Ralph makes one last Appointment—and keeps it
Creeping from the house, and slinking off like a thief; groping with his hands, when first he got into the street, as if he were a blind man; and looking often over his shoulder while he hurried away, as though he were followed in imagination or reality by someone anxious to question or detain him; Ralph Nickleby left the city behind him, and took the road to his own home.
The night was dark, and a cold wind blew, driving the clouds, furiously and fast, before it. There was one black, gloomy mass that seemed to follow him: not hurrying in the wild chase with the others, but lingering sullenly behind, and gliding darkly and stealthily on. He often looked back at this, and, more than once, stopped to let it pass over; but, somehow, when he went forward again, it was still behind him, coming mournfully and slowly up, like a shadowy funeral train.
He had to pass a poor, mean burial-ground—a dismal place, raised a few feet above the level of the street, and parted from it by a low parapet-wall and an iron railing; a rank, unwholesome, rotten spot, where the very grass and weeds seemed, in their frouzy growth, to tell that they had sprung from paupers’ bodies, and had struck their roots in the graves of men, sodden, while alive, in steaming courts and drunken hungry dens. And here, in truth, they lay, parted from the living by a little earth and a board or two—lay thick and close—corrupting in body as they had in mind—a dense and squalid crowd. Here they lay, cheek by jowl with life: no deeper down than the feet of the throng that passed there every day, and piled high as their throats. Here they lay, a grisly family, all these dear departed brothers and sisters of the ruddy clergyman who did his task so speedily when they were hidden in the ground!
As he passed here, Ralph called to mind that he had been one of a jury, long before, on the body of a man who had cut his throat; and that he was buried in this place. He could not tell how he came to recollect it now, when he had so often passed and never thought about him, or how it was that he felt an interest in the circumstance; but he did both; and stopping, and clasping the iron railings with his hands, looked eagerly in, wondering which might be his grave.
While he was thus engaged, there came towards him, with noise of shouts and singing, some fellows full of drink, followed by others, who were remonstrating with them and urging them to go home in quiet. They were in high good-humour; and one of them, a little, weazen, hump-backed man, began to dance. He was a grotesque, fantastic figure, and the few bystanders laughed. Ralph himself was moved to mirth, and echoed the laugh of one who stood near and who looked round in his face. When they had passed on, and he was left alone again, he resumed his speculation with a new kind of interest; for he recollected that the last person who had seen the suicide alive, had left him very merry, and he remembered how strange he and the other jurors had thought that at the time.
He could not fix upon the spot among such a heap of graves, but he conjured up a strong and vivid idea of the man himself, and how he looked, and what had led him to do it; all of which he recalled with ease. By dint of dwelling upon this theme, he carried the impression with him when he went away; as he remembered, when a child, to have had frequently before him the figure of some goblin he had once seen chalked upon a door. But as he drew nearer and nearer home he forgot it again, and began to think how very dull and solitary the house would be inside.
This feeling became so strong at last, that when he reached his own door, he could hardly make up his mind to turn the key and open it. When he had done that, and gone into the passage, he felt as though to shut it again would be to shut out the world. But he let it go, and it closed with a loud noise. There was no light. How very dreary, cold, and still it was!
Shivering from head to foot, he made his way upstairs into the room where he had been last disturbed. He had made a kind of compact with himself that he would not think of what had happened until he got home. He was at home now, and suffered himself to consider it.
His own child, his own child! He never doubted the tale; he felt it was true; knew it as well, now, as if he had been privy to it all along. His own child! And dead too. Dying beside Nicholas, loving him, and looking upon him as something like an angel. That was the worst!
They had all turned from him and deserted him in his very first need. Even money could not buy them now; everything must come out, and everybody must know all. Here was the young lord dead, his companion abroad and beyond his reach, ten thousand pounds gone at one blow, his plot with Gride overset at the very moment of triumph, his after-schemes discovered, himself in danger, the object of his persecution and Nicholas’s love, his own wretched boy; everything crumbled and fallen upon him, and he beaten down beneath the ruins and grovelling in the dust.
If he had known his child to be alive; if no deceit had been ever practised, and he had grown up beneath his eye; he might have been a careless, indifferent, rough, harsh father—like enough—he felt that; but the thought would come that he might have been otherwise, and that his son might have been a comfort to him, and they two happy together. He began to think now, that his supposed death and his wife’s flight had had some share in making him the morose, hard man he was. He seemed to remember a time when he was not quite so rough and obdurate; and almost thought that he had first hated Nicholas because he was young and gallant, and perhaps like the stripling who had brought dishonour and loss of fortune on his head.
