CHAPTER XXIV.
CHRISTABEL TAKES DIBBLE INTO HER
CONFIDENCE.
Though Thomas Dibble never, during all his connection with “The Temple of Magic,” had seen a performance from beginning to end, he had seen enough to surprise and delight him, and whenever an opportunity offered, he communicated to Christabel the feelings of wonder with which he regarded her.
“You be certainly the cleverest lady as ever I see,” said Thomas, one night after business, as the pair sat alone over supper, in a corner of the general room of the lodging-house where the magician’s company were quartered. The renowned Digby had gone out to a lamb’s fry supper given in honour of the birth-day of the Yorkshire giant, whose acquaintance he had recently made.
“Do you think so?” said the amiable young lady, looking all kinds of sweet things at Dibble. “Ah, I might have been, if poor old Carkey had lived.”
“It would hardly be possible for you to be any cleverer,” said Dibble. “However you does change them cards so wonderful, is a mystery to me.”
“Ah, that’s easy enough, Thomas; I mean clever at reading and writing, and all that. You didn’t know Carkey, of course. He was father’s clown. Ah, these were the days! We once had a circus company, Thomas; a real grand affair, with horses, and ladies in spangles and tights, and father used to stand in the middle in jackboots and crack a whip.”
“You don’t say so!” said Dibble, who felt highly honoured at the condescension of the young lady in telling him all this.
“O, yes; it was stunning, I can tell you. I was a very little girl at the time—very little; I can only just remember it; but Carkey, the clown, when father was done up, and had to turn to conjuring, he stuck to us for long enough, and it was he who used to tell me all about it.”
“I never see a clown but once,” said Dibble, “and that was when me and——”
“Yes,” said Christabel, “you and——”
“Well, I was going to say,” Dibble stammered.
“You and——” repeated Christabel. “Now, you are keeping something from me: if it’s a secret, tell it me, and I’ll tell you another—such a first-rater.”
“You will?” exclaimed Dibble.
“Yes,” said Christabel, nodding her head, and laughing quite gleefully.
“And you’ll never tell, on your blessed oath?” said Dibble. “But what’s the good of oaths? I’d rather trust to your honour.”
“Then you may,” said Christabel; “for I’m longing to tell you a secret,—one that I’ve kept for, O, ever so long! Now, who was it when you and——”
“Well, then, I wor going to say, when me and Mrs. Dibble—which be my wife,” said Thomas, “once went to a pantomime, and see the clown eat three yards of sausages, and jump through a clock.”
“So you’ve a wife?” said Christabel, disregarding altogether the wonderful feat of the clown in the pantomime.
“Yes; and I’ve bin and run away from her,” said Dibble; “so there’s my secret, and I trusts to your honour.”
“What did you run away for?” asked Christabel.
“Well, ’cos I’d bin and got into trouble in the panic,” said Dibble.
“What’s a panic?” asked Christabel. “I never heard of a panic.”
“Why, you see, it’s a sort of row in the City about what shares be worth, and which buys ’em, and who sells ’em, and whether you’ve got ’em, or the other one; but the great thing of all is to know what a bull is, and which is the bear, and whether, you ought to be one or the ’tother, and whether it’s premium or par, or what the discount be.”
This was one of the longest explanatory speeches that Dibble had ever made, except when he was trying to convince Mrs. Dibble that he was a bull, and could not help it. He looked at Christabel, and fancied that he had given a particularly lucid description of a panic; but the mysterious lady stared in astonishment at Dibble, and said—
“So that’s a panic, is it?”
“Yes it be, summat near it,” said Dibble. “I ought to know, considerin’ as I lost five hundred pounds in it.”
Dibble raised his head, and looked quite important when he thought of his financial experience.
“Well I never heard of a panic before,” said Christabel. “I begun to think you must be going off your head—‘off your nut,’ as father calls it—when you talked of bears and bulls, or else that a panic was a menagerie, and you really had been in the profession before.”
