Chapter 5

They passed through the long, deserted streets, in the glad light of early morning, until these streets dwindled away, and the open country was about them. They walked all day, and slept that night at a small cottage where beds were let to travelers. The sun was setting on the second day of their journey, and they were jaded and worn out with walking, when, following a path which led through a churchyard to the town where they were to spend the night, they fell in with two traveling showmen, the exhibitors or keepers of a Punch and Judy show. These two men raised their eyes when the old man and his young companion were close upon them. One of them, the real exhibitor, no doubt, was a little, merry-faced man with a twinkling eye and a red nose, who seemed to be something like old Punch himself. The other--that was he who took the money--had rather a careful and cautious look, which perhaps came from his business also.

The merry man was the first to greet the strangers with a nod; and following the old man's eyes, he observed that perhaps that was the first time he had ever seen a Punch off the stage.

"Why do you come here to do this?" said the old man sitting down beside them, and looking at the figures with extreme delight.

"Why, you see," rejoined the little man, "we're putting up for to-night at the public house yonder, and it wouldn't do to let 'em see the present company undergoing repair."

"No!" cried the old man, making signs to Nell to listen, "why not, eh? why not?"

"Because it would destroy all the reality of the show and take away all the interest, wouldn't it?" replied the little man. "Would you care a ha'penny for the Lord Chancellor if you know'd him in private and without his wig?--certainly not."[C]

"Good!" said the old man, venturing to touch one of the puppets, and drawing away his hand with a shrill laugh. "Are you going to show 'em to-night? are you?"

"That is the purpose, governor," replied the other, "and unless I'm much mistaken, Tommy Codlin is a-calculating at this minute what we've lost through your coming upon us. Cheer up, Tommy, it can't be much."

The little man accompanied these latter words with a wink, expressive of the estimate he had formed of the travelers' pocketbook.

To this Mr. Codlin, who had a surly, grumbling manner, replied, as he twitched Punch off the tombstone and flung him into the box:

"I don't care if we haven't lost a farden, but you're too free. If you stood in front of the curtain and see the public's faces as I do, you'd know human natur' better."

Turning over the figures in the box like one who knew and despised them, Mr. Codlin drew one forth and held it up for the inspection of his friend:

"Look here; here's all this Judy's clothes falling to pieces again. You haven't got a needle and thread, I suppose?"

The little man shook his head and scratched it sadly, as he contemplated this condition of a principal performer in his show. Seeing that they were at a loss, the child said, timidly:

"I have a needle, sir, in my basket, and thread too. Will you let me try to mend it for you? I think I could do it neater than you could."

Even Mr. Codlin had nothing to urge against a proposal so seasonable. Nell, kneeling down beside the box, was soon busily engaged in her task, and finished it in a wonderful way.

While she was thus at work, the merry little man looked at her with an interest which did not appear to be any less when he glanced at her helpless companion. When she had finished her work he thanked her, and asked to what place they were traveling.

"N--no farther to-night, I think," said the child, looking toward her grandfather.

"If you're wanting a place to stop at," the man remarked. "I should advise you to take up at the same house with us. That's it. The long low, white house there. It's very cheap."

They went to the little inn, and when they had been refreshed, the whole house hurried away into an empty stable where the show stood, and where, by the light of a few flaring candles stuck round a hoop which hung by a line from the ceiling, it was to be forthwith shown.

And now Mr. Thomas Codlin, after blowing away at the Pan's pipes, took his station on one side of the curtain which concealed the mover of the figures, and, putting his hands in his pockets, prepared to reply to all questions and remarks of Punch, and to make a pretence of being his most intimate private friend, of believing in him to the fullest and most unlimited extent, of knowing that Mr. Punch enjoyed day and night a merry and glorious life in that temple, and that he was at all times and under every circumstance the same wise and joyful person that all present then beheld him.

The whole performance was applauded until the old stable rang, and gifts were showered in with a liberality which testified yet more strongly to the general delight. Among the laughter none was more loud and frequent than the old man's. Nell's was unheard, for she, poor child, with her head drooping on his shoulder, had fallen asleep, and slept too soundly to be roused by any of his efforts to awaken her to a part in his glee.

The supper was very good, but she was too tired to eat, and yet would not leave the old man until she had kissed him in his bed. He, happily insensible to every care and anxiety, sat listening with a vacant smile and admiring face to all that his new friends said; and it was not until they retired yawning to their room that he followed the child up-stairs.

She had a little money, but it was very little; and when that was gone they must begin to beg. There was one piece of gold among it, and a need might come when its worth to them would be increased a hundred times. It would be best to hide this coin, and never show it unless their case was entirely desperate, and nothing else was left them.