But one tender thought, or one of natural regret, in his whirlwind of passion and remorse, was as a drop of calm water in a stormy maddened sea. His hatred of Nicholas had been fed upon his own defeat, nourished on his interference with his schemes, fattened upon his old defiance and success. There were reasons for its increase; it had grown and strengthened gradually. Now it attained a height which was sheer wild lunacy. That his, of all others, should have been the hands to rescue his miserable child; that he should have been his protector and faithful friend; that he should have shown him that love and tenderness which, from the wretched moment of his birth, he had never known; that he should have taught him to hate his own parent and execrate his very name; that he should now know and feel all this, and triumph in the recollection; was gall and madness to the usurer’s heart. The dead boy’s love for Nicholas, and the attachment of Nicholas to him, was insupportable agony. The picture of his deathbed, with Nicholas at his side, tending and supporting him, and he breathing out his thanks, and expiring in his arms, when he would have had them mortal enemies and hating each other to the last, drove him frantic. He gnashed his teeth and smote the air, and looking wildly round, with eyes which gleamed through the darkness, cried aloud:
‘I am trampled down and ruined. The wretch told me true. The night has come! Is there no way to rob them of further triumph, and spurn their mercy and compassion? Is there no devil to help me?’
Swiftly, there glided again into his brain the figure he had raised that night. It seemed to lie before him. The head was covered now. So it was when he first saw it. The rigid, upturned, marble feet too, he remembered well. Then came before him the pale and trembling relatives who had told their tale upon the inquest—the shrieks of women—the silent dread of men—the consternation and disquiet—the victory achieved by that heap of clay, which, with one motion of its hand, had let out the life and made this stir among them—
He spoke no more; but, after a pause, softly groped his way out of the room, and up the echoing stairs—up to the top—to the front garret—where he closed the door behind him, and remained.
It was a mere lumber-room now, but it yet contained an old dismantled bedstead; the one on which his son had slept; for no other had ever been there. He avoided it hastily, and sat down as far from it as he could.
The weakened glare of the lights in the street below, shining through the window which had no blind or curtain to intercept it, was enough to show the character of the room, though not sufficient fully to reveal the various articles of lumber, old corded trunks and broken furniture, which were scattered about. It had a shelving roof; high in one part, and at another descending almost to the floor. It was towards the highest part that Ralph directed his eyes; and upon it he kept them fixed steadily for some minutes, when he rose, and dragging thither an old chest upon which he had been seated, mounted on it, and felt along the wall above his head with both hands. At length, they touched a large iron hook, firmly driven into one of the beams.
At that moment, he was interrupted by a loud knocking at the door below. After a little hesitation he opened the window, and demanded who it was.
‘I want Mr. Nickleby,’ replied a voice.
‘What with him?’
‘That’s not Mr. Nickleby’s voice, surely?’ was the rejoinder.
It was not like it; but it was Ralph who spoke, and so he said.
The voice made answer that the twin brothers wished to know whether the man whom he had seen that night was to be detained; and that although it was now midnight they had sent, in their anxiety to do right.
‘Yes,’ cried Ralph, ‘detain him till tomorrow; then let them bring him here—him and my nephew—and come themselves, and be sure that I will be ready to receive them.’
‘At what hour?’ asked the voice.
‘At any hour,’ replied Ralph fiercely. ‘In the afternoon, tell them. At any hour, at any minute. All times will be alike to me.’
He listened to the man’s retreating footsteps until the sound had passed, and then, gazing up into the sky, saw, or thought he saw, the same black cloud that had seemed to follow him home, and which now appeared to hover directly above the house.
‘I know its meaning now,’ he muttered, ‘and the restless nights, the dreams, and why I have quailed of late. All pointed to this. Oh! if men by selling their own souls could ride rampant for a term, for how short a term would I barter mine tonight!’
The sound of a deep bell came along the wind. One.
‘Lie on!’ cried the usurer, ‘with your iron tongue! Ring merrily for births that make expectants writhe, and marriages that are made in hell, and toll ruefully for the dead whose shoes are worn already! Call men to prayers who are godly because not found out, and ring chimes for the coming in of every year that brings this cursed world nearer to its end. No bell or book for me! Throw me on a dunghill, and let me rot there, to infect the air!’
With a wild look around, in which frenzy, hatred, and despair were horribly mingled, he shook his clenched hand at the sky above him, which was still dark and threatening, and closed the window.
