第 五十一 章 · 第51章

The bland and open-hearted proprietor of Bachelor’s Hall slept on

amidst the congenial accompaniments of rain, mud, dirt, damp, fog, and

rats, until late in the day; when, summoning his valet Tom Scott to

assist him to rise, and to prepare breakfast, he quitted his couch, and

made his toilet. This duty performed, and his repast ended, he again

betook himself to Bevis Marks.

This visit was not intended for Mr Swiveller, but for his friend and

employer Mr Sampson Brass. Both gentlemen however were from home, nor

was the life and light of law, Miss Sally, at her post either. The

fact of their joint desertion of the office was made known to all

comers by a scrap of paper in the hand-writing of Mr Swiveller, which

was attached to the bell-handle, and which, giving the reader no clue

to the time of day when it was first posted, furnished him with the

rather vague and unsatisfactory information that that gentleman would

‘return in an hour.’

‘There’s a servant, I suppose,’ said the dwarf, knocking at the

house-door. ‘She’ll do.’

After a sufficiently long interval, the door was opened, and a small

voice immediately accosted him with, ‘Oh please will you leave a card

or message?’

‘Eh?’ said the dwarf, looking down, (it was something quite new to him)

upon the small servant.

To this, the child, conducting her conversation as upon the occasion of

her first interview with Mr Swiveller, again replied, ‘Oh please will

you leave a card or message?’

‘I’ll write a note,’ said the dwarf, pushing past her into the office;

‘and mind your master has it directly he comes home.’ So Mr Quilp

climbed up to the top of a tall stool to write the note, and the small

servant, carefully tutored for such emergencies, looked on with her

eyes wide open, ready, if he so much as abstracted a wafer, to rush

into the street and give the alarm to the police.

As Mr Quilp folded his note (which was soon written: being a very short

one) he encountered the gaze of the small servant. He looked at her,

long and earnestly.

‘How are you?’ said the dwarf, moistening a wafer with horrible

grimaces.

The small servant, perhaps frightened by his looks, returned no audible

reply; but it appeared from the motion of her lips that she was

inwardly repeating the same form of expression concerning the note or

message.

‘Do they use you ill here? is your mistress a Tartar?’ said Quilp with

a chuckle.

In reply to the last interrogation, the small servant, with a look of

infinite cunning mingled with fear, screwed up her mouth very tight and

round, and nodded violently. Whether there was anything in the

peculiar slyness of her action which fascinated Mr Quilp, or anything

in the expression of her features at the moment which attracted his

attention for some other reason; or whether it merely occurred to him

as a pleasant whim to stare the small servant out of countenance;

certain it is, that he planted his elbows square and firmly on the

desk, and squeezing up his cheeks with his hands, looked at her fixedly.

‘Where do you come from?’ he said after a long pause, stroking his chin.

‘I don’t know.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nonsense!’ retorted Quilp. ‘What does your mistress call you when she

wants you?’

‘A little devil,’ said the child.

She added in the same breath, as if fearful of any further questioning,

‘But please will you leave a card or message?’

These unusual answers might naturally have provoked some more

inquiries. Quilp, however, without uttering another word, withdrew his

eyes from the small servant, stroked his chin more thoughtfully than

before, and then, bending over the note as if to direct it with

scrupulous and hair-breadth nicety, looked at her, covertly but very

narrowly, from under his bushy eyebrows. The result of this secret

survey was, that he shaded his face with his hands, and laughed slyly

and noiselessly, until every vein in it was swollen almost to bursting.

Pulling his hat over his brow to conceal his mirth and its effects, he

tossed the letter to the child, and hastily withdrew.

Once in the street, moved by some secret impulse, he laughed, and held

his sides, and laughed again, and tried to peer through the dusty area

railings as if to catch another glimpse of the child, until he was

quite tired out. At last, he travelled back to the Wilderness, which

was within rifle-shot of his bachelor retreat, and ordered tea in the

wooden summer-house that afternoon for three persons; an invitation to

Miss Sally Brass and her brother to partake of that entertainment at

that place, having been the object both of his journey and his note.