Her resolution taken, she sewed the piece of gold into her dress, and going to bed with a lighter heart sunk into a deep slumber.

"And where are you going to-day?" said the little man the following morning, addressing himself to Nell.

"Indeed I hardly know--we have not made up our minds yet," replied the child.

"We're going on to the races," said the little man. "If that's your way and you like to have us for company, let us travel together. If you prefer going alone, only say the word and you'll find that we sha'n't trouble you."

"We'll go with you," said the old man. "Nell--with them, with them."

The child thought for a moment, and knowing that she must shortly beg, and could scarcely hope to do so at a better place than where crowds of rich ladies and gentlemen were met together for enjoyment, determined to go with these men so far. She therefore thanked the little man for his offer, and said, glancing timidly toward his friend, that they would if there was no objection to their staying with them as far as the race-town.

And with these men they traveled forward on the following day.

They made two long days' journey with their new companions, passing through villages and towns, and meeting upon one occasion with two young people walking upon stilts, who were also going to the races.

And now they had come to the time when they must beg their bread. Soon after sunrise the second morning, she stole out, and, rambling into some fields at a short distance, plucked a few wild roses and such humble flowers, purposing to make them into little nosegays and offer them to the ladies in the carriages when the company arrived. Her thoughts were not idle while she was thus busy; when she returned and was seated beside the old man, tying her flowers together, while the two men lay dozing in the corner, she plucked him by the sleeve, and, slightly glancing toward them, said in a low voice:

"Grandfather, don't look at those I talk of, and don't seem as if I spoke of anything but what I am about. What was that you told me before we left the old house? That if they knew what we were going to do, they would say that you were mad, and part us?"

The old man turned to her with a look of wild terror; but she checked him by a look, and bidding him hold some flowers while she tied them up, and so bringing her lips closer to his ear, said:

"I know that was what you told me. You needn't speak, dear. I recollect it very well. It was not likely that I should forget it. Grandfather, I have heard these men say they think that we have secretly left our friends, and mean to carry us before some gentleman and have us taken care of and sent back. If you let your hand tremble so, we can never get away from them, but if you're only quiet now, we shall do so easily."

"How?" muttered the old man. "Dear Nell, how? They will shut me up in a stone-room, dark and cold, and chain me up to the wall, Nell--flog me with whips, and never let me see thee more!"

"You're trembling again," said the child. "Keep close to me all day. Never mind them, don't look at them, but me. I shall find a time when we can steal away. When I do, mind you come with me, and do not stop or speak a word. Hush! That's all."

"Halloo! what are you up to, my dear?" said Mr. Codlin, raising his head, and yawning.

"Making some nosegays," the child replied; "I am going to try to sell some, these three days of the races. Will you have one--as a present, I mean?"

Mr. Codlin would have risen to receive it, but the child hurried toward him and placed it in his hand, and he stuck it in his button-hole.

As the morning wore on, the tents at the race-course assumed a gayer and more brilliant appearance, and long lines of carriages came rolling softly on the turf. Black-eyed gipsy girls, their heads covered with showy handkerchiefs, came out to tell fortunes, and pale, slender women with wasted faces followed the footsteps of conjurers, and counted the sixpences with anxious eyes long before they were gained. As many of the children as could be kept within bounds were stowed away, with all the other signs of dirt and poverty, among the donkeys, carts, and horses; and as many as could not be thus disposed of ran in and out in all directions, crept between people's legs and carriage wheels, and came forth unharmed from under horses' hoofs. The dancing-dogs, the stilts, the little lady and the tall man, and all the other attractions, with organs out of number and bands innumerable, came out from the holes and corners in which they had passed the night, and flourished boldly in the sun.

Along the uncleared course, Short led his party, sounding the brazen trumpet and speaking in the voice of Punch; and at his heels went Thomas Codlin, bearing the show as usual, and keeping his eye on Nell and her grandfather, as they rather lingered in the rear. The child bore upon her arm the little basket with her flowers, and sometimes stopped, with timid and modest looks, to offer them at some gay carriage; but alas! there were many bolder beggars there, gipsies who promised husbands, and others skillful in their trade; and although some ladies smiled gently as they shook their heads, and others cried to the gentlemen beside them, "See what a pretty face!" they let the pretty face pass on, and never thought that it looked tired or hungry.

There was but one lady who seemed to understand the child, and she was one who sat alone in a handsome carriage, while two young men in dashing clothes, who had just stepped out from it, talked and laughed loudly at a little distance, appearing to forget her, quite. There were many ladies all around, but they turned their backs, or looked another way, or at the two young men (not unfavorably at _them_), and left her to herself. The lady motioned away a gipsy woman, eager to tell her fortune, saying that it was told already and had been for some years, but called the child toward her, and, taking her flowers, put money into her trembling hand, and bade her go home and keep at home.

