The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby

C >> Charles Dickens >> The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby


'What HAS come, then?' inquired Mr Nickleby.

'I have,' said Newman.

'What else?' demanded the master, sternly.

'This,' said Newman, drawing a sealed letter slowly from his pocket.
'Post-mark, Strand, black wax, black border, woman's hand, C. N. in the
corner.'

'Black wax?' said Mr Nickleby, glancing at the letter. 'I know something
of that hand, too. Newman, I shouldn't be surprised if my brother were
dead.'

'I don't think you would,' said Newman, quietly.

'Why not, sir?' demanded Mr Nickleby.

'You never are surprised,' replied Newman, 'that's all.'

Mr Nickleby snatched the letter from his assistant, and fixing a cold
look upon him, opened, read it, put it in his pocket, and having now hit
the time to a second, began winding up his watch.

'It is as I expected, Newman,' said Mr Nickleby, while he was thus
engaged. 'He IS dead. Dear me! Well, that's sudden thing. I shouldn't
have thought it, really.' With these touching expressions of sorrow, Mr
Nickleby replaced his watch in his fob, and, fitting on his gloves to a
nicety, turned upon his way, and walked slowly westward with his hands
behind him.

'Children alive?' inquired Noggs, stepping up to him.

'Why, that's the very thing,' replied Mr Nickleby, as though his
thoughts were about them at that moment. 'They are both alive.'

'Both!' repeated Newman Noggs, in a low voice.

'And the widow, too,' added Mr Nickleby, 'and all three in London,
confound them; all three here, Newman.'

Newman fell a little behind his master, and his face was curiously
twisted as by a spasm; but whether of paralysis, or grief, or inward
laughter, nobody but himself could possibly explain. The expression of
a man's face is commonly a help to his thoughts, or glossary on his
speech; but the countenance of Newman Noggs, in his ordinary moods, was
a problem which no stretch of ingenuity could solve.

'Go home!' said Mr Nickleby, after they had walked a few paces: looking
round at the clerk as if he were his dog. The words were scarcely
uttered when Newman darted across the road, slunk among the crowd, and
disappeared in an instant.

'Reasonable, certainly!' muttered Mr Nickleby to himself, as he walked
on, 'very reasonable! My brother never did anything for me, and I never
expected it; the breath is no sooner out of his body than I am to be
looked to, as the support of a great hearty woman, and a grown boy and
girl. What are they to me! I never saw them.'

Full of these, and many other reflections of a similar kind, Mr Nickleby
made the best of his way to the Strand, and, referring to his letter as
if to ascertain the number of the house he wanted, stopped at a private
door about half-way down that crowded thoroughfare.

A miniature painter lived there, for there was a large gilt frame
screwed upon the street-door, in which were displayed, upon a black
velvet ground, two portraits of naval dress coats with faces looking
out of them, and telescopes attached; one of a young gentleman in a very
vermilion uniform, flourishing a sabre; and one of a literary character
with a high forehead, a pen and ink, six books, and a curtain. There
was, moreover, a touching representation of a young lady reading a
manuscript in an unfathomable forest, and a charming whole length of a
large-headed little boy, sitting on a stool with his legs fore-shortened
to the size of salt-spoons. Besides these works of art, there were a
great many heads of old ladies and gentlemen smirking at each other out
of blue and brown skies, and an elegantly written card of terms with an
embossed border.

Mr Nickleby glanced at these frivolities with great contempt, and gave
a double knock, which, having been thrice repeated, was answered by a
servant girl with an uncommonly dirty face.

'Is Mrs Nickleby at home, girl?' demanded Ralph sharply.

'Her name ain't Nickleby,' said the girl, 'La Creevy, you mean.'

Mr Nickleby looked very indignant at the handmaid on being thus
corrected, and demanded with much asperity what she meant; which she
was about to state, when a female voice proceeding from a perpendicular
staircase at the end of the passage, inquired who was wanted.

'Mrs Nickleby,' said Ralph.

