Nicholas Nickleby
Tim launched out into several other declarations also manifesting the
disinterestedness of his heart, and a great devotion to the fair sex:
which were received with no less approbation. This was done and said
with a comical mixture of jest and earnest, and, leading to a great
amount of laughter, made them very merry indeed.
Kate was commonly the life and soul of the conversation at home; but she
was more silent than usual upon this occasion (perhaps because Tim and
Miss La Creevy engrossed so much of it), and, keeping aloof from the
talkers, sat at the window watching the shadows as the evening closed
in, and enjoying the quiet beauty of the night, which seemed to have
scarcely less attractions to Frank, who first lingered near, and then
sat down beside, her. No doubt, there are a great many things to be said
appropriate to a summer evening, and no doubt they are best said in a
low voice, as being most suitable to the peace and serenity of the hour;
long pauses, too, at times, and then an earnest word or so, and then
another interval of silence which, somehow, does not seem like silence
either, and perhaps now and then a hasty turning away of the head, or
drooping of the eyes towards the ground, all these minor circumstances,
with a disinclination to have candles introduced and a tendency to
confuse hours with minutes, are doubtless mere influences of the time,
as many lovely lips can clearly testify. Neither is there the slightest
reason why Mrs. Nickleby should have expressed surprise when, candles
being at length brought in, Kate’s bright eyes were unable to bear the
light which obliged her to avert her face, and even to leave the room
for some short time; because, when one has sat in the dark so long,
candles ARE dazzling, and nothing can be more strictly natural than that
such results should be produced, as all well-informed young people know.
For that matter, old people know it too, or did know it once, but they
forget these things sometimes, and more’s the pity.
The good lady’s surprise, however, did not end here. It was greatly
increased when it was discovered that Kate had not the least appetite
for supper: a discovery so alarming that there is no knowing in what
unaccountable efforts of oratory Mrs. Nickleby’s apprehensions might have
been vented, if the general attention had not been attracted, at the
moment, by a very strange and uncommon noise, proceeding, as the pale
and trembling servant girl affirmed, and as everybody’s sense of hearing
seemed to affirm also, ‘right down’ the chimney of the adjoining room.
It being quite plain to the comprehension of all present that, however
extraordinary and improbable it might appear, the noise did nevertheless
proceed from the chimney in question; and the noise (which was a strange
compound of various shuffling, sliding, rumbling, and struggling sounds,
all muffled by the chimney) still continuing, Frank Cheeryble caught
up a candle, and Tim Linkinwater the tongs, and they would have very
quickly ascertained the cause of this disturbance if Mrs. Nickleby
had not been taken very faint, and declined being left behind, on any
account. This produced a short remonstrance, which terminated in their
all proceeding to the troubled chamber in a body, excepting only Miss La
Creevy, who, as the servant girl volunteered a confession of having been
subject to fits in her infancy, remained with her to give the alarm and
apply restoratives, in case of extremity.
Advancing to the door of the mysterious apartment, they were not
a little surprised to hear a human voice, chanting with a highly
elaborated expression of melancholy, and in tones of suffocation which
a human voice might have produced from under five or six feather-beds
of the best quality, the once popular air of ‘Has she then failed in
her truth, the beautiful maid I adore?’ Nor, on bursting into the room
without demanding a parley, was their astonishment lessened by the
discovery that these romantic sounds certainly proceeded from the throat
of some man up the chimney, of whom nothing was visible but a pair of
legs, which were dangling above the grate; apparently feeling, with
extreme anxiety, for the top bar whereon to effect a landing.
A sight so unusual and unbusiness-like as this, completely paralysed
Tim Linkinwater, who, after one or two gentle pinches at the stranger’s
ankles, which were productive of no effect, stood clapping the tongs
together, as if he were sharpening them for another assault, and did
nothing else.
‘This must be some drunken fellow,’ said Frank. ‘No thief would announce
his presence thus.’
As he said this, with great indignation, he raised the candle to obtain
a better view of the legs, and was darting forward to pull them down
with very little ceremony, when Mrs. Nickleby, clasping her hands,
uttered a sharp sound, something between a scream and an exclamation,
and demanded to know whether the mysterious limbs were not clad in
small-clothes and grey worsted stockings, or whether her eyes had
deceived her.
‘Yes,’ cried Frank, looking a little closer. ‘Small-clothes certainly,
and--and--rough grey stockings, too. Do you know him, ma’am?’