“No, a panic bain’t a menagerie,” said Dibble; “it’s worse nor anything of that sort; it’s something as you can’t see, but it’s got a way of getting at your money, and swallering of it up in the most outdacious style, and the more it gets, the more you has to give it.”
“Why, it must be a menagerie,” said Christabel.
“What be a menagerie,—wild beasts?”
“Of course, you know that,” said Christabel, a little impatiently.
“Well, it’s worse than the awfullest wild beasts as ever you heard on; but you can’t see it. I thought you could myself, and I went into the City and inquired. ‘Where be the panic?’ I says to a porter as I knowed. ‘In there,’ says he, ‘in the Stock Exchange.’ I looked into a place, through a hole, and there I sees above a hundred men, a talking, and shouting, and writing in little books, and going on like Bedlam; but I never see the panic. So I asks a man as was standing close by, and he begun to laugh and told me to inquire of a fat party again the door, and he said I was to ask the Old Woman of Threadneedle-street. I went there, and I see an old ’oman, a selling oranges, which I asked at once. She said she thought that was it, pointing to a great big house; but I never see it, and I ’eard arter, as it was not to be seen, that it was like the devil going about in the character of a roaring lion on the quiet, never letting anybody see ’un.”
Dibble was becoming quite garrulous upon the panic, and Christabel sat looking at him with a startled sort of curiosity; she had never heard of such a wonderful animal before; but then, she said, there were no doubt many things of which she was ignorant.
“If Carkey had lived,” she went on, “I should have known all about everything, because he said he would teach me, and some day he said I might become a fine lady. Just fancy, wouldn’t that be fizzing, to be a fine lady! If I was to tell your secret, you’d be in an awful way, eh? It would be a reglar do, wouldn’t it?”
“Hawful,” said Dibble.
“That’s right, ’cause I want to tell you mine. Now, look here.”
Christabel looked cautiously round, to see if the miscellaneous company were occupied. Convinced that nobody was watching them, she took from her bosom a small miniature.
“Now, you see that?” she said, in a whisper.
“Yes,” said Dibble, fully expecting to see it changed into a pigeon or something more wonderful still, in the way of conjuring.
“That is the picture of a lady. Carkey gave it to me, and he told me never to part with it for love or money. It is a picture of a real lady, such a beauty, and he says,—you swear you will never split?”
“Never,” said Dibble, solemnly.
“Well, that this lady was my mother, and that my father was a gentleman; that Digby Martin is not my father at all, and that some day I would perhaps find out my real father. I promised on his death-bed always to call Digby father, and never to let anything make me not do so, and that I was to try and learn things out of books, and read newspapers, and all that. Now, I’ve always wanted somebody to talk to since poor Carkey died, and to ask their opinion about it; and now you and I shall be friends for ever,—eh, Thomas?”
“Oh, yes, sure,” said Dibble. “I wouldn’t tell your secret for all the world. What a wonderful girl you be, surely!”
“Ain’t I?” said Christabel, quite proudly. “I often thinks of it when I’m going through the performance, and especially lately. I read in bed, and sometimes of a morning; and I know it’s true what Carkey said, because there’s a tale just like it in the paper which I buy every Saturday morning, as sure as the day comes round; and O, it makes my blood boil! O, it’s such a fizzing story, and there’s pictures of her in it! She was stolen by gipsies, and they made her sell buy-a-brooms and matches; and she was a lord’s daughter all the time! And who knows, Thomas, but that I am the same? Haven’t I got a picture in my bosom, and all that? O, wouldn’t I go it if I ever came to be rich! And I mean to be, Dibble; I’m not a-going to be always performing here, don’t think it!”
Dibble said Miss Christabel ought to be in London, at the British Museum, or somewhere.
When she knew a little more of things in general, Christabel said she meant to try her fortune. There were lots of marriages in the tale she was reading, and always a lot in the newspapers. Why shouldn’t she be married?
