The Old Curiosity Shop

by Dickens, Charles

  of treachery and ingratitude--even the having parted from the two

  sisters--would have filled her with sorrow and regret. But now,

  all other considerations were lost in the new uncertainties and

  anxieties of their wild and wandering life; and the very

  desperation of their condition roused and stimulated her.

  In the pale moonlight, which lent a wanness of its own to the

  delicate face where thoughtful care already mingled with the

  winning grace and loveliness of youth, the too bright eye, the

  spiritual head, the lips that pressed each other with such high

  resolve and courage of the heart, the slight figure firm in its

  bearing and yet so very weak, told their silent tale; but told it

  only to the wind that rustled by, which, taking up its burden,

  carried, perhaps to some mother's pillow, faint dreams of childhood

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  fading in its bloom, and resting in the sleep that knows no waking.

  The night crept on apace, the moon went down, the stars grew pale

  and dim, and morning, cold as they, slowly approached. Then, from

  behind a distant hill, the noble sun rose up, driving the mists in

  phantom shapes before it, and clearing the earth of their ghostly

  forms till darkness came again. When it had climbed higher into

  the sky, and there was warmth in its cheerful beams, they laid them

  down to sleep, upon a bank, hard by some water.

  But Nell retained her grasp upon the old man's arm, and long after

  he was slumbering soundly, watched him with untiring eyes. Fatigue

  stole over her at last; her grasp relaxed, tightened, relaxed

  again, and they slept side by side.

  A confused sound of voices, mingling with her dreams, awoke her.

  A man of very uncouth and rough appearance was standing over them,

  and two of his companions were looking on, from a long heavy boat

  which had come close to the bank while they were sleeping. The

  boat had neither oar nor sail, but was towed by a couple of horses,

  who, with the rope to which they were harnessed slack and dripping

  in the water, were resting on the path.

  'Holloa!' said the man roughly. 'What's the matter here?'

  'We were only asleep, Sir,' said Nell. 'We have been walking all

  night.'

  'A pair of queer travellers to be walking all night,' observed the

  man who had first accosted them. 'One of you is a trifle too old

  for that sort of work, and the other a trifle too young. Where are

  you going?'

  Nell faltered, and pointed at hazard towards the West, upon which

  the man inquired if she meant a certain town which he named. Nell,

  to avoid more questioning, said 'Yes, that was the place.'

  'Where have you come from?' was the next question; and this being

  an easier one to answer, Nell mentioned the name of the village in

  which their friend the schoolmaster dwelt, as being less likely to

  be known to the men or to provoke further inquiry.

  'I thought somebody had been robbing and ill-using you, might be,'

  said the man. 'That's all. Good day.'

  Returning his salute and feeling greatly relieved by his departure,

  Nell looked after him as he mounted one of the horses, and the boat

  went on. It had not gone very far, when it stopped again, and she

  saw the men beckoning to her.

  'Did you call to me?' said Nell, running up to them.

  'You may go with us if you like,' replied one of those in the boat.

  'We're going to the same place.'

  The child hesitated for a moment. Thinking, as she had thought

  with great trepidation more than once before, that the men whom she

  had seen with her grandfather might, perhaps, in their eagerness

  for the booty, follow them, and regaining their influence over him,

  set hers at nought; and that if they went with these men, all

  traces of them must surely be lost at that spot; determined to

  accept the offer. The boat came close to the bank again, and

  before she had had any more time for consideration, she and her

  grandfather were on board, and gliding smoothly down the canal.

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  The sun shone pleasantly on the bright water, which was sometimes

  shaded by trees, and sometimes open to a wide extent of country,

  intersected by running streams, and rich with wooded hills,

  cultivated land, and sheltered farms. Now and then, a village with

  its modest spire, thatched roofs, and gable-ends, would peep out

  from among the trees; and, more than once, a distant town, with

  great church towers looming through its smoke, and high factories

  or workshops rising above the mass of houses, would come in view,

  and, by the length of time it lingered in the distance, show them

  how slowly they travelled. Their way lay, for the most part,

  through the low grounds, and open plains; and except these distant

  places, and occasionally some men working in the fields, or

  lounging on the bridges under which they passed, to see them creep

  along, nothing encroached on their monotonous and secluded track.

  Nell was rather disheartened, when they stopped at a kind of wharf

  late in the afternoon, to learn from one of the men that they would

  not reach their place of destination until next day, and that, if

  she had no provision with her, she had better buy it there. She

  had but a few pence, having already bargained with them for some

  bread, but even of these it was necessary to be very careful, as

  they were on their way to an utterly strange place, with no

  resource whatever. A small loaf and a morsel of cheese, therefore,

  were all she could afford, and with these she took her place in the

  boat again, and, after half an hour's delay during which the men

  were drinking at the public-house, proceeded on the journey.

