of Jonas.
As for the boy, he trusted, even reverenced, the dashing Montague, on whose dog-cart perhaps the proudest moments of his life had been passed, prouder even than when " divesting himself of his neckcloth he sat down in the easy shaving-chair of Mr. Poll Sweedlepipe " and requested to be shaved.
" ' The barber stood aghast . . . there was no resisting his manner. The evidence of sight and touch became as nothing. His chin was as smooth as a new-laid egg or a scraped Dutch cheese; but Poll Sweedlepipe wouldn't have ventured to deny, on affidavit, that he had the beard of a Jewish Rabbi.
" ' Go with the grain. Poll, all round please,' said Mr. Bailey screwing up his face for the reception of the lather. ' You may do what you like with the bits of whiskers. I don't care for 'em.'
" The neat little barber stood gazing at him with the brush and soap dish in his hand, stirring them round and round in a ludicrous uncertainty, as if he were disabled by some fascination from beginning. At last he made a dash at Mr. Bailey's cheek. Then he stopped again, as if the ghost of a beard had suddenly receded from his touch, but receiving mild encouragement from Mr. Bailey, in the form of an adjuration to ' go in and win ' he lathered him bountifully. Mr. Bailey smiled through the suds and with satisfaction.
" ' Gently over the stones, Poll. Go a tip-toe over the pimples! ' "
It was this beardless infant that Tigg trusted for protection and who looked up to Tigg, villain as he was, with the same worship that Quilp's boy, Tom Scott, bestowed upon the dwarf between him and whom there existed a strange kind of mutual liking how born or bred, or nourished upon blows and threats on one side and retorts and defiance on the other, is not to the purpose! Quilp, certainly, would suffer nobody to contradict him but the boy, and the boy would assuredly not have submitted to be so knocked about by anybody but Quilp when he had the power to run away any time he choose.
" ' Now,' said Quilp, passing into the wooden country house, ' you mind the wharf. Stand upon your head again, and I'll cut one of your feet off.'
" The boy made no answer, but directly Quilp had shut himself in, stood on his head before the door, then walked on his hands to the back and stood on his head there, and then to the opposite side and repeated the performance. There were indeed, four sides to the country house, but he avoided that one where the window was, deeming it probable that Quilp would be looking out of it."
It was from the bottom of this wharf that Quilp stepped into the river, which carried him miles down and laid him, a torn mass, on a marshy bank there to be discovered days later, when poor Tom Scott sheds the only tears wept over his master and wants to fight the jury for returning a verdict of Felo de se.
These two men, need we say, are presented to us as bad, but not in the sense that Jonas or that Rudge is. There is an old-fashioned saying, that has dropped into desuetude, to the effect that a man to whom children take readily is not given over wholly to the powers of darkness, and that there is some good in him at bottom. And we may know that this is true even of Tigg and of Quilp by the fact that we read of both, even as we despise both, with avidity. Of Jonas, or say, of Jasper, we read with repulsion; we shudder as we turn the page, and of a certainty our children would shrink from them. But they might well laugh, as we do, at Quilp's antics and make friends with the eccentric Mr. Tigg. For, as Dickens made us realize, the unspoilt perceptions of the child, its untroubled and discerning vision, are often more reliable guides than all the tests and creeds which we have fashioned for the judgment of the soul of man.
Again and yet again Dickens uses this magic touchstone of a child's innocence to confound the elders given over to the pomps and vanities of this world, and blind to the realities that the fresher mind perceives. Who does not remember little Paul Dombey's question of his father:
" ' Papa, what's money after all? '
" Heaven and Earth, how old his face was as he turned it up again towards his father.
" ' What is money after all,' said Mr. Dombey, . . . gazing in sheer amazement at the presumptuous atom that propounded such an inquiry.
" ' I mean, Papa, what can it do? ' returned Paul, folding his arms (they were hardly long enough to fold), and looking at the fire, and up at him, and at the fire, and up at him again.
" Mr. Dombey drew his chair back to its former place and patted him on the head. ' You'll know better by-and-by, my man,' he said. ' Money can do anything.' He took hold of the little hand and beat it softly against one of his own, as he said so.
" ' Anything, Papa? '
" ' Yes, anything — almost,' said Mr. Dombey. . . .
" ' If it's a good thing and can do anything,' said the little fellow thoughtfully, as he looked at the fire, ' I wonder why it didn't save me my mamma.
" ' It can't make me strong and quite well. Papa, can it? ' asked Paul."
Perhaps that is the supreme exemplification of the question that Dickens asked of our civilization in the name of the Child, whom he found and set up again in our midst. What does our wealth, our resources, our pomp, our dignity avail if it leaves us cold, frigid, haughty prisoners in the midst of it all, with stunted sympathies and sterile understandings, and with the heir to our glories starved of affection, aged in mind, stricken in body? What after all does it avail a nation, more than a man, if it gain the whole world and lose its own soul?
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