Nicholas Nickleby
yours. Five shillings in the pound, six and-eightpence, ten shillings? I
WOULD go as far as ten for such a friend as you, we have always been on
such good terms, but you won’t be so hard upon me as that, I know. Now,
will you?’
‘There’s something more to be told,’ said Ralph, as stony and immovable
as ever.
‘Yes, yes, there is, but you won’t give me time,’ returned Arthur Gride.
‘I want a backer in this matter; one who can talk, and urge, and press a
point, which you can do as no man can. I can’t do that, for I am a poor,
timid, nervous creature. Now, if you get a good composition for this
debt, which you long ago gave up for lost, you’ll stand my friend, and
help me. Won’t you?’
‘There’s something more,’ said Ralph.
‘No, no, indeed,’ cried Arthur Gride.
‘Yes, yes, indeed. I tell you yes,’ said Ralph.
‘Oh!’ returned old Arthur feigning to be suddenly enlightened. ‘You mean
something more, as concerns myself and my intention. Ay, surely, surely.
Shall I mention that?’
‘I think you had better,’ rejoined Ralph, drily.
‘I didn’t like to trouble you with that, because I supposed your
interest would cease with your own concern in the affair,’ said Arthur
Gride. ‘That’s kind of you to ask. Oh dear, how very kind of you! Why,
supposing I had a knowledge of some property--some little property--very
little--to which this pretty chick was entitled; which nobody does or
can know of at this time, but which her husband could sweep into his
pouch, if he knew as much as I do, would that account for--’
‘For the whole proceeding,’ rejoined Ralph, abruptly. ‘Now, let me turn
this matter over, and consider what I ought to have if I should help you
to success.’
‘But don’t be hard,’ cried old Arthur, raising his hands with an
imploring gesture, and speaking, in a tremulous voice. ‘Don’t be too
hard upon me. It’s a very small property, it is indeed. Say the ten
shillings, and we’ll close the bargain. It’s more than I ought to give,
but you’re so kind--shall we say the ten? Do now, do.’
Ralph took no notice of these supplications, but sat for three or four
minutes in a brown study, looking thoughtfully at the person from whom
they proceeded. After sufficient cogitation he broke silence, and
it certainly could not be objected that he used any needless
circumlocution, or failed to speak directly to the purpose.
‘If you married this girl without me,’ said Ralph, ‘you must pay my debt
in full, because you couldn’t set her father free otherwise. It’s plain,
then, that I must have the whole amount, clear of all deduction or
incumbrance, or I should lose from being honoured with your confidence,
instead of gaining by it. That’s the first article of the treaty. For
the second, I shall stipulate that for my trouble in negotiation and
persuasion, and helping you to this fortune, I have five hundred pounds.
That’s very little, because you have the ripe lips, and the clustering
hair, and what not, all to yourself. For the third and last article, I
require that you execute a bond to me, this day, binding yourself in the
payment of these two sums, before noon of the day of your marriage with
Madeline Bray. You have told me I can urge and press a point. I press
this one, and will take nothing less than these terms. Accept them if
you like. If not, marry her without me if you can. I shall still get my
debt.’
To all entreaties, protestations, and offers of compromise between his
own proposals and those which Arthur Gride had first suggested, Ralph
was deaf as an adder. He would enter into no further discussion of the
subject, and while old Arthur dilated upon the enormity of his demands
and proposed modifications of them, approaching by degrees nearer and
nearer to the terms he resisted, sat perfectly mute, looking with an
air of quiet abstraction over the entries and papers in his pocket-book.
Finding that it was impossible to make any impression upon his staunch
friend, Arthur Gride, who had prepared himself for some such result
before he came, consented with a heavy heart to the proposed treaty, and
upon the spot filled up the bond required (Ralph kept such instruments
handy), after exacting the condition that Mr. Nickleby should accompany
him to Bray’s lodgings that very hour, and open the negotiation at once,
should circumstances appear auspicious and favourable to their designs.
In pursuance of this last understanding the worthy gentlemen went out
together shortly afterwards, and Newman Noggs emerged, bottle in hand,
from the cupboard, out of the upper door of which, at the imminent risk
of detection, he had more than once thrust his red nose when such parts
of the subject were under discussion as interested him most.
‘I have no appetite now,’ said Newman, putting the flask in his pocket.
‘I’ve had MY dinner.’
Having delivered this observation in a very grievous and doleful
tone, Newman reached the door in one long limp, and came back again in
another.
‘I don’t know who she may be, or what she may be,’ he said: ‘but I pity
her with all my heart and soul; and I can’t help her, nor can I any of
the people against whom a hundred tricks, but none so vile as this, are
plotted every day! Well, that adds to my pain, but not to theirs. The
thing is no worse because I know it, and it tortures me as well as
them. Gride and Nickleby! Good pair for a curricle. Oh roguery! roguery!
roguery!’
With these reflections, and a very hard knock on the crown of his
unfortunate hat at each repetition of the last word, Newman Noggs,
whose brain was a little muddled by so much of the contents of
the pocket-pistol as had found their way there during his recent
concealment, went forth to seek such consolation as might be derivable
from the beef and greens of some cheap eating-house.
