lodging, where, marvellous to relate, he consented to stop when Mr
Abel checked him.
'See! It's the room up there,' said the Marchioness, pointing to
one where there was a faint light. 'Come!'
Mr Abel, who was one of the simplest and most retiring creatures in
existence, and naturally timid withal, hesitated; for he had heard
of people being decoyed into strange places to be robbed and
murdered, under circumstances very like the present, and, for
anything he knew to the contrary, by guides very like the
Marchioness. His regard for Kit, however, overcame every other
consideration. So, entrusting Whisker to the charge of a man who
was lingering hard by in expectation of the Job, he suffered his
companion to take his hand, and to lead him up the dark and narrow
stairs.
He was not a little surprised to find himself conducted into a
dimly-lighted sick chamber, where a man was sleeping tranquilly in
bed.
'An't it nice to see him lying there so quiet?' said his guide, in
an earnest whisper. 'Oh! you'd say it was, if you had only seen
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him two or three days ago.'
Mr Abel made no answer, and, to say the truth, kept a long way from
the bed and very near the door. His guide, who appeared to
understand his reluctance, trimmed the candle, and taking it in her
hand, approached the bed. As she did so, the sleeper started up,
and he recognised in the wasted face the features of Richard
Swiveller.
'Why, how is this?' said Mr Abel kindly, as he hurried towards him.
'You have been ill?'
'Very,' replied Dick. 'Nearly dead. You might have chanced to
hear of your Richard on his bier, but for the friend I sent to
fetch you. Another shake of the hand, Marchioness, if you please.
Sit down, Sir.'
Mr Abel seemed rather astonished to hear of the quality of his
guide, and took a chair by the bedside.
'I have sent for you, Sir,' said Dick--'but she told you on what
account?'
'She did. I am quite bewildered by all this. I really don't know
what to say or think,' replied Mr Abel.
'You'll say that presently,' retorted Dick. 'Marchioness, take a
seat on the bed, will you? Now, tell this gentleman all that you
told me; and be particular. Don't you speak another word, Sir.'
The story was repeated; it was, in effect, exactly the same as
before, without any deviation or omission. Richard Swiveller kept
his eyes fixed on his visitor during its narration, and directly it
was concluded, took the word again.
'You have heard it all, and you'll not forget it. I'm too giddy
and too queer to suggest anything; but you and your friends will
know what to do. After this long delay, every minute is an age.
If ever you went home fast in your life, go home fast to-night.
Don't stop to say one word to me, but go. She will be found here,
whenever she's wanted; and as to me, you're pretty sure to find me
at home, for a week or two. There are more reasons than one for
that. Marchioness, a light! If you lose another minute in looking
at me, sir, I'll never forgive you!'
Mr Abel needed no more remonstrance or persuasion. He was gone in
an instant; and the Marchioness, returning from lighting him
down-stairs, reported that the pony, without any preliminary
objection whatever, had dashed away at full gallop.
'That's right!' said Dick; 'and hearty of him; and I honour him
from this time. But get some supper and a mug of beer, for I am
sure you must be tired. Do have a mug of beer. It will do me as
much good to see you take it as if I might drink it myself.'
Nothing but this assurance could have prevailed upon the small
nurse to indulge in such a luxury. Having eaten and drunk to Mr
Swiveller's extreme contentment, given him his drink, and put
everything in neat order, she wrapped herself in an old coverlet
and lay down upon the rug before the fire.
Mr Swiveller was by that time murmuring in his sleep, 'Strew then,
oh strew, a bed of rushes. Here will we stay, till morning
blushes. Good night, Marchioness!'
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CHAPTER 66
On awaking in the morning, Richard Swiveller became conscious, by
slow degrees, of whispering voices in his room. Looking out
between the curtains, he espied Mr Garland, Mr Abel, the notary,
and the single gentleman, gathered round the Marchioness, and
talking to her with great earnestness but in very subdued tones--
fearing, no doubt, to disturb him. He lost no time in letting them
know that this precaution was unnecessary, and all four gentlemen
directly approached his bedside. Old Mr Garland was the first to
stretch out his hand, and inquire how he felt.
Dick was about to answer that he felt much better, though still as
weak as need be, when his little nurse, pushing the visitors aside
and pressing up to his pillow as if in jealousy of their
interference, set his breakfast before him, and insisted on his
taking it before he underwent the fatigue of speaking or of being
spoken to. Mr Swiveller, who was perfectly ravenous, and had had,
all night, amazingly distinct and consistent dreams of mutton
chops, double stout, and similar delicacies, felt even the weak tea
and dry toast such irresistible temptations, that he consented to
eat and drink on one condition.