The rain and hail pattered against the glass; the chimneys quaked and rocked; the crazy casement rattled with the wind, as though an impatient hand inside were striving to burst it open. But no hand was there, and it opened no more.
‘How’s this?’ cried one. ‘The gentleman say they can’t make anybody hear, and have been trying these two hours.’
‘And yet he came home last night,’ said another; ‘for he spoke to somebody out of that window upstairs.’
They were a little knot of men, and, the window being mentioned, went out into the road to look up at it. This occasioned their observing that the house was still close shut, as the housekeeper had said she had left it on the previous night, and led to a great many suggestions: which terminated in two or three of the boldest getting round to the back, and so entering by a window, while the others remained outside, in impatient expectation.
They looked into all the rooms below: opening the shutters as they went, to admit the fading light: and still finding nobody, and everything quiet and in its place, doubted whether they should go farther. One man, however, remarking that they had not yet been into the garret, and that it was there he had been last seen, they agreed to look there too, and went up softly; for the mystery and silence made them timid.
After they had stood for an instant, on the landing, eyeing each other, he who had proposed their carrying the search so far, turned the handle of the door, and, pushing it open, looked through the chink, and fell back directly.
‘It’s very odd,’ he whispered, ‘he’s hiding behind the door! Look!’
They pressed forward to see; but one among them thrusting the others aside with a loud exclamation, drew a clasp-knife from his pocket, and dashing into the room, cut down the body.
He had torn a rope from one of the old trunks, and hung himself on an iron hook immediately below the trap-door in the ceiling—in the very place to which the eyes of his son, a lonely, desolate, little creature, had so often been directed in childish terror, fourteen years before.
The Brothers Cheeryble make various Declarations for themselves and others. Tim Linkinwater makes a Declaration for himself
Some weeks had passed, and the first shock of these events had subsided. Madeline had been removed; Frank had been absent; and Nicholas and Kate had begun to try in good earnest to stifle their own regrets, and to live for each other and for their mother—who, poor lady, could in nowise be reconciled to this dull and altered state of affairs—when there came one evening, per favour of Mr. Linkinwater, an invitation from the brothers to dinner on the next day but one: comprehending, not only Mrs Nickleby, Kate, and Nicholas, but little Miss La Creevy, who was most particularly mentioned.
‘Now, my dears,’ said Mrs. Nickleby, when they had rendered becoming honour to the bidding, and Tim had taken his departure, ‘what doesthismean?’
‘What doyoumean, mother?’ asked Nicholas, smiling.
‘I say, my dear,’ rejoined that lady, with a face of unfathomable mystery, ‘what does this invitation to dinner mean? What is its intention and object?’
‘I conclude it means, that on such a day we are to eat and drink in their house, and that its intent and object is to confer pleasure upon us,’ said Nicholas.
‘And that’s all you conclude it is, my dear?’
‘I have not yet arrived at anything deeper, mother.’
‘Then I’ll just tell you one thing,’ said Mrs. Nickleby, you’ll find yourself a little surprised; that’s all. You may depend upon it that this means something besides dinner.’
‘Tea and supper, perhaps,’ suggested Nicholas.
‘I wouldn’t be absurd, my dear, if I were you,’ replied Mrs. Nickleby, in a lofty manner, ‘because it’s not by any means becoming, and doesn’t suit you at all. What I mean to say is, that the Mr. Cheerybles don’t ask us to dinner with all this ceremony for nothing. Never mind; wait and see. You won’t believe anything I say, of course. It’s much better to wait; a great deal better; it’s satisfactory to all parties, and there can be no disputing. All I say is, remember what I say now, and when I say I said so, don’t say I didn’t.’
With this stipulation, Mrs. Nickleby, who was troubled, night and day, with a vision of a hot messenger tearing up to the door to announce that Nicholas had been taken into partnership, quitted that branch of the subject, and entered upon a new one.
‘It’s a very extraordinary thing,’ she said, ‘a most extraordinary thing, that they should have invited Miss La Creevy. It quite astonishes me, upon my word it does. Of course it’s very pleasant that she should be invited, very pleasant, and I have no doubt that she’ll conduct herself extremely well; she always does. It’s very gratifying to think that we should have been the means of introducing her into such society, and I’m quite glad of it—quite rejoiced—for she certainly is an exceedingly well-behaved and good-natured little person. I could wish that some friend would mention to her how very badly she has her cap trimmed, and what very preposterous bows those are, but of course that’s impossible, and if she likes to make a fright of herself, no doubt she has a perfect right to do so. We never see ourselves—never do, and never did—and I suppose we never shall.’
