The bland and open-hearted proprietor of Bachelor's Hall slept on amidst the congenial accompaniments of rain, mud, dirt, damp, fog, and rats, until late in the day; when, summoning his valet Tom Scott to assist him to rise, and to prepare breakfast, he quitted his couch, and made his toilet.This duty performed, and his repast ended, he again betook himself to Bevis Marks.
This visit was not intended for Mr Swiveller, but for his friend and employer Mr Sampson Brass.Both gentlemen however were from home, nor was the life and light of law, Miss Sally, at her post either.The fact of their joint desertion of the office was made known to all comers by a scrap of paper in the hand-writing of Mr Swiveller, which was attached to the bell-handle, and which, giving the reader no clue to the time of day when it was first posted, furnished him with the rather vague and unsatisfactory information that that gentleman would 'return in an hour.'
'There's a servant, I suppose,' said the dwarf, knocking at the house-door.'She'll do.'
After a sufficiently long interval, the door was opened, and a small voice immediately accosted him with, 'Oh please will you leave a card or message?'
'Eh?' said the dwarf, looking down, (it was something quite new to him) upon the small servant.
To this, the child, conducting her conversation as upon the occasion of her first interview with Mr Swiveller, again replied, 'Oh please will you leave a card or message?'
'I'll write a note,' said the dwarf, pushing past her into the office; 'and mind your master has it directly he comes home.' So Mr Quilp climbed up to the top of a tall stool to write the note, and the small servant, carefully tutored for such emergencies, looked on with her eyes wide open, ready, if he so much as abstracted a wafer, to rush into the street and give the alarm to the police.
As Mr Quilp folded his note (which was soon written: being a very short one) he encountered the gaze of the small servant.He looked at her, long and earnestly.
'How are you?' said the dwarf, moistening a wafer with horrible grimaces.
The small servant, perhaps frightened by his looks, returned no audible reply; but it appeared from the motion of her lips that she was inwardly repeating the same form of expression concerning the note or message.
'Do they use you ill here? is your mistress a Tartar?' said Quilp with a chuckle.
In reply to the last interrogation, the small servant, with a look of infinite cunning mingled with fear, screwed up her mouth very tight and round, and nodded violently.Whether there was anything in the peculiar slyness of her action which fascinated Mr Quilp, or anything in the expression of her features at the moment which attracted his attention for some other reason; or whether it merely occurred to him as a pleasant whim to stare the small servant out of countenance; certain it is, that he planted his elbows square and firmly on the desk, and squeezing up his cheeks with his hands, looked at her fixedly.
'Where do you come from?' he said after a long pause, stroking his chin.
'I don't know.'
'What's your name?'
'Nothing.'
'Nonsense!' retorted Quilp.'What does your mistress call you when she wants you?'
'A little devil,' said the child.
She added in the same breath, as if fearful of any further questioning, 'But please will you leave a card or message?'
These unusual answers might naturally have provoked some more inquiries.Quilp, however, without uttering another word, withdrew his eyes from the small servant, stroked his chin more thoughtfully than before, and then, bending over the note as if to direct it with scrupulous and hair-breadth nicety, looked at her, covertly but very narrowly, from under his bushy eyebrows.The result of this secret survey was, that he shaded his face with his hands, and laughed slyly and noiselessly, until every vein in it was swollen almost to bursting.Pulling his hat over his brow to conceal his mirth and its effects, he tossed the letter to the child, and hastily withdrew.
Once in the street, moved by some secret impulse, he laughed, and held his sides, and laughed again, and tried to peer through the dusty area railings as if to catch another glimpse of the child, until he was quite tired out.At last, he travelled back to the Wilderness, which was within rifle-shot of his bachelor retreat, and ordered tea in the wooden summer-house that afternoon for three persons; an invitation to Miss Sally Brass and her brother to partake of that entertainment at that place, having been the object both of his journey and his note.
It was not precisely the kind of weather in which people usually take tea in summer-houses, far less in summer-houses in an advanced state of decay, and overlooking the slimy banks of a great river at low water.Nevertheless, it was in this choice retreat that Mr Quilp ordered a cold collation to be prepared, and it was beneath its cracked and leaky roof that he, in due course of time, received Mr Sampson and his sister Sally.
'You're fond of the beauties of nature,' said Quilp with a grin.
'Is this charming, Brass? Is it unusual, unsophisticated, primitive?'
'It's delightful indeed, sir,' replied the lawyer.
'Cool?' said Quilp.
'N-not particularly so, I think, sir,' rejoined Brass, with his teeth chattering in his head.
'Perhaps a little damp and ague-ish?' said Quilp.
'Just damp enough to be cheerful, sir,' rejoined Brass.'Nothing more, sir, nothing more.'
'And Sally?' said the delighted dwarf.'Does she like it?'
'She'll like it better,' returned that strong-minded lady, 'when she has tea; so let us have it, and don't bother.'
'Sweet Sally!' cried Quilp, extending his arms as if about to embrace her.'Gentle, charming, overwhelming Sally.'
'He's a very remarkable man indeed!' soliloquised Mr Brass.'He's quite a Troubadour, you know; quite a Troubadour!'