'It's the second floor, Hannah,' said the same voice; 'what a stupid
thing you are! Is the second floor at home?'

'Somebody went out just now, but I think it was the attic which had been
a cleaning of himself,' replied the girl.

'You had better see,' said the invisible female. 'Show the gentleman
where the bell is, and tell him he mustn't knock double knocks for the
second floor; I can't allow a knock except when the bell's broke, and
then it must be two single ones.'

'Here,' said Ralph, walking in without more parley, 'I beg your pardon;
is that Mrs La what's-her-name?'

'Creevy--La Creevy,' replied the voice, as a yellow headdress bobbed
over the banisters.

'I'll speak to you a moment, ma'am, with your leave,' said Ralph.

The voice replied that the gentleman was to walk up; but he had walked
up before it spoke, and stepping into the first floor, was received by
the wearer of the yellow head-dress, who had a gown to correspond, and
was of much the same colour herself. Miss La Creevy was a mincing
young lady of fifty, and Miss La Creevy's apartment was the gilt frame
downstairs on a larger scale and something dirtier.

'Hem!' said Miss La Creevy, coughing delicately behind her black silk
mitten. 'A miniature, I presume. A very strongly-marked countenance for
the purpose, sir. Have you ever sat before?'

'You mistake my purpose, I see, ma'am,' replied Mr Nickleby, in his
usual blunt fashion. 'I have no money to throw away on miniatures,
ma'am, and nobody to give one to (thank God) if I had. Seeing you on the
stairs, I wanted to ask a question of you, about some lodgers here.'

Miss La Creevy coughed once more--this cough was to conceal her
disappointment--and said, 'Oh, indeed!'

'I infer from what you said to your servant, that the floor above
belongs to you, ma'am,' said Mr Nickleby.

Yes it did, Miss La Creevy replied. The upper part of the house belonged
to her, and as she had no necessity for the second-floor rooms just
then, she was in the habit of letting them. Indeed, there was a lady
from the country and her two children in them, at that present speaking.

'A widow, ma'am?' said Ralph.

'Yes, she is a widow,' replied the lady.

'A POOR widow, ma'am,' said Ralph, with a powerful emphasis on that
little adjective which conveys so much.

'Well, I'm afraid she IS poor,' rejoined Miss La Creevy.

'I happen to know that she is, ma'am,' said Ralph. 'Now, what business
has a poor widow in such a house as this, ma'am?'

'Very true,' replied Miss La Creevy, not at all displeased with this
implied compliment to the apartments. 'Exceedingly true.'

'I know her circumstances intimately, ma'am,' said Ralph; 'in fact, I
am a relation of the family; and I should recommend you not to keep them
here, ma'am.'

'I should hope, if there was any incompatibility to meet the pecuniary
obligations,' said Miss La Creevy with another cough, 'that the lady's
family would--'

'No they wouldn't, ma'am,' interrupted Ralph, hastily. 'Don't think it.'

'If I am to understand that,' said Miss La Creevy, 'the case wears a
very different appearance.'

'You may understand it then, ma'am,' said Ralph, 'and make your
arrangements accordingly. I am the family, ma'am--at least, I believe
I am the only relation they have, and I think it right that you should
know I can't support them in their extravagances. How long have they
taken these lodgings for?'

'Only from week to week,' replied Miss La Creevy. 'Mrs Nickleby paid the
first week in advance.'

'Then you had better get them out at the end of it,' said Ralph.
'They can't do better than go back to the country, ma'am; they are in
everybody's way here.'

'Certainly,' said Miss La Creevy, rubbing her hands, 'if Mrs Nickleby
took the apartments without the means of paying for them, it was very
unbecoming a lady.'

'Of course it was, ma'am,' said Ralph.

'And naturally,' continued Miss La Creevy, 'I who am, AT
PRESENT--hem--an unprotected female, cannot afford to lose by the
apartments.'

'Of course you can't, ma'am,' replied Ralph.

