The Story of Little Nell
I. IN THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP
It was a queer home for a child—this place where Little Nell lived with her grandfather. He was a dealer in all sorts of curious old things: suits of mail which stood like ghosts in armor here and there; fantastic carved tables and chairs; rusty weapons of various kinds; distorted figures in china and wood and iron. And, amid it all, the oldest thing in the shop seemed to be the little old man with the long gray hair.
The only bit of youth was Nell herself; and yet she had a strange intermingling of dignity and responsibility, in spite of her small figure and childish ways. Her fourteen years of life had left her undecided between childhood and girlhood. She had not begun to grow up; and yet she was an orphan, accustomed to doing everything for herself.
Her grandfather tried in his way to take care of her, for he loved her dearly. But between the tending of his shop and the mysterious journeys which he made night after night, the child was often sent upon strange errands or left alone in the old house. And at all times it was she who took care of him. But the old man did not see that this lonely life was putting lines of sorrow into her face. To him she was still the child of yesterday, care-free and happy.
She had been happy once. She had gone singing through the dim rooms, and moving with gay step among their dusty treasures, making them older by her young life, and sterner and more grim by her cheerful presence. But now the chambers were cold and gloomy, and when she left her own little room to while away the tedious hours, and sat in one of them, she was still and motionless as their inanimate occupants, and had no heart to startle the echoes—hoarse from their long silence—with her voice.
In one of these rooms was a window looking into the street, where the child sat, many and many a long evening, and often far into the night, alone and thoughtful. None are so anxious as those who watch and wait; and at these times mournful fancies came flocking on her mind in crowds.
She knew instinctively that her grandfather was hiding something from her. What it was she could not guess; but these regular journeys at night, while she watched and waited, left him only the more fretful and careworn. He seemed to have a constant fever for something; yet all he would say was that he would some day leave her a fortune. Meanwhile he had fallen into the clutches of Quilp a terrible dwarf, who had lent him money from time to time, until the entire contents of the shop were mortgaged. So it is not strange that Little Nell should have mournful thoughts.
When the night had worn away, the child would close the window and even smile, with the first dawn of light, at her night-time fears. Then after praying earnestly for her grandfather and the restoring of their former happy days, she would unlatch the door for him and fall into a troubled sleep.
One night the old man said that he would not leave home. The child’s face lit up at the news, but became grave again when she saw how worried he looked.
“You took my note safely to Mr. Quilp, you say?” he asked fretfully. “What did he tell you, Nell?”
“Exactly what I told you, dear grandfather, indeed.”
“True,” said the old man, faintly. “Yes. But tell me again, Nell. My head fails me. What was it that he told you? Nothing more than that he would see me to-morrow or next day? That was in the note.”
“Nothing more,” said the child. “Shall I go to him again to-morrow, dear grandfather? Very early? I will be there and back before breakfast.”
The old man shook his head and, sighing mournfully, drew her towards him.
“’T would be no use, my dear, no earthly use. But if he deserts me, Nell, at this moment—if he deserts me now, when I should, with his assistance, be recompensed for all the time and money I have lost and all the agony of mind I have undergone, which makes me what you see, I am ruined and worse,—far worse than that—I have ruined you, for whom I ventured all. If we are beggars—!”
“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.”
The child’s voice was lost in sobs, as she clasped her arms about the old man’s neck; nor did she weep alone.
These were not words for other ears, nor was it a scene for other eyes. And yet other ears and eyes were there and greedily taking in all that passed, and moreover they were the ears and eyes of no less a person than Mr. Daniel Quilp, who, having entered unseen when the child first placed herself at the old man’s side, stood looking on with his accustomed grin. Standing, however, being tiresome, and the dwarf being one of that kind of persons who usually make themselves at home, he soon cast his eyes upon a chair, into which he skipped with uncommon agility, and perching himself on the back with his feet upon the seat, was thus enabled to look on and listen with greater comfort to himself, besides gratifying at the same time that taste for doing something fantastic and monkey-like, which on all occasions had strong possession of him. Here, then, he sat, one leg cocked carelessly over the other, his chin resting on the palm of his hand, his head turned a little on one side, and his ugly features twisted into a complacent grimace. And in this position the old man, happening in course of time to look that way, chanced to see him.
The child uttered a suppressed shriek on beholding this figure; in their first surprise both she and the old man, not knowing what to say, and half doubting its reality, looked shrinkingly at it. Not at all disconcerted by this reception, Daniel Quilp preserved the same attitude, merely nodding twice or thrice with great condescension. At length, the old man pronounced his name and inquired how he came there.
“Through the door,” said Quilp, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. “I’m not quite small enough to get through keyholes. I wish I was. I want to have some talk with you, particularly, and in private—with nobody present, neighbor. Good-bye, little Nelly.”
Nell looked at the old man, who nodded to her to retire, and kissed her cheek.
The dwarf said never a word, but watched his companion as he paced restlessly up and down the room, and presently returned to his seat. Here he remained, with his head bowed upon his breast for some time, and then suddenly raising it, said,
“Once, and once for all, have you brought me any money?”
“No!” returned Quilp.
“Then,” said the old man, clenching his hands desperately and looking upward, “the child and I are lost!”
“Neighbor,” said Quilp, glancing sternly at him, and beating his hand twice or thrice upon the table to attract his wandering attention, “let me be plain with you, and play a fairer game than when you held all the cards, and I saw but the backs and nothing more. You have no secret from me, now.”
The old man looked up, trembling.