'And that is,' said Dick, returning the pressure of Mr Garland's
hand, 'that you answer me this question truly, before I take a bit
or drop. Is it too late?'
'For completing the work you began so well last night?' returned
the old gentleman. 'No. Set your mind at rest on that point. It
is not, I assure you.'
Comforted by this intelligence, the patient applied himself to his
food with a keen appetite, though evidently not with a greater zest
in the eating than his nurse appeared to have in seeing him eat.
The manner of this meal was this:--Mr Swiveller, holding the slice
of toast or cup of tea in his left hand, and taking a bite or
drink, as the case might be, constantly kept, in his right, one
palm of the Marchioness tight locked; and to shake, or even to kiss
this imprisoned hand, he would stop every now and then, in the very
act of swallowing, with perfect seriousness of intention, and the
utmost gravity. As often as he put anything into his mouth,
whether for eating or drinking, the face of the Marchioness lighted
up beyond all description; but whenever he gave her one or other of
these tokens of recognition, her countenance became overshadowed,
and she began to sob. Now, whether she was in her laughing joy, or
in her crying one, the Marchioness could not help turning to the
visitors with an appealing look, which seemed to say, 'You see this
fellow--can I help this?'--and they, being thus made, as it were,
parties to the scene, as regularly answered by another look, 'No.
Certainly not.' This dumb-show, taking place durin
g the whole time
of the invalid's breakfast, and the invalid himself, pale and
emaciated, performing no small part in the same, it may be fairly
questioned whether at any meal, where no word, good or bad, was
spoken from beginning to end, so much was expressed by gestures in
themselves so slight and unimportant.
At length--and to say the truth before very long--Mr Swiveller
had despatched as much toast and tea as in that stage of his
recovery it was discreet to let him have. But the cares of the
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Marchioness did not stop here; for, disappearing for an instant and
presently returning with a basin of fair water, she laved his face
and hands, brushed his hair, and in short made him as spruce and
smart as anybody under such circumstances could be made; and all
this, in as brisk and business-like a manner, as if he were a very
little boy, and she his grown-up nurse. To these various
attentions, Mr Swiveller submitted in a kind of grateful
astonishment beyond the reach of language. When they were at last
brought to an end, and the Marchioness had withdrawn into a distant
corner to take her own poor breakfast (cold enough by that time),
he turned his face away for some few moments, and shook hands
heartily with the air.
'Gentlemen,' said Dick, rousing himself from this pause, and
turning round again, 'you'll excuse me. Men who have been brought
so low as I have been, are easily fatigued. I am fresh again now,
and fit for talking. We're short of chairs here, among other
trifles, but if you'll do me the favour to sit upon the bed--'
'What can we do for you?' said Mr Garland, kindly.
'if you could make the Marchioness yonder, a Marchioness, in real,
sober earnest,' returned Dick, 'I'd thank you to get it done
off-hand. But as you can't, and as the question is not what you
will do for me, but what you will do for somebody else who has a
better claim upon you, pray sir let me know what you intend doing.'
'It's chiefly on that account that we have come just now,' said the
single gentleman, 'for you will have another visitor presently. We
feared you would be anxious unless you knew from ourselves what
steps we intended to take, and therefore came to you before we
stirred in the matter.'
'Gentlemen,' returned Dick, 'I thank you. Anybody in the helpless
state that you see me in, is naturally anxious. Don't let me
interrupt you, sir.'
'Then, you see, my good fellow,' said the single gentleman, 'that
while we have no doubt whatever of the truth of this disclosure,
which has so providentially come to light--'
'Meaning hers?' said Dick, pointing towards the Marchioness.
'--Meaning hers, of course. While we have no doubt of that, or
that a proper use of it would procure the poor lad's immediate
pardon and liberation, we have a great doubt whether it would, by
itself, enable us to reach Quilp, the chief agent in this villany.
I should tell you that this doubt has been confirmed into something
very nearly approaching certainty by the best opinions we have been
enabled, in this short space of time, to take upon the subject.
You'll agree with us, that to give him even the most distant chance
of escape, if we could help it, would be monstrous. You say with
us, no doubt, if somebody must escape, let it be any one but he.'
'Yes,' returned Dick, 'certainly. That is if somebody must--but
upon my word, I'm unwilling that Anybody should. Since laws were
made for every degree, to curb vice in others as well as in me--
and so forth you know--doesn't it strike you in that light?'
