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CHAPTER 2
After combating, for nearly a week, the feeling which impelled me to revisit the place I had
quitted under the circumstances already detailed, I yielded to it at length; and determining
that this time I would present myself by the light of day, bent my steps thither early
in the morning.
I walked past the house, and took several turns in the street, with that kind of hesitation
which is natural to a man who is conscious that the visit he is about to pay is unexpected,
and may not be very acceptable. However, as the door of the shop was shut, and it did
not appear likely that I should be recognized by those within, if I continued merely to
pass up and down before it, I soon conquered this irresolution, and found myself in the
Curiosity Dealer's warehouse.
The old man and another person were together in the back part, and there seemed to have
been high words between them, for their voices which were raised to a very high pitch suddenly
stopped on my entering, and the old man advancing hastily towards me, said in a tremulous tone
that he was very glad I had come.
'You interrupted us at a critical moment,' said he, pointing to the man whom I had found
in company with him; 'this fellow will *** me one of these days. He would have done so,
long ago, if he had dared.'
'Bah! You would swear away my life if you could,' returned the other, after bestowing
a stare and a frown on me; 'we all know that!'
'I almost think I could,' cried the old man, turning feebly upon him. 'If oaths, or prayers,
or words, could rid me of you, they should. I would be quit of you, and would be relieved
if you were dead.'
'I know it,' returned the other. 'I said so, didn't I? But neither oaths, or prayers, nor
words, WILL kill me, and therefore I live, and mean to live.'
'And his mother died!' cried the old man, passionately clasping his hands and looking
upward; 'and this is Heaven's justice!'
The other stood lunging with his foot upon a chair, and regarded him with a contemptuous
sneer. He was a young man of one-and-twenty or thereabouts; well made, and certainly handsome,
though the expression of his face was far from prepossessing, having in common with
his manner and even his dress, a dissipated, insolent air which repelled one.
'Justice or no justice,' said the young fellow, 'here I am and here I shall stop till such
time as I think fit to go, unless you send for assistance to put me out—which you won't
do, I know. I tell you again that I want to see my sister.'
'YOUR sister!' said the old man bitterly.
'Ah! You can't change the relationship,' returned the other. 'If you could, you'd have done
it long ago. I want to see my sister, that you keep cooped up here, poisoning her mind
with your sly secrets and pretending an affection for her that you may work her to death, and
add a few scraped shillings every week to the money you can hardly count. I want to
see her; and I will.'
'Here's a moralist to talk of poisoned minds! Here's a generous spirit to scorn scraped-up
shillings!' cried the old man, turning from him to me. 'A profligate, sir, who has forfeited
every claim not only upon those who have the misfortune to be of his blood, but upon society
which knows nothing of him but his misdeeds. A liar too,' he added, in a lower voice as
he drew closer to me, 'who knows how dear she is to me, and seeks to wound me even there,
because there is a stranger nearby.'
'Strangers are nothing to me, grandfather,' said the young fellow catching at the word,
'nor I to them, I hope. The best they can do, is to keep an eye to their business and
leave me to mind. There's a friend of mine waiting outside, and as it seems that I may
have to wait some time, I'll call him in, with your leave.'
Saying this, he stepped to the door, and looking down the street beckoned several times to
some unseen person, who, to judge from the air of impatience with which these signals
were accompanied, required a great quantity of persuasion to induce him to advance. At
length there sauntered up, on the opposite side of the way—with a bad pretense of passing
by accident—a figure conspicuous for its dirty smartness, which after a great many
frowns and jerks of the head, in resistance of the invitation, ultimately crossed the
road and was brought into the shop.
'There. It's *** Swiveller,' said the young fellow, pushing him in. 'Sit down, Swiveller.'
'But is the old min agreeable?' said Mr Swiveller in an undertone.
