The Old Curiosity Shop

One night I had roamed into the city, and was walking slowly on in my usual way, musing upon a great many things, when I was arrested by an inquiry, the purport of which did not reach me, but which seemed to be addressed to myself, and was preferred in a soft sweet voice that struck me very pleasantly. I turned hastily round and found at my elbow a pretty little girl, who begged to be directed to a certain street at a considerable distance, and indeed in quite another quarter of the town.

“It is a very long way from here,” said I, “my child.”

“I know that, sir,” she replied timidly. “I am afraid it is a very long way, for I came from there tonight.”

“Alone?” said I, in some surprise.

“Oh yes, I don’t mind that, but I am a little frightened now, for I have lost my road.”

“And what made you ask it of me? Suppose I should tell you wrong.”

“I am sure you will not do that,” said the little creature, “you are such a very old gentleman, and walk so slow yourself.”

I cannot describe how much I was impressed by this appeal and the energy with which it was made, which brought a tear into the child’s clear eye, and made her slight figure tremble as she looked up into my face.

“Come,” said I, “I’ll take you there.”

She put her hand in mine as confidingly as if she had known me from her cradle, and we trudged away together: the

A part of this door was of glass unprotected by any shutter, which I did not observe at first, for all was very dark and silent within, and I was anxious (as indeed the child was also) for an answer to our summons. When she had knocked twice or thrice there was a noise as if some person were moving inside, and at length a faint light appeared through the glass which, as it approached very slowly, the bearer having to make his way through a great many scattered articles, enabled me to see both what kind of person it was who advanced and what kind of place it was through which he came.

It was a little old man with long grey hair, whose face and figure as he held the light above his head and looked before him as he approached, I could plainly see. Though much altered by age, I fancied I could recognise in his spare and slender form something of that delicate mould which I had noticed in the child. Their bright blue eyes were certainly alike, but his face was so deeply furrowed and so very full of care, that here all resemblance ceased.

The place through which he made his way at leisure was one of those receptacles for old and curious things which seem to crouch in odd corners of this town and to hide their musty treasures from the public eye in jealousy and distrust. There were suits of mail standing like ghosts in armour here and there, fantastic carvings brought from monkish cloisters, rusty weapons of various kinds, distorted figures in china and wood and iron and ivory: tapestry and strange furniture that might have been designed in dreams.

“The best of her is,” said the dwarf, advancing with a sort of skip, which, what with the crookedness of his legs, the ugliness of his face, and the mockery of his manner, was perfectly goblin-like;⁠—“the best of her is that she’s so meek, and she’s so mild, and she never has a will of her own, and she has such an insinuating mother!”

Uttering these latter words with a gloating maliciousness, within a hundred degrees of which no one but himself could possibly approach, Mr. Quilp planted his two hands on his knees, and straddling his legs out very wide apart, stooped slowly down, and down, and down, until, by screwing his head very much on one side, he came between his wife’s eyes and the floor.

“Mrs. Quilp!”

“Yes, Quilp.”

“Am I nice to look at? Should I be the handsomest creature in the world if I had but whiskers? Am I quite a lady’s man as it is?⁠—am I, Mrs. Quilp?”

Mrs. Quilp dutifully replied, “Yes, Quilp;” and fascinated by his gaze, remained looking timidly at him, while he treated her with a succession of such horrible grimaces, as none but himself and nightmares had the power of assuming. During the whole of this performance, which was somewhat of the longest, he preserved a dead silence, except when, by an unexpected skip or leap, he made his wife start backward with an irrepressible shriek. Then he chuckled.

“Mrs. Quilp,” he said at last.

“Yes, Quilp,” she meekly replied.

“What if we are,” said the child boldly. “Let us be beggars, and be happy.”

“Beggars⁠—and happy!” said the old man. “Poor child!”

“Dear grandfather,” cried the girl with an energy which shone in her flushed face, trembling voice, and impassioned gesture, “I am not a child in that I think, but even if I am, oh hear me pray that we may beg, or work in open roads or fields, to earn a scanty living, rather than live as we do now.”

“Nelly!” said the old man.

“Yes, yes, rather than live as we do now,” the child repeated, more earnestly than before. “If you are sorrowful, let me know why and be sorrowful too; if you waste away and are paler and weaker every day, let me be your nurse and try to comfort you. If you are poor, let us be poor together, but let me be with you, do let me be with you, do not let me see such change and not know why, or I shall break my heart and die. Dear grandfather, let us leave this sad place tomorrow, and beg our way from door to door.”

The old man covered his face with his hands, and hid it in the pillow of the couch on which he lay.

“Let us be beggars,” said the child passing an arm round his neck, “I have no fear but we shall have enough, I am sure we shall.

A figure was there. Yes, she had drawn up the blind to admit the light when it should dawn, and there, between the foot of the bed and the dark casement, it crouched and slunk along, groping its way with noiseless hands, and stealing round the bed. She had no voice to cry for help, no power to move, but lay still, watching it.

On it came⁠—on, silently and stealthily, to the bed’s head. The breath so near her pillow, that she shrunk back into it, lest those wandering hands should light upon her face. Back again it stole to the window⁠—then turned its head towards her.

The dark form was a mere blot upon the lighter darkness of the room, but she saw the turning of the head, and felt and knew how the eyes looked and the ears listened. There it remained, motionless as she. At length, still keeping the face towards her, it busied its hands in something, and she heard the chink of money.

Then, on it came again, silent and stealthy as before, and, replacing the garments it had taken from the bedside, dropped upon its hands and knees, and crawled away. How slowly it seemed to move, now that she could hear but not see it, creeping along the floor! It reached the door at last, and stood upon its feet.