Nicholas Nickleby
comings and goings of breath, seemed to imply that feelings were
swelling in Miss Squeers’s bosom too great for utterance.
While the foregoing conversation was proceeding, Master Wackford,
finding himself unnoticed, and feeling his preponderating inclinations
strong upon him, had by little and little sidled up to the table and
attacked the food with such slight skirmishing as drawing his fingers
round and round the inside of the plates, and afterwards sucking them
with infinite relish; picking the bread, and dragging the pieces over
the surface of the butter; pocketing lumps of sugar, pretending all
the time to be absorbed in thought; and so forth. Finding that no
interference was attempted with these small liberties, he gradually
mounted to greater, and, after helping himself to a moderately good cold
collation, was, by this time, deep in the pie.
Nothing of this had been unobserved by Mr. Squeers, who, so long as the
attention of the company was fixed upon other objects, hugged himself to
think that his son and heir should be fattening at the enemy’s expense.
But there being now an appearance of a temporary calm, in which the
proceedings of little Wackford could scarcely fail to be observed,
he feigned to be aware of the circumstance for the first time, and
inflicted upon the face of that young gentleman a slap that made the
very tea-cups ring.
‘Eating!’ cried Mr. Squeers, ‘of what his father’s enemies has left! It’s
fit to go and poison you, you unnat’ral boy.’
‘It wean’t hurt him,’ said John, apparently very much relieved by the
prospect of having a man in the quarrel; ‘let’ un eat. I wish the whole
school was here. I’d give’em soom’at to stay their unfort’nate stomachs
wi’, if I spent the last penny I had!’
Squeers scowled at him with the worst and most malicious expression of
which his face was capable--it was a face of remarkable capability, too,
in that way--and shook his fist stealthily.
‘Coom, coom, schoolmeasther,’ said John, ‘dinnot make a fool o’ thyself;
for if I was to sheake mine--only once--thou’d fa’ doon wi’ the wind o’
it.’
‘It was you, was it,’ returned Squeers, ‘that helped off my runaway boy?
It was you, was it?’
‘Me!’ returned John, in a loud tone. ‘Yes, it wa’ me, coom; wa’at o’
that? It wa’ me. Noo then!’
‘You hear him say he did it, my child!’ said Squeers, appealing to his
daughter. ‘You hear him say he did it!’
‘Did it!’ cried John. ‘I’ll tell ‘ee more; hear this, too. If thou’d
got another roonaway boy, I’d do it agean. If thou’d got twonty roonaway
boys, I’d do it twonty times ower, and twonty more to thot; and I
tell thee more,’ said John, ‘noo my blood is oop, that thou’rt an old
ra’ascal; and that it’s weel for thou, thou be’est an old ‘un, or I’d
ha’ poonded thee to flour when thou told an honest mun hoo thou’d licked
that poor chap in t’ coorch.’
‘An honest man!’ cried Squeers, with a sneer.
‘Ah! an honest man,’ replied John; ‘honest in ought but ever putting
legs under seame table wi’ such as thou.’
‘Scandal!’ said Squeers, exultingly. ‘Two witnesses to it; Wackford
knows the nature of an oath, he does; we shall have you there, sir.
Rascal, eh?’ Mr. Squeers took out his pocketbook and made a note of it.
‘Very good. I should say that was worth full twenty pound at the next
assizes, without the honesty, sir.’
‘’Soizes,’ cried John, ‘thou’d betther not talk to me o’ ‘Soizes.
Yorkshire schools have been shown up at ‘Soizes afore noo, mun, and it’s
a ticklish soobjact to revive, I can tell ye.’
Mr. Squeers shook his head in a threatening manner, looking very white
with passion; and taking his daughter’s arm, and dragging little
Wackford by the hand, retreated towards the door.
‘As for you,’ said Squeers, turning round and addressing Nicholas,
who, as he had caused him to smart pretty soundly on a former occasion,
purposely abstained from taking any part in the discussion, ‘see if I
ain’t down upon you before long. You’ll go a kidnapping of boys, will
you? Take care their fathers don’t turn up--mark that--take care their
fathers don’t turn up, and send ‘em back to me to do as I like with, in
spite of you.’
‘I am not afraid of that,’ replied Nicholas, shrugging his shoulders
contemptuously, and turning away.
‘Ain’t you!’ retorted Squeers, with a diabolical look. ‘Now then, come
along.’
‘I leave such society, with my pa, for Hever,’ said Miss Squeers,
looking contemptuously and loftily round. ‘I am defiled by breathing
the air with such creatures. Poor Mr. Browdie! He! he! he! I do pity him,
that I do; he’s so deluded. He! he! he!--Artful and designing ‘Tilda!’
With this sudden relapse into the sternest and most majestic wrath, Miss
Squeers swept from the room; and having sustained her dignity until the
last possible moment, was heard to sob and scream and struggle in the
passage.
John Browdie remained standing behind the table, looking from his wife
to Nicholas, and back again, with his mouth wide open, until his hand
accidentally fell upon the tankard of ale, when he took it up, and
having obscured his features therewith for some time, drew a long
breath, handed it over to Nicholas, and rang the bell.
‘Here, waither,’ said John, briskly. ‘Look alive here. Tak’ these things
awa’, and let’s have soomat broiled for sooper--vary comfortable and
plenty o’ it--at ten o’clock. Bring soom brandy and soom wather, and a
pair o’ slippers--the largest pair in the house--and be quick aboot it.