Mr Swiveller complied, and looking about him with a propitiatory smile, observed that last
week was a fine week for the ducks, and this week was a fine week for the dust; he also
observed that whilst standing by the post at the street-corner, he had observed a pig
with a straw in his mouth issuing out of the tobacco-shop, from which appearance he augured
that another fine week for the ducks was approaching, and that rain would certainly ensue. He furthermore
took occasion to apologize for any negligence that might be perceptible in his dress, on
the ground that last night he had had 'the sun very strong in his eyes'; by which expression
he was understood to convey to his hearers in the most delicate manner possible, the
information that he had been extremely drunk.
'But what,' said Mr Swiveller with a sigh, 'what is the odds so long as the fire of soul
is kindled at the taper of conwiviality, and the wing of friendship never moults a feather!
What is the odds so long as the spirit is expanded by means of rosy wine, and the present
moment is the least happiest of our existence!'
'You needn't act the chairman here,' said his friend, half aside.
'Fred!' cried Mr Swiveller, tapping his nose, 'a word to the wise is sufficient for them—we
may be good and happy without riches, Fred. Say not another syllable. I know my cue; smart
is the word. Only one little whisper, Fred—is the old min friendly?'
'Never you mind,' replied his friend.
'Right again, quite right,' said Mr Swiveller, 'caution is the word, and caution is the act.'
with that, he winked as if in preservation of some deep secret, and folding his arms
and leaning back in his chair, looked up at the ceiling with profound gravity.
It was perhaps not very unreasonable to suspect from what had already passed, that Mr Swiveller
was not quite recovered from the effects of the powerful sunlight to which he had made
allusion; but if no such suspicion had been awakened by his speech, his wiry hair, dull
eyes, and sallow face would still have been strong witnesses against him. His attire was
not, as he had himself hinted, remarkable for the nicest arrangement, but was in a state
of disorder which strongly induced the idea that he had gone to bed in it. It consisted
of a brown body-coat with a great many brass buttons up the front and only one behind,
a bright check neckerchief, a plaid waistcoat, soiled white trousers, and a very limp hat,
worn with the wrong side foremost, to hide a hole in the brim. The breast of his coat
was ornamented with an outside pocket from which there peeped forth the cleanest end
of a very large and very ill-favoured handkerchief; his dirty wristbands were pulled on as far
as possible and ostentatiously folded back over his cuffs; he displayed no gloves, and
carried a yellow cane having at the top a bone hand with the semblance of a ring on
its little finger and a black ball in its grasp. With all these personal advantages
(to which may be added a strong savour of tobacco-smoke, and a prevailing greasiness
of appearance) Mr Swiveller leant back in his chair with his eyes fixed on the ceiling,
and occasionally pitching his voice to the needful key, obliged the company with a few
bars of an intensely dismal air, and then, in the middle of a note, relapsed into his
former silence.
The old man sat himself down in a chair, and with folded hands, looked sometimes at his
grandson and sometimes at his strange companion, as if he were utterly powerless and had no
resource but to leave them to do as they pleased. The young man reclined against a table at
no great distance from his friend, in apparent indifference to everything that had passed;
and I—who felt the difficulty of any interference, notwithstanding that the old man had appealed
to me, both by words and looks—made the best feint I could of being occupied in examining
some of the goods that were disposed for sale, and paying very little attention to a person
before me.
The silence was not of long duration, for Mr Swiveller, after favouring us with several
melodious assurances that his heart was in the Highlands, and that he wanted but his
Arab steed as a preliminary to the achievement of great feats of valour and loyalty, removed
his eyes from the ceiling and subsided into prose again.
'Fred,' said Mr Swiveller stopping short, as if the idea had suddenly occurred to him,
and speaking in the same audible whisper as before, 'is the old min friendly?'
'What does it matter?' returned his friend peevishly.
'No, but IS he?' said ***.
'Yes, of course. What do I care whether he is or not?'
Emboldened as it seemed by this reply to enter into a more general conversation, Mr Swiveller
plainly laid himself out to captivate our attention.
