第 40 页

friends, as if they had confidences and trusts together, as if her load

were lightened and less hard to bear; as if they mingled their sorrows,

and found mutual consolation. It was a weak fancy perhaps, the

childish fancy of a young and lonely creature; but night after night,

and still the sisters loitered in the same place, and still the child

followed with a mild and softened heart.

She was much startled, on returning home one night, to find that Mrs

Jarley had commanded an announcement to be prepared, to the effect that

the stupendous collection would only remain in its present quarters one

day longer; in fulfilment of which threat (for all announcements

connected with public amusements are well known to be irrevocable and

most exact), the stupendous collection shut up next day.

'Are we going from this place directly, ma'am?' said Nell.

'Look here, child,' returned Mrs Jarley. 'That'll inform you.' And so

saying Mrs Jarley produced another announcement, wherein it was stated,

that, in consequence of numerous inquiries at the wax-work door, and in

consequence of crowds having been disappointed in obtaining admission,

the Exhibition would be continued for one week longer, and would

re-open next day.

'For now that the schools are gone, and the regular sight-seers

exhausted,' said Mrs Jarley, 'we come to the General Public, and they

want stimulating.'

Upon the following day at noon, Mrs Jarley established herself behind

the highly-ornamented table, attended by the distinguished effigies

before mentioned, and ordered the doors to be thrown open for the

readmission of a discerning and enlightened public. But the first

day's operations were by no means of a successful character, inasmuch

as the general public, though they manifested a lively interest in Mrs

Jarley personally, and such of her waxen satellites as were to be seen

for nothing, were not affected by any impulses moving them to the

payment of sixpence a head. Thus, notwithstanding that a great many

people continued to stare at the entry and the figures therein

displayed; and remained there with great perseverance, by the hour at a

time, to hear the barrel-organ played and to read the bills; and

notwithstanding that they were kind enough to recommend their friends

to patronise the exhibition in the like manner, until the door-way was

regularly blockaded by half the population of the town, who, when they

went off duty, were relieved by the other half; it was not found that

the treasury was any the richer, or that the prospects of the

establishment were at all encouraging.

In this depressed state of the classical market, Mrs Jarley made

extraordinary efforts to stimulate the popular taste, and whet the

popular curiosity. Certain machinery in the body of the nun on the

leads over the door was cleaned up and put in motion, so that the

figure shook its head paralytically all day long, to the great

admiration of a drunken, but very Protestant, barber over the way, who

looked upon the said paralytic motion as typical of the degrading

effect wrought upon the human mind by the ceremonies of the Romish

Church and discoursed upon that theme with great eloquence and

morality. The two carters constantly passed in and out of the

exhibition-room, under various disguises, protesting aloud that the

sight was better worth the money than anything they had beheld in all

their lives, and urging the bystanders, with tears in their eyes, not

to neglect such a brilliant gratification. Mrs Jarley sat in the

pay-place, chinking silver moneys from noon till night, and solemnly

calling upon the crowd to take notice that the price of admission was

only sixpence, and that the departure of the whole collection, on a

short tour among the Crowned Heads of Europe, was positively fixed for

that day week.

'So be in time, be in time, be in time,' said Mrs Jarley at the close

of every such address. 'Remember that this is Jarley's stupendous

collection of upwards of One Hundred Figures, and that it is the only

collection in the world; all others being imposters and deceptions. Be

in time, be in time, be in time!'

CHAPTER 33

As the course of this tale requires that we should become acquainted,

somewhere hereabouts, with a few particulars connected with the

domestic economy of Mr Sampson Brass, and as a more convenient place

than the present is not likely to occur for that purpose, the historian

takes the friendly reader by the hand, and springing with him into the

air, and cleaving the same at a greater rate than ever Don Cleophas

Leandro Perez Zambullo and his familiar travelled through that pleasant

region in company, alights with him upon the pavement of Bevis Marks.

