第 三十二 章 · 第32章

Mrs Jarley’s wrath on first learning that she had been threatened with

the indignity of Stocks and Penance, passed all description. The

genuine and only Jarley exposed to public scorn, jeered by children,

and flouted by beadles! The delight of the Nobility and Gentry shorn

of a bonnet which a Lady Mayoress might have sighed to wear, and

arrayed in a white sheet as a spectacle of mortification and humility!

And Miss Monflathers, the audacious creature who presumed, even in the

dimmest and remotest distance of her imagination, to conjure up the

degrading picture, ‘I am a’most inclined,’ said Mrs Jarley, bursting

with the fulness of her anger and the weakness of her means of revenge,

‘to turn atheist when I think of it!’

But instead of adopting this course of retaliation, Mrs Jarley, on

second thoughts, brought out the suspicious bottle, and ordering

glasses to be set forth upon her favourite drum, and sinking into a

chair behind it, called her satellites about her, and to them several

times recounted, word for word, the affronts she had received. This

done, she begged them in a kind of deep despair to drink; then laughed,

then cried, then took a little sip herself, then laughed and cried

again, and took a little more; and so, by degrees, the worthy lady went

on, increasing in smiles and decreasing in tears, until at last she

could not laugh enough at Miss Monflathers, who, from being an object

of dire vexation, became one of sheer ridicule and absurdity.

‘For which of us is best off, I wonder,’ quoth Mrs Jarley, ‘she or me!

It’s only talking, when all is said and done, and if she talks of me in

the stocks, why I can talk of her in the stocks, which is a good deal

funnier if we come to that. Lord, what does it matter, after all!’

Having arrived at this comfortable frame of mind (to which she had been

greatly assisted by certain short interjectional remarks of the

philosophical George), Mrs Jarley consoled Nell with many kind words,

and requested as a personal favour that whenever she thought of Miss

Monflathers, she would do nothing else but laugh at her, all the days

of her life.

So ended Mrs Jarley’s wrath, which subsided long before the going down

of the sun. Nell’s anxieties, however, were of a deeper kind, and the

checks they imposed upon her cheerfulness were not so easily removed.

That evening, as she had dreaded, her grandfather stole away, and did

not come back until the night was far spent. Worn out as she was, and

fatigued in mind and body, she sat up alone, counting the minutes,

until he returned--penniless, broken-spirited, and wretched, but still

hotly bent upon his infatuation.

‘Get me money,’ he said wildly, as they parted for the night. ‘I must

have money, Nell. It shall be paid thee back with gallant interest one

day, but all the money that comes into thy hands, must be mine--not for

myself, but to use for thee. Remember, Nell, to use for thee!’

What could the child do with the knowledge she had, but give him every

penny that came into her hands, lest he should be tempted on to rob

their benefactress? If she told the truth (so thought the child) he

would be treated as a madman; if she did not supply him with money, he

would supply himself; supplying him, she fed the fire that burnt him

up, and put him perhaps beyond recovery. Distracted by these thoughts,

borne down by the weight of the sorrow which she dared not tell,

tortured by a crowd of apprehensions whenever the old man was absent,

and dreading alike his stay and his return, the colour forsook her

cheek, her eye grew dim, and her heart was oppressed and heavy. All

her old sorrows had come back upon her, augmented by new fears and

doubts; by day they were ever present to her mind; by night they

hovered round her pillow, and haunted her in dreams.

It was natural that, in the midst of her affliction, she should often

revert to that sweet young lady of whom she had only caught a hasty

glance, but whose sympathy, expressed in one slight brief action, dwelt

in her memory like the kindnesses of years. She would often think, if

she had such a friend as that to whom to tell her griefs, how much

lighter her heart would be--that if she were but free to hear that

voice, she would be happier. Then she would wish that she were

something better, that she were not quite so poor and humble, that she

dared address her without fearing a repulse; and then feel that there

was an immeasurable distance between them, and have no hope that the

young lady thought of her any more.

It was now holiday-time at the schools, and the young ladies had gone

home, and Miss Monflathers was reported to be flourishing in London,

and damaging the hearts of middle-aged gentlemen, but nobody said

anything about Miss Edwards, whether she had gone home, or whether she

had any home to go to, whether she was still at the school, or anything

about her. But one evening, as Nell was returning from a lonely walk,

she happened to pass the inn where the stage-coaches stopped, just as

one drove up, and there was the beautiful girl she so well remembered,

pressing forward to embrace a young child whom they were helping down

from the roof.

Well, this was her sister, her little sister, much younger than Nell,

whom she had not seen (so the story went afterwards) for five years,

and to bring whom to that place on a short visit, she had been saving

her poor means all that time. Nell felt as if her heart would break

when she saw them meet. They went a little apart from the knot of

people who had congregated about the coach, and fell upon each other’s

neck, and sobbed, and wept with joy. Their plain and simple dress, the

distance which the child had come alone, their agitation and delight,

and the tears they shed, would have told their history by themselves.