This moral reflection reminding her of the necessity of being peculiarly smart on the occasion, so as to counterbalance Miss La Creevy, and be herself an effectual set-off and atonement, led Mrs. Nickleby into a consultation with her daughter relative to certain ribbons, gloves, and trimmings: which, being a complicated question, and one of paramount importance, soon routed the previous one, and put it to flight.
The great day arriving, the good lady put herself under Kate’s hands an hour or so after breakfast, and, dressing by easy stages, completed her toilette in sufficient time to allow of her daughter’s making hers, which was very simple, and not very long, though so satisfactory that she had never appeared more charming or looked more lovely. Miss La Creevy, too, arrived with two bandboxes (whereof the bottoms fell out as they were handed from the coach) and something in a newspaper, which a gentleman had sat upon, coming down, and which was obliged to be ironed again, before it was fit for service. At last, everybody was dressed, including Nicholas, who had come home to fetch them, and they went away in a coach sent by the brothers for the purpose: Mrs. Nickleby wondering very much what they would have for dinner, and cross-examining Nicholas as to the extent of his discoveries in the morning; whether he had smelt anything cooking at all like turtle, and if not, what he had smelt; and diversifying the conversation with reminiscences of dinners to which she had gone some twenty years ago, concerning which she particularised not only the dishes but the guests, in whom her hearers did not feel a very absorbing interest, as not one of them had ever chanced to hear their names before.
The old butler received them with profound respect and many smiles, and ushered them into the drawing-room, where they were received by the brothers with so much cordiality and kindness that Mrs. Nickleby was quite in a flutter, and had scarcely presence of mind enough, even to patronise Miss La Creevy. Kate was still more affected by the reception: for, knowing that the brothers were acquainted with all that had passed between her and Frank, she felt her position a most delicate and trying one, and was trembling on the arm of Nicholas, when Mr. Charles took her in his, and led her to another part of the room.
‘Have you seen Madeline, my dear,’ he said, ‘since she left your house?’
‘No, sir!’ replied Kate. ‘Not once.’
‘And not heard from her, eh? Not heard from her?’
‘I have only had one letter,’ rejoined Kate, gently. ‘I thought she would not have forgotten me quite so soon.’
‘Ah,’ said the old man, patting her on the head, and speaking as affectionately as if she had been his favourite child. ‘Poor dear! what do you think of this, brother Ned? Madeline has only written to her once, only once, Ned, and she didn’t think she would have forgotten her quite so soon, Ned.’
‘Oh! sad, sad; very sad!’ said Ned.
The brothers interchanged a glance, and looking at Kate for a little time without speaking, shook hands, and nodded as if they were congratulating each other on something very delightful.
‘Well, well,’ said brother Charles, ‘go into that room, my dear—that door yonder—and see if there’s not a letter for you from her. I think there’s one upon the table. You needn’t hurry back, my love, if there is, for we don’t dine just yet, and there’s plenty of time. Plenty of time.’
Kate retired as she was directed. Brother Charles, having followed her graceful figure with his eyes, turned to Mrs. Nickleby, and said:
‘We took the liberty of naming one hour before the real dinner-time, ma’am, because we had a little business to speak about, which would occupy the interval. Ned, my dear fellow, will you mention what we agreed upon? Mr. Nickleby, sir, have the goodness to follow me.’
Without any further explanation, Mrs. Nickleby, Miss La Creevy, and brother Ned, were left alone together, and Nicholas followed brother Charles into his private room; where, to his great astonishment, he encountered Frank, whom he supposed to be abroad.
‘Young men,’ said Mr. Cheeryble, ‘shake hands!’
‘I need no bidding to do that,’ said Nicholas, extending his.
‘Nor I,’ rejoined Frank, as he clasped it heartily.
The old gentleman thought that two handsomer or finer young fellows could scarcely stand side by side than those on whom he looked with so much pleasure. Suffering his eyes to rest upon them, for a short time in silence, he said, while he seated himself at his desk:
‘I wish to see you friends—close and firm friends—and if I thought you otherwise, I should hesitate in what I am about to say. Frank, look here! Mr. Nickleby, will you come on the other side?’
The young men stepped up on either hand of brother Charles, who produced a paper from his desk, and unfolded it.