'Though at the same time,' added Miss La Creevy, who was plainly
wavering between her good-nature and her interest, 'I have nothing
whatever to say against the lady, who is extremely pleasant and affable,
though, poor thing, she seems terribly low in her spirits; nor against
the young people either, for nicer, or better-behaved young people
cannot be.'

'Very well, ma'am,' said Ralph, turning to the door, for these encomiums
on poverty irritated him; 'I have done my duty, and perhaps more than I
ought: of course nobody will thank me for saying what I have.'

'I am sure I am very much obliged to you at least, sir,' said Miss La
Creevy in a gracious manner. 'Would you do me the favour to look at a
few specimens of my portrait painting?'

'You're very good, ma'am,' said Mr Nickleby, making off with great
speed; 'but as I have a visit to pay upstairs, and my time is precious,
I really can't.'

'At any other time when you are passing, I shall be most happy,' said
Miss La Creevy. 'Perhaps you will have the kindness to take a card of
terms with you? Thank you--good-morning!'

'Good-morning, ma'am,' said Ralph, shutting the door abruptly after him
to prevent any further conversation. 'Now for my sister-in-law. Bah!'

Climbing up another perpendicular flight, composed with great mechanical
ingenuity of nothing but corner stairs, Mr Ralph Nickleby stopped to
take breath on the landing, when he was overtaken by the handmaid, whom
the politeness of Miss La Creevy had dispatched to announce him, and
who had apparently been making a variety of unsuccessful attempts, since
their last interview, to wipe her dirty face clean, upon an apron much
dirtier.

'What name?' said the girl.

'Nickleby,' replied Ralph.

'Oh! Mrs Nickleby,' said the girl, throwing open the door, 'here's Mr
Nickleby.'

A lady in deep mourning rose as Mr Ralph Nickleby entered, but appeared
incapable of advancing to meet him, and leant upon the arm of a slight
but very beautiful girl of about seventeen, who had been sitting by her.
A youth, who appeared a year or two older, stepped forward and saluted
Ralph as his uncle.

'Oh,' growled Ralph, with an ill-favoured frown, 'you are Nicholas, I
suppose?'

'That is my name, sir,' replied the youth.

'Put my hat down,' said Ralph, imperiously. 'Well, ma'am, how do you do?
You must bear up against sorrow, ma'am; I always do.'

'Mine was no common loss!' said Mrs Nickleby, applying her handkerchief
to her eyes.

'It was no UNcommon loss, ma'am,' returned Ralph, as he coolly
unbuttoned his spencer. 'Husbands die every day, ma'am, and wives too.'

'And brothers also, sir,' said Nicholas, with a glance of indignation.

'Yes, sir, and puppies, and pug-dogs likewise,' replied his uncle,
taking a chair. 'You didn't mention in your letter what my brother's
complaint was, ma'am.'

'The doctors could attribute it to no particular disease,' said Mrs
Nickleby; shedding tears. 'We have too much reason to fear that he died
of a broken heart.'

'Pooh!' said Ralph, 'there's no such thing. I can understand a man's
dying of a broken neck, or suffering from a broken arm, or a broken
head, or a broken leg, or a broken nose; but a broken heart!--nonsense,
it's the cant of the day. If a man can't pay his debts, he dies of a
broken heart, and his widow's a martyr.'

'Some people, I believe, have no hearts to break,' observed Nicholas,
quietly.

'How old is this boy, for God's sake?' inquired Ralph, wheeling back his
chair, and surveying his nephew from head to foot with intense scorn.

'Nicholas is very nearly nineteen,' replied the widow.

'Nineteen, eh!' said Ralph; 'and what do you mean to do for your bread,
sir?'

'Not to live upon my mother,' replied Nicholas, his heart swelling as he
spoke.

'You'd have little enough to live upon, if you did,' retorted the uncle,
eyeing him contemptuously.

'Whatever it be,' said Nicholas, flushed with anger, 'I shall not look
to you to make it more.'

'Nicholas, my dear, recollect yourself,' remonstrated Mrs Nickleby.

