Nicholas Nickleby
I’ll knock that head of yours in among the wine-glasses behind you
there.’
Here a waiter who had been rubbing his hands in excessive enjoyment
of the scene, so long as only the breaking of heads was in question,
adjured the spectators with great earnestness to fetch the police,
declaring that otherwise murder would be surely done, and that he was
responsible for all the glass and china on the premises.
‘No one need trouble himself to stir,’ said the young gentleman, ‘I am
going to remain in the house all night, and shall be found here in the
morning if there is any assault to answer for.’
‘What did you strike him for?’ asked one of the bystanders.
‘Ah! what did you strike him for?’ demanded the others.
The unpopular gentleman looked coolly round, and addressing himself to
Nicholas, said:
‘You inquired just now what was the matter here. The matter is simply
this. Yonder person, who was drinking with a friend in the coffee-room
when I took my seat there for half an hour before going to bed, (for I
have just come off a journey, and preferred stopping here tonight, to
going home at this hour, where I was not expected until tomorrow,) chose
to express himself in very disrespectful, and insolently familiar
terms, of a young lady, whom I recognised from his description and other
circumstances, and whom I have the honour to know. As he spoke loud
enough to be overheard by the other guests who were present, I informed
him most civilly that he was mistaken in his conjectures, which were
of an offensive nature, and requested him to forbear. He did so for a
little time, but as he chose to renew his conversation when leaving the
room, in a more offensive strain than before, I could not refrain
from making after him, and facilitating his departure by a kick, which
reduced him to the posture in which you saw him just now. I am the
best judge of my own affairs, I take it,’ said the young man, who had
certainly not quite recovered from his recent heat; ‘if anybody here
thinks proper to make this quarrel his own, I have not the smallest
earthly objection, I do assure him.’
Of all possible courses of proceeding under the circumstances detailed,
there was certainly not one which, in his then state of mind, could
have appeared more laudable to Nicholas than this. There were not many
subjects of dispute which at that moment could have come home to his
own breast more powerfully, for having the unknown uppermost in his
thoughts, it naturally occurred to him that he would have done just the
same if any audacious gossiper durst have presumed in his hearing to
speak lightly of her. Influenced by these considerations, he espoused
the young gentleman’s quarrel with great warmth, protesting that he had
done quite right, and that he respected him for it; which John Browdie
(albeit not quite clear as to the merits) immediately protested too,
with not inferior vehemence.
‘Let him take care, that’s all,’ said the defeated party, who was being
rubbed down by a waiter, after his recent fall on the dusty boards. ‘He
don’t knock me about for nothing, I can tell him that. A pretty state of
things, if a man isn’t to admire a handsome girl without being beat to
pieces for it!’
This reflection appeared to have great weight with the young lady in
the bar, who (adjusting her cap as she spoke, and glancing at a mirror)
declared that it would be a very pretty state of things indeed; and that
if people were to be punished for actions so innocent and natural as
that, there would be more people to be knocked down than there would
be people to knock them down, and that she wondered what the gentleman
meant by it, that she did.
‘My dear girl,’ said the young gentleman in a low voice, advancing
towards the sash window.
‘Nonsense, sir!’ replied the young lady sharply, smiling though as she
turned aside, and biting her lip, (whereat Mrs. Browdie, who was still
standing on the stairs, glanced at her with disdain, and called to her
husband to come away).
‘No, but listen to me,’ said the young man. ‘If admiration of a pretty
face were criminal, I should be the most hopeless person alive, for I
cannot resist one. It has the most extraordinary effect upon me, checks
and controls me in the most furious and obstinate mood. You see what an
effect yours has had upon me already.’
‘Oh, that’s very pretty,’ replied the young lady, tossing her head,
‘but--’
‘Yes, I know it’s very pretty,’ said the young man, looking with an air
of admiration in the barmaid’s face; ‘I said so, you know, just this
moment. But beauty should be spoken of respectfully--respectfully, and
in proper terms, and with a becoming sense of its worth and excellence,
whereas this fellow has no more notion--’
The young lady interrupted the conversation at this point, by thrusting
her head out of the bar-window, and inquiring of the waiter in a shrill
voice whether that young man who had been knocked down was going to
stand in the passage all night, or whether the entrance was to be left
clear for other people. The waiters taking the hint, and communicating
it to the hostlers, were not slow to change their tone too, and the
result was, that the unfortunate victim was bundled out in a twinkling.
‘I am sure I have seen that fellow before,’ said Nicholas.
‘Indeed!’ replied his new acquaintance.
‘I am certain of it,’ said Nicholas, pausing to reflect. ‘Where can I
have--stop!--yes, to be sure--he belongs to a register-office up at the
west end of the town. I knew I recollected the face.’
It was, indeed, Tom, the ugly clerk.
‘That’s odd enough!’ said Nicholas, ruminating upon the strange manner
in which the register-office seemed to start up and stare him in the
face every now and then, and when he least expected it.