‘This,’ he said, ‘is a copy of the will of Madeline’s maternal grandfather, bequeathing her the sum of twelve thousand pounds, payable either upon her coming of age or marrying. It would appear that this gentleman, angry with her (his only relation) because she would not put herself under his protection, and detach herself from the society of her father, in compliance with his repeated overtures, made a will leaving this property (which was all he possessed) to a charitable institution. He would seem to have repented this determination, however, for three weeks afterwards, and in the same month, he executed this. By some fraud, it was abstracted immediately after his decease, and the other—the only will found—was proved and administered. Friendly negotiations, which have only just now terminated, have been proceeding since this instrument came into our hands, and, as there is no doubt of its authenticity, and the witnesses have been discovered (after some trouble), the money has been refunded. Madeline has therefore obtained her right, and is, or will be, when either of the contingencies which I have mentioned has arisen, mistress of this fortune. You understand me?’
Frank replied in the affirmative. Nicholas, who could not trust himself to speak lest his voice should be heard to falter, bowed his head.
‘Now, Frank,’ said the old gentleman, ‘you were the immediate means of recovering this deed. The fortune is but a small one; but we love Madeline; and such as it is, we would rather see you allied to her with that, than to any other girl we know who has three times the money. Will you become a suitor to her for her hand?’
‘No, sir. I interested myself in the recovery of that instrument, believing that her hand was already pledged to one who has a thousand times the claims upon her gratitude, and, if I mistake not, upon her heart, that I or any other man can ever urge. In this it seems I judged hastily.’
‘As you always do, sir,’ cried brother Charles, utterly forgetting his assumed dignity, ‘as you always do. How dare you think, Frank, that we would have you marry for money, when youth, beauty, and every amiable virtue and excellence were to be had for love? How dared you, Frank, go and make love to Mr. Nickleby’s sister without telling us first what you meant to do, and letting us speak for you?’
‘I hardly dared to hope—’
‘You hardly dared to hope! Then, so much the greater reason for having our assistance! Mr. Nickleby, sir, Frank, although he judged hastily, judged, for once, correctly. Madeline’s heartisoccupied. Give me your hand, sir; it is occupied by you, and worthily and naturally. This fortune is destined to be yours, but you have a greater fortune in her, sir, than you would have in money were it forty times told. She chooses you, Mr Nickleby. She chooses as we, her dearest friends, would have her choose. Frank chooses as we would havehimchoose. He should have your sister’s little hand, sir, if she had refused it a score of times; ay, he should, and he shall! You acted nobly, not knowing our sentiments, but now you know them, sir, you must do as you are bid. What! You are the children of a worthy gentleman! The time was, sir, when my dear brother Ned and I were two poor simple-hearted boys, wandering, almost barefoot, to seek our fortunes: are we changed in anything but years and worldly circumstances since that time? No, God forbid! Oh, Ned, Ned, Ned, what a happy day this is for you and me! If our poor mother had only lived to see us now, Ned, how proud it would have made her dear heart at last!’
Thus apostrophised, brother Ned, who had entered with Mrs. Nickleby, and who had been before unobserved by the young men, darted forward, and fairly hugged brother Charles in his arms.
‘Bring in my little Kate,’ said the latter, after a short silence. ‘Bring her in, Ned. Let me see Kate, let me kiss her. I have a right to do so now; I was very near it when she first came; I have often been very near it. Ah! Did you find the letter, my bird? Did you find Madeline herself, waiting for you and expecting you? Did you find that she had not quite forgotten her friend and nurse and sweet companion? Why, this is almost the best of all!’
‘Come, come,’ said Ned, ‘Frank will be jealous, and we shall have some cutting of throats before dinner.’
‘Then let him take her away, Ned, let him take her away. Madeline’s in the next room. Let all the lovers get out of the way, and talk among themselves, if they’ve anything to say. Turn ‘em out, Ned, every one!’
Brother Charles began the clearance by leading the blushing girl to the door, and dismissing her with a kiss. Frank was not very slow to follow, and Nicholas had disappeared first of all. So there only remained Mrs Nickleby and Miss La Creevy, who were both sobbing heartily; the two brothers; and Tim Linkinwater, who now came in to shake hands with everybody: his round face all radiant and beaming with smiles.
‘Well, Tim Linkinwater, sir,’ said brother Charles, who was always spokesman, ‘now the young folks are happy, sir.’
‘You didn’t keep ‘em in suspense as long as you said you would, though,’ returned Tim, archly. ‘Why, Mr. Nickleby and Mr. Frank were to have been in your room for I don’t know how long; and I don’t know what you weren’t to have told them before you came out with the truth.’
‘Now, did you ever know such a villain as this, Ned?’ said the old gentleman; ‘did you ever know such a villain as Tim Linkinwater? He accusing me of being impatient, and he the very man who has been wearying us morning, noon, and night, and torturing us for leave to go and tell ‘em what was in store, before our plans were half complete, or we had arranged a single thing. A treacherous dog!’