‘Kate, my dear,’ said Mrs. Nickleby, deliberately sitting herself down
in a chair with that sort of desperate resignation which seemed to imply
that now matters had come to a crisis, and all disguise was useless,
‘you will have the goodness, my love, to explain precisely how this
matter stands. I have given him no encouragement--none whatever--not the
least in the world. You know that, my dear, perfectly well. He was very
respectful, exceedingly respectful, when he declared, as you were a
witness to; still at the same time, if I am to be persecuted in this
way, if vegetable what’s-his-names and all kinds of garden-stuff are
to strew my path out of doors, and gentlemen are to come choking up our
chimneys at home, I really don’t know--upon my word I do NOT know--what
is to become of me. It’s a very hard case--harder than anything I was
ever exposed to, before I married your poor dear papa, though I suffered
a good deal of annoyance then--but that, of course, I expected, and made
up my mind for. When I was not nearly so old as you, my dear, there
was a young gentleman who sat next us at church, who used, almost every
Sunday, to cut my name in large letters in the front of his pew while
the sermon was going on. It was gratifying, of course, naturally so,
but still it was an annoyance, because the pew was in a very conspicuous
place, and he was several times publicly taken out by the beadle for
doing it. But that was nothing to this. This is a great deal worse, and
a great deal more embarrassing. I would rather, Kate, my dear,’ said
Mrs. Nickleby, with great solemnity, and an effusion of tears: ‘I would
rather, I declare, have been a pig-faced lady, than be exposed to such a
life as this!’
Frank Cheeryble and Tim Linkinwater looked, in irrepressible
astonishment, first at each other and then at Kate, who felt that some
explanation was necessary, but who, between her terror at the apparition
of the legs, her fear lest their owner should be smothered, and her
anxiety to give the least ridiculous solution of the mystery that it was
capable of bearing, was quite unable to utter a single word.
‘He gives me great pain,’ continued Mrs. Nickleby, drying her eyes,
‘great pain; but don’t hurt a hair of his head, I beg. On no account
hurt a hair of his head.’
It would not, under existing circumstances, have been quite so easy to
hurt a hair of the gentleman’s head as Mrs. Nickleby seemed to imagine,
inasmuch as that part of his person was some feet up the chimney, which
was by no means a wide one. But, as all this time he had never left off
singing about the bankruptcy of the beautiful maid in respect of truth,
and now began not only to croak very feebly, but to kick with great
violence as if respiration became a task of difficulty, Frank Cheeryble,
without further hesitation, pulled at the shorts and worsteds with
such heartiness as to bring him floundering into the room with greater
precipitation than he had quite calculated upon.
‘Oh! yes, yes,’ said Kate, directly the whole figure of this singular
visitor appeared in this abrupt manner. ‘I know who it is. Pray don’t be
rough with him. Is he hurt? I hope not. Oh, pray see if he is hurt.’
‘He is not, I assure you,’ replied Frank, handling the object of his
surprise, after this appeal, with sudden tenderness and respect. ‘He is
not hurt in the least.’
‘Don’t let him come any nearer,’ said Kate, retiring as far as she
could.
‘Oh, no, he shall not,’ rejoined Frank. ‘You see I have him secure here.
But may I ask you what this means, and whether you expected this old
gentleman?’
‘Oh, no,’ said Kate, ‘of course not; but he--mama does not think so, I
believe--but he is a mad gentleman who has escaped from the next house,
and must have found an opportunity of secreting himself here.’
‘Kate,’ interposed Mrs. Nickleby with severe dignity, ‘I am surprised at
you.’
‘Dear mama,’ Kate gently remonstrated.
‘I am surprised at you,’ repeated Mrs. Nickleby; ‘upon my word, Kate,
I am quite astonished that you should join the persecutors of this
unfortunate gentleman, when you know very well that they have the basest
designs upon his property, and that that is the whole secret of it. It
would be much kinder of you, Kate, to ask Mr. Linkinwater or Mr. Cheeryble
to interfere in his behalf, and see him righted. You ought not to allow
your feelings to influence you; it’s not right, very far from it. What
should my feelings be, do you suppose? If anybody ought to be indignant,
who is it? I, of course, and very properly so. Still, at the same time,
I wouldn’t commit such an injustice for the world. No,’ continued Mrs
Nickleby, drawing herself up, and looking another way with a kind of
bashful stateliness; ‘this gentleman will understand me when I tell him
that I repeat the answer I gave him the other day; that I always will
repeat it, though I do believe him to be sincere when I find him placing
himself in such dreadful situations on my account; and that I request
him to have the goodness to go away directly, or it will be impossible
to keep his behaviour a secret from my son Nicholas. I am obliged to
him, very much obliged to him, but I cannot listen to his addresses for
a moment. It’s quite impossible.’
While this address was in course of delivery, the old gentleman, with
his nose and cheeks embellished with large patches of soot, sat upon the
ground with his arms folded, eyeing the spectators in profound silence,
and with a very majestic demeanour. He did not appear to take the
smallest notice of what Mrs. Nickleby said, but when she ceased to
speak he honoured her with a long stare, and inquired if she had quite
finished.
‘I have nothing more to say,’ replied that lady modestly. ‘I really
cannot say anything more.’
‘Very good,’ said the old gentleman, raising his voice, ‘then bring in
the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.’
Nobody executing this order, the old gentleman, after a short pause,
raised his voice again and demanded a thunder sandwich. This article not
being forthcoming either, he requested to be served with a fricassee of
boot-tops and goldfish sauce, and then laughing heartily, gratified his
hearers with a very long, very loud, and most melodious bellow.
But still Mrs. Nickleby, in reply to the significant looks of all about
her, shook her head as though to assure them that she saw nothing
whatever in all this, unless, indeed, it were a slight degree of
eccentricity. She might have remained impressed with these opinions
down to the latest moment of her life, but for a slight train of