‘I am much obliged to you for your kind advocacy of my cause when it
most needed an advocate,’ said the young man, laughing, and drawing a
card from his pocket. ‘Perhaps you’ll do me the favour to let me know
where I can thank you.’
Nicholas took the card, and glancing at it involuntarily as he returned
the compliment, evinced very great surprise.
‘Mr. Frank Cheeryble!’ said Nicholas. ‘Surely not the nephew of Cheeryble
Brothers, who is expected tomorrow!’
‘I don’t usually call myself the nephew of the firm,’ returned Mr. Frank,
good-humouredly; ‘but of the two excellent individuals who compose it,
I am proud to say I AM the nephew. And you, I see, are Mr. Nickleby, of
whom I have heard so much! This is a most unexpected meeting, but not
the less welcome, I assure you.’
Nicholas responded to these compliments with others of the same kind,
and they shook hands warmly. Then he introduced John Browdie, who had
remained in a state of great admiration ever since the young lady in
the bar had been so skilfully won over to the right side. Then Mrs. John
Browdie was introduced, and finally they all went upstairs together
and spent the next half-hour with great satisfaction and mutual
entertainment; Mrs. John Browdie beginning the conversation by
declaring that of all the made-up things she ever saw, that young woman
below-stairs was the vainest and the plainest.
This Mr. Frank Cheeryble, although, to judge from what had recently taken
place, a hot-headed young man (which is not an absolute miracle and
phenomenon in nature), was a sprightly, good-humoured, pleasant fellow,
with much both in his countenance and disposition that reminded Nicholas
very strongly of the kind-hearted brothers. His manner was as unaffected
as theirs, and his demeanour full of that heartiness which, to most
people who have anything generous in their composition, is peculiarly
prepossessing. Add to this, that he was good-looking and intelligent,
had a plentiful share of vivacity, was extremely cheerful, and
accommodated himself in five minutes’ time to all John Browdie’s
oddities with as much ease as if he had known him from a boy; and it
will be a source of no great wonder that, when they parted for the
night, he had produced a most favourable impression, not only upon the
worthy Yorkshireman and his wife, but upon Nicholas also, who, revolving
all these things in his mind as he made the best of his way home,
arrived at the conclusion that he had laid the foundation of a most
agreeable and desirable acquaintance.
‘But it’s a most extraordinary thing about that register-office fellow!’
thought Nicholas. ‘Is it likely that this nephew can know anything about
that beautiful girl? When Tim Linkinwater gave me to understand the
other day that he was coming to take a share in the business here, he
said he had been superintending it in Germany for four years, and that
during the last six months he had been engaged in establishing an agency
in the north of England. That’s four years and a half--four years and a
half. She can’t be more than seventeen--say eighteen at the outside. She
was quite a child when he went away, then. I should say he knew nothing
about her and had never seen her, so HE can give me no information. At
all events,’ thought Nicholas, coming to the real point in his mind,
‘there can be no danger of any prior occupation of her affections in
that quarter; that’s quite clear.’
Is selfishness a necessary ingredient in the composition of that passion
called love, or does it deserve all the fine things which poets, in the
exercise of their undoubted vocation, have said of it? There are, no
doubt, authenticated instances of gentlemen having given up ladies
and ladies having given up gentlemen to meritorious rivals, under
circumstances of great high-mindedness; but is it quite established
that the majority of such ladies and gentlemen have not made a virtue of
necessity, and nobly resigned what was beyond their reach; as a private
soldier might register a vow never to accept the order of the Garter, or
a poor curate of great piety and learning, but of no family--save a very
large family of children--might renounce a bishopric?
Here was Nicholas Nickleby, who would have scorned the thought of
counting how the chances stood of his rising in favour or fortune with
the brothers Cheeryble, now that their nephew had returned, already deep
in calculations whether that same nephew was likely to rival him in the
affections of the fair unknown--discussing the matter with himself too,
as gravely as if, with that one exception, it were all settled; and
recurring to the subject again and again, and feeling quite indignant
and ill-used at the notion of anybody else making love to one with
whom he had never exchanged a word in all his life. To be sure, he
exaggerated rather than depreciated the merits of his new acquaintance;
but still he took it as a kind of personal offence that he should have
any merits at all--in the eyes of this particular young lady, that is;
for elsewhere he was quite welcome to have as many as he pleased. There
was undoubted selfishness in all this, and yet Nicholas was of a most
free and generous nature, with as few mean or sordid thoughts, perhaps,
as ever fell to the lot of any man; and there is no reason to suppose
that, being in love, he felt and thought differently from other people
in the like sublime condition.
He did not stop to set on foot an inquiry into his train of thought or
state of feeling, however; but went thinking on all the way home,
and continued to dream on in the same strain all night. For, having
satisfied himself that Frank Cheeryble could have no knowledge of, or
acquaintance with, the mysterious young lady, it began to occur to him
that even he himself might never see her again; upon which hypothesis he
built up a very ingenious succession of tormenting ideas which answered
his purpose even better than the vision of Mr. Frank Cheeryble, and
tantalised and worried him, waking and sleeping.