It was not precisely the kind of weather in which people usually take

tea in summer-houses, far less in summer-houses in an advanced state of

decay, and overlooking the slimy banks of a great river at low water.

Nevertheless, it was in this choice retreat that Mr Quilp ordered a

cold collation to be prepared, and it was beneath its cracked and leaky

roof that he, in due course of time, received Mr Sampson and his sister

Sally.

‘You’re fond of the beauties of nature,’ said Quilp with a grin. ‘Is

this charming, Brass? Is it unusual, unsophisticated, primitive?’

‘It’s delightful indeed, sir,’ replied the lawyer.

‘Cool?’ said Quilp.

‘N-not particularly so, I think, sir,’ rejoined Brass, with his teeth

chattering in his head.

‘Perhaps a little damp and ague-ish?’ said Quilp.

‘Just damp enough to be cheerful, sir,’ rejoined Brass. ‘Nothing more,

sir, nothing more.’

‘And Sally?’ said the delighted dwarf. ‘Does she like it?’

‘She’ll like it better,’ returned that strong-minded lady, ‘when she

has tea; so let us have it, and don’t bother.’

‘Sweet Sally!’ cried Quilp, extending his arms as if about to embrace

her. ‘Gentle, charming, overwhelming Sally.’

‘He’s a very remarkable man indeed!’ soliloquised Mr Brass. ‘He’s

quite a Troubadour, you know; quite a Troubadour!’

These complimentary expressions were uttered in a somewhat absent and

distracted manner; for the unfortunate lawyer, besides having a bad

cold in his head, had got wet in coming, and would have willingly borne

some pecuniary sacrifice if he could have shifted his present raw

quarters to a warm room, and dried himself at a fire. Quilp,

however--who, beyond the gratification of his demon whims, owed Sampson

some acknowledgment of the part he had played in the mourning scene of

which he had been a hidden witness, marked these symptoms of uneasiness

with a delight past all expression, and derived from them a secret joy

which the costliest banquet could never have afforded him.

It is worthy of remark, too, as illustrating a little feature in the

character of Miss Sally Brass, that, although on her own account she

would have borne the discomforts of the Wilderness with a very ill

grace, and would probably, indeed, have walked off before the tea

appeared, she no sooner beheld the latent uneasiness and misery of her

brother than she developed a grim satisfaction, and began to enjoy

herself after her own manner. Though the wet came stealing through the

roof and trickling down upon their heads, Miss Brass uttered no

complaint, but presided over the tea equipage with imperturbable

composure. While Mr Quilp, in his uproarious hospitality, seated

himself upon an empty beer-barrel, vaunted the place as the most

beautiful and comfortable in the three kingdoms, and elevating his

glass, drank to their next merry-meeting in that jovial spot; and Mr

Brass, with the rain plashing down into his tea-cup, made a dismal

attempt to pluck up his spirits and appear at his ease; and Tom Scott,

who was in waiting at the door under an old umbrella, exulted in his

agonies, and bade fair to split his sides with laughing; while all this

was passing, Miss Sally Brass, unmindful of the wet which dripped down

upon her own feminine person and fair apparel, sat placidly behind the

tea-board, erect and grizzly, contemplating the unhappiness of her

brother with a mind at ease, and content, in her amiable disregard of

self, to sit there all night, witnessing the torments which his

avaricious and grovelling nature compelled him to endure and forbade

him to resent. And this, it must be observed, or the illustration

would be incomplete, although in a business point of view she had the

strongest sympathy with Mr Sampson, and would have been beyond measure

indignant if he had thwarted their client in any one respect.

In the height of his boisterous merriment, Mr Quilp, having on some

pretence dismissed his attendant sprite for the moment, resumed his

usual manner all at once, dismounted from his cask, and laid his hand

upon the lawyer’s sleeve.

‘A word,’ said the dwarf, ‘before we go farther. Sally, hark’ee for a

minute.’

Miss Sally drew closer, as if accustomed to business conferences with

their host which were the better for not having air.

‘Business,’ said the dwarf, glancing from brother to sister. ‘Very

private business. Lay your heads together when you’re by yourselves.’