The intrepid aeronauts alight before a small dark house, once the

residence of Mr Sampson Brass.

In the parlour window of this little habitation, which is so close upon

the footway that the passenger who takes the wall brushes the dim glass

with his coat sleeve--much to its improvement, for it is very dirty--in

this parlour window in the days of its occupation by Sampson Brass,

there hung, all awry and slack, and discoloured by the sun, a curtain

of faded green, so threadbare from long service as by no means to

intercept the view of the little dark room, but rather to afford a

favourable medium through which to observe it accurately. There was

not much to look at. A rickety table, with spare bundles of papers,

yellow and ragged from long carriage in the pocket, ostentatiously

displayed upon its top; a couple of stools set face to face on opposite

sides of this crazy piece of furniture; a treacherous old chair by the

fire-place, whose withered arms had hugged full many a client and

helped to squeeze him dry; a second-hand wig box, used as a depository

for blank writs and declarations and other small forms of law, once the

sole contents of the head which belonged to the wig which belonged to

the box, as they were now of the box itself; two or three common books

of practice; a jar of ink, a pounce box, a stunted hearth-broom, a

carpet trodden to shreds but still clinging with the tightness of

desperation to its tacks--these, with the yellow wainscot of the walls,

the smoke-discoloured ceiling, the dust and cobwebs, were among the

most prominent decorations of the office of Mr Sampson Brass.

But this was mere still-life, of no greater importance than the plate,

'BRASS, Solicitor,' upon the door, and the bill, 'First floor to let to

a single gentleman,' which was tied to the knocker. The office

commonly held two examples of animated nature, more to the purpose of

this history, and in whom it has a stronger interest and more

particular concern.

Of these, one was Mr Brass himself, who has already appeared in these

pages. The other was his clerk, assistant, housekeeper, secretary,

confidential plotter, adviser, intriguer, and bill of cost increaser,

Miss Brass--a kind of amazon at common law, of whom it may be desirable

to offer a brief description.

Miss Sally Brass, then, was a lady of thirty-five or thereabouts, of a

gaunt and bony figure, and a resolute bearing, which if it repressed

the softer emotions of love, and kept admirers at a distance, certainly

inspired a feeling akin to awe in the breasts of those male strangers

who had the happiness to approach her. In face she bore a striking

resemblance to her brother, Sampson--so exact, indeed, was the likeness

between them, that had it consorted with Miss Brass's maiden modesty

and gentle womanhood to have assumed her brother's clothes in a frolic

and sat down beside him, it would have been difficult for the oldest

friend of the family to determine which was Sampson and which Sally,

especially as the lady carried upon her upper lip certain reddish

demonstrations, which, if the imagination had been assisted by her

attire, might have been mistaken for a beard. These were, however, in

all probability, nothing more than eyelashes in a wrong place, as the

eyes of Miss Brass were quite free from any such natural

impertinencies. In complexion Miss Brass was sallow--rather a dirty

sallow, so to speak--but this hue was agreeably relieved by the healthy

glow which mantled in the extreme tip of her laughing nose. Her voice

was exceedingly impressive--deep and rich in quality, and, once heard,

not easily forgotten. Her usual dress was a green gown, in colour not

unlike the curtain of the office window, made tight to the figure, and

terminating at the throat, where it was fastened behind by a peculiarly

large and massive button. Feeling, no doubt, that simplicity and

plainness are the soul of elegance, Miss Brass wore no collar or

kerchief except upon her head, which was invariably ornamented with a

brown gauze scarf, like the wing of the fabled vampire, and which,

twisted into any form that happened to suggest itself, formed an easy

and graceful head-dress.

