Nicholas Nickleby
circumstances, which, trivial as they were, altered the whole complexion
of the case.
It happened that Miss La Creevy, finding her patient in no very
threatening condition, and being strongly impelled by curiosity to see
what was going forward, bustled into the room while the old gentleman
was in the very act of bellowing. It happened, too, that the instant the
old gentleman saw her, he stopped short, skipped suddenly on his feet,
and fell to kissing his hand violently: a change of demeanour which
almost terrified the little portrait painter out of her senses, and
caused her to retreat behind Tim Linkinwater with the utmost expedition.
‘Aha!’ cried the old gentleman, folding his hands, and squeezing them
with great force against each other. ‘I see her now; I see her now! My
love, my life, my bride, my peerless beauty. She is come at last--at
last--and all is gas and gaiters!’
Mrs. Nickleby looked rather disconcerted for a moment, but immediately
recovering, nodded to Miss La Creevy and the other spectators several
times, and frowned, and smiled gravely, giving them to understand that
she saw where the mistake was, and would set it all to rights in a
minute or two.
‘She is come!’ said the old gentleman, laying his hand upon his heart.
‘Cormoran and Blunderbore! She is come! All the wealth I have is hers
if she will take me for her slave. Where are grace, beauty, and
blandishments, like those? In the Empress of Madagascar? No. In the
Queen of Diamonds? No. In Mrs. Rowland, who every morning bathes in
Kalydor for nothing? No. Melt all these down into one, with the three
Graces, the nine Muses, and fourteen biscuit-bakers’ daughters from
Oxford Street, and make a woman half as lovely. Pho! I defy you.’
After uttering this rhapsody, the old gentleman snapped his fingers
twenty or thirty times, and then subsided into an ecstatic contemplation
of Miss La Creevy’s charms. This affording Mrs. Nickleby a favourable
opportunity of explanation, she went about it straight.
‘I am sure,’ said the worthy lady, with a prefatory cough, ‘that it’s a
great relief, under such trying circumstances as these, to have anybody
else mistaken for me--a very great relief; and it’s a circumstance that
never occurred before, although I have several times been mistaken for
my daughter Kate. I have no doubt the people were very foolish, and
perhaps ought to have known better, but still they did take me for
her, and of course that was no fault of mine, and it would be very
hard indeed if I was to be made responsible for it. However, in this
instance, of course, I must feel that I should do exceedingly wrong if
I suffered anybody--especially anybody that I am under great obligations
to--to be made uncomfortable on my account. And therefore I think it my
duty to tell that gentleman that he is mistaken, that I am the lady
who he was told by some impertinent person was niece to the Council of
Paving-stones, and that I do beg and entreat of him to go quietly away,
if it’s only for,’ here Mrs. Nickleby simpered and hesitated, ‘for MY
sake.’
It might have been expected that the old gentleman would have been
penetrated to the heart by the delicacy and condescension of this
appeal, and that he would at least have returned a courteous and
suitable reply. What, then, was the shock which Mrs. Nickleby received,
when, accosting HER in the most unmistakable manner, he replied in a
loud and sonourous voice: ‘Avaunt! Cat!’
‘Sir!’ cried Mrs. Nickleby, in a faint tone.
‘Cat!’ repeated the old gentleman. ‘Puss, Kit, Tit, Grimalkin, Tabby,
Brindle! Whoosh!’ with which last sound, uttered in a hissing manner
between his teeth, the old gentleman swung his arms violently round and
round, and at the same time alternately advanced on Mrs. Nickleby, and
retreated from her, in that species of savage dance with which boys on
market-days may be seen to frighten pigs, sheep, and other animals, when
they give out obstinate indications of turning down a wrong street.
Mrs. Nickleby wasted no words, but uttered an exclamation of horror and
surprise, and immediately fainted away.
‘I’ll attend to mama,’ said Kate, hastily; ‘I am not at all frightened.
But pray take him away: pray take him away!’
Frank was not at all confident of his power of complying with this
request, until he bethought himself of the stratagem of sending Miss La
Creevy on a few paces in advance, and urging the old gentleman to
follow her. It succeeded to a miracle; and he went away in a rapture of
admiration, strongly guarded by Tim Linkinwater on one side, and Frank
himself on the other.
‘Kate,’ murmured Mrs. Nickleby, reviving when the coast was clear, ‘is he
gone?’
She was assured that he was.
‘I shall never forgive myself, Kate,’ said Mrs. Nickleby. ‘Never! That
gentleman has lost his senses, and I am the unhappy cause.’
‘YOU the cause!’ said Kate, greatly astonished.
‘I, my love,’ replied Mrs. Nickleby, with a desperate calmness. ‘You saw
what he was the other day; you see what he is now. I told your brother,
weeks and weeks ago, Kate, that I hoped a disappointment might not be
too much for him. You see what a wreck he is. Making allowance for
his being a little flighty, you know how rationally, and sensibly, and
honourably he talked, when we saw him in the garden. You have heard the
dreadful nonsense he has been guilty of this night, and the manner in
which he has gone on with that poor unfortunate little old maid. Can
anybody doubt how all this has been brought about?’
‘I should scarcely think they could,’ said Kate mildly.