  They brought some beer and spirits into the boat with them, and

  what with drinking freely before, and again now, were soon in a

  fair way of being quarrelsome and intoxicated. Avoiding the small

  cabin, therefore, which was very dark and filthy, and to which they

  often invited both her and her grandfather, Nell sat in the open

  air with the old man by her side: listening to their boisterous

  hosts with a palpitating heart, and almost wishing herself safe on

  shore again though she should have to walk all night.

  They were, in truth, very rugged, noisy fellows, and quite brutal

  among themselves, though civil enough to their two passengers.

  Thus, when a quarrel arose between the man who was steering and his

  friend in the cabin, upon the question who had first suggested the

  propriety of offering Nell some beer, and when the quarrel led to

  a scuffle in which they beat each other fearfully, to her

  inexpressible terror, neither visited his displeasure upon her, but

  each contented himself with venting it on his adversary, on whom,

  in addition to blows, he bestowed a variety of compliments, which,

  happily for the child, were conveyed in terms, to her quite

  unintelligible. The difference was finally adjusted, by the man

  who had come out of the cabin knocking the other
into it head

  first, and taking the helm into his own hands, without evincing the

  least discomposure himself, or causing any in his friend, who,

  being of a tolerably strong constitution and perfectly inured to

  such trifles, went to sleep as he was, with his heels upwards, and

  in a couple of minutes or so was snoring comfortably.

  By this time it was night again, and though the child felt cold,

  being but poorly clad, her anxious thoughts were far removed from

  her own suffering or uneasiness, and busily engaged in endeavouring

  to devise some scheme for their joint subsistence. The same spirit

  which had supported her on the previous night, upheld and sustained

  her now. Her grandfather lay sleeping safely at her side, and the

  crime to which his madness urged him, was not committed. That was

  her comfort.

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  How every circumstance of her short, eventful life, came thronging

  into her mind, as they travelled on! Slight incidents, never

  thought of or remembered until now; faces, seen once and ever since

  forgotten; words scarcely heeded at the time; scenes, of a year ago

  and those of yesterday, mixing up and linking themselves together;

  familiar places shaping themselves out in the darkness from things

  which, when approached, were, of all others, the most remote and

  most unlike them; sometimes, a strange confusion in her mind

  relative to the occasion of her being there, and the place to which

  she was going, and the people she was with; and imagination

  suggesting remarks and questions which sounded so plainly in her

  ears, that she would start, and turn, and be almost tempted to

  reply;--all the fancies and contradictions common in watching and

  excitement and restless change of place, beset the child.

  She happened, while she was thus engaged, to encounter the face of

  the man on deck, in whom the sentimental stage of drunkenness had

  now succeeded to the boisterous, and who, taking from his mouth a

  short pipe, quilted over with string for its longer preservation,

  requested that she would oblige him with a song.

  'You've got a very pretty voice, a very soft eye, and a very strong

  memory,' said this gentleman; 'the voice and eye I've got evidence

  for, and the memory's an opinion of my own. And I'm never wrong.

  Let me hear a song this minute.'

  'I don't think I know one, sir,' returned Nell.

  'You know forty-seven songs,' said the man, with a gravity which

  admitted of no altercation on the subject. 'Forty-seven's your

  number. Let me hear one of 'em--the best. Give me a song this

  minute.'

  Not knowing what might be the consequences of irritating her

  friend, and trembling with the fear of doing so, poor Nell sang him

  some little ditty which she had learned in happier times, and which

  was so agreeable to his ear, that on its conclusion he in the same

  peremptory manner requested to be favoured with another, to which

  he was so obliging as to roar a chorus to no particular tune, and

  with no words at all, but which amply made up in its amazing energy

  for its deficiency in other respects. The noise of this vocal

  performance awakened the other man, who, staggering upon deck and

  shaking his late opponent by the hand, swore that singing was his

  pride and joy and chief delight, and that he desired no better

  entertainment. With a third call, more imperative than either of

  the two former, Nell felt obliged to comply, and this time a chorus

  was maintained not only by the two men together, but also by the

  third man on horseback, who being by his position debarred from a

  nearer participation in the revels of the night, roared when his

  companions roared, and rent the very air. In this way, with little

  cessation, and singing the same songs again and again, the tired

  and exhausted child kept them in good humour all that night; and

  many a cottager, who was roused from his soundest sleep by the

  discordant chorus as it floated away upon the wind, hid his head

  beneath the bed-clothes and trembled at the sounds.