Many a time they went up and down those long, long lines, seeing everything but the horses and the race; when the bell rung to clear the course, going back to rest among the carts and donkeys, and not coming out again until the heat was over. Many a time, too, was Punch displayed in the full glory of his humor; but all this while the eye of Thomas Codlin was upon them, and to escape without notice was almost impossible.

At length, late in the day, Mr. Codlin pitched the show in a spot right in the middle of the crowd, and the Punch and Judy were surrounded by people who were watching the performance.

Short was moving the images, and knocking them in the fury of the combat against the sides of the show, the people were looking on with laughing faces, and Mr. Codlin's face showed a grim smile as his roving eye detected the hands of thieves in the crowd going into waistcoat pockets. If Nell and her grandfather were ever to get away unseen, that was the very moment. They seized it, and fled.

They made a path through booths and carriages and throngs of people, and never once stopped to look behind. The bell was ringing, and the course was cleared by the time they reached the ropes, but they dashed across it, paying no attention to the shouts and screeching that assailed them for breaking in it, and, creeping under the brow of the hill at a quick pace, made for the open fields. At last they were free from Codlin and Short.

That night they reached a little village in a woody hollow. The village schoolmaster, a good and gentle man, pitying their weariness, and attracted by the child's sweetness and modesty, gave them a lodging for the night; nor would he let them leave him until two days more had passed.

They journeyed on, when the time came that they must wander forth again, by pleasant country lanes; and as they passed, watching the birds that perched and twittered in the branches overhead, or listening to the songs that broke the happy silence, their hearts were peaceful and free from care. But by-and-by they came to a long winding road which lengthened out far into the distance, and though they still kept on, it was at a much slower pace, for they were now very weary.

The afternoon had worn away into a beautiful evening, when they arrived at a point where the road made a sharp turn and struck across a common. On the border of this common, and close to the hedge which divided it from the cultivated fields, a caravan was drawn up to rest; upon which they came so suddenly that they could not have avoided it if they would. Do you know what a "caravan" is? It is a sort of gipsy house on wheels in which people live, while the house moves from place to place.

It was not a shabby, dingy, dusty cart, but a smart little house with white dimity curtains hung over the windows, and window-shutters of green picked out with panels of a staring red, in which happily-contrasted colors the whole house shone brilliant. Neither was it a poor caravan drawn by a single donkey or feeble old horse, for a pair of horses in pretty good condition were released from the shafts and grazing on the frouzy grass. Neither was it a gipsy caravan, for at the open door (graced with a bright brass knocker) sat a Christian lady, stout and comfortable to look upon, who wore a large bonnet trembling with bows. And that it was not a caravan of poor people was clear from what this lady was doing; for she was taking her tea. The tea-things, including a bottle of rather suspicious looks and a cold knuckle of ham, were set forth upon a drum, covered with a white napkin; and there, as if at the most convenient round-table in all the world, sat this roving lady, taking her tea and enjoying the prospect.

It happened at that moment that the lady of the caravan had her cup (which, that everything about her might be of a stout and comfortable kind, was a breakfast cup) to her lips, and that having her eyes lifted to the sky in her enjoyment of the full flavor of her tea, it happened that, being thus agreeably engaged, she did not see the travelers when they first came up. It was not until she was in the act of setting down the cup, and drawing a long breath after the exertion of swallowing its contents, that the lady of the caravan beheld an old man and a young child walking slowly by, and glancing at her proceedings with eyes of modest, but hungry admiration.

"Hey!" cried the lady of the caravan, scooping the crumbs out of her lap and swallowing the same before wiping her lips. "Yes, to be sure------Who won the Helter-Skelter Plate, child?"

"Won what, ma'am?" asked Nell.

"The Helter-Skelter Plate at the races, child--the plate that was run for on the second day."

"On the second day, ma'am?"

"Second day! Yes, second day," repeated the lady, with an air of impatience. "Can't you say who won the Helter-Skelter Plate when you're asked the question civilly?"

"I don't know, ma'am."

"Don't know!" repeated the lady of the caravan; "why, you were there. I saw you with my own eyes."

Nell was not a little alarmed to hear this, supposing that the lady might be intimately acquainted with the firm of Short and Codlin; but what followed tended to put her at her ease.

"And very sorry I was," said the lady of the caravan, "to see you in company with a Punch--a low, common, vulgar wretch, that people should scorn to look at."

"I was not there by choice," returned the child; "we didn't know our way, and the two men were very kind to us, and let us travel with them. Do you--do you know them, ma'am?"