They became a little more composed in a short time, and went away, not

so much hand in hand as clinging to each other. ‘Are you sure you’re

happy, sister?’ said the child as they passed where Nell was standing.

‘Quite happy now,’ she answered. ‘But always?’ said the child. ‘Ah,

sister, why do you turn away your face?’

Nell could not help following at a little distance. They went to the

house of an old nurse, where the elder sister had engaged a bed-room

for the child. ‘I shall come to you early every morning,’ she said,

‘and we can be together all the day.’

‘Why not at night-time too? Dear sister, would they be angry with you

for that?’

Why were the eyes of little Nell wet, that night, with tears like those

of the two sisters? Why did she bear a grateful heart because they had

met, and feel it pain to think that they would shortly part? Let us

not believe that any selfish reference--unconscious though it might

have been--to her own trials awoke this sympathy, but thank God that

the innocent joys of others can strongly move us, and that we, even in

our fallen nature, have one source of pure emotion which must be prized

in Heaven!

By morning’s cheerful glow, but oftener still by evening’s gentle

light, the child, with a respect for the short and happy intercourse of

these two sisters which forbade her to approach and say a thankful

word, although she yearned to do so, followed them at a distance in

their walks and rambles, stopping when they stopped, sitting on the

grass when they sat down, rising when they went on, and feeling it a

companionship and delight to be so near them. Their evening walk was

by a river’s side. Here, every night, the child was too, unseen by

them, unthought of, unregarded; but feeling as if they were her

friends, as if they had confidences and trusts together, as if her load

were lightened and less hard to bear; as if they mingled their sorrows,

and found mutual consolation. It was a weak fancy perhaps, the

childish fancy of a young and lonely creature; but night after night,

and still the sisters loitered in the same place, and still the child

followed with a mild and softened heart.

She was much startled, on returning home one night, to find that Mrs

Jarley had commanded an announcement to be prepared, to the effect that

the stupendous collection would only remain in its present quarters one

day longer; in fulfilment of which threat (for all announcements

connected with public amusements are well known to be irrevocable and

most exact), the stupendous collection shut up next day.

‘Are we going from this place directly, ma’am?’ said Nell.

‘Look here, child,’ returned Mrs Jarley. ‘That’ll inform you.’ And so

saying Mrs Jarley produced another announcement, wherein it was stated,

that, in consequence of numerous inquiries at the wax-work door, and in

consequence of crowds having been disappointed in obtaining admission,

the Exhibition would be continued for one week longer, and would

re-open next day.

‘For now that the schools are gone, and the regular sight-seers

exhausted,’ said Mrs Jarley, ‘we come to the General Public, and they

want stimulating.’

Upon the following day at noon, Mrs Jarley established herself behind

the highly-ornamented table, attended by the distinguished effigies

before mentioned, and ordered the doors to be thrown open for the

readmission of a discerning and enlightened public. But the first

day’s operations were by no means of a successful character, inasmuch

as the general public, though they manifested a lively interest in Mrs

Jarley personally, and such of her waxen satellites as were to be seen

for nothing, were not affected by any impulses moving them to the

payment of sixpence a head. Thus, notwithstanding that a great many

people continued to stare at the entry and the figures therein

displayed; and remained there with great perseverance, by the hour at a

time, to hear the barrel-organ played and to read the bills; and

notwithstanding that they were kind enough to recommend their friends

to patronise the exhibition in the like manner, until the door-way was

regularly blockaded by half the population of the town, who, when they

went off duty, were relieved by the other half; it was not found that

the treasury was any the richer, or that the prospects of the

establishment were at all encouraging.

In this depressed state of the classical market, Mrs Jarley made

extraordinary efforts to stimulate the popular taste, and whet the

popular curiosity. Certain machinery in the body of the nun on the

leads over the door was cleaned up and put in motion, so that the

figure shook its head paralytically all day long, to the great

admiration of a drunken, but very Protestant, barber over the way, who

looked upon the said paralytic motion as typical of the degrading

effect wrought upon the human mind by the ceremonies of the Romish

Church and discoursed upon that theme with great eloquence and

morality. The two carters constantly passed in and out of the

exhibition-room, under various disguises, protesting aloud that the

sight was better worth the money than anything they had beheld in all

their lives, and urging the bystanders, with tears in their eyes, not

to neglect such a brilliant gratification. Mrs Jarley sat in the

pay-place, chinking silver moneys from noon till night, and solemnly

calling upon the crowd to take notice that the price of admission was

only sixpence, and that the departure of the whole collection, on a

short tour among the Crowned Heads of Europe, was positively fixed for

that day week.

‘So be in time, be in time, be in time,’ said Mrs Jarley at the close

of every such address. ‘Remember that this is Jarley’s stupendous

collection of upwards of One Hundred Figures, and that it is the only

collection in the world; all others being imposters and deceptions. Be

in time, be in time, be in time!’