'Dear Nicholas, pray,' urged the young lady.

'Hold your tongue, sir,' said Ralph. 'Upon my word! Fine beginnings, Mrs
Nickleby--fine beginnings!'

Mrs Nickleby made no other reply than entreating Nicholas by a gesture
to keep silent; and the uncle and nephew looked at each other for
some seconds without speaking. The face of the old man was stern,
hard-featured, and forbidding; that of the young one, open, handsome,
and ingenuous. The old man's eye was keen with the twinklings of avarice
and cunning; the young man's bright with the light of intelligence and
spirit. His figure was somewhat slight, but manly and well formed; and,
apart from all the grace of youth and comeliness, there was an emanation
from the warm young heart in his look and bearing which kept the old man
down.

However striking such a contrast as this may be to lookers-on, none ever
feel it with half the keenness or acuteness of perfection with which it
strikes to the very soul of him whose inferiority it marks. It galled
Ralph to the heart's core, and he hated Nicholas from that hour.

The mutual inspection was at length brought to a close by Ralph
withdrawing his eyes, with a great show of disdain, and calling Nicholas
'a boy.' This word is much used as a term of reproach by elderly
gentlemen towards their juniors: probably with the view of deluding
society into the belief that if they could be young again, they wouldn't
on any account.

'Well, ma'am,' said Ralph, impatiently, 'the creditors have
administered, you tell me, and there's nothing left for you?'

'Nothing,' replied Mrs Nickleby.

'And you spent what little money you had, in coming all the way to
London, to see what I could do for you?' pursued Ralph.

'I hoped,' faltered Mrs Nickleby, 'that you might have an opportunity of
doing something for your brother's children. It was his dying wish that
I should appeal to you in their behalf.'

'I don't know how it is,' muttered Ralph, walking up and down the room,
'but whenever a man dies without any property of his own, he always
seems to think he has a right to dispose of other people's. What is your
daughter fit for, ma'am?'

'Kate has been well educated,' sobbed Mrs Nickleby. 'Tell your uncle, my
dear, how far you went in French and extras.'

The poor girl was about to murmur something, when her uncle stopped her,
very unceremoniously.

'We must try and get you apprenticed at some boarding-school,' said
Ralph. 'You have not been brought up too delicately for that, I hope?'

'No, indeed, uncle,' replied the weeping girl. 'I will try to do
anything that will gain me a home and bread.'

'Well, well,' said Ralph, a little softened, either by his niece's
beauty or her distress (stretch a point, and say the latter). 'You must
try it, and if the life is too hard, perhaps dressmaking or tambour-work
will come lighter. Have YOU ever done anything, sir?' (turning to his
nephew.)

'No,' replied Nicholas, bluntly.

'No, I thought not!' said Ralph. 'This is the way my brother brought up
his children, ma'am.'

'Nicholas has not long completed such education as his poor father could
give him,' rejoined Mrs Nickleby, 'and he was thinking of--'

'Of making something of him someday,' said Ralph. 'The old story; always
thinking, and never doing. If my brother had been a man of activity
and prudence, he might have left you a rich woman, ma'am: and if he had
turned his son into the world, as my father turned me, when I wasn't as
old as that boy by a year and a half, he would have been in a situation
to help you, instead of being a burden upon you, and increasing your
distress. My brother was a thoughtless, inconsiderate man, Mrs Nickleby,
and nobody, I am sure, can have better reason to feel that, than you.'

This appeal set the widow upon thinking that perhaps she might have made
a more successful venture with her one thousand pounds, and then she
began to reflect what a comfortable sum it would have been just then;
which dismal thoughts made her tears flow faster, and in the excess of
these griefs she (being a well-meaning woman enough, but weak withal)
fell first to deploring her hard fate, and then to remarking, with many
sobs, that to be sure she had been a slave to poor Nicholas, and had
often told him she might have married better (as indeed she had, very
often), and that she never knew in his lifetime how the money went, but
that if he had confided in her they might all have been better off that
day; with other bitter recollections common to most married ladies,
either during their coverture, or afterwards, or at both periods. Mrs
Nickleby concluded by lamenting that the dear departed had never deigned
to profit by her advice, save on one occasion; which was a strictly
veracious statement, inasmuch as he had only acted upon it once, and had
ruined himself in consequence.