Dash ma wig!’ said John, rubbing his hands, ‘there’s no ganging oot to
neeght, noo, to fetch anybody whoam, and ecod, we’ll begin to spend the
evening in airnest.’
CHAPTER 43
Officiates as a kind of Gentleman Usher, in bringing various People
together
The storm had long given place to a calm the most profound, and the
evening was pretty far advanced--indeed supper was over, and the
process of digestion proceeding as favourably as, under the influence of
complete tranquillity, cheerful conversation, and a moderate allowance
of brandy-and-water, most wise men conversant with the anatomy and
functions of the human frame will consider that it ought to have
proceeded, when the three friends, or as one might say, both in a civil
and religious sense, and with proper deference and regard to the holy
state of matrimony, the two friends, (Mr. and Mrs. Browdie counting as
no more than one,) were startled by the noise of loud and angry
threatenings below stairs, which presently attained so high a pitch,
and were conveyed besides in language so towering, sanguinary, and
ferocious, that it could hardly have been surpassed, if there had
actually been a Saracen’s head then present in the establishment,
supported on the shoulders and surmounting the trunk of a real, live,
furious, and most unappeasable Saracen.
This turmoil, instead of quickly subsiding after the first outburst,
(as turmoils not unfrequently do, whether in taverns, legislative
assemblies, or elsewhere,) into a mere grumbling and growling squabble,
increased every moment; and although the whole din appeared to be
raised by but one pair of lungs, yet that one pair was of so powerful
a quality, and repeated such words as ‘scoundrel,’ ‘rascal,’ ‘insolent
puppy,’ and a variety of expletives no less flattering to the party
addressed, with such great relish and strength of tone, that a dozen
voices raised in concert under any ordinary circumstances would have
made far less uproar and created much smaller consternation.
‘Why, what’s the matter?’ said Nicholas, moving hastily towards the
door.
John Browdie was striding in the same direction when Mrs. Browdie turned
pale, and, leaning back in her chair, requested him with a faint voice
to take notice, that if he ran into any danger it was her intention to
fall into hysterics immediately, and that the consequences might be more
serious than he thought for. John looked rather disconcerted by this
intelligence, though there was a lurking grin on his face at the same
time; but, being quite unable to keep out of the fray, he compromised
the matter by tucking his wife’s arm under his own, and, thus
accompanied, following Nicholas downstairs with all speed.
The passage outside the coffee-room door was the scene of disturbance,
and here were congregated the coffee-room customers and waiters,
together with two or three coachmen and helpers from the yard. These had
hastily assembled round a young man who from his appearance might have
been a year or two older than Nicholas, and who, besides having given
utterance to the defiances just now described, seemed to have proceeded
to even greater lengths in his indignation, inasmuch as his feet had no
other covering than a pair of stockings, while a couple of slippers lay
at no great distance from the head of a prostrate figure in an opposite
corner, who bore the appearance of having been shot into his present
retreat by means of a kick, and complimented by having the slippers
flung about his ears afterwards.
The coffee-room customers, and the waiters, and the coachmen, and the
helpers--not to mention a barmaid who was looking on from behind an
open sash window--seemed at that moment, if a spectator might judge from
their winks, nods, and muttered exclamations, strongly disposed to take
part against the young gentleman in the stockings. Observing this, and
that the young gentleman was nearly of his own age and had in nothing
the appearance of an habitual brawler, Nicholas, impelled by such
feelings as will influence young men sometimes, felt a very strong
disposition to side with the weaker party, and so thrust himself at once
into the centre of the group, and in a more emphatic tone, perhaps, than
circumstances might seem to warrant, demanded what all that noise was
about.
‘Hallo!’ said one of the men from the yard, ‘this is somebody in
disguise, this is.’
‘Room for the eldest son of the Emperor of Roosher, gen’l’men!’ cried
another fellow.
Disregarding these sallies, which were uncommonly well received, as
sallies at the expense of the best-dressed persons in a crowd usually
are, Nicholas glanced carelessly round, and addressing the young
gentleman, who had by this time picked up his slippers and thrust his
feet into them, repeated his inquiries with a courteous air.
‘A mere nothing!’ he replied.
At this a murmur was raised by the lookers-on, and some of the boldest
cried, ‘Oh, indeed!--Wasn’t it though?--Nothing, eh?--He called that
nothing, did he? Lucky for him if he found it nothing.’ These and many
other expressions of ironical disapprobation having been exhausted, two
or three of the out-of-door fellows began to hustle Nicholas and the
young gentleman who had made the noise: stumbling against them by
accident, and treading on their toes, and so forth. But this being a
round game, and one not necessarily limited to three or four players,
was open to John Browdie too, who, bursting into the little crowd--to
the great terror of his wife--and falling about in all directions,
now to the right, now to the left, now forwards, now backwards, and
accidentally driving his elbow through the hat of the tallest helper,
who had been particularly active, speedily caused the odds to wear a
very different appearance; while more than one stout fellow limped away
to a respectful distance, anathematising with tears in his eyes the
heavy tread and ponderous feet of the burly Yorkshireman.
‘Let me see him do it again,’ said he who had been kicked into the
corner, rising as he spoke, apparently more from the fear of John
Browdie’s inadvertently treading upon him, than from any desire to place
himself on equal terms with his late adversary. ‘Let me see him do it
again. That’s all.’
‘Let me hear you make those remarks again,’ said the young man, ‘and