He began by remarking that soda-water, though a good thing in the abstract, was apt to lie
cold upon the stomach unless qualified with ginger, or a small infusion of brandy, which
latter article he held to be preferable in all cases, saving for the one consideration
of expense. Nobody venturing to dispute these positions, he proceeded to observe that the
human hair was a great retainer of tobacco-smoke, and that the young gentlemen of Westminster
and Eton, after eating vast quantities of apples to conceal any scent of cigars from
their anxious friends, were usually detected in consequence of their heads possessing this
remarkable property; when he concluded that if the Royal Society would turn their attention
to the circumstance, and endeavour to find in the resources of science a means of preventing
such untoward revelations, they might indeed be looked upon as benefactors to mankind.
These opinions being equally incontrovertible with those he had already pronounced, he went
on to inform us that Jamaica rum, though unquestionably an agreeable spirit of great richness and
flavour, had the drawback of remaining constantly present to the taste next day; and nobody
being venturous enough to argue this point either, he increased in confidence and became
yet more companionable and communicative.
'It's a devil of a thing, gentlemen,' said Mr Swiveller, 'when relations fall out and
disagree. If the wing of friendship should never moult a feather, the wing of relationship
should never be clipped, but be always expanded and serene. Why should a grandson and grandfather
peg away at each other with mutual wiolence when all might be bliss and concord. Why not
jine hands and forgit it?'
'Hold your tongue,' said his friend.
'Sir,' replied Mr Swiveller, 'don't you interrupt the chair. Gentlemen, how does the case stand,
upon the present occasion? Here is a jolly old grandfather—I say it with the utmost
respect—and here is a wild, young grandson. The jolly old grandfather says to the wild
young grandson, 'I have brought you up and educated you, Fred; I have put you in the
way of getting on in life; you have bolted a little out of course, as young fellows often
do; and you shall never have another chance, nor the ghost of half a one.' The wild young
grandson makes answer to this and says, 'You're as rich as rich can be; you have been at no
uncommon expense on my account, you're saving up piles of money for my little sister that
lives with you in a secret, stealthy, hugger-muggering kind of way and with no manner of enjoyment—why
can't you stand a trifle for your grown-up relation?' The jolly old grandfather unto
this, retorts, not only that he declines to fork out with that cheerful readiness which
is always so agreeable and pleasant in a gentleman of his time of life, but that he will bow
up, and call names, and make reflections whenever they meet. Then the plain question is, an't
it a pity that this state of things should continue, and how much better would it be
for the gentleman to hand over a reasonable amount of tin, and make it all right and comfortable?'
Having delivered this oration with a great many waves and flourishes of the hand, Mr
Swiveller abruptly thrust the head of his cane into his mouth as if to prevent himself
from impairing the effect of his speech by adding one other word.
'Why do you hunt and persecute me, God help me!' said the old man turning to his grandson.
'Why do you bring your prolifigate companions here? How often am I to tell you that my life
is one of care and self-denial, and that I am poor?'
'How often am I to tell you,' returned the other, looking coldly at him, 'that I know
better?'
'You have chosen your own path,' said the old man. 'Follow it. Leave Nell and me to
toil and work.'
'Nell will be a woman soon,' returned the other, 'and, bred in your faith, she'll forget
her brother unless he shows himself sometimes.'
'Take care,' said the old man with sparkling eyes, 'that she does not forget you when you
would have her memory keenest. Take care that the day don't come when you walk barefoot
in the streets, and she rides by in a gay carriage of her own.'
'You mean when she has your money?' retorted the other. 'How like a poor man he talks!'
'And yet,' said the old man dropping his voice and speaking like one who thinks aloud, 'how
poor we are, and what a life it is! The cause is a young child's guiltless of all harm or
wrong, but nothing goes well with it! Hope and patience, hope and patience!'
These words were uttered in too low a tone to reach the ears of the young men. Mr Swiveller
appeared to think that they implied some mental struggle consequent upon the powerful effect
of his address, for he poked his friend with his cane and whispered his conviction that
he had administered 'a clincher,' and that he expected a commission on the profits. Discovering
his mistake after a while, he appeared to grow rather sleepy and discontented, and had
more than once suggested the propriety of an immediate departure, when the door opened,
and the child herself appeared.