The Old Curiosity Shop

by Dickens, Charles

  Monflathers, bringing up the rear, approached her, when she

  curtseyed and presented her little packet; on receipt whereof Miss

  Monflathers commanded that the line should halt.

  'You're the wax-work child, are you not?' said Miss Monflathers.

  'Yes, ma'am,' replied Nell, colouring deeply, for the young ladies

  had collected about her, and she was the centre on which all eyes

  were fixed.

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  'And don't you think you must be a very wicked little child,' said

  Miss Monflathers, who was of rather uncertain temper, and lost no

  opportunity of impressing moral truths upon the tender minds of the

  young ladies, 'to be a wax-work child at all?'

  Poor Nell had never viewed her position in this light, and not

  knowing what to say, remained silent, blushing more deeply than

  before.

  'Don't you know,' said Miss Monflathers, 'that it's very naughty

  and unfeminine, and a perversion of the properties wisely and

  benignantly transmitted to us, with expansive powers to be roused

  from their dormant state through the medium of cultivation?'

  The two teachers murmured their respectful approval of this

  home-thrust, and looked at Nell as though they would have said that

  there indeed Miss Monflathers had hit her very hard. Then they

  smiled and glanced at Miss Monflathers, and then, their eyes

  meeting, they exchanged looks which plainly said that each

  considered herself smiler in ordinary to Miss Monflathers, and

  regarded the other as having no right to smile, and that her so

  doing was an act of presumption and impertinence.

  'Don't you feel how naughty it is of you,' resumed Miss

  Monflathers, 'to be a wax-work child, when you might have the proud

  consciousness of assisting, to the extent of your infant powers,

  the manufactures of your country; of improving your mind by the

  constant contemplation of the steam-engine; and of earning a

  comfortable and independent subsistence of from two-and-ninepence

  to three shillings per week? Don't you know that the harder you

  are at work, the happier you are?'

  '"How doth the little--"' murmured one of the teachers, in

  quotation from Doctor Watts.

  'Eh?' said Miss Monflathers, turning smartly round. 'Who said

  that?'

  Of course the teacher who had not said it, indicated the rival who

  had, whom Miss Monflathers frowningly requested to hold her peace;

  by that means throwing the informing teacher into raptures of joy.

  'The little busy bee,' said Miss Monflathers, drawing herself up,

  'is applicable only to genteel children.

  "In books, or work, or healthful play"

  is quite right as far as they are concerned; and the work means

  painting on velvet, fancy needle-work, or embroidery. In such

  cases as these,' pointing to Nell, with her parasol, 'and in the

  case of all poor people's children, we should read it thus:

  "In work, work, work. In work alway

  Let my first years be past,

  That I may give for ev'ry day

  Some good account at last."'

  A deep hum of applause rose not only from the two teachers, but

  from all the pupils, who were equally astonished to hear Miss

  Monflathers improvising after this brilliant style; for although

  she had been long known as a politician, she had never appeared

  before as an original poet. Just then somebody happened to

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  discover that Nell was crying, and all eyes were again turned

  towards her.

  There were indeed tears in her eyes, and drawing out her

  handkerchief to brush them away, she happened to let it fall.

  Before she could stoop to pick it up, one young lady of about

  fifteen or sixteen, who had been standing a little apart from the

  others, as though she had no recognised place among them, sprang

  forward and put it in her hand. She was gliding timidly away

  again, when she was arrested by the governess.

  'It was Miss Edwards who did that, I KNOW,' said Miss Monflathers

  predictively. 'Now I am sure that was Miss Edwards.'

  It was Miss Edwards, and everybody said it was Miss Edwards, and

  Miss Edwards herself admitted that it was.

  'Is it not,' said Miss Monflathers, putting down her parasol to

  take a severer view of the offender, 'a most remarkable thing, Miss

  Edwards, that you have an attachment to the lower classes which

  always draws you to their sides; or, rather, is it not a most

  extraordinary thing that all I say and do will not wean you from

  propensities which your original station in life have unhappily

  rendered habitual to you, you extremely vulgar-minded girl?'

  'I really intended no harm, ma'am,' said a sweet voice. 'It was a

  momentary impulse, indeed.'

