“You have deceived an orphan sir,” said Mr. Swiveller solemnly.
“I! I’m a second father to you,” replied Quilp.
“You my father sir!” retorted Dick. “Being all right myself sir, I request to be left alone—instantly sir.”
“What a funny fellow you are!” cried Quilp.
“Go sir,” returned Dick, leaning against a post and waving his hand. “Go deceiver go, some day sir p’raps you’ll waken, from pleasure’s dream to know, the grief of orphans forsaken. Will you go Sir?”
The dwarf taking no heed of this adjuration, Mr. Swiveller advanced with the view of inflicting upon him condign chastisement. But forgetting his purpose or changing his mind before he came close to him, he seized his hand and vowed eternal friendship, declaring with an agreeable frankness that from that time forth they were brothers in everything but personal appearance. Then he told his secret all over again, with the addition of being pathetic on the subject of Miss Wackles, who, he gave Mr. Quilp to understand, was the occasion of any slight incoherency he might observe in his speech at that moment, which was attributable solely to the strength of his affection and not to rosy wine or other fermented liquor. And then they went on arm-in-arm, very lovingly together.
“I’m as sharp,” said Quilp to him, at parting, “as sharp as a ferret, and as cunning as a weazel. You bring Trent to me; assure him that I’m his friend though I fear he a little distrusts me (I don’t know why, I have not deserved it); and you’ve both of you made your fortunes—in perspective.”
“That’s the worst of it,” returned Dick. “These fortunes in perspective look such a long way off.”
“But they look smaller than they really are, on that account,” said Quilp pressing his arm. “You’ll have no conception of the value of your prize until you draw close to it. Mark that.”
“D’ye think not?” said Dick.
“Aye, I do; and I am certain of what I say, that’s better,” returned the dwarf. “You bring Trent to me. Tell him I am his friend and yours—why shouldn’t I be?”
“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t certainly,” replied Dick, “and perhaps there are a great many why you should—at least there would be nothing strange in your wanting to be my friend, if you were a choice spirit, but then you know you’re not a choice spirit.”
“I not a choice spirit!” cried Quilp.
“Devil a bit sir,” returned Dick. “A man of your appearance couldn’t be. If you’re any spirit at all, sir, you’re an evil spirit. Choice spirits,” added Dick, smiting himself on the breast, “are quite a different looking sort of people, you may take your oath of that, sir.”
Quilp glanced at his free-spoken friend with a mingled expression of cunning and dislike, and wringing his hand almost at the same moment, declared that he was an uncommon character and had his warmest esteem. With that they parted; Mr. Swiveller to make the best of his way home and sleep himself sober; and Quilp to cogitate upon the discovery he had made, and exult in the prospect of the rich field of enjoyment and reprisal it opened to him.
It was not without great reluctance and misgiving that Mr. Swiveller, next morning, his head racked by the fumes of the renowned Schiedam, repaired to the lodging of his friend Trent (which was in the roof of an old house in an old ghostly inn), and recounted by very slow degrees what had yesterday taken place between him and Quilp. Nor was it without great surprise and much speculation on Quilp’s probable motives, nor without many bitter comments on Dick Swiveller’s folly, that his friend received the tale.
“I don’t defend myself, Fred,” said the penitent Richard; “but the fellow has such a queer way with him and is such an artful dog, that first of all he set me upon thinking whether there was any harm in telling him, and while I was thinking, screwed it out of me. If you had seen him drink and smoke, as I did, you couldn’t have kept anything from him. He’s a Salamander you know, that’s what he is.”
Without inquiring whether Salamanders were of necessity good confidential agents, or whether a fireproof man was as a matter of course trustworthy, Frederick Trent threw himself into a chair, and, burying his head in his hands, endeavoured to fathom the motives which had led Quilp to insinuate himself into Richard Swiveller’s confidence;—for that the disclosure was of his seeking and had not been spontaneously revealed by Dick, was sufficiently plain from Quilp’s seeking his company and enticing him away.
The dwarf had twice encountered him when he was endeavouring to obtain intelligence of the fugitives. This, perhaps, as he had not shown any previous anxiety about them, was enough to awaken suspicion in the breast of a creature so jealous and distrustful by nature, setting aside any additional impulse to curiosity that he might have derived from Dick’s incautious manner. But knowing the scheme they had planned, why should he offer to assist it? This was a question more difficult of solution; but as knaves generally overreach themselves by imputing their own designs to others, the idea immediately presented itself that some circumstances of irritation between Quilp and the old man, arising out of their secret transactions and not unconnected perhaps with his sudden disappearance, now rendered the former desirous of revenging himself upon him by seeking to entrap the sole object of his love and anxiety into a connection of which he knew he had a dread and hatred. As Frederick Trent himself, utterly regardless of
