and had been discussed and expatiated on at every tea-drinking in the neighbourhood for the last twelve months, this official communication was no sooner made than they all began to talk at once and to vie with each other in vehemence and volubility. Mrs George remarked that people would talk, that people had often said this to her before, that Mrs Simmons then and there present had told her so twenty times, that she had always said, ‘No, Henrietta Simmons, unless I see it with my own eyes and hear it with my own ears, I never will believe it.’ Mrs Simmons corroborated this testimony and added strong evidence of her own. The lady from the Minories recounted a successful course of treatment under which she had placed her own husband, who, from manifesting one month after marriage unequivocal symptoms of the tiger, had by this means become subdued into a perfect lamb. Another lady recounted her own personal struggle and final triumph, in the course whereof she had found it necessary to call in her mother and two aunts, and to weep incessantly night and day for six weeks. A third, who in the general confusion could secure no other listener, fastened herself upon a young woman still unmarried who happened to be amongst them, and conjured her, as she valued her own peace of mind and happiness to profit by this solemn occasion, to take example from the weakness of Mrs Quilp, and from that time forth to direct her whole thoughts to taming and subduing the rebellious spirit of man. The noise was at its height, and half the company had elevated their voices into a perfect shriek in order to drown the voices of the other half, when Mrs Jiniwin was seen to change colour and shake her forefinger stealthily, as if exhorting them to silence. Then, and not until then, Daniel Quilp himself, the cause and occasion of all this clamour, was observed to be in the room, looking on and listening with profound attention.
‘Go on, ladies, go on,’ said Daniel. ‘Mrs Quilp, pray ask the ladies to stop to supper, and have a couple of lobsters and something light and palatable.’
‘I – I – didn’t ask them to tea, Quilp,’ stammered his wife. ‘It’s quite an accident.’
‘So much the better, Mrs Quilp; these accidental parties are always the pleasantest,’ said the dwarf, rubbing his hands so hard that he seemed to be engaged in manufacturing, of the dirt with which they were encrusted, little charges for popguns. ‘What! Not going, ladies, you are not going, surely!’
His fair enemies tossed their heads slightly as they sought their respective bonnets and shawls, but left all verbal contention to Mrs Jiniwin, who finding herself in the position of champion, made a faint struggle to sustain the character.
‘And why not stop to supper, Quilp,’ said the old lady, ‘if my daughter had a mind?’
‘To be sure,’ rejoined Daniel. ‘Why not?’
‘There’s nothing dishonest or wrong in a supper, I hope?’ said Mrs Jiniwin.
‘Surely not,’ returned the dwarf. ‘Why should there be? Nor anything unwholesome, either, unless there’s lobster-salad or prawns, which I’m told are not good for digestion.’
‘And you wouldn’t like your wife to be attacked with that, or anything else that would make her uneasy would you?’ said Mrs Jiniwin.
‘Not for a score of worlds,’ replied the dwarf with a grin. ‘Not even to have a score of mothers-in-law at the same time – and what a blessing that would be!’
‘My daughter’s your wife, Mr Quilp, certainly,’ said the old lady with a giggle, meant for satirical and to imply that he needed to be reminded of the fact; ‘your wedded wife.’
‘So she is, certainly. So she is,’ observed the dwarf.
‘And she has a right to do as she likes, I hope, Quilp,’ said the old lady trembling, partly with anger and partly with a secret fear of her impish son-in-law.
‘Hope she has!’ he replied. ‘Oh! Don’t you know she has? Don’t you know she has, Mrs Jiniwin?
‘I know she ought to have, Quilp, and would have, if she was of my way of thinking.’
‘Why an’t you of your mother’s way of thinking, my dear?’ said the dwarf, turing round and addressing his wife, ‘why don’t you always imitate your mother, my dear? She’s the ornament of her sex – your father said so every day of his life. I am sure he did.’
‘Her father was a blessed creetur, Quilp, and worthy twenty thousand of some people,’ said Mrs Jiniwin; ‘twenty hundred million thousand.’
‘I should like to have known him,’ remarked the dwarf. ‘I dare say he was a blessed creature then; but I’m sure he is now. It was a happy release. I believe he had suffered a long time?’
The old lady gave a gasp, but nothing came of it; Quilp resumed, with the same malice in his eye and the same sarcastic politeness on his tongue.
‘You look ill, Mrs Jiniwin; I know you have been exciting yourself too much – talking perhaps, for it is your weakness. Go to bed. Do go to bed.’
‘I shall go when I please, Quilp, and not before.’
‘But please to do now. Do please to go now,’ said the dwarf.
The old woman looked angrily at him, but retreated as he advanced, and falling back before him, suffered him to shut the door upon her and bolt her out among the guests, who were by this time crowding downstairs. Being left alone with his wife, who sat trembling in a corner with her eyes fixed upon the ground, the little man planted himself before her, and folding his arms looked steadily at her for a long time without speaking.
‘Mrs Quilp,’ he said at last.
‘Yes, Quilp,’ she replead meekly.
Instead of pursuing the theme he had in his mind, Quilp folded his arms again, and looked at her more sternly than before, while she averted her eyes and kept them on the ground.
‘Mrs Quilp.’
‘Yes, Quilp.’
‘If ever you listen to these beldames again, I’ll bite you.’
With this laconic threat, which he accompanied with a snarl that gave him the appearance of being particularly in earnest, Mr Quilp bade her clear the teaboard away, and bring the rum. The spirit being set before him in a huge case-bottle, which had originally come out of some ship’s locker, he settled himself in an arm-chair with his large head and face squeezed up against the back, and his little legs planted on the table.
‘Now, Mrs Quilp,’ he said; ‘I feel in a smoking humour, and shall probably blaze away all night. But sit where you are, if you please, in case I want you.’
His wife returned no other reply than the necessary ‘Yes, Quilp,’ and the small lord of the creation took his first cigar and mixed his first glass of grog. The sun went down and the stars peeped out, the Tower turned from its own proper colours to grey and from grey to black, the room became perfectly dark and the end of the cigar a deep fiery red, but still Mr Quilp went on smoking and drinking in the same position, and staring listlessly out of window with the doglike smile always on his face, save when Mrs Quilp made some involuntary movement of restlessness or fatigue; and then it expanded into a grin of delight.
CHAPTER 5
Whether Mr Quilp took any sleep by snatches of a few winks at a time, or whether he sat with his eyes wide open all night long, certain it is that he kept his cigar alight, and kindled every fresh one from the ashes of that which was nearly consumed, without requiring the assistance of a candle. Nor did the striking of the clocks, hour after hour, appear to inspire him with any sense of drowsiness or any natural desire to go to rest, but rather to increase his wakefulness, which he showed, at every such indication of the progress of the night, by a suppressed cackling in his throat, and a motion of his shoulders, like one who laughs heartily but the same time slyly and by stealth.
At length the day broke, and poor Mrs Quilp, shivering with cold of early morning and harassed by fatigue and want of sleep, was discovered sitting patiently on her chair, raising her eyes at intervals in mute appeal to the compassion and clemency of her lord, and gently reminding him by an occasion cough that she was still unpardoned and that her penance had been of long duration. But her dwarfish spouse still smoked his cigar