Mr Ralph Nickleby heard all this with a half-smile; and when the widow
had finished, quietly took up the subject where it had been left before
the above outbreak.

'Are you willing to work, sir?' he inquired, frowning on his nephew.

'Of course I am,' replied Nicholas haughtily.

'Then see here, sir,' said his uncle. 'This caught my eye this morning,
and you may thank your stars for it.'

With this exordium, Mr Ralph Nickleby took a newspaper from his
pocket, and after unfolding it, and looking for a short time among the
advertisements, read as follows:

'"EDUCATION.--At Mr Wackford Squeers's Academy, Dotheboys Hall, at the
delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire, Youth
are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished with pocket-money, provided
with all necessaries, instructed in all languages living and dead,
mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry, the use of
the globes, algebra, single stick (if required), writing, arithmetic,
fortification, and every other branch of classical literature.
Terms, twenty guineas per annum. No extras, no vacations, and diet
unparalleled. Mr Squeers is in town, and attends daily, from one till
four, at the Saracen's Head, Snow Hill. N.B. An able assistant wanted.
Annual salary 5 pounds. A Master of Arts would be preferred."

'There!' said Ralph, folding the paper again. 'Let him get that
situation, and his fortune is made.'

'But he is not a Master of Arts,' said Mrs Nickleby.

'That,' replied Ralph, 'that, I think, can be got over.'

'But the salary is so small, and it is such a long way off, uncle!'
faltered Kate.

'Hush, Kate my dear,' interposed Mrs Nickleby; 'your uncle must know
best.'

'I say,' repeated Ralph, tartly, 'let him get that situation, and his
fortune is made. If he don't like that, let him get one for himself.
Without friends, money, recommendation, or knowledge of business of any
kind, let him find honest employment in London, which will keep him in
shoe leather, and I'll give him a thousand pounds. At least,' said Mr
Ralph Nickleby, checking himself, 'I would if I had it.'

'Poor fellow!' said the young lady. 'Oh! uncle, must we be separated so
soon!'

'Don't tease your uncle with questions when he is thinking only for our
good, my love,' said Mrs Nickleby. 'Nicholas, my dear, I wish you would
say something.'

'Yes, mother, yes,' said Nicholas, who had hitherto remained silent and
absorbed in thought. 'If I am fortunate enough to be appointed to this
post, sir, for which I am so imperfectly qualified, what will become of
those I leave behind?'

'Your mother and sister, sir,' replied Ralph, 'will be provided for, in
that case (not otherwise), by me, and placed in some sphere of life in
which they will be able to be independent. That will be my immediate
care; they will not remain as they are, one week after your departure, I
will undertake.'

'Then,' said Nicholas, starting gaily up, and wringing his uncle's hand,
'I am ready to do anything you wish me. Let us try our fortune with Mr
Squeers at once; he can but refuse.'

'He won't do that,' said Ralph. 'He will be glad to have you on my
recommendation. Make yourself of use to him, and you'll rise to be a
partner in the establishment in no time. Bless me, only think! if he
were to die, why your fortune's made at once.'

'To be sure, I see it all,' said poor Nicholas, delighted with a
thousand visionary ideas, that his good spirits and his inexperience
were conjuring up before him. 'Or suppose some young nobleman who is
being educated at the Hall, were to take a fancy to me, and get his
father to appoint me his travelling tutor when he left, and when we
come back from the continent, procured me some handsome appointment. Eh!
uncle?'

'Ah, to be sure!' sneered Ralph.

'And who knows, but when he came to see me when I was settled (as he
would of course), he might fall in love with Kate, who would be keeping
my house, and--and marry her, eh! uncle? Who knows?'