"Know 'em, child?" cried the lady of the caravan, in a sort of shriek. "Know _them_! But you're young and ignorant, and that's your excuse for asking sich a question. Do I look as if I know'd 'em? does the caravan look as if _it_ know'd 'em?"

"No, ma'am, no," said the child, fearing she had committed some grievous fault. "I beg your pardon."

The lady of the caravan was in the act of gathering her tea things together preparing to clear the table, but noting the child's anxious manner, she hesitated and stopped. The child courtesied, and, giving her hand to the old man, had already got some fifty yards or so away, when the lady of the caravan called to her to return.

"Come nearer, nearer still," said she, beckoning to her to ascend the steps. "Are you hungry, child?"

"Not very, but we are tired, and it's--it _is_ a long way------"

"Well, hungry or not, you had better have some tea," rejoined her new acquaintance. "I suppose you are agreeable to that old gentleman?"

The grandfather humbly pulled off his hat and thanked her. The lady of the caravan then bade him come up the steps likewise, but the drum proving an inconvenient table for two, they went down again, and sat upon the grass, where she handed down to them the tea-tray, the bread and butter, and the knuckle of ham.

"Set 'em out near the hind wheels child, that's the best place," said their friend, superintending the arrangement from above. "Now hand up the tea-pot for a little more hot water and a pinch of fresh tea, and then both of you eat and drink as much as you can, and don't spare anything; that's all I ask of you."

The mistress of the caravan, saying the girl and her grandfather could not be very heavy, invited them to go along with them for a while, for which Nell thanked her with all her heart.

When they had traveled slowly forward for some short distance, Nell ventured to steal a look round the caravan and observe it more closely. One-half of it--that part in which the comfortable proprietress was then seated--was carpeted, and so divided the farther end as to form a sleeping-place, made after the fashion of a berth on board ship, which was shaded, like the little windows, with fair white curtains, and looked comfortable enough, though by what kind of gymnastic exercise the lady of the caravan ever contrived to get into it was a mystery. The other half served for a kitchen, and was fitted up with a stove whose small chimney passed through the roof.

The mistress sat looking at the child for a long time in silence, and then, getting up, brought out from a corner a large roll of canvas about a yard in width, which she laid upon the floor and spread open with her foot until it nearly reached from one end of the caravan to the other.

"There, child," she said, "read that."

Nell walked down it, and read aloud, in enormous black letters, the inscription, "JARLEY'S WAX-WORK."

"Read it again," said the lady, complacently.

"Jarley's Wax-work," repeated Nell.

"That's me," said the lady. "I am Mrs. Jarley."

Giving the child an encouraging look, the lady of the caravan unfolded another scroll, whereon was the inscription, "One hundred figures the full size of life;" and then another scroll, on which was written, "The only stupendous collection of real wax-work in the world;" and then several smaller scrolls, with such inscriptions as "Now exhibiting within"--"The genuine and only Jarley"--"Jarley's unrivaled collection"--"Jarley is the delight of the Nobility and Gentry"--"The Royal Family are the patrons of Jarley." When she had exhibited these large painted signs to the astonished child, she brought forth specimens of the lesser notices in the shape of hand-bills, some of which were printed in the form of verses on popular times, as "Believe me if all Jarley's wax-work so rare"--"I saw thy show in youthful prime"--"Over the water to Jarley;" while, to satisfy all tastes, others were composed with a view to the lighter and merrier spirits, as a verse on the favorite air of "If I had a donkey," beginning

If I know'd a donkey wot wouldn't go To see Mrs. Jarley's wax-work show, Do you think I'd own him? Oh no, no! Then run to Jarley's------

besides several compositions in prose, pretending to be dialogues between the Emperor of China and an oyster.

"I never saw any wax-work, ma'am," said Nell. "Is it funnier than Punch?"

"Funnier!" said Mrs. Jarley in a shrill voice. "It is not funny at all."

"Oh!" said Nell, with all possible humility.

"It isn't funny at all," repeated Mrs. Jarley. "It's calm and--what's that word again--critical?--no--classical, that's it--it's calm and classical. No low beatings and knockings about, no jokings and squeakings like your precious Punches, but always the same, with a constantly unchanging air of coldness and dignity; and so like life that, if wax-work only spoke and walked about you'd hardly know the difference. I won't go so far as to say that, as it is, I've seen wax-work quite like life, but I've certainly seen some life that was exactly like wax-work."

This conference at length concluded, she beckoned Nell to sit down.

"And the old gentleman, too," said Mrs. Jarley; "for I want to have a word with him. Do you want a good place for your granddaughter, master? If you do, I can put her in the way of getting one. What do you say?"

"I can't leave her," answered the old man. "We can't separate. What would become of me without her?"