Such was Miss Brass in person. In mind, she was of a strong and

vigorous turn, having from her earliest youth devoted herself with

uncommon ardour to the study of law; not wasting her speculations upon

its eagle flights, which are rare, but tracing it attentively through

all the slippery and eel-like crawlings in which it commonly pursues

its way. Nor had she, like many persons of great intellect, confined

herself to theory, or stopped short where practical usefulness begins;

inasmuch as she could ingross, fair-copy, fill up printed forms with

perfect accuracy, and, in short, transact any ordinary duty of the

office down to pouncing a skin of parchment or mending a pen. It is

difficult to understand how, possessed of these combined attractions,

she should remain Miss Brass; but whether she had steeled her heart

against mankind, or whether those who might have wooed and won her,

were deterred by fears that, being learned in the law, she might have

too near her fingers' ends those particular statutes which regulate

what are familiarly termed actions for breach, certain it is that she

was still in a state of celibacy, and still in daily occupation of her

old stool opposite to that of her brother Sampson. And equally certain

it is, by the way, that between these two stools a great many people

had come to the ground.

One morning Mr Sampson Brass sat upon his stool copying some legal

process, and viciously digging his pen deep into the paper, as if he

were writing upon the very heart of the party against whom it was

directed; and Miss Sally Brass sat upon her stool making a new pen

preparatory to drawing out a little bill, which was her favourite

occupation; and so they sat in silence for a long time, until Miss

Brass broke silence.

'Have you nearly done, Sammy?' said Miss Brass; for in her mild and

feminine lips, Sampson became Sammy, and all things were softened down.

'No,' returned her brother. 'It would have been all done though, if

you had helped at the right time.'

'Oh yes, indeed,' cried Miss Sally; 'you want my help, don't you?--YOU,

too, that are going to keep a clerk!'

'Am I going to keep a clerk for my own pleasure, or because of my own

wish, you provoking rascal!' said Mr Brass, putting his pen in his

mouth, and grinning spitefully at his sister. 'What do you taunt me

about going to keep a clerk for?'

It may be observed in this place, lest the fact of Mr Brass calling a

lady a rascal, should occasion any wonderment or surprise, that he was

so habituated to having her near him in a man's capacity, that he had

gradually accustomed himself to talk to her as though she were really a

man. And this feeling was so perfectly reciprocal, that not only did

Mr Brass often call Miss Brass a rascal, or even put an adjective

before the rascal, but Miss Brass looked upon it as quite a matter of

course, and was as little moved as any other lady would be by being

called an angel.

'What do you taunt me, after three hours' talk last night, with going

to keep a clerk for?' repeated Mr Brass, grinning again with the pen in

his mouth, like some nobleman's or gentleman's crest. 'Is it my fault?'

'All I know is,' said Miss Sally, smiling drily, for she delighted in

nothing so much as irritating her brother, 'that if every one of your

clients is to force us to keep a clerk, whether we want to or not, you

had better leave off business, strike yourself off the roll, and get

taken in execution, as soon as you can.'

'Have we got any other client like him?' said Brass. 'Have we got

another client like him now--will you answer me that?'

'Do you mean in the face!' said his sister.

'Do I mean in the face!' sneered Sampson Brass, reaching over to take

up the bill-book, and fluttering its leaves rapidly. 'Look

here--Daniel Quilp, Esquire--Daniel Quilp, Esquire--Daniel Quilp,

Esquire--all through. Whether should I take a clerk that he

recommends, and says, "this is the man for you," or lose all this, eh?'

Miss Sally deigned to make no reply, but smiled again, and went on with

her work.

'But I know what it is,' resumed Brass after a short silence. 'You're

afraid you won't have as long a finger in the business as you've been

used to have. Do you think I don't see through that?'

'The business wouldn't go on very long, I expect, without me,' returned

his sister composedly. 'Don't you be a fool and provoke me, Sammy, but

mind what you're doing, and do it.'

Sampson Brass, who was at heart in great fear of his sister, sulkily

bent over his writing again, and listened as she said:

'If I determined that the clerk ought not to come, of course he

wouldn't be allowed to come. You know that well enough, so don't talk

nonsense.'

Mr Brass received this observation with increased meekness, merely

remarking, under his breath, that he didn't like that kind of joking,