‘Certainly, sir,’ returned Brass, taking out his pocket-book and

pencil. ‘I’ll take down the heads if you please, sir. Remarkable

documents,’ added the lawyer, raising his eyes to the ceiling, ‘most

remarkable documents. He states his points so clearly that it’s a

treat to have ‘em! I don’t know any act of parliament that’s equal to

him in clearness.’

‘I shall deprive you of a treat,’ said Quilp. ‘Put up your book. We

don’t want any documents. So. There’s a lad named Kit--’

Miss Sally nodded, implying that she knew of him.

‘Kit!’ said Mr Sampson.--‘Kit! Ha! I’ve heard the name before, but I

don’t exactly call to mind--I don’t exactly--’

‘You’re as slow as a tortoise, and more thick-headed than a

rhinoceros,’ returned his obliging client with an impatient gesture.

‘He’s extremely pleasant!’ cried the obsequious Sampson. ‘His

acquaintance with Natural History too is surprising. Quite a Buffoon,

quite!’

There is no doubt that Mr Brass intended some compliment or other; and

it has been argued with show of reason that he would have said Buffon,

but made use of a superfluous vowel. Be this as it may, Quilp gave him

no time for correction, as he performed that office himself by more

than tapping him on the head with the handle of his umbrella.

‘Don’t let’s have any wrangling,’ said Miss Sally, staying his hand.

‘I’ve showed you that I know him, and that’s enough.’

‘She’s always foremost!’ said the dwarf, patting her on the back and

looking contemptuously at Sampson. ‘I don’t like Kit, Sally.’

‘Nor I,’ rejoined Miss Brass.

‘Nor I,’ said Sampson.

‘Why, that’s right!’ cried Quilp. ‘Half our work is done already.

This Kit is one of your honest people; one of your fair characters; a

prowling prying hound; a hypocrite; a double-faced, white-livered,

sneaking spy; a crouching cur to those that feed and coax him, and a

barking yelping dog to all besides.’

‘Fearfully eloquent!’ cried Brass with a sneeze. ‘Quite appalling!’

‘Come to the point,’ said Miss Sally, ‘and don’t talk so much.’

‘Right again!’ exclaimed Quilp, with another contemptuous look at

Sampson, ‘always foremost! I say, Sally, he is a yelping, insolent dog

to all besides, and most of all, to me. In short, I owe him a grudge.’

‘That’s enough, sir,’ said Sampson.

‘No, it’s not enough, sir,’ sneered Quilp; ‘will you hear me out?

Besides that I owe him a grudge on that account, he thwarts me at this

minute, and stands between me and an end which might otherwise prove a

golden one to us all. Apart from that, I repeat that he crosses my

humour, and I hate him. Now, you know the lad, and can guess the rest.

Devise your own means of putting him out of my way, and execute them.

Shall it be done?’

‘It shall, sir,’ said Sampson.

‘Then give me your hand,’ retorted Quilp. ‘Sally, girl, yours. I rely

as much, or more, on you than him. Tom Scott comes back. Lantern,

pipes, more grog, and a jolly night of it!’

No other word was spoken, no other look exchanged, which had the

slightest reference to this, the real occasion of their meeting. The

trio were well accustomed to act together, and were linked to each

other by ties of mutual interest and advantage, and nothing more was

needed. Resuming his boisterous manner with the same ease with which

he had thrown it off, Quilp was in an instant the same uproarious,

reckless little savage he had been a few seconds before. It was ten

o’clock at night before the amiable Sally supported her beloved and

loving brother from the Wilderness, by which time he needed the utmost

support her tender frame could render; his walk being from some unknown

reason anything but steady, and his legs constantly doubling up in

unexpected places.

Overpowered, notwithstanding his late prolonged slumbers, by the

fatigues of the last few days, the dwarf lost no time in creeping to

his dainty house, and was soon dreaming in his hammock. Leaving him to

visions, in which perhaps the quiet figures we quitted in the old

church porch were not without their share, be it our task to rejoin

them as they sat and watched.