will be for him when he gets better,’ said the boy, pointing

towards the sick room.

‘--If he ever does,’ added the child, unable to restrain her tears.

‘Oh, he’ll do that, he’ll do that,’ said Kit. ‘I’m sure he will. You

mustn’t be cast down, Miss Nell. Now don’t be, pray!’

These words of encouragement and consolation were few and roughly said,

but they affected the child and made her, for the moment, weep the more.

‘He’ll be sure to get better now,’ said the boy anxiously, ‘if you

don’t give way to low spirits and turn ill yourself, which would make

him worse and throw him back, just as he was recovering. When he does,

say a good word--say a kind word for me, Miss Nell!’

‘They tell me I must not even mention your name to him for a long, long

time,’ rejoined the child, ‘I dare not; and even if I might, what good

would a kind word do you, Kit? We shall be very poor. We shall

scarcely have bread to eat.’

‘It’s not that I may be taken back,’ said the boy, ‘that I ask the

favour of you. It isn’t for the sake of food and wages that I’ve been

waiting about so long in hopes to see you. Don’t think that I’d come

in a time of trouble to talk of such things as them.’

The child looked gratefully and kindly at him, but waited that he might

speak again.

‘No, it’s not that,’ said Kit hesitating, ‘it’s something very

different from that. I haven’t got much sense, I know, but if he could

be brought to believe that I’d been a faithful servant to him, doing

the best I could, and never meaning harm, perhaps he mightn’t--’

Here Kit faltered so long that the child entreated him to speak out,

and quickly, for it was very late, and time to shut the window.

‘Perhaps he mightn’t think it over venturesome of me to say--well then,

to say this,’ cried Kit with sudden boldness. ‘This home is gone from

you and him. Mother and I have got a poor one, but that’s better than

this with all these people here; and why not come there, till he’s had

time to look about, and find a better!’

The child did not speak. Kit, in the relief of having made his

proposition, found his tongue loosened, and spoke out in its favour

with his utmost eloquence.

‘You think,’ said the boy, ‘that it’s very small and inconvenient. So

it is, but it’s very clean. Perhaps you think it would be noisy, but

there’s not a quieter court than ours in all the town. Don’t be afraid

of the children; the baby hardly ever cries, and the other one is very

good--besides, I’d mind ‘em. They wouldn’t vex you much, I’m sure. Do

try, Miss Nell, do try. The little front room up stairs is very

pleasant. You can see a piece of the church-clock, through the

chimneys, and almost tell the time; mother says it would be just the

thing for you, and so it would, and you’d have her to wait upon you

both, and me to run of errands. We don’t mean money, bless you; you’re

not to think of that! Will you try him, Miss Nell? Only say you’ll

try him. Do try to make old master come, and ask him first what I have

done. Will you only promise that, Miss Nell?’

Before the child could reply to this earnest solicitation, the

street-door opened, and Mr Brass thrusting out his night-capped head

called in a surly voice, ‘Who’s there!’ Kit immediately glided away,

and Nell, closing the window softly, drew back into the room.

Before Mr Brass had repeated his inquiry many times, Mr Quilp, also

embellished with a night-cap, emerged from the same door and looked

carefully up and down the street, and up at all the windows of the

house, from the opposite side. Finding that there was nobody in sight,

he presently returned into the house with his legal friend, protesting

(as the child heard from the staircase), that there was a league and

plot against him; that he was in danger of being robbed and plundered

by a band of conspirators who prowled about the house at all seasons;

and that he would delay no longer but take immediate steps for

disposing of the property and returning to his own peaceful roof.

Having growled forth these, and a great many other threats of the same

nature, he coiled himself once more in the child’s little bed, and Nell

crept softly up the stairs.

It was natural enough that her short and unfinished dialogue with Kit

should leave a strong impression on her mind, and influence her dreams

that night and her recollections for a long, long time. Surrounded by

unfeeling creditors, and mercenary attendants upon the sick, and

meeting in the height of her anxiety and sorrow with little regard or

sympathy even from the women about her, it is not surprising that the

affectionate heart of the child should have been touched to the quick

by one kind and generous spirit, however uncouth the temple in which it

dwelt. Thank Heaven that the temples of such spirits are not made with

hands, and that they may be even more worthily hung with poor

patch-work than with purple and fine linen!