“Why, you be too young for that,” said Dibble. “I know a young gentleman as would make such a sweetheart for you,” said Dibble; “such a sweetheart!”
“Yes,” said Christabel, smiling her sweetest, and putting her hair to rights.
“But there, he be miles and miles away from here,” said Dibble; “and you’re never likely to see him, Ise afeared.”
“What is he like?” said Christabel, preparing for a flirtation in fancy.
“O, a handsome, nice young gentleman; and his name’s Paul.”
“What a jolly, stunning name!” said Christabel.
“He wouldn’t like you to speak like that,” said Dibble.
“How do you mean?” asked Christabel.
“Why stunning and all that—it bain’t perlite; he talks so fine himself, he do.”
“I know what you mean,” said the young lady. “I can talk fine, too. I know stunning isn’t fine; but I know what is, so there!”
“You bain’t angry now?” said Dibble.
“Not at all—oh, no,” said Christabel. “What’s his other name?”
“Somerton,” said Dibble. “Master Paul Somerton.”
“Oh! and do you think he would fall in love with me?”
“I should think he would,” said Dibble, astonished that there should be any opening for doubt upon the subject.
“Oh, how nice! I often think some grand young gentleman will come into the Temple and fall in love with me; but I never see a real handsome one come in, dressed pretty, you know, and with a little moustache, like the pictures in the tale that I was telling you of. I always looks round the audience to see if there is aireyone as is in love with me; aireyone as I could love, you know. But they are all such a gawky lot. Most of them are in love with me—I know that, of course; but they are hardly worth being made miserable. O, I gives them such looks sometimes!”
Christabel seemed to hug herself upon her assumed capacity to make some of the male portion of her audiences unhappily in love with her, and Dibble felt morally certain that it would be impossible for any young gentleman not to fall in love with her; but as for marriage it was nonsense, Dibble told her, to think of that,—such a very young lady as she was; he should think for his part that she ought to be able to conjure some handsome young gentleman into that basket when she disappeared at the touch of her father’s wand—disappeared nobody knew where. But the young lady only laughed at this, and thought it a good joke.
What if she could conjure into it that handsome Paul Somerton, she said, who talked so fine!
Dibble said that would be splendid, and then Christabel as a further proof of her favour, gave Thomas her royal permission to call her “Chrissy.” Carkey, the clown, had always called her “Chrissy,” and in future Dibble should take the clown’s place, and be her confidant.
“But mind,” she said, clenching her little hand, “if you dare to betray me—if you do not keep my secret,—I will not only tell yours, but oh, I don’t know what I will not do besides—shoot you, perhaps, with a pistol, like the lord’s daughter in the tale.”
Christabel said this so fiercely that Dibble almost wished she had not confided her secret to him. Just as he was about to make a remark to this effect, there staggered into the room, reeling through the smoke, the showman and his “dawg.” The company hammered their glasses on the tables and shouted “bravo,” as Digby strutted in with the Yorkshire giant and Momus, the giant smiling benignly upon his tipsy friend, and Momus marching in front with her head very erect, and her nose turned towards her proprietor.
Thomas Dibble had hardly raised his eyes to look at his new master and the giant, when Digby seized a cup and threw it at Momus, and, missing his mark, made stupid efforts to kick the animal, whereupon Christabel rushed to the dog’s rescue and called the showman a brute, at which there was another burst of applause. The giant hereupon lifted Digby up by his collar out of harm’s way, as if in terrible affright at Christabel; at this Digby kicked and swore, and the giant, dropping him, said the young lady was right, Digby Martin was indeed a brute; and it was generally agreed that this was the most courageous thing that a giant had ever been known to do and say. This led to a dispute between a very tall gentleman in the peep-show line, and the proprietor of a boxing booth, which ended in an extempore fight on the spot; in the midst of which Christabel retired in disgust, quietly intimating to Dibble that she would not put up with “this sort of thing” much longer. Dibble slunk away too, and wished there had never been such a thing as a panic in the City.
END OF VOL. I.
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.