Meanwhile the two plotters had betaken themselves to the same house
whither Nicholas had repaired for the first time but a few mornings
before, and having obtained access to Mr. Bray, and found his daughter
from home, had by a train of the most masterly approaches that Ralph’s
utmost skill could frame, at length laid open the real object of their
visit.
‘There he sits, Mr. Bray,’ said Ralph, as the invalid, not yet recovered
from his surprise, reclined in his chair, looking alternately at him
and Arthur Gride. ‘What if he has had the ill-fortune to be one cause
of your detention in this place? I have been another; men must live; you
are too much a man of the world not to see that in its true light. We
offer the best reparation in our power. Reparation! Here is an offer
of marriage, that many a titled father would leap at, for his child. Mr
Arthur Gride, with the fortune of a prince. Think what a haul it is!’
‘My daughter, sir,’ returned Bray, haughtily, ‘as I have brought her
up, would be a rich recompense for the largest fortune that a man could
bestow in exchange for her hand.’
‘Precisely what I told you,’ said the artful Ralph, turning to his
friend, old Arthur. ‘Precisely what made me consider the thing so fair
and easy. There is no obligation on either side. You have money, and
Miss Madeline has beauty and worth. She has youth, you have money.
She has not money, you have not youth. Tit for tat, quits, a match of
Heaven’s own making!’
‘Matches are made in Heaven, they say,’ added Arthur Gride, leering
hideously at the father-in-law he wanted. ‘If we are married, it will be
destiny, according to that.’
‘Then think, Mr. Bray,’ said Ralph, hastily substituting for this
argument considerations more nearly allied to earth, ‘think what a stake
is involved in the acceptance or rejection of these proposals of my
friend.’
‘How can I accept or reject,’ interrupted Mr. Bray, with an irritable
consciousness that it really rested with him to decide. ‘It is for my
daughter to accept or reject; it is for my daughter. You know that.’
‘True,’ said Ralph, emphatically; ‘but you have still the power to
advise; to state the reasons for and against; to hint a wish.’
‘To hint a wish, sir!’ returned the debtor, proud and mean by turns, and
selfish at all times. ‘I am her father, am I not? Why should I hint, and
beat about the bush? Do you suppose, like her mother’s friends and my
enemies--a curse upon them all!--that there is anything in what she has
done for me but duty, sir, but duty? Or do you think that my having been
unfortunate is a sufficient reason why our relative positions should
be changed, and that she should command and I should obey? Hint a wish,
too! Perhaps you think, because you see me in this place and
scarcely able to leave this chair without assistance, that I am some
broken-spirited dependent creature, without the courage or power to do
what I may think best for my own child. Still the power to hint a wish!
I hope so!’
‘Pardon me,’ returned Ralph, who thoroughly knew his man, and had taken
his ground accordingly; ‘you do not hear me out. I was about to say that
your hinting a wish, even hinting a wish, would surely be equivalent to
commanding.’
‘Why, of course it would,’ retorted Mr. Bray, in an exasperated tone. ‘If
you don’t happen to have heard of the time, sir, I tell you that there
was a time, when I carried every point in triumph against her mother’s
whole family, although they had power and wealth on their side, by my
will alone.’
‘Still,’ rejoined Ralph, as mildly as his nature would allow him, ‘you
have not heard me out. You are a man yet qualified to shine in society,
with many years of life before you; that is, if you lived in freer air,
and under brighter skies, and chose your own companions. Gaiety is
your element, you have shone in it before. Fashion and freedom for you.
France, and an annuity that would support you there in luxury, would
give you a new lease of life, would transfer you to a new existence. The
town rang with your expensive pleasures once, and you could blaze up
on a new scene again, profiting by experience, and living a little at
others’ cost, instead of letting others live at yours. What is there on
the reverse side of the picture? What is there? I don’t know which is
the nearest churchyard, but a gravestone there, wherever it is, and a
date, perhaps two years hence, perhaps twenty. That’s all.’
Mr. Bray rested his elbow on the arm of his chair, and shaded his face
with his hand.
‘I speak plainly,’ said Ralph, sitting down beside him, ‘because I feel
strongly. It’s my interest that you should marry your daughter to my
friend Gride, because then he sees me paid--in part, that is. I don’t
disguise it. I acknowledge it openly. But what interest have you in
recommending her to such a step? Keep that in view. She might object,
remonstrate, shed tears, talk of his being too old, and plead that her
life would be rendered miserable. But what is it now?’
Several slight gestures on the part of the invalid showed that these
arguments were no more lost upon him, than the smallest iota of his
demeanour was upon Ralph.
‘What is it now, I say,’ pursued the wily usurer, ‘or what has it a
chance of being? If you died, indeed, the people you hate would make her
happy. But can you bear the thought of that?’
‘No!’ returned Bray, urged by a vindictive impulse he could not repress.
‘I should imagine not, indeed!’ said Ralph, quietly. ‘If she profits
by anybody’s death,’ this was said in a lower tone, ‘let it be by her
husband’s. Don’t let her have to look back to yours, as the event from
which to date a happier life. Where is the objection? Let me hear it
stated. What is it? That her suitor is an old man? Why, how often do men
of family and fortune, who haven’t your excuse, but have all the means
and superfluities of life within their reach, how often do they marry
their daughters to old men, or (worse still) to young men without heads