'Who, indeed!' snarled Ralph.

'How happy we should be!' cried Nicholas with enthusiasm. 'The pain of
parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again. Kate will be a beautiful
woman, and I so proud to hear them say so, and mother so happy to
be with us once again, and all these sad times forgotten, and--' The
picture was too bright a one to bear, and Nicholas, fairly overpowered
by it, smiled faintly, and burst into tears.

This simple family, born and bred in retirement, and wholly unacquainted
with what is called the world--a conventional phrase which, being
interpreted, often signifieth all the rascals in it--mingled their tears
together at the thought of their first separation; and, this first gush
of feeling over, were proceeding to dilate with all the buoyancy of
untried hope on the bright prospects before them, when Mr Ralph Nickleby
suggested, that if they lost time, some more fortunate candidate
might deprive Nicholas of the stepping-stone to fortune which the
advertisement pointed out, and so undermine all their air-built castles.
This timely reminder effectually stopped the conversation. Nicholas,
having carefully copied the address of Mr Squeers, the uncle and nephew
issued forth together in quest of that accomplished gentleman; Nicholas
firmly persuading himself that he had done his relative great injustice
in disliking him at first sight; and Mrs Nickleby being at some pains to
inform her daughter that she was sure he was a much more kindly disposed
person than he seemed; which, Miss Nickleby dutifully remarked, he might
very easily be.

To tell the truth, the good lady's opinion had been not a little
influenced by her brother-in-law's appeal to her better understanding,
and his implied compliment to her high deserts; and although she had
dearly loved her husband, and still doted on her children, he had struck
so successfully on one of those little jarring chords in the human heart
(Ralph was well acquainted with its worst weaknesses, though he knew
nothing of its best), that she had already begun seriously to consider
herself the amiable and suffering victim of her late husband's
imprudence.



CHAPTER 4

Nicholas and his Uncle (to secure the Fortune without loss of time) wait
upon Mr Wackford Squeers, the Yorkshire Schoolmaster


Snow Hill! What kind of place can the quiet townspeople who see the
words emblazoned, in all the legibility of gilt letters and dark
shading, on the north-country coaches, take Snow Hill to be? All
people have some undefined and shadowy notion of a place whose name is
frequently before their eyes, or often in their ears. What a vast number
of random ideas there must be perpetually floating about, regarding this
same Snow Hill. The name is such a good one. Snow Hill--Snow Hill too,
coupled with a Saracen's Head: picturing to us by a double association
of ideas, something stern and rugged! A bleak desolate tract of country,
open to piercing blasts and fierce wintry storms--a dark, cold, gloomy
heath, lonely by day, and scarcely to be thought of by honest folks
at night--a place which solitary wayfarers shun, and where desperate
robbers congregate;--this, or something like this, should be the
prevalent notion of Snow Hill, in those remote and rustic parts, through
which the Saracen's Head, like some grim apparition, rushes each day and
night with mysterious and ghost-like punctuality; holding its swift and
headlong course in all weathers, and seeming to bid defiance to the very
elements themselves.

The reality is rather different, but by no means to be despised
notwithstanding. There, at the very core of London, in the heart of its
business and animation, in the midst of a whirl of noise and motion:
stemming as it were the giant currents of life that flow ceaselessly on
from different quarters, and meet beneath its walls: stands Newgate; and
in that crowded street on which it frowns so darkly--within a few feet
of the squalid tottering houses--upon the very spot on which the vendors
of soup and fish and damaged fruit are now plying their trades--scores
of human beings, amidst a roar of sounds to which even the tumult of a
great city is as nothing, four, six, or eight strong men at a time, have
been hurried violently and swiftly from the world, when the scene has
been rendered frightful with excess of human life; when curious eyes
have glared from casement and house-top, and wall and pillar; and
when, in the mass of white and upturned faces, the dying wretch, in his
all-comprehensive look of agony, has met not one--not one--that bore the
impress of pity or compassion.