  'An impulse!' repeated Miss Monflathers scornfully. 'I wonder that

  you presume to speak of impulses to me'--both the teachers assented--

  'I am astonished'--both the teachers were astonished--'I suppose

  it is an impulse which induces you to take the part of every

  grovelling and debased person that comes in your way'--both the

  teachers supposed so too.

  'But I would have you know, Miss Edwards,' resumed the governess in

  a tone of increased severity, 'that you cannot be permitted--if it

  be only for the sake of preserving a proper example and decorum in

  this establishment--that you cannot be permitted, and that you

  shall not be permitted, to fly in the face of your superiors in

  this exceedingly gross manner. If you have no reason to feel a

  becoming pride before wax-work children, there are young ladies

  here who have, and you must either defer to those young ladies or

  leave the establishment, Miss Edwards.'

  This young lady, being motherless and poor, was apprenticed at the

  school--taught for nothing--teaching others what she learnt, for

  nothing--boarded for nothing--lodged for nothing--and set down

  and rated as something immeasurably less than nothing, by all the

  dwellers in the house. The servant-maids felt her inferiority, for

  they were better treated; free to come and go, and regarded in

  their stations with much more respect. The teachers were

  infinitely superior, for they had paid to go to school in their

  time, and were paid now. The pupils cared little for a companion

  who had no grand stories to tell about home; no friends to come

  with post-horses, and be received in all humility, with cake and

  wine, by the governess; no deferential servant to attend and bear

  her home for the holidays; nothing genteel to talk about, and

  nothing to display. But why was Miss Monflathers always vexed and

  irritated with the poor apprentice--how did that come to pass?

  Why, the gayest feather in Miss Monflathers's cap, and the

  brightest glory of Miss Monflathers's school, was a baronet's

  daughter--the real live daughter of a real live baronet--who, by

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  some extraordinary reversal of the Laws of Nature, was not only


  plain in features but dull in intellect, while the poor apprentice

  had both a ready wit, and a handsome face and figure. It seems

  incredible. Here was Miss Edwards, who only paid a small premium

  which had been spent long ago, every day outshining and excelling

  the baronet's daughter, who learned all the extras (or was taught

  them all) and whose half-yearly bill came to double that of any

  other young lady's in the school, making no account of the honour

  and reputation of her pupilage. Therefore, and because she was a

  dependent, Miss Monflathers had a great dislike to Miss Edwards,

  and was spiteful to her, and aggravated by her, and, when she had

  compassion on little Nell, verbally fell upon and maltreated her as

  we have already seen.

  'You will not take the air to-day, Miss Edwards,' said Miss

  Monflathers. 'Have the goodness to retire to your own room, and

  not to leave it without permission.'

  The poor girl was moving hastily away, when she was suddenly, in

  nautical phrase, 'brought to' by a subdued shriek from Miss

  Monflathers.

  'She has passed me without any salute!' cried the governess,

  raising her eyes to the sky. 'She has actually passed me without

  the slightest acknowledgment of my presence!'

  The young lady turned and curtsied. Nell could see that she raised

  her dark eyes to the face of her superior, and that their

  expression, and that of her whole attitude for the instant, was one

  of mute but most touching appeal against this ungenerous usage.

  Miss Monflathers only tossed her head in reply, and the great gate

  closed upon a bursting heart.

  'As for you, you wicked child,' said Miss Monflathers, turning to

  Nell, 'tell your mistress that if she presumes to take the liberty

  of sending to me any more, I will write to the legislative

  authorities and have her put in the stocks, or compelled to do

  penance in a white sheet; and you may depend upon it that you shall

  certainly experience the treadmill if you dare to come here again.

  Now ladies, on.'

  The procession filed off, two and two, with the books and parasols,

  and Miss Monflathers, calling the Baronet's daughter to walk with

  her and smooth her ruffled feelings, discarded the two teachers--

  who by this time had exchanged their smiles for looks of sympathy--

  and left them to bring up the rear, and hate each other a little

  more for being obliged to walk together.

  CHAPTER 32

  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

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  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

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  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, t
hat 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--