The single gentleman smiled as if the light in which Mr Swiveller
had put the question were not the clearest in the world, and
proceeded to explain that they contemplated proceeding by stratagem
in the first instance; and that their design was to endeavour to
extort a confession from the gentle Sarah.
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'When she finds how much we know, and how we know it,' he said,
'and that she is clearly compromised already, we are not without
strong hopes that we may be enabled through her means to punish the
other two effectually. If we could do that, she might go scot-free
for aught I cared.'
Dick received this project in anything but a gracious manner,
representing with as much warmth as he was then capable of showing,
that they would find the old buck (meaning Sarah) more difficult to
manage than Quilp himself--that, for any tampering, terrifying, or
cajolery, she was a very unpromising and unyielding subject--that
she was of a kind of brass not easily melted or moulded into shape--
in short, that they were no match for her, and would be signally
defeated. But it was in vain to urge them to adopt some other
course. The single gentleman has been described as explaining
their joint intentions, but it should have been written that they
all spoke together; that if any one of them by chance held his
peace for a moment, he stood gasping and panting for an opportunity
to strike in again: in a word, that they had reached that pitch of
impatience and anxiety where men can neither be persuaded nor
reasoned with; and that it would have been as easy to turn the most
impetuous wind that ever blew, as to prevail on them to reconsider
their determination. So, after telling Mr Swiveller how they had
not lost sight of Kit's mother and the children; how they had never
once even lost sight of Kit himself, but had been unremitting in
their endeavours to procure a mitigation of his sentence; how they
had been perfectly distracted between the strong proofs of his
guilt, and their own fading hopes of his innocence; and how he,
Richard Swiveller, might keep his mind at rest, for everything
should be happily adjusted between that time and night;--after
telling him all this, and adding a great many kind and cordial
expressions, personal to himself, which it is unnecessary to
recite, Mr Garland, the notary, and the single gentleman, took
their leaves at a very critical time, or Richard Swiveller must
assuredly have been driven into another fever, whereof the results
might have been fatal.
Mr Abel remained behind, very often looking at his watch and at the
room door, until Mr Swiveller was roused from a short nap, by the
setting-down on the landing-place outside, as from the shoulders of
a porter, of some giant load, which seemed to shake the house, and
made the little physic bottles on the mantel-shelf ring again.
Directly this sound reached his ears, Mr Abel started up, and
hobbled to the door, and opened it; and behold! there stood a
strong man, with a mighty hamper, which, being hauled into the room
and presently unpacked, disgorged such treasures as tea, and
coffee, and wine, and rusks, and oranges, and grapes, and fowls
ready trussed for boiling, and calves'-foot jelly, and arrow-root,
and sago, and other delicate r
estoratives, that the small servant,
who had never thought it possible that such things could be, except
in shops, stood rooted to the spot in her one shoe, with her mouth
and eyes watering in unison, and her power of speech quite gone.
But, not so Mr Abel; or the strong man who emptied the hamper, big
as it was, in a twinkling; and not so the nice old lady, who
appeared so suddenly that she might have come out of the hamper too
(it was quite large enough), and who, bustling about on tiptoe and
without noise--now here, now there, now everywhere at once--began
to fill out the jelly in tea-cups, and to make chicken broth in
small saucepans, and to peel oranges for the sick man and to cut
them up in little pieces, and to ply the small servant with glasses
of wine and choice bits of everything until more substantial meat
could be prepared for her refreshment. The whole of which
appearances were so unexpected and bewildering, that Mr Swiveller,
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when he had taken two oranges and a little jelly, and had seen the
strong man walk off with the empty basket, plainly leaving all that
abundance for his use and benefit, was fain to lie down and fall
asleep again, from sheer inability to entertain such wonders in his
mind.
Meanwhile, the single gentleman, the Notary, and Mr Garland,
repaired to a certain coffee-house, and from that place indited and
sent a letter to Miss Sally Brass, requesting her, in terms
mysterious and brief, to favour an unknown friend who wished to
consult her, with her company there, as speedily as possible. The
communication performed its errand so well, that within ten minutes
of the messenger's return and report of its delivery, Miss Brass
herself was announced.
'Pray ma'am,' said the single gentleman, whom she found alone in
the room, 'take a chair.'
Miss Brass sat herself down, in a very stiff and frigid state, and
seemed--as indeed she was--not a little astonished to find that
the lodger and her mysterious correspondent were one and the same
person.
'You did not expect to see me?' said the single gentleman.
'I didn't think much about it,' returned the beauty. 'I supposed
it was business of some kind or other. If it's about the
apartments, of course you'll give my brother regular notice, you
know--or money. That's very easily settled. You're a responsible
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