  At length the morning dawned. It was no sooner light than it began

  to rain heavily. As the child could not endure the intolerable

  vapours of the cabin, they covered her, in return for her

  exertions, with some pieces of sail-cloth and ends of tarpaulin,

  which sufficed to keep her tolerably dry and to shelter her

  grandfather besides. As the day advanced the rain increased. At

  noon it poured down more hopelessly and heavily than ever without

  the faintest promise of abatement.

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  They had, for some time, been gradually approaching the place for

  which they were bound. The water had become thicker and dirtier;

  other barges, coming from it, passed them frequently; the paths of

  coal-ash and huts of staring brick, marked the vicinity of some

  great manufacturing town; while scattered streets and houses, and

  smoke from distant furnaces, indicated that they were already in

  the outskirts. Now, the clustered roofs, and piles of buildings,

  trembling with the working of engines, and dimly resounding with

  their shrieks and throbbings; the tall chimneys vomiting forth a

  black vapour, which hung in a dense ill-favoured cloud above the

  housetops and filled the air with gloom; the clank of hammers

  beating upon iron, the roar of busy streets and noisy crowds,

  gradually augmenting until all the various sounds blended into one

  and none was distinguishable for itself, announced the termination

  of their journey.

  The boat floated into the wharf to which it belonged. The men were

  occupied directly. The child and her grandfather, after waiting in

  vain to thank them or ask them whither they should go, passed

  through a dirty lane into a crowded street, and stood, amid its din

  and tumult, and in the pouring rain, as strange, bewildered, and

  confused, as if they had lived a thousand years before, and were

  raised from the dead and placed there by a miracle.

  CHAPTER 44

  The throng of people hurried by, in two opposite streams, with no

  symptom of cessation or exhaustion; intent upon their own affairs;

  and undisturbed in their business speculations, by the roar of

  carts and waggons laden with clashing wares, the slipping of

  horses' feet upon the wet and greasy pavement, the rattling of the

  rain on windows and umbrella-tops, the jostling of the more

  impatient passengers, and all the noise and tumult of a crowded

  street in the high tide of its occupation: while the two poor

  strangers, stunned and bewildered by the hurry they beheld but had

  no part in, looked mournfully on; feeling, amidst the crowd, a

  solitude which has no parallel but in the thirst of the shipwrecked

  mariner, who, tost to and fro upon the billows of a mighty ocean,

  his red eyes blinded by looking on the water which hems him in on

  every side, has not one drop to cool his burning tongue.

  They withdrew into a low archway for shelter from the r
ain, and

  watched the faces of those who passed, to find in one among them a

  ray of encouragement or hope. Some frowned, some smiled, some

  muttered to themselves, some made slight gestures, as if

  anticipating the conversation in which they would shortly be

  engaged, some wore the cunning look of bargaining and plotting,

  some were anxious and eager, some slow and dull; in some

  countenances, were written gain; in others, loss. It was like

  being in the confidence of all these people to stand quietly there,

  looking into their faces as they flitted past. In busy places,

  where each man has an object of his own, and feels assured that

  every other man has his, his character and purpose are written

  broadly in his face. In the public walks and lounges of a town,

  people go to see and to be seen, and there the same expression,

  with little variety, is repeated a hundred times. The working-day

  faces come nearer to the truth, and let it out more plainly.

  Falling into that kind of abstraction which such a solitude

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  awakens, the child continued to gaze upon the passing crowd with a

  wondering interest, amounting almost to a temporary forgetfulness

  of her own condition. But cold, wet, hunger, want of rest, and

  lack of any place in which to lay her aching head, soon brought her

  thoughts back to the point whence they had strayed. No one passed

  who seemed to notice them, or to whom she durst appeal. After some

  time, they left their place of refuge from the weather, and mingled

  with the concourse.

  Evening came on. They were still wandering up and down, with fewer

  people about them, but with the same sense of solitude in their own

  breasts, and the same indifference from all around. The lights in

  the streets and shops made them feel yet more desolate, for with

  their help, night and darkness seemed to come on faster. Shivering

  with the cold and damp, ill in body, and sick to death at heart,

  the child needed her utmost firmness and resolution even to creep

  along.

  Why had they ever come to this noisy town, when there were peaceful

  country places, in which, at least, they might have hungered and

  thirsted, with less suffering than in its squalid strife! They

  were but an atom, here, in a mountain heap of misery, the very

  sight of which increased their hopelessness and suffering.