‘I should scarcely think so, either,’ rejoined her mother. ‘Well! if
I am the unfortunate cause of this, I have the satisfaction of knowing
that I am not to blame. I told Nicholas, I said to him, “Nicholas, my
dear, we should be very careful how we proceed.” He would scarcely hear
me. If the matter had only been properly taken up at first, as I wished
it to be! But you are both of you so like your poor papa. However, I
have MY consolation, and that should be enough for me!’
Washing her hands, thus, of all responsibility under this head, past,
present, or to come, Mrs. Nickleby kindly added that she hoped her
children might never have greater cause to reproach themselves than she
had, and prepared herself to receive the escort, who soon returned with
the intelligence that the old gentleman was safely housed, and that
they found his custodians, who had been making merry with some friends,
wholly ignorant of his absence.
Quiet being again restored, a delicious half-hour--so Frank called it,
in the course of subsequent conversation with Tim Linkinwater as they
were walking home--was spent in conversation, and Tim’s watch at length
apprising him that it was high time to depart, the ladies were left
alone, though not without many offers on the part of Frank to remain
until Nicholas arrived, no matter what hour of the night it might be,
if, after the late neighbourly irruption, they entertained the least
fear of being left to themselves. As their freedom from all further
apprehension, however, left no pretext for his insisting on mounting
guard, he was obliged to abandon the citadel, and to retire with the
trusty Tim.
Nearly three hours of silence passed away. Kate blushed to find, when
Nicholas returned, how long she had been sitting alone, occupied with
her own thoughts.
‘I really thought it had not been half an hour,’ she said.
‘They must have been pleasant thoughts, Kate,’ rejoined Nicholas gaily,
‘to make time pass away like that. What were they now?’
Kate was confused; she toyed with some trifle on the table, looked up
and smiled, looked down and dropped a tear.
‘Why, Kate,’ said Nicholas, drawing his sister towards him and kissing
her, ‘let me see your face. No? Ah! that was but a glimpse; that’s
scarcely fair. A longer look than that, Kate. Come--and I’ll read your
thoughts for you.’
There was something in this proposition, albeit it was said without the
slightest consciousness or application, which so alarmed his sister,
that Nicholas laughingly changed the subject to domestic matters, and
thus gathered, by degrees, as they left the room and went upstairs
together, how lonely Smike had been all night--and by very slow
degrees, too; for on this subject also, Kate seemed to speak with some
reluctance.
‘Poor fellow,’ said Nicholas, tapping gently at his door, ‘what can be
the cause of all this?’
Kate was hanging on her brother’s arm. The door being quickly opened,
she had not time to disengage herself, before Smike, very pale and
haggard, and completely dressed, confronted them.
‘And have you not been to bed?’ said Nicholas.
‘N--n--no,’ was the reply.
Nicholas gently detained his sister, who made an effort to retire; and
asked, ‘Why not?’
‘I could not sleep,’ said Smike, grasping the hand which his friend
extended to him.
‘You are not well?’ rejoined Nicholas.
‘I am better, indeed. A great deal better,’ said Smike quickly.
‘Then why do you give way to these fits of melancholy?’ inquired
Nicholas, in his kindest manner; ‘or why not tell us the cause? You grow
a different creature, Smike.’
‘I do; I know I do,’ he replied. ‘I will tell you the reason one day,
but not now. I hate myself for this; you are all so good and kind. But I
cannot help it. My heart is very full; you do not know how full it is.’
He wrung Nicholas’s hand before he released it; and glancing, for a
moment, at the brother and sister as they stood together, as if there
were something in their strong affection which touched him very deeply,
withdrew into his chamber, and was soon the only watcher under that
quiet roof.
CHAPTER 50
Involves a serious Catastrophe
The little race-course at Hampton was in the full tide and height of
its gaiety; the day as dazzling as day could be; the sun high in the
cloudless sky, and shining in its fullest splendour. Every gaudy colour
that fluttered in the air from carriage seat and garish tent top, shone
out in its gaudiest hues. Old dingy flags grew new again, faded gilding
was re-burnished, stained rotten canvas looked a snowy white, the very
beggars’ rags were freshened up, and sentiment quite forgot its charity
in its fervent admiration of poverty so picturesque.
It was one of those scenes of life and animation, caught in its very
brightest and freshest moments, which can scarcely fail to please;
for if the eye be tired of show and glare, or the ear be weary with a
ceaseless round of noise, the one may repose, turn almost where it
will, on eager, happy, and expectant faces, and the other deaden
all consciousness of more annoying sounds in those of mirth and
exhilaration. Even the sunburnt faces of gypsy children, half naked
though they be, suggest a drop of comfort. It is a pleasant thing to see
that the sun has been there; to know that the air and light are on them
every day; to feel that they ARE children, and lead children’s lives;
that if their pillows be damp, it is with the dews of Heaven, and not
with tears; that the limbs of their girls are free, and that they are
not crippled by distortions, imposing an unnatural and horrible penance
upon their sex; that their lives are spent, from day to day, at least
among the waving trees, and not in the midst of dreadful engines which
make young children old before they know what childhood is, and give
them the exhaustion and infirmity of age, without, like age, the
privilege to die. God send that old nursery tales were true, and that
gypsies stole such children by the score!
The great race of the day had just been run; and the close lines of
people, on either side of the course, suddenly breaking up and pouring
into it, imparted a new liveliness to the scene, which was again all