“You are surprised,” said Quilp. “Well, perhaps that’s natural. You have no secret from me now, I say; no, not one. For now I know that all those sums of money, that all those loans, advances, and supplies that you have had from me, have found their way to—shall I say the word?”
“Aye!” replied the old man, “say it if you will.”
“To the gaming-table,” rejoined Quilp, “your nightly haunt. This was the precious scheme to make your fortune, was it; this was the secret certain source of wealth in which I was to have sunk my money (if I had been the fool you took me for); this was your inexhaustible mine of gold, your El Dorado, eh?”
“Yes,” cried the old man, turning upon him with gleaming eyes, “it was. It is. It will be, till I die.”
“That I should have been blinded,” said Quilp, looking contemptuously at him, “by a mere shallow gambler!”
“I am no gambler,” cried the old man, fiercely. “I call Heaven to witness that I never played for gain of mine, or love of play. It was all for her—for my little Nelly! I had sworn to leave her rich!”
“When did you first begin this mad career?” asked Quilp, his taunting inclination subdued, for a moment, by the old man’s grief and wildness.
“When did I first begin?” he rejoined, passing his hand across his brow. “When was it, that I first began? When should it be, but when I began to think how little I had saved, how long a time it took to save at all, how short a time I might have, at my age, to live, and how she would be left to the rough mercies of the world with barely enough to keep her from the sorrows that wait on poverty; then it was that I began to think about it.”
“Humph! the old story,” said the dwarf. “You lost what money you had laid by, first, and then came to me. While I thought you were making your fortune (as you said you were) you were making yourself a beggar, eh? Dear me! And so it comes to pass that I hold every security you could scrape together, and a bill of sale upon the—upon the stock and property. But did you never win?”
“Never!” groaned the old man. “Never won back my loss!”
“I thought,” sneered the dwarf, “that if a man played long enough he was sure to win at last, or, at the worst, not to come off a loser.”
“And so he is!” cried the old man, “so he is; I have felt that from the first, I have always known it, I’ve seen it, I never felt it half so strongly as I feel it now. Quilp, I have dreamed, three nights, of winning the same large sum. I never could dream that dream before, though I have often tried. Do not desert me, now I have this chance! I have no resource but you,—give me some help, let me try this one last hope.”
The dwarf shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.
“Nay, Quilp, good Quilp!” gasped the old man, extending his hands in entreaty; “let me try just this once more. I tell you it is not for me—it is for her! Oh, I cannot die and leave her in poverty!”
“I couldn’t do it, really,” said Quilp, with unusual politeness. And grinning and making a low bow he passed out of the door.
The dwarf was, for once, as good as his word. He not only refused to lend any more money, but he at once began to make plans for closing the shop. The old man was so broken-hearted that he fell ill of a raging fever, and for days was delirious. Little Nell, his only nurse, gradually learned the truth about her grandfather’s evening pursuit—the gaming-table—and it added all the more to her sorrow.
At last when he was well enough to go about again, the impatient dwarf would not be put off any longer in regard to the sale. An early day was fixed for it, and the old dealer no longer offered any objections. Instead, he sat quietly, dully in his chair, looking at a tiny patch of green through his window.
To one who had been tossing on a restless bed so long, even these few green leaves and this tranquil light, although it languished among chimneys and house-tops, were pleasant things. They suggested quiet places afar off, and rest and peace.
The child thought, more than once, that he was moved and had forborne to speak. But now he shed tears—tears that it lightened her aching heart to see—and making as though he would fall upon his knees, he besought her to forgive him.
“Forgive you—what?” said Nell, interposing to prevent his purpose. “Oh, grandfather, what should I forgive?”
“All that is past, all that has come upon you, Nell,” returned the old man.
“Do not talk so,” said the child. “Pray do not. Let us speak of something else.”
“Yes, yes, we will,” he rejoined. “And it shall be of what we talked of long ago—many months—months is it, or weeks, or days? which is it, Nell?”
“I do not understand you,” said the child.
“You said, let us be beggars and happy in the open fields,” he answered. “Oh, let us go away—anywhere!”
“Yes, let us go,” said Nell, earnestly; “there will we find happiness and peace.”
And so it was arranged. On the night before the public auction they were to steal forth quietly, out into the wide world.
The old man had slept for some hours soundly in his bed, while she was busily engaged in preparing for their flight. There were a few articles of clothing for herself to carry, and a few for him; old garments, such as became their fallen fortunes, laid out to wear; and a staff to support his feeble steps, put ready for his use. But this was not all her task, for now she must visit the old rooms for the last time.
And how different the parting with them was from any she had expected, and most of all from that which she had oftenest pictured to herself! How could she ever have thought of bidding them farewell in triumph, lonely and sad though her days had been! She sat down at the window where she had spent so many evenings—-darker far, than this—and every thought of hope or cheerfulness that had occurred to her in that place came vividly upon her mind, and blotted out all its dull and mournful associations in an instant.
Her own little room, too, where she had so often knelt down and prayed at night—prayed for the time which she hoped was dawning now—the little room where she had slept so peacefully, and dreamed such pleasant dreams—it was hard to leave it without one kind look or grateful tear.
But at last she was ready to go, and her grandfather was awakened. Just as the first rays of dawn were seen they stole forth noiselessly, hand in hand. They dared not awaken Quilp, who was sleeping that night in the shop to guard his prospective wealth. Out in the middle of the street they paused.
“Which way?” said the child.
The old man looked irresolutely and helplessly, first at her, then to the right and left, then at her again, and shook his head. It was plain that she was thenceforth his guide and leader. The child felt it, but had no doubts or misgiving, and putting her hand in his led him gently away.