‘So he is, brother Charles,’ returned Ned; ‘Tim is a treacherous dog. Tim is not to be trusted. Tim is a wild young fellow. He wants gravity and steadiness; he must sow his wild oats, and then perhaps he’ll become in time a respectable member of society.’
This being one of the standing jokes between the old fellows and Tim, they all three laughed very heartily, and might have laughed much longer, but that the brothers, seeing that Mrs. Nickleby was labouring to express her feelings, and was really overwhelmed by the happiness of the time, took her between them, and led her from the room under pretence of having to consult her on some most important arrangements.
Now, Tim and Miss La Creevy had met very often, and had always been very chatty and pleasant together—had always been great friends—and consequently it was the most natural thing in the world that Tim, finding that she still sobbed, should endeavour to console her. As Miss La Creevy sat on a large old-fashioned window-seat, where there was ample room for two, it was also natural that Tim should sit down beside her; and as to Tim’s being unusually spruce and particular in his attire that day, why it was a high festival and a great occasion, and that was the most natural thing of all.
Tim sat down beside Miss La Creevy, and, crossing one leg over the other so that his foot—he had very comely feet and happened to be wearing the neatest shoes and black silk stockings possible—should come easily within the range of her eye, said in a soothing way:
‘Don’t cry!’
‘I must,’ rejoined Miss La Creevy.
‘No, don’t,’ said Tim. ‘Please don’t; pray don’t.’
‘I am so happy!’ sobbed the little woman.
‘Then laugh,’ said Tim. ‘Do laugh.’
What in the world Tim was doing with his arm, it is impossible to conjecture, but he knocked his elbow against that part of the window which was quite on the other side of Miss La Creevy; and it is clear that it could have no business there.
‘Do laugh,’ said Tim, ‘or I’ll cry.’
‘Why should you cry?’ asked Miss La Creevy, smiling.
‘Because I’m happy too,’ said Tim. ‘We are both happy, and I should like to do as you do.’
Surely, there never was a man who fidgeted as Tim must have done then; for he knocked the window again—almost in the same place—and Miss La Creevy said she was sure he’d break it.
‘I knew,’ said Tim, ‘that you would be pleased with this scene.’
‘It was very thoughtful and kind to remember me,’ returned Miss La Creevy. ‘Nothing could have delighted me half so much.’
Why on earth should Miss La Creevy and Tim Linkinwater have said all this in a whisper? It was no secret. And why should Tim Linkinwater have looked so hard at Miss La Creevy, and why should Miss La Creevy have looked so hard at the ground?
‘It’s a pleasant thing,’ said Tim, ‘to people like us, who have passed all our lives in the world alone, to see young folks that we are fond of, brought together with so many years of happiness before them.’
‘Ah!’ cried the little woman with all her heart, ‘that it is!’
‘Although,’ pursued Tim ‘although it makes one feel quite solitary and cast away. Now don’t it?’
Miss La Creevy said she didn’t know. And why should she say she didn’t know? Because she must have known whether it did or not.
‘It’s almost enough to make us get married after all, isn’t it?’ said Tim.
‘Oh, nonsense!’ replied Miss La Creevy, laughing. ‘We are too old.’
‘Not a bit,’ said Tim; ‘we are too old to be single. Why shouldn’t we both be married, instead of sitting through the long winter evenings by our solitary firesides? Why shouldn’t we make one fireside of it, and marry each other?’
‘Oh, Mr. Linkinwater, you’re joking!’
‘No, no, I’m not. I’m not indeed,’ said Tim. ‘I will, if you will. Do, my dear!’
‘It would make people laugh so.’
‘Let ‘em laugh,’ cried Tim stoutly; ‘we have good tempers I know, and we’ll laugh too. Why, what hearty laughs we have had since we’ve known each other!’
‘So we have,’ cried Miss La Creevy—giving way a little, as Tim thought.
‘It has been the happiest time in all my life; at least, away from the counting-house and Cheeryble Brothers,’ said Tim. ‘Do, my dear! Now say you will.’
‘No, no, we mustn’t think of it,’ returned Miss La Creevy. ‘What would the brothers say?’
‘Why, God bless your soul!’ cried Tim, innocently, ‘you don’t suppose I should think of such a thing without their knowing it! Why they left us here on purpose.’
‘I can never look ‘em in the face again!’ exclaimed Miss La Creevy, faintly.
‘Come,’ said Tim, ‘let’s be a comfortable couple. We shall live in the old house here, where I have been for four-and-forty year; we shall go to the old church, where I’ve been, every Sunday morning, all through that time; we shall have all my old friends about us—Dick, the archway, the pump, the flower-pots, and Mr. Frank’s children, and Mr. Nickleby’s children, that we shall seem like grandfather and grandmother to. Let’s be a comfortable couple, and take care of each other! And if we should get deaf, or lame, or blind, or bed-ridden, how glad we shall be that we have somebody we are fond of, always to talk to and sit with! Let’s be a comfortable couple. Now, do, my dear!’
Five minutes after this honest and straightforward speech, little Miss La Creevy and Tim were talking as pleasantly as if they had been married for a score of years, and had never once quarrelled all the time; and five minutes after that, when Miss La Creevy had bustled out to see if her eyes were red and put her hair to rights, Tim moved with a stately step towards the drawing-room, exclaiming as he went, ‘There an’t such another woman in all London! Iknowthere an’t!’
By this time, the apoplectic butler was nearly in fits, in consequence of the unheard-of postponement of dinner. Nicholas, who had been engaged in a manner in which every reader may imagine for himself or herself, was hurrying downstairs in obedience to his angry summons, when he encountered a new surprise.
On his way down, he overtook, in one of the passages, a stranger genteelly dressed in black, who was also moving towards the dining-room. As he was rather lame, and walked slowly, Nicholas lingered behind, and was following him step by step, wondering who he was, when he suddenly turned round and caught him by both hands.
‘Newman Noggs!’ cried Nicholas joyfully
‘Ah! Newman, your own Newman, your own old faithful Newman! My dear boy, my dear Nick, I give you joy—health, happiness, every blessing! I can’t bear it—it’s too much, my dear boy—it makes a child of me!’
‘Where have you been?’ said Nicholas. ‘What have you been doing? How often have I inquired for you, and been told that I should hear before long!’
‘I know, I know!’ returned Newman. ‘They wanted all the happiness to come together. I’ve been helping ‘em. I—I—look at me, Nick, look at me!’
‘You would never letmedo that,’ said Nicholas in a tone of gentle reproach.
‘I didn’t mind what I was, then. I shouldn’t have had the heart to put on gentleman’s clothes. They would have reminded me of old times and made me miserable. I am another man now, Nick. My dear boy, I can’t speak. Don’t say anything to me. Don’t think the worse of me for these tears. You don’t know what I feel today; you can’t, and never will!’
They walked in to dinner arm-in-arm, and sat down side by side.
Never was such a dinner as that, since the world began. There was the superannuated bank clerk, Tim Linkinwater’s friend; and there was the chubby old lady, Tim Linkinwater’s sister; and there was so much attention from Tim Linkinwater’s sister to Miss La Creevy, and there were so many jokes from the superannuated bank clerk, and Tim Linkinwater himself was in such tiptop spirits, and little Miss La Creevy was in such a comical state, that of themselves they would have composed the pleasantest party conceivable. Then, there was Mrs. Nickleby, so grand and complacent; Madeline and Kate, so blushing and beautiful; Nicholas and Frank, so devoted and proud; and all four so silently and tremblingly happy; there was Newman so subdued yet so overjoyed, and there were the twin brothers so delighted and interchanging such looks, that the old servant stood transfixed behind his master’s chair, and felt his eyes grow dim as they wandered round the table.
When the first novelty of the meeting had worn off, and they began truly to feel how happy they were, the conversation became more general, and the harmony and pleasure if possible increased. The brothers were in a perfect ecstasy; and their insisting on saluting the ladies all round, before they would permit them to retire, gave occasion to the superannuated bank clerk to say so many good things, that he quite outshone himself, and was looked upon as a prodigy of humour.
‘Kate, my dear,’ said Mrs. Nickleby, taking her daughter aside, as soon as they got upstairs, ‘you don’t really mean to tell me that this is actually true about Miss La Creevy and Mr. Linkinwater?’
‘Indeed it is, mama.’
‘Why, I never heard such a thing in my life!’ exclaimed Mrs. Nickleby.
‘Mr. Linkinwater is a most excellent creature,’ reasoned Kate, ‘and, for his age, quite young still.’
‘Forhisage, my dear!’ returned Mrs. Nickleby, ‘yes; nobody says anything against him, except that I think he is the weakest and most foolish man I ever knew. It’sherage I speak of. That he should have gone and offered himself to a woman who must be—ah, half as old again as I am—and that she should have dared to accept him! It don’t signify, Kate; I’m disgusted with her!’
Shaking her head very emphatically indeed, Mrs. Nickleby swept away; and all the evening, in the midst of the merriment and enjoyment that ensued, and in which with that exception she freely participated, conducted herself towards Miss La Creevy in a stately and distant manner, designed to mark her sense of the impropriety of her conduct, and to signify her extreme and cutting disapprobation of the misdemeanour she had so flagrantly committed.
An old Acquaintance is recognised under melancholy Circumstances, and Dotheboys Hall breaks up for ever
Nicholas was one of those whose joy is incomplete unless it is shared by the friends of adverse and less fortunate days. Surrounded by every fascination of love and hope, his warm heart yearned towards plain John Browdie. He remembered their first meeting with a smile, and their second with a tear; saw poor Smike once again with the bundle on his shoulder trudging patiently by his side; and heard the honest Yorkshireman’s rough words of encouragement as he left them on their road to London.
Madeline and he sat down, very many times, jointly to produce a letter which should acquaint John at full length with his altered fortunes, and assure him of his friendship and gratitude. It so happened, however, that the letter could never be written. Although they applied themselves to it with the best intentions in the world, it chanced that they always fell to talking about something else, and when Nicholas tried it by himself, he found it impossible to write one-half of what he wished to say, or to pen anything, indeed, which on reperusal did not appear cold and unsatisfactory compared with what he had in his mind. At last, after going on thus from day to day, and reproaching himself more and more, he resolved (the more readily as Madeline strongly urged him) to make a hasty trip into Yorkshire, and present himself before Mr. and Mrs. Browdie without a word of notice.
Thus it was that between seven and eight o’clock one evening, he and Kate found themselves in the Saracen’s Head booking-office, securing a place to Greta Bridge by the next morning’s coach. They had to go westward, to procure some little necessaries for his journey, and, as it was a fine night, they agreed to walk there, and ride home.
The place they had just been in called up so many recollections, and Kate had so many anecdotes of Madeline, and Nicholas so many anecdotes of Frank, and each was so interested in what the other said, and both were so happy and confiding, and had so much to talk about, that it was not until they had plunged for a full half-hour into that labyrinth of streets which lies between Seven Dials and Soho, without emerging into any large thoroughfare, that Nicholas began to think it just possible they might have lost their way.
The possibility was soon converted into a certainty; for, on looking about, and walking first to one end of the street and then to the other, he could find no landmark he could recognise, and was fain to turn back again in quest of some place at which he could seek a direction.
It was a by-street, and there was nobody about, or in the few wretched shops they passed. Making towards a faint gleam of light which streamed across the pavement from a cellar, Nicholas was about to descend two or three steps so as to render himself visible to those below and make his inquiry, when he was arrested by a loud noise of scolding in a woman’s voice.
‘Oh come away!’ said Kate, ‘they are quarrelling. You’ll be hurt.’
‘Wait one instant, Kate. Let us hear if there’s anything the matter,’ returned her brother. ‘Hush!’
‘You nasty, idle, vicious, good-for-nothing brute,’ cried the woman, stamping on the ground, ‘why don’t you turn the mangle?’
‘So I am, my life and soul!’ replied the man’s voice. ‘I am always turning. I am perpetually turning, like a demd old horse in a demnition mill. My life is one demd horrid grind!’
‘Then why don’t you go and list for a soldier?’ retorted the woman; ‘you’re welcome to.’
‘For a soldier!’ cried the man. ‘For a soldier! Would his joy and gladness see him in a coarse red coat with a little tail? Would she hear of his being slapped and beat by drummers demnebly? Would she have him fire off real guns, and have his hair cut, and his whiskers shaved, and his eyes turned right and left, and his trousers pipeclayed?’
‘Dear Nicholas,’ whispered Kate, ‘you don’t know who that is. It’s Mr Mantalini I am confident.’
‘Do make sure! Peep at him while I ask the way,’ said Nicholas. ‘Come down a step or two. Come!’
Drawing her after him, Nicholas crept down the steps and looked into a small boarded cellar. There, amidst clothes-baskets and clothes, stripped up to his shirt-sleeves, but wearing still an old patched pair of pantaloons of superlative make, a once brilliant waistcoat, and moustache and whiskers as of yore, but lacking their lustrous dye—there, endeavouring to mollify the wrath of a buxom female—not the lawful Madame Mantalini, but the proprietress of the concern—and grinding meanwhile as if for very life at the mangle, whose creaking noise, mingled with her shrill tones, appeared almost to deafen him—there was the graceful, elegant